swansont

YT mentions a pyro crew and a bonfire, fireworks and a firing box, and you think chili is a euphemism?

I haven't read the article, but the implication of this quote is wrong. QM was never dogma; it works in explaining how nature behaves, and for that reason it won't be scrapped. Just like F=ma and all of classical physics is still around. If someone finds a more basic description of nature, it had better predict all of the quantum effects we see, since that's how nature behaves.

I think this misses the point of the post. While you may object to the tone, the message is valid. The problem with accepting the premise that an opinion is acceptable is that opinions don't really have to be justified. An opinion is something you hold and don't have to be swayed by arguments against it. That's not science. If you are having a science discussion (and this was posted in General Science) then opinion doesn't matter — there aren't two sides to the story, despite the way the media portrays these issues. Science is about arriving at a description of how nature behaves, and science is evidence-based. Facts, not opinions. There's really no overlap. You don't have an opinion on how gravity behaves, or relativity, or anything else in science; you may have a conjecture or hypothesis, but the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, not a bunch of people standing around offering an opinion. You do experiments, collect data and figure out what's going on. From a scientific standpoint, I don't care what your opinion is, nor should I. If you have an objection to the science, then point out where it's suspect, or where the data are faulty. The OP asked the question "Is denying the scientific consensus on the origins and development of life and the universe analogous to denying the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change?" and the answer to that is yes. The focus of the objection is largely not directed at the science itself, but engages in denialist tactics, and "I'm entitled to my opinion" (and its variants) is but one of those.

I agree with everything but the use of "interfere," which has a specific definition that isn't in play here. The extended source and diffraction effects certainly increase with distance.

Indeed. Hard to believe Guy Lombardo has been gone 30 years.

Yes, as I recall there is a model in which photons interacting in a medium can be viewed as massive, and thus travel slower than c. Still not related to gravity and space curvature.

Diffraction is the most likely culprit. Light bends a little when it goes around a sharp corner, and this fuzzes the shadow out.

In matters of scientific inquiry, opinion doesn't matter. Strawman. Warming implies comparison to a baseline. What was the baseline? It is not equivalent to stating that the planet has never been warmer. Appeal to ridicule. Science does not deal in proof, and there is always uncertainty in any measurement, so quantifying uncertainty is part of science. Noting that there was a high temperature in the 30's is a strawman, climate change does not imply/predict a monotonic increase in temperature. The first prediction is not contradicted by the second. And then a strawman.

Ah, yes. I've read that about the trinity test site as well, though I can't find what particular isotopes are responsible for the radiation. And, as far as Co-60 goes, it's a good gamma source, so it's used for sterilization (as YT surmised) and for medical treatments, and other uses.

Air is moving around, so it will spend time in areas where it doesn't "see" the sky, and where it can exchange energy with other objects.

Curvature doesn't enter into the discussion, AFAIK.

JohnB: Your links all seem to be incorrectly formatted as http://http: (whatever) and they don't work. Challenges by "Czech President Vaclav Klaus," "Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute" ("Hudson Institute is a non-partisan policy research organization") and "Lord Monckton of Brenchley, a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher" to debate Al Gore cannot legitimately be called scientific debates, since none of the protagonists appear to be engaged in climate research. To claim that such a debate would contain facts and no rhetoric is optimistic to a ludicrous degree. Public debate is a really bad forum for scientific discussion. The real debate occurs in peer-reviewed scientific journals and at conferences.

Since the angles differ by 90º (by inspection) at the equator, I think this is a case of "trivial maths" and not "no maths"

The fission fragments are often unstable, which is why nuclear waste is such an issue. Lol. That would make for a "fun" time for several years, but probably not 60 years later. Both Co-60 (from thermal neutron absorption) and especially Fe-59 (from a proton ejection) have short enough half-lives to be imperceptible above background in that time. (5.25 years and 44 days, respectively) Actually, one of the things I ran across was a study from a few years ago where they measured the fast neutron dose by looking at copper samples from the blast area. They didn't have the ability to do this in the WWII era, so they really weren't sure what that exposure was. For fast neutrons you can get 63Cu(n,p)63Ni, and the Ni has a 100 year half-life. The ability to measure the small amount of Ni wasn't acquired until well after the war, so they couldn't have done the measurement back then.

Light slows down, i.e. the propagation time increases. Photons do not, as they always travel at c. No, they are the classical and quantum-mechanical decriptions of what's going on. In the classical picture the wavelength (not the frequency) changes and the light slows, because [math]c=\lambda\nu[/math] . In the QM picture (quantum electrodynamics) the photons are occasionally absorbed in a virtual state of the atoms of the medium, delaying their travel.

Objects with rest mass can't go the speed of light, so the question is moot.

That will give you a - sign if you are using the usual coordinate system with the y axis being up.

Ah, OK. The negative sign comes from the way that PE is defined, not from that integral. The work-energy theorem states that [math]W = \Delta KE[/math] and conservation of (mechanical) energy dictates that if [math]W_{noncons} = 0, \Delta KE + \Delta PE = 0[/math] which leaves you with [math]W_{cons} = -\Delta PE[/math]

Right, that's how we use potential energy. It's related to how much work someone would have to do to move the object around, and the applied force would be in the opposite direction of the conservative force, so you get a negative sign.

Oh, you anti-Fahrenheitean! ———— You can get frost when the temperature is above freezing. I'll bet that the sky was clear. The rate of radiative heat transfer depends on the difference between T4 of the object and T4 of the surroundings (the "reservoir;" basically they each radiate, and you look at power out vs power in. No net heat transfer when the temperatures are equal because the radiation balances out) Well, the nighttime sky is pretty cold: 2.7 K, so you can radiate quite efficiently when the sky is clear. When there is cloud cover, or something else nearby taking up a large amount of surface area that the objct can "see," the difference in radiated power drops dramatically, and you don't see frost above freezing.

[math]W_{grav} = - \Delta U [/math] Is this representing the work done by gravity, or the work done against gravity?

I think one wouldn't have to look very hard to find people who know they are peddling BS but do it anyway, i.e. it may not always be apparent what the "honestly held belief" is, assuming that statement truly reflects peoples' actions. IOW it does not follow that geocentrism was an honestly held belief, if some other motivation outweighed the possible dishonesty.

Actually the critical mass in the Hiroshima bomb wasn't spherical. Since they used a gun topology rather than implosion, it was cylindrical. Simpler and more robust, so it had a smaller chance of failure (they never fully tested this design — the Trinity test was an implosion device). The cylinder means a slightly higher critical mass, because of increased neutron leakage. (Leakage never goes to zero) Do you have a cite for the radiation level? All the sources I've seen claim that it's no higher than normal background. http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/kids/KPSH_E/question_box/question12.html

Shouldn't that be: I Think I'm Freaking Out I Think I'm Freaking Out I Think I'm Freaking Out ?

One must also remember that the first amendment right to free seech is concerned primarily with government censorship/suppression. Free speech does not give you the right to libel or slander someone, for instance, and this would seem to be related (willful infliction of emotional distress). Protesting the government is one thing, but there are so many avenues available to do so, and a funeral is usually not a government event.