swansont

What's cyclic about it? The half-life in our frame is longer when they are moving than when they are at rest. That observation is independent of SR.

According to this table Si is a worse conductor than Ge, and they are way at the top of the list, which is from worst-to-best (6th and 7th worst of the ones listed) But, like Carbon (diamond vs graphite), the structure of Si may matter. If it's not a good crystal, or there are impurities, the conductivity may be higher.

Si and Ge are intrinsic semiconductors, so they probably shouldn't be thought of as "good conductors"

But there's a horrendous signal-to-noise. They point out so many "flaws" already, it would be hard to tell a real one from all of the false positives.

Carbon isn't all that reactive AFAIK (at least at room temp). It does form compounds, but how does it do so? Not so much on its own. If it were reactive, it wouldn't just sit there and be carbon, like in graphite or diamond. It would react. C isn't going to be as unreactive as a noble gas, but you have to take that as given, as you are looking for a solid.

My guess is that you might want to chew your pencil while you ponder this.

The first question is poorly done (technically two correct answers) but if you're lost on this, discuss the validity of each answer, and we can give you feedback. For the second, as Atheist said, you need to solve for the equilibrium condition of the balance. But you can eliminate several choices even before you do that.

You'd submit it to e.g. one of the Physical Review journals that was appropriate to the topic. (published by the American Physical Society) Science libraries, research institutions and some individuals subscribe to the journals, and people try to read the articles in their field.

A, B and C are in the same position, relative to each other. There is no A', B' and C' in that frame. If you have an absolute frame, you would expect the proposed change, but this is not observed experimentally, so it is falsified. Is there point to any of this?

Waaaay back in post #6 But your diagram and post imply that the speed of the clocks with respect to some other frame need to be taken into account. And that's wrong.

There are also conferences where you showcase/discuss your research.

No, it isn't. SR iteself is a self-cosistent result of assuming c is constant. It's derived from that and some mathematical definitions. Meaning it will hold if that postulate is true (and if the laws of physics don't change). All you can show is that the assumptions don't model the real world, and that requires a physical experiment. A gedanken experiment will include what you think nature will do. So if there is a disagreement, all that means is that you predict nature will disagree with theory, but it doesn't disprove anything until you do the experiment to confirm it. So if you are describing a situation that has already been investigated, like moving clocks, and you have a problem, it's because you have misapplied the theory. If there was a delay as you describe due to motion through an absolute frame, synchronizing clocks at noon vs midnight would be different because of the change in velocity due to rotation of the earth. This is not observed to happen. This isn't an issue of prejudice. It's about burden of proof and exisitence (and quality) of evidence.

If the clocks are all moving with respect to some other observer, so that they are not moving with respect to each other, they will all agree with each other in their own frame. The basic flaw is this: special relativity is a self-consistent theory. There is no thought experiment you can do to show that it's wrong, unless you misapply relativity. If you come up with an inconsistent answer, then you have made a mistake. The only way to falsify it is through actual experiment. IOW, gedanken experiments show you how SR works. They won't show you that it doesn't work.

Yes, that is correct. Once you have made a measurement that collapses the wave function the entanglement is lost, so the second measurement has no further effect on the first particle — its state has already been determined. Confirming the state has to take place via some means that is limited to c, so you can't use this to get around that speed limit of transmitting information. Welcome to the wonderful world of Quantum mechanics. Check your intuition at the door.

Since it's basically static charge that causes the initial bias I don't think a magnet will help

Thermodynamic entropy and Shannon entropy (information) are not the same things. There is no second law of thermodynamics equivalent - you can increase information without adding energy, with a filter, as dak described in connection with evolution. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/shannon.html (near the bottom) "Unlike molecular entropy, Shannon entropy can be locally reduced without putting energy into the information system. Simply passing a channel through a passive filter can reduce the entropy of the transmitted information (unbeknownst to the transmitter, the channel capacity is reduced, and therefore so is the entropy of the information on the channel). The amount of power needed to transmit is the same whether or not the filter is in place, and whether or not the information entropy is reduced. " also http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/information.is.not.uncertainty.html

I recall that ions have been entangled in an ion trap. If the particles are charged it's not all that difficult to contain them.

Ions, or just maybe the polar nature of the water, are going to induce a charge in the upper buckets, which will tend to allow electrons to be stripped off or added. So you will have a net charge in the bottom bucket. The upper and lower buckets are cross-connected, so once this starts happening, there will continue to be a charge in the upper bucket that will continue to strip/add the electrons - it feeds back on itself until the spark occurs. It may be easier for the electrons to go one way than the other (to the bucket or to the water), so that's why the streams may not separate equally.

"Gravity is a radial vector" is the short answer, since it includes the notion of there not being an up and a down. People falling off has (perhaps subtle) ties to the concept of the earth being flat. But, to again veer off topic, my boss and I were giving a tour of our lab to an Admiral, and discussing our vacuum system. The admiral made the joke about a vacuum keeping hot things hot and cold things cold — how does it know? My boss (who has a good sense of humor) was so locked in to the "explain technical thing to impress the admiral" mode that he started explaining the thermal insulation properties of a vacuum, until I pointed out that it was a joke. So you're not alone in focusing so much that you are missing what is often obvious. (I've done it, too)

There's no preferred inertial frame, but an accelerating frame can be distinguished from an inertial one. I think the idea is that if gravity were actually just an acceleration, you'd have to have it be toward the center of the earth; if it were in the direction of the earth's motion then not everyone would feel it in that direction. It's not in x, y or z, so you postulate a new dimension, q, that is orthogonal to all of them. So gravity is equivalent to acceleration in q. But that means that two people in differing gravity are moving apart in q-space. What does that mean? I think you have to look at things in polar coordinates, too. The acceleration is in the -r direction, which is not a new dimension.

Ever see a van de Graff generator?

Science does have an agenda: figuring out how nature behaves. It's when you look for a specific answer or assume the answer first, and then only investigate that answer, that you confound the scientific method.

As you have probably figured out, I've moved this to a new thread.

I was able to do that with the recent stuff in Severian's "So you've got a new theory" thread. Apparently successfully, even. There's also a little button on the bottom right that lets you do it. Good tool to have.

Recent discussion has been moved here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=25902