swansont

Laser light isn't parallel. It converges and diverges, depending on the optics involved. It can be made to diverge slowly, i.e. over a fairly long distance. But it's never parallel.

Yes, that's the EIT stuff I mentioned earlier. It's a vapor - gas, not a solid, certainly not glass - and be sure to note that "In each experiment, the information about the light pulse can be stored for about a thousandth of a second before it starts to decay."

Virtual photons are the carriers of the force, and used in Feynman diagrams

Yes. General relativity says that gravity is a geometric effect on space rather than a product of having mass.

You have to actually know the laws and variables. There are systems that are chaotic, and so very sensitive on initial conditions and correctness of the model. Processing power doesn't really extend the capability solve those equations, because a wrong answer diverges rapidly as you iterate or add terms to the model. Everybody thought that bigger and better computers would help us predict the weather, but it hasn't really - I think better observations and better data have done more than more computer power.

I'd like to see a reference for the "slow glass." I know that people have slowed or "trapped" light using coherence properties of vapors, and electromagnetically induced transparency. But 1 cm/year in a solid? I need a cite. But, in addition to there being no perfect reflectors, it's also true that nothing is 100% transparent - light will get absorbed.

There is no such thing as a perfect reflector, so any pulse will quickly dissipate. Even .999n goes to zero when n=ct/L gets large. (L is the size of the device, c is the speed of light) In one dimension, using two mirrors (typically confocal), you can do this - if you keep adding light the power grows much higher than in the incident beem. It's called a "power buildup cavity."

It's not 0.001% P/A, it's ~0.00002% P/A. It's power, not speed, that you want (v2), so it has ~98% of the energy left, and assuming the process is constant the energy loss is exponential (i.e. you compound it)

That's included in "energy loss in collisions"

Ah, of course.

There are lots of effects where an electrical interaction causes sound. Lightning is one example, where you heat the surrounding air and get thunder. Any spark will give a similar effect. AC in a transformer causes the domains in the core to continually change direction, and the iron actually expands and contracts slightly as this occurs, so you get a humming. A rapid shutoff of current that creates a magnetic field will often give a large back-emf from Faraday's/Lenz's laws. This, I think, can also cause noises.

Your animation shows this happening once. If the last ball leaves with more energy than you gave the first ball, that energy was stored in the system from the work you did in setting the demonstration up. Try it in reverse from the ending configuration, and report back what happens.

Without looking I can tell you "no, it won't work." Perpetual motion requires that the laws of physics change with time. This time symmetry has been demonstrated - it's one of Noether's theorems. (conservation laws all have a corresponding symmetry in nature) The ball is attracted to the magnet as it moves away, too. It will have no more energy than the first ball. It will have less, actually, because there is energy loss in the collisions and as the ball moves along the track.

How about I do what? Write a book? I choose not to write a piece of scientific crap, just to prove the point, as I have some professional credibility to protect. I have a non-technical book registered with the US copyright office, so I know exactly how high that hurdle is.

You can't achieve 0 K. Any question that asks what happens after you are there is ill-formed.

No, it's just action-reaction. The ions are accelerated downward, so the lifter is accelerated upward.

Basically, things don't transform the way we expect - speeds don't add linearly. We don't notice this at low speeds because the difference is so small. But the speed of light is the same for all inertial (non-accelerating) observers. This has some peculiar consequences, including the effect that speeds don't just add together, that time runs slower for someone who is moving, and distances are shortened in the direction of motion. It's not grammar-school material. Physics (and relativity or QM) isn't a simple subject. (BTW I don't think that people who don't "get" this stuff are stupid. But don't expect it to be easy)