lemur

Ok, first I didn't know that there was such a definite discourse about gravitons in progress, so my apologies. I thought they were just speculative projections of particle-fetishizing people. I should have asked what the theoretical claims are about gravitons and critically engaged those instead of assuming there was nothing serious to engage. Second, thanks for apologizing and not wanting to offend. I can understand your annoyance but since my interest in physics is amateur, I have gaps in what I know about various lines of theory. Also, to be honest I think one of the good things about an empirically-oriented science like physics is that one does not have to adhere to certain discourses because they are institutionally validated. What reason is there to speculate according to established professionally-developed theories but not to discuss the logic of why a graviton could or couldn't be an anti-photon? Imo, the interesting thing is to have discussions that bring out the contours of reasoning about these things and not to simply dismiss thoughts and questions because they conflict with established knowledge. How can learning occur from just saying, "no, gravitons can't be anti-photons because that's not what they are." That's not scientific reasoning - it's insistence on established knowledge because that knowledge is grounded - instead of explaining the actual grounds themselves. Isn't that like telling someone, "because the bible says so," without even bothering to explain what the bible says and why?

I didn't say anything about multiple paths. What I said was that if EM waves get blueshifted/compressed, but the flow of energy from the source doesn't increase, then the beam should fragment into multiple compressed pulses with breaks of some kind in between. This seems logical if you think of a certain segment of light as containing a certain number of waves within a given distance (say 1 million per meter to make it simple). Then if you blueshift that light to a shorter wavelength, the million waves cannot fill up the whole meter so I would think gaps would have to form at various points in that meter of light. Doesn't that make sense?

What about energy = movement and/or the potential thereof?

I don't think theories ever get totally discarded in an absolute sense. Whatever it was that caused them to merit pursuit in the first place will tend to resurface in a new form. The more they failed, the more different they will look when they are resurrected. A lightly criticized theory will be modified and new avenues of research pursued. A "failed" theory will appear to be abandoned but aspects of it can be found in newer theories. A good genealogist of science could trace epistemological continuities across seemingly divergent theories, even when they are in very distinct disciplines.

Comparing cats and horses could involve different characteristics of each. What basis do you have to compare photons to gravitons, since gravitons are purely theoretical, as far as I am aware? I did not bring up "gravitons" first in this thread. I was just playing off another post that mentioned them and considering a further theoretical possibility that they could be related to photons at the fundamental level of atomic construction/design. If particles always emit some level of radiation, why shouldn't they also be constantly emitting some level of gravitation? I'm not really trying to speculate as much as just considering avenues for how to explore possible relationships between gravity and light.

My guess would be that when the memory starts to get triggered by a cognitive association, the emotional intensity of it emerging leads the person to supplant it with another thought or process. A person could start singing to themselves or even aloud, for example, to divert themselves from a memory or thought that is too intense to deal with. I believe this is why psychotherapy works to reduce the trauma of such memories and thoughts so that they can be expressed in a less intense way and therefore cause less distress and avoidance-behavior.

I think the OP makes 100% sense. There is an avid BBT following for little purpose other than asserting denial of divine creation. Plus you have to think about the reasons people buy books: books are often presents to others or to oneself meant to symbolize something about the recipient's worldview or personality. How many people either wish themselves to display their belief in the absence of divinity or see this as a defining character trait in the personality of a loved one and wish to give them a book that recognizes that? It's a fairly cheap gimmick but they will surely cash in on it richly.

I wonder if it would be possible to say that the least "evolved" organisms are actually the most fit. Sharks, for example, are supposedly very similar to the way they were a very long time ago. This is supposedly because they are so well adapted as predators that they have not needed to evolve further. The opposite could also be the case; that species that are evolving rapidly may be headed for genetic instability and thereby extinction. Humans are an interesting case because I have read that medical and other technologies have effectively stopped human genetic evolution, yet some people claim that this allows recessive genes to remain in the gene pool and spread, forming a risk for future expression. I wonder if you couldn't look at it another way, i.e. that by allowing recessive genes to continue several generations by treating their expression, other dominant genes are able to supercede them in meiosis and thereby prevent the loss of dominant genes with recessive genes that occur due to pre-reproductive deaths of individual organisms. In other words, it could be that preventing a recessive genetic characteristic from causing death prior to reproduction maintains greater variation and therefore stability among the dominant gene pool. Remember, no individual organism is devoid of good genes just because they contain a certain amount of bad genes. It's a waste to lose the good with the bad (baby with the bath water), no?

Your post seems to address a great many divergent issues. If you really love philosophy, I would recommend burning your fuel in a more focussed way instead of going for a fireworks show. You could address any one of the issues you lumped into this big post as a thread discussion in itself. Once the thread gets going, you can always bring in related issues as they pop up in your mind reading what others have to say about your initial post(s).

Whenever I hear about people going "muddin'" it seems like a good way to till a field for planting. In fact, when you see those images of people bathing in mud at woodstock, that also seems like a good way to till a field for planting. If you want to use your motorbike for tilling soil for planting, why not drive it around the field on a wet day, braking and skidding to tear up the grass or other ground covering? Then you can walk around and pull out the weeds you missed and plant seeds in the bare soil.

I find it interesting and perhaps ironic that an object in frictionless motion does not perform work, yet it does traverse distance. In a sense the object is both "in motion" and "at rest" at the same time. This confounds fixed-coordinate spatial thinking, but it also suggests some reason to the fact that light can transmit power across a distance without performing work to do so; at least it does imo.

Maybe "gravitons" are anti-photons. This is, of course, speculative but couldn't it be the case that as smaller particles fuse to form heavier ones, the energy released as radiation also generates a proportional amount of anti-radiation that remains in the form of mass/gravitation? Just as particles always emit a certain amount of low-level radiation, they may also consistently emit a certain level of gravitation, although I wonder why this level wouldn't fluctuate the way radiation-levels do, as a response to absorption and re-emission. Still, I wonder if gravitation could build up in particles in such a way that causes extremely large particles to decay faster. Maybe gravity-generation is very similar to energy-generation except mass has less volatility and dynamism in comparison with processes that store and release energy.

Maybe the only reason anyone developed such a bomb is because they were afraid of the consequences of what it would mean for people to have access to unlimited energy. The fact that people react to power with fear and the desire to control power is not reason to blame the messenger. While some people reacted to the prospect of infinite energy with fear, others saw it as a road to peace and prosperity. If that ideology had dominated the reception of Einstein's claim, why would they have developed bombs instead of nuclear power plants? BTW, do you really find it legitimate to blame use of a technology on its inventors or developers? Do you think Karl Daimler or Henry Ford is responsible for all the deaths, injuries, and health problems caused by driving each year globally?

good question about power plants. I think most would run out of fuel and the nuclear ones have automatic safety shutoffs that would stop them. Recent history suggests that deep ocean oil drilling rigs would continue to harvest oil until someone stopped the flow. Solar panels would keep generating electricity, as would windmills assuming their generators were engaged. The interesting question I would have with your scenario is whether people would all move together to a single city/community, or whether they would attempt to construct a new way of life with relatively few people in the cities they were in. Or would they become nomadic, roaming from place to place to consume what was left behind by all the disappeared people.

You can test your hypothesis by dissolving salt in water and observing whether its color or other reflection/refraction properties change. If you time your experiment well, you could follow it up with a pasta dinner or a nice soup. Have fun!

So it is magnetic force that causes objects to be experienced as solid? I always though it was electrostatic force.

it makes sense that gravity would compress EM waves. The question is how those EM waves would remain intact and get compressed without the source velocity toward the target increasing. I would expect a high gravity target, such as a black hole, to blue-shift EM waves some but for those waves to fragment into multiple strands of compressed wavelengths. Is this presumptive?

if the structures were pyramid-shaped or long with sloping sides, there could be large open areas that would be accessible from the upper levels.

I think I heard that there were plans to build cycling tunnels close to Amsterdam with controlled wind flow for speed-assist. I wonder what ever happened to that.

I have often wondered how it would work to have multi-story greenhouses. You could put gardens around the edges of the building and have people living in the core. If you organized recreation levels, shopping levels, school levels, etc., I don't see why it would be inhospitable. Whoever posted that the heat would need to be ventilated in the winter may be thinking in terms of too much density. If there was a way to harness the heat while getting sufficient ventilation, it could be very efficient, I think.