imatfaal

Victor to be brutal - at present no one would acknowledge your "proof" because it is impossible to truly follow. English is a dreadful language, it is irregular, informal, and difficult; but it does allow exact expression; unfortunately it is not easy to get to this level of proficiency. In order to improve your chance of getting someone to look hard at your work you must simplify. 1. For an attempt that relies on division you must learn the correct use of the verb "to divide". This will allow you to create ideas and express them in a way others can be certain to understand 2. Try and be more formal. Define ALL your variables at the beginning - if you have different bases then make it clear which is base10 and which are base_n. If you must use upper and lower of the same letter - then it is vital to be consistent. Its really confusing to mix latex with plain type. 3. Break your ideas down into smaller sentences. Include only one idea per sentence. Make it clear with each new idea the status of that idea (axiomatic, proved, to be proved, reliant on previous proof etc ) Matthew

Jackson - firstly there is no such thing as British Common Law - its English and Welsh; the Scots have their own common law system they are rightly proud of. And Secondly, I am absolutely certain it is legal within the English courts - it is normally discussed under the headings international private law or conflict of laws (when to do with incorporation of a foreign law) and ADR (when dealing with tribunals) - IAAL. Whether it is acceptable in the USA - I am not sure and it is not my area; it would not be a common occurrence as the US courts are reluctant to claim jurisdiction of cases in a potential conflict of forums. I can tell you that US courts do not automatically/immediately refuse jurisdiction over a dispute of a contract merely because that contract calls for non-US law. You are right to say that parties cannot agree to break the criminal law (although it can get very close to this) - but they can agree to waive certain rights and privileges that would normally be protected by the law. This is getting very off topic - but it is too easy to follow the traditional line that both English and America common law is ageless and sacrosanct; it just isn't. It changes all the time, items of faith are watered down and quiet backwaters become fierce debates. I do not think there is any real prospect of any foreign or new religious law being used in criminal courts in the UK or USA any time soon - it is a bit of a red-rag argument. From my research in the area; when this is mentioned in the media it is normally massively exaggerated and the story stems from the use of a non-usual law within a private law tribunal (which as I have pointed out above is quite legal).

397,000 years after the big bang the universe was still hot enough to be opaque (leonard susskind likens it to trying to look through the sun) . It was like this everywhere! As the electrons and nuclei combined to form neutral atoms the universe became transparent (the final stages of this is lyrically known as the epoch of last scattering) and the last vestiges of this burning bright universe was not scattered. There was a relatively brief period in which radiation was produced - but was not scattered. This radiation was very energetic and radiated by every point of the universe and in every direction. The area which will later contain sol and earth produced this radiation as well. This radiation has continued to travel as the universe has expanded. The radiation that was given off by the area which will later contain sol and earth has been travelling for 13.ish billion years away from us. the radiation we can currently detect has been travelling for 13.ish billion years towards us. 1 billion years ago - an observer near sol would have seen the radiation that had travelled for 12ish billion years, it would have been less red-shifted and coming from a nearer point of the universe. Because the universe has expanded during those 13ish bilion years the initially very energetic radiation has been red-shifted all the way down to the microwave . We are obviously at the centre of a sphere of observance - because our observables define that sphere. But that sphere is repeated for every observation point in the universe. the sphere of observance is not some form of real result/wavefront/artifact from the big bang; it is merely that the light from 13ish billion years ago from every direction reaches us at the same time (ie now) . the big bang happened everywhere - and thus its effects are visible everywhere; we see them in a sphere because we need to look back 13 billion years - and that creates a spherical observation I now see Sisyphus has already done this - oh well never mind

Simpleton - I think no one is saying it can't work because it is such a fanciful idea. On the pennies side of things - No! He is not asking for funding that will be repaid, nor capital that will grow with success; he is asking for donations. As a rule of thumb any idea that can create or involves free energy is probably not based in a lot of truth

Rigney - there are actually many examples of courts and tribunals in the UK in which alternative "laws" are used, mostly in the private law domain. Even though this is private law with non-standard rules the power of the tribunal is normally upheld by the courts. Many property, marriage, reputation cases are settled by tribunals in which the rules are agreed in advance by the disputants (whether commercial terms, roman catholic canon law, or rabbinical law). There is also of course Equity - which technically was originally church law. You should also bear in mind that the English court is sometimes willing to use foreign law in a case where there is difficulty in simply determining the correct jurisdiction. A contract might state English jurisdiction - but quite clearly have terms that refer to French law, in some circumstances the English Court will use French Law and French interpretation. The arena of criminal law is however not structured on either of these ideas - criminal law is the state or the crown bringing the prosecution and to avoid any possibility of mis-interpretation only one law is acceptable here and that is the law of the state. So, in essence, you are right for criminal law - but there are many other forms of law that impact on daily life.

From a different point of view; the problems Mr S highlighted are in my opinion pretty insurmountable - and they are not alone. I am pretty sure that every decision I take has a multitude of factors - most of them unknown to my conscious mind. How do you plan to have your algorithm take account of the unconscious mind? The only way that you could do it was to have a decision process that had as its initial variable every sensation and every thought that the subject had ever had - and that is clearly not going to happen. I might posit that any machine capable of storing all the memories, sensations, thoughts of a human being and the myriad cross-relations and implications between them would be as sentient as the human being itself - and this machine might well tell you that it has more important things to do than predict another sapient machines decision.

To follow up on Timo's post - for dark matter the idea is that there is actually matter out there and we cannot see it cos it is dark; for dark energy, all we know is that rate of expansion is accelerating more than it should (and it was a very crap choice of name). The dark energy name gives the impression of similar yet opposite to dark matter - whereas this is not known/thought to be the case

Number 6 is divided into prime number 3? DOES NOT EQUAL Number 6 is divided by prime number 3? 3 is a DIVISOR of 6 MEANS 6 is DIVIDED BY 3 with no remainder. These are the two terms you need ie 'x is a divisor of y' and similarly 'y is divided by x with no remainder' Victor - where or what is A1°? To be honest even your 1st point is hard to follow. Let us examine the numbers A, B, C, D, U in the numeration system on the base q and will multiply the number D by this number , that the number finishes by digit 1 (see A1°). A B C D U are integers in base q. // should we presume that g and n are also base q D=A^n + B^n - C^n // I have presumed that lower case d is same as upper case D // Have you shown somewhere else that this equation is satisfiable? It could be - but I am rubbish at guessing. There exists a number of the form g^n such that if we multiply D.g^n that the number gB has a unit digit of 1 // multiply both sides of D=A^n + B^n - C^n by g^n // D(g^n) = A^n(g^n) + B^n(g^n) - C^n(g^n) to get to gB you need to take the nth root - surely you cannot mean that! // Where is the A1° I am sure that the forum has a link facility somewhere

As a committed atheist it was a little upsetting to see the bigotry evinced by many of the posters, how badly moderated the thread was and the puerile nature of the argument. I think there is more than a little missionary zeal in Sev's insistence on stepping into the lion's den - but a site with rationalism and scepticism as its raison d'etre should be able to tackle a debate with argument and logic, and avoid falling into the trap of relying on lazy stereotypes; and they failed on both points.

No he means millions - if I have it straight (and I thank you for starting this argument because I hope I am learning) we see a sphere centred on us (see green stars reasoning) of CMBR of radius 46billion light years. When the universe was hot enough to create the gamma (?) radiation (that has now been red-shifted down to microwaves) and forms the CMBR this same sphere was 40 Million light years. But the spheres are only from OUR perspective - the big bang was everywhere, we just see it at 46 Billion light years. All observers in the universe will see the CMBR at 46 Billion LY.

Why should a description of 3 spatial & one time dimensions be reducible to a 2 dimensional sketch? Sisyphus' second comment about stars turning green gave a wonderful notion of how any universal effect will appear to use to be a spherical effect with us, the observer, at the centre.

Viktor - I love the fact that you are battling away against this problem - although I am certain it is a doomed task. I think you might get more challenges and thus learn more and be able to develop a more coherent argument if your posts were slightly less cryptic. Your latest post seems to say talk about three numbers (A^N+B^n-C^n, n.A.B.C, and A+B-C) and whether they are divisors of a fourth number q. But then you say that q is a prime number! Prime numbers have no divisors except themselves and 1 - that's kinda the point. A^N+B^n-C^n will only divide q when A,B &C all equal 1, or when n=0, or when the expression equals q. I think if you were more methodical and presented your argument in a more formal manner (perhaps with //comments to explain) then you would see errors and be able to hone your ideas.

What a beautiful site. Thnks

mu see "godel escher bach"

If anyone has any proper news stories on this I would love to see it! The blog posted is a little information-lite - without even the full name of Prof Lago. Even if the figures quoted are exaggerated it would still be a huge step forward - which makes me a little sceptical

Just realised I have never put my name on the newbie list - Hello Everyone. I work in shipping in central London and wish I had continued my science education rather than defecting to the dark side.

A smoothing iron that someone got artistic with once they had bought an electric iron?

Demosthenes - I think our posts crossed, I agree that not all communication acts are spoken. I use verbal to mean communication through language - not merely oral speech, and I am pretty certain that freedom of speech laws only really deal with that. Non-verbal interactions are hard to classify, let alone legislate for! Your point on societal norms is well taken - I am unsure that we have fewer norms but perhaps the flavour is different and "our norms" bear less heavily on us than the imagined weight of the norms of previous generations. I wish our culture was based on rationalism - it seems to me that much of our culture is as irrational as the pre-enlightenment cultures were. The unwritten laws are still there and functioning - they may not be based on the opprobrium of the elders, or religious and moral strictures - but they are very much a part of modern society.

Speech not necessarily - communication almost certainly. Only the most extreme form of political expression will be able to be cast in the light of bullying and I cannot see the legislation being a problem. If the law reverses the burden of proof on the respondent to prove he is not a bully - then I can see your point and agree, but I think this legal formation is unlikely. Hmm. Bullying is a personal offence with an individual victim - you can criticise a religion, you can rail against it, but I don't believe you can bully it. You can bully an certain member of a religion - but that is no longer a rational political point, it's ad hom and it adds nothing to an argument; therefore I do not see the problem with it being legislated against I see no problem in institutionalizing the protection of the weak from the intimidatory and repressive. the almost-Nietzschean myth of the passive victim has been done to death in criminology and is not highly regarded. This seems to say that freedom of speech legislation and bullying regulation together give the pretence and possibility of an open society yet remove the practical reality - if you replace bullying with libel I could agree with you more, not much, but more.

At the moment it is just a vague idea by a designer rather than an engineer. I get the impression that the Nokia name is purely hype by the designer ("The Nokia E-Cu phone, which borrows the Finnish phone giant’s moniker for its name and logo") - and frankly I cannot see Nokia or anyone else making this work. Thermogenerators are pretty inefficient, need higher temperatures, and just wouldn't produce enough juice. wired article http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/07/concept-body-heat-phone designers blog http://patrickhylandproductdesign.blogspot.com/2010/10/nokia-e-cu-concept-nokia-e-cu-e-for.html#comments

Lemur - why is all bullying a speech act? A significant proportion of bullying is non-verbal. Additionally, not all speech acts are necessarily constitutionally/state protected actions under a freedom of speech provision. Freedom of speech laws tend to operate by removing barriers to expressing one's opinions - they very rarely act by allowing all speech (as Marat pointed out above). I do not know of any freedom of speech legislation that does not preclude intimidatory speech (either implicitly or explicitly) - but that does not render the legislation a dead letter. The expression of a political opinion is normally the very object that is protected by freedom of speech legislation and I cannot see how anti-bullying legislation will affect this - you seem to be equating the expression of a differing viewpoint as potential bullying which will be trammelled by new legislation. To say that A disagrees with B is by no means equivalent to saying A is bullying B. Of course, at the limit this disagreement may transcend the debate and become oppressive; but for it to become bullying is possible to envisage but unlikely outside imagination. Anyhow, at that point the bullying legislation would come in and freedom of speech might be limited.

We need to take all of the predictions of water and goldilock's zone with a massive pinch of salt - I heard Prof Andrew Fitzsimmons on the radio a few days ago trying to calm the media hype. "the signal is around the same level as the noise, as the uncertainty" - "it needs work to be positive that the planet actually exists" - "water: complete conjecture". The exciting part is that of the nearby stars surveyed we have now found two very distinct possibilities for rocky planets in fairly near orbits - hopefully we will find one soon that transits across the face of its star and we can get an idea of hte atmosphere

I would go with Dog as well. Strange snout and balance of front legs/back legs however. I tend to envisage dogs with shoulders and hips equal or shoulders higher / more massive. Here is a list of floridan mammals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mammals_of_Florida

I think Lemur is correct in asking

But IIRC the drop size from a pipette is governed by the outside diameter of the tip and the surface tension of the liquid - and I think therein lies the reason for Mr Skeptic's question. If you are measuring the liquid with an accurate volume measure or doing the whole experiment on an accurate scale then fine. But you need to get rid of surface tension as part of your known variable measurement if it also makes up part of your question