geordief

How would you organize the collection of spacetime intervals intervals so as to potentially turn them back into a reality? Would you have a local origin(the start of the first interval) corresponding to the apex of a light cone?

Is there a silver lining to be drawn from the current situation? Are the opponents to concerted action based on scientific understanding who have shown their hands on this occasion broadly the same group we can expect to be digging in their heels when it comes to any action at all when the time comes (of course it has come but seems to be being deliberately ignored-eg the windmills in Texas ploy) Are we getting any closer to a very widespread acceptance that we are all in this together in a very shallow pool or has the populace shown themselves to be ready for more snake oil merchants who will offer them short term satisfactions and attempt to turn us one against another for their own gain? On a practical level are their any parallels between the measures required to fight this pandemic and the mobilization required to address climate change?

Is that the same thing as differentiability?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55760673 "Google has threatened to remove its search engine from Australia over the nation's attempt to make the tech giant share royalties with news publishers" Google appears to be flexing its muscle against Australian plans to make laws that will affect its position . Is this tenable? Google is accountable to whom? Its shareholders? Any legal requirements? More generally ,what is the responsibility of multinationals to the countries that they operate in? Do they avoid local laws by resettling ( or making the threat to do so) their assets to more compliant jurisdictions? Are Multinationals now too big to fail? Should they be shackled (or made accountable) so that the power they have cannot be abused?

Rules out Cheney ,then.Vladimir,JCM?

It has yet to be substantiated that he was "really" in J.C.MacSwell's dream. This may be premature speculation but my "Cheney" was the MigL version.

In your dreams

Cheney?

Lest we forget https://twitter.com/i/status/1324078979775684608

Agreed but the point (not so salient perhaps) I was trying to make is that ,for him the blow is softened if he can move to another platform with less followers as his future status (as a leader of a political -to be kind- grouping) will probably still be able to thrive equally well with that reduced amount of publicity The problem with Trump is those who use him for their ends. Hopefully those who oppose him and his loose "political" grouping will be able ,if required to use his presence in a way to further their ends (eg he can be used as an example) Well .it might matter if his term was not about to end as he could put pressure on Twitter to reinstate his account -or make political capital of of his matyrdom and the supposed "assault" on freedom of speech (which of course ,in the large is a real issue .) Everyone is trying to get through and past the next 10 days and so "stopgaps" are not to be sneezed at at the stage.

Is this banning of Trump just a stopgap measure ?(and a response to his incitement to anti democratic insurrection,as well perhaps as a wish to disassociate themselves from further incitements) Won't he find another outlet soon enough? Since he will no longer be President he won't need the amount of followers he has now . The whole question of regulating social media is a huge question in itself. I have always thought that heavy accountable moderation should be compulsory. Other than that the only opinions I have are (obviously) that this is a huge world defining question and that developments are moving ahead at lightning speed.

Well,yes. As to whether that can be achieved I am doubtful ,but I don't claim any expertise to make that judgement. I am hearing that very few Republicans are pressuring him to resign..... And I have heard arguments that impeachment should be used to set a precedent even if chances of success may not be great.

We need to know as much as possible of what went on . If there were conversations between Trump and those who organized this action we need to know this. I am not saying this is necessary to show culpability if enough is already known to show this. But we still need to know as much as possible about this and ,if some kind of a chain of responsibility can be shown then this is to everyone's benefit . We have been told that Trump is like a Mafia boss and never spells things out explicitly but he may have had an off day and shown his hand. And ,if others are revealed in the line of command they may talk for a reduced sentence.

Are they likely to roll up a conspiracy that would actually and directly link Trump or his close advisers to the main actors in this action?

If you record the sequence of radioactive emissions from an atom don't you get a random sequence? Is it impossible or impractical to do that because the time intervals are too small to measure? (hope this makes sense)

It appears from my limited acquaintance that ,as far as we can tell events in the universe follow random paths (can we call them "paths" or are they "appearances?) I am thinking of spontaneous radioactive emissions where there (again to my limited knowledge) thee is no "interior" pattern to the ordering of events save for the half life laws that seem to be obeyed. What interpretation can one give to this order of things? I understand the Einstein was famously (and seemingly wrongly) outraged by the notion of pure randomness (not sure if it was in this context) but is it possible to welcome this state of things beyond the requirement to accept it as an apparently "set in stone " feature of things ? Can we (should we) elevate in our estimation randomness to a level whereby ,as it were if it did not exist we would need to invent it? Do other fundamental understandings flow from an acceptance of some kind of a randomness principle or is it a standalone pillar of the functioning of the mechanisms of the universe?

Do we receive more optical data from the distorted galaxy than we would otherwise get....or is the image just distorted? Are we getting photons that would normally not reach us bent in our direction so that we can see them so that we get a higher definition image as a result?

A little bit off topic but a wonderful detour "Grandin has lectured widely about her first-hand experiences of the anxiety of feeling threatened by everything in her surroundings, and of being dismissed and feared, which motivates her work in humane livestock handling processes. She studied the behavior of cattle, how they react to ranchers, movements, objects, and light .................... her claim of compassion for the animals is that because of her autism she can see the animals' reality from their viewpoint, that when she holds an animal's head in her hands as it is being slaughtered, she feels a deep connection to them" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin

So this on going expansion (whether steady or whatever) is like a blank canvas on which the relative motion of bodies is written? Like a page in a book where the letters get smaller and smaller over time. ( the letters corresponding to regions bound by gravity)

Yes,thanks. @Halc it was intuitive .(seems there is a thick line between counterintuitivity and lack of imagination Still,I find it hard to accept this concept of "expansion of space" if (as my mind tells me) space is not a "thing" that can expand. Does this "expansion of space" just mean an increase in distances between objects? Also ,might the "Big Bang" have occurred over a small region and a very short time with there actually being a concatenation of BBs which blended into one event when viewed in retrospect?

It seems very counter intuitive that galaxies should be separating from each other at velocities that are proportionate to distance. But this is what we observe ,it seems. Does this imply that ,at an early stage all the matter that formed those galaxies "talked to each other"? What did they "say"?😉

So does an EM wave propagating through the vacuum interact with this CMB field in theory even if the effects were too small to measure?

When does E=0? Not,surely because to detecting apparatus is too insensitive? Are there points in the region of an electric charge when E is equal to precisely zero? Is ,perhaps the field not continuous? You can't have a perfect shield against the electric field can you?

So,I am getting the feeling now that the CMB is not ,as I imagined an example of an electromagnetic field per se. Is it ,though or can it be described as a field of some kind (a set of measurements over space)? Also ,if the CMB is not an electromagnetic field what would be the first (earliest) known example of an electromagnetic field and would that field have perpetuated itself (in a continuously changing form) in perpetuity down to the present day?

(Hope this is the right subforum) Really a question about waves,particles and fields wrt electromagnetism. I understand that light propagates as a wave in the Electromagnetic Field and think I am also coming to realise that the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) may well be such a field and a primordial one at that. So,this is what I am wondering (and my question) When light propagates through the vacuum as a wave in the EM field can we say that it is propagating through this CMB(field) ? Is the vacuum (in this instance) the CMB field? As a second related question,how does one detect the CMB field if it is the same in all directions ? What apparatus might one employ to measure its value and how would its needle move if it didn't know what direction to move in?(if that makes sense)