MigL

Probably a typo 🙂, but L Boltzmann passed away in 1906, well before the advent of QM and its particles' behavior. Maxwell-Boltzmann distributions apply to ideal gases where particles don't display quantum behavior. Bose-Einstein statistics apply to quantum particles with integer spin ( Bosons ). Bose–Einstein statistics - Wikipedia ( so many names and terms to remember ☹️ )

That is one way of rationalizing it. I'll stick with my 3rd year class in Statistical Thermodynamics, where we derived Fermi-Dirac distributions for quantum particles with half-integer spin ( Fermions ), and Bose-Einstein distributions for quantum particles with integer spin ( bosons ). These distributions dictate how such particles can and cannot act.

That gravitational potential is an energy ... ... which contributes to the stress-energy momentum tensor. Which dictates the curvature term ( as per Mordred above ) or what we call gravity. ( yeah ... sometimes it does seem like a 'dog chasing its tail' even to me )

I don't think you're saying that 'inclusivity' has been detrimental. But definitely students shouldn't be 'protected' from 'hardships', or difficult concepts, they may encounter in the 'real world'. I realize some can handle such hardships better than others, and once upon a time in Canada, we had High School to Gr12 for technical/trades education and a further Gr13 for University admission. Nowdays, it seems such 'sorting' is not allowed, and university admission standards are set to allow the maximum numbers, even if some of those numbers are not capable ( may not be politically correct, but it is true ). At least it is better than the US, where for some learning institutions, the only standard is how much money your parents have.

Gravity is self-coupling; as a result, its equations ( as GR ) are non-linear. The same issue is being described by you both, but you are failing to connect the two. Gravity has to be, or it would not work. Our model, GR, is not; hence the search for models that don't manifest infinities. I believe he's still confusing normalization and renormalization. The simplest 'layman' explanation of renormalization is as follows. Consider trying to find the charge of an electron by moving a test charge closer and closer to it. Claasical electromagnetism tells us that, as the electron has no extent, once r approaches zero, the force, and therefore the electron's charge, approaches infinity. Quantum mechanics rationalizes this by assuming the electron is surrounded by a 'fog' of virtual electrons, that becomes increasingly dense as you approach the electron. These virtual electrons contribute to the value of the charge, and are the inner loops ( not sure of terminology ) of the Feynman diagram; an infinity of them adding up to infinite charge. What renormalization does, is subtract all contributions from these inner loops, or contributions from the virtual electron cloud, leaving only the 'bare' electron charge. Somrtimes it is difficult to see what a mathematical process is physically doing. I hope I have clarified instead of further 'muddying the waters'.

I have a nephew whom I love dearly. He has his own business and is successful, but whenever he needs to do anything, he looks up a how-to on his phone and YouTube. Most of his generation ( he's out of school for several years ) are used to the quick answers the internet provides, and sometimes have no clue how to obtain those answers without their phone/internet. You see this all the time where a young person is trying to make change from a cash register. I know if I was an astronaut on Apollo 13 and had to radio Houston that 'we had a problem', I could pull out a slide rule to calculate course corrections ( just like Tom Hanks ). Not many people under 60 know what a slide rule is, or how logarithms allow it to work. Todays world, and students in particular, are so dependent on technology that one EMP would end their world.

Degeneracy pressure is not a 'force', but the result of two quantum mechanical principles. The Pauli Exclusion Principle, which says each Fermion is allowed only one quantum state, and must obey Fermi-Dirac statistics, as Genady mentions above. They cannot be 'stacked-up' in the same state as bosons, which obey Bose-Einstein statistics. The other is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. If you put a box around an electron, and keep shrinking the box, its position is determined more and more accurately. Eventually you reach a point where its position is determined so accurately that its momentum could be so great as to exceed c ; a physical impossibility. Nature gets around this problem by forcing electrons to merge with protons, to form neutrons. As the neutron is 2000 more massive than an electron, it is capable of exceeding the electrons momentum by 2000 times before running into the velocity being equal to c problem. This is evidwnt in type 1A supernova where a white dwarf star takes enough material from a companion star, that electron degeneracy can no longer support it against gravity, and it collapses to a neutron star, which is supported by the much greater neutron degeneracy pressure. This is the analysiss Subraihmanyan Chandrasekhar performed in 1930, during his boat trip to England, to study under Sir A Eddington ( who ridiculed his work ), and which today we call the Chandrasekhar Limit for electron degeneracy of white dwarf stars ) about 1.4 solar masses ).

If I were a cynical person, I would say the Israeli arracks on Hezbollah and Southern Lebanon targeting leadership, was an attempt to draw in the puppet-master Iran. An the hatred of Israelis by most in the Middle East, but especially Iran, seems to have facilitated it. Now Netanyahu has the world's permission to go after the leadership of Iran, as Iran has just declared war on Israel.. My prediction is Mossad is already gathering location information, and one of these nights, a squad of F-35s will penetrate Iranian air defenses, and attempt to take out Iranian leadership. That is what Netanyahu meant by 'regime change is coming to Iran'; chop off the head of Medusa and you don't need to worry about the individual snakes anymore. If he succeeds, Netanyahu will come off looking like the savior of Israel, and the idiot will be a political fixture in Israeli politics for many years to come. Iranian leaders let their hatred get the best of them, and they will make this all possible

Thanks for clarifying John. The answer to solve all immediate problems seems simple. If we can agree that Israel has the right to take out the leaders of groups who wish to do Israel harm, then they have the right to take out Netanyahu. And stop firing rockets indiscriminately into population centers, if Israel stops dropping bombs. But, just as Ukraine refuses to negotiate a cease fire unless all Russian occupiers leave Ukrainian land, Israel does not negotiate if Hamas is still holding ( and killing ) hostages.

Yeah ... my apologies for that. It is not that Phi and I think differently on this matter. Reading back, I realize the I took his comment too personally because of past history. I suppose having grudges doesn't make for good discussions. My bad; I'm working on it. Men and women have physiological and psychological differences, as well as similarities, and sometimes they need to be treated differently, sometimes not. The century we're in will not change that; education about which differences need to be treated differently is what is slowly changing. Women are more than capable of doing most of the jobs men do, so there is no need for pay disparity. In terms of the employment/pay issue ( purely anecdotal ), I work with a few women who are very intelligent, pleasant and attractive; no one accuses them of using their 'attributes' to get their positions, then again, we are Canadian, and unionized, so we get equal wages for the same job titles. One I work closely with, however, still insists that her date must pay for dinner, even if she asks him out ( no we haven't dated, she's 30 years younger, and I used to work with her dad ). I would point out however, that men who are pleasant and easy to work with often also get promotions ahead of the ones who are difficult, even if comparably qualified. This is often the problem for women as ignorant people will assume they are promoted for 'other reasons'; men don't have that problem.

I think your meter needle was already broken since last year, as it doesn't seem to have registered any reading last October 7th either.

I don't believe that, as I cannot weigh, or balance, losing someone you care for with someone you have no emotional attachment to, even if all lives should have equivalent value. That is not who we are, or can ever be. Nor do I want to be; you stated your son's life is more important to you than my son's, and my son's is more important to me than your son's. That is what makes us human. Maybe our definition of 'morality' needs amending.

Are you being 'sarcastic' again ? Did you want stats about other groups, like children, or housewives, or grandmothers, etc. Or did you want examples specifically of hostages from last October's massacre being killed as negotiations were ongoing ? Because this is what you said ... Well, I do wonder how many people would have been killed by the indiscriminate firing of 5000 rockets ( on very many occasions ) into civilian population centers, if Israel had not been forced, by the unrelenting attacks from neighboring states and groups, over the last75 years,, to develop one of the best air defense systems in the world, which can intercept such rockets in great numbers. Is the fact that Israel chooses to protect its people now to be used against them also ?

We are territorial animals. Our own family, our friends, our neighborhood, our city and our country are prioritized. I may not know the person who lives three houses down the street, but if he passes away it will affect ne more than 75 people perishing in a landslide in China. We would like to think that we are 'moral' people, but that is a made up word to describe how we believe we should think. But if that isn't a trait that helps us survive, and do what is best for us, what makes it 'moral' ? We cannot see the big picture, and can only work with the information we have. Is this strived for 'morality', that we can never achieve, the new religion ? A kind of thinking that the 'morality priests' preach to the followers, knowing full well that they themselves don't think that way, and the followers will never achieve that state either.

I would think that a method which targets mostly enemy combatants, say with a shipment of exploding pagers specifically purchased by Hezbollah militants maybe, that lessen the risk of innocent civilians and children being killed by 2000 lb bombs, would be seen as a step in the right direction. Not the 'cruel and cowardly' act of terrorists. ( although if it does inspire terror for Hezbollah members, and prevents them from doing their own version of the Oct 7 massacre of strictly civilians, that's a step in the right direction also )

Does it ? Or does it sound like all the posts I see are condemning Israel's actions, yet no one mentions the acts committed against them. All the while assuring me that they ARE condemning Hamas' massacre of Israeli innocents, or saying they hold Israel to a 'higher standard'.

John asked for stats and I provided such. If he had asked for sarcasm, I would have provided what you did.

Absolutely, and since Oct 7 did just that, lets condemn and ostracize the government of Gaza for committing such a violation. BEFORE moving on to condemn and ostracize the Israeli government. And how has that worked out for Jews through the ages ?

Six killed about a month ago, including one American, who were going to be released as part of the cease-fire negotiations. What we know about the six hostages killed in Gaza | CNN Some will probably claim they were actually found alive, but Netanyahu had them killed so he would have an excuse to keep dropping 2000 lb bombs on civilians and kids. ( I wonder how much 5000 )rockets with at least a couple of pound warhead weigh combined )

So why are there no comments in this thread about the fact that, even during negotiations for a cease fire, Hamas is still killing kidnapped hostages from last October? Oh Yeah ... we got one comment about how unjust it was for Israel to kill one of Hamas' leaders, who happened to also be their negotiator. Would these negotiations be taking place at the 'civilized table' ?

Working; don't have much time for responses ...but and I guess String Junky thinks Hamas is 'civilized society'.

On rare occasion I have watched porn. And like Peterkin, I find a lot of the genres on sites like PornHub extremely distasteful ( and sometimes funny ). But hey, whatever floats some people's boats, as long as consensual and not harmful. Having no exposure to porn, however, Peterkin has somehow formed a strong opinion about it. I myself, do know one porn star. She lived down the street in the 80s, and went to my high school ( about a decade after me ). She left before finishing, for LA, in the late 80s, and did porn with the stage name of Alexandra Quinn. She is now past her 'best before date' and about 8 years ago was back in town selling real estate, but it didn't last long. Should have finished school.

If you fire a gun at me and miss, I'm allowed to shoot back at you, and even kill you, in order to remove the threat of you shooting me again. You missed, but I killed you, so definitely not proportional. But I definitely am not allowed to shoot the person beside you, or even your dog, so not advocating for collateral damage. No. I suggested that criticism of both, collateral killing AND targeted killing of foes, leaves no other response. So if there is to be a response, other than 'shut up and take it', you tell me which is preferable. ( also applies to String Junky's post directly above ) IOW, they, the Paalestinians, 'cut off their noses to spite their face', which makes them just as stupid as Netanyahu. And still doesn't absolve Hamas' evil acts, against Israel, and the Palestinians they're supposed to govern. Let's try to keep the discussion honest, by reading what I write, not what you think I wrote.

Gravitational potential is an energy, and as such, it is a source, like momentum, stress, mass, etc. Rather simplistic, but easily understood for those of us that don't deal with the mathematics on a day to day basis. Also why I prefer Feynman diagrams to the integrals of QFT.

Whereas you can have a ToE without a graviton, it will not be as 'beautiful'. The graviton is only a requirement for a quantum field theory of gravity. If gravity resists all attempts at renormalization and quantization, it will have to be considered separately from a GUT, and the ToE model will no be as elegant, or useful, as one that combines all four interactions.