MigL

It would seem K Harris is the yet undeclared Democratic contender for the upcoming election, so we can stop discussing her 'faults' or advantages others may have brought. We can discuss a running mate that adds to, or enhances, her attributes, and has the best chance of defeating the Trump/Vance ticket. And just to turn the tables on D Trump, maybe news sources will start mentioning that he is now the oldest person to run for President. And almost incoherently crazy ...

That's why we're here. We may be discussing two differing conepts; benefit of society, and benefit of the species. Your, and I suspect MSC's, point is certainly valid for benefitting society, but benefit of the species has no morals attached to it. It is simply the purpose of life to procreate. Our species may have morals, but we are still essentially just animals. The wildebeest have no problem giving up the weak and infirm for the lion's lunch, because it means disease and weaknesses are not passed on to future generations, making them 'stronger' as a species. The ones that are fast enough to outrun the lion pass on their genes. Similarly, a monkey with bad eyesight will not catch the next vine or branch, when swinging through the trees, and will fall to its death, never reproducing, and never passing on the 'bad eyesight' genes. Our morals don't permit that, so we give people eyeglasses ( and surgery ), they reproduce and pass on inherited eye disease. Even social animals, ants, bees, etc., will sacrifice the diseased or weak to save their colony, although our morals don't really allow for their 'kind of society' ( except maybe in India, where the caste system allows for different value of different people ). So, as an advanced society, we have the luxury of morals, only because evolutionary environmental forcings don't affect us as much anymore. The eyeglasses I mentioned earlier, and research into curing inherited disease, are some examples. The fact that we don't need to be fast or strong as protection from predators since we have guns. We don't need differing skin melanin levels as we don't need to adapt to our environment, rather we adapt our environment to us with glass and steel shelters and heating/air conditioning. It is not that I'm advocating against morals, yet they do seem to conflict with our nature. A nature that has served us well for about 65 Million years, and has made mammals, and us humans ( the only ones with morals ), the dominant life form on this planet.

Please do. I'd like to educate you on how natural selection works in evolution. ( or possibly, be educated by you )

Given that we can't even get close to probing Planck scales, this then becomes another beautiful mathematical model, which may, or may not make 'real' predictions. i don't want to read the PDF; does this model make any predictions which can be compared to experimental observations ?

I do think N Pelosi was putting a lot of pressure on him to bow out. But Pelosi seems to want a run--off to pick the nominee, not simply nominating K Harris. I didn't really think he could win this time around and in this political climate, but I felt his slide in the polls wasn't so much gains for D Trump, rather losses for J Biden amid Republican, and Democrat, criticism of his mental health. And I'm not sure any other nominee, including K Harris, can do any better. Democracy in the US is between a hard place and a rock.

Evolution is essentially 'survival of the fittest'. You would do the greatest benefit to future generations by being strong and not caring about the weak; taking care of the weak ensures that specific 'weakness' survives and reproduces. But I don't think that's what you had in mind ... It's about to get much worse than Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt at a political convention ... Sarah Palin was 'shallow' and not too bright; This guy is an evil ass-kisser who is just out for himself; just like his boss ran for a Democrat nomination back in the 2000s, but then switched to Republican when he realized they were easier to manipulate. And at least Sarah Palin was good looking ... By the way, I don't find any of part of this situation funny.

Now who's lamenting about how things used to be better 'in the good old days' ? The first step in combatting all problems is understanding; the more we understand, the easier problems become. And the world is much more capable of understanding today than it used to be. Every once in a while opportunistic predators will try to control our understanding, and we take a step back, but overall we have come far and will continue to advance. And don't worry; with an age of 79, attempted assassinations and a wife who wants him dead so she can inherit his wealth, how long can D Trump possibly live ?

The Toronto Maple Leafs last won the Stanley Cup in 1967, but every year their many fans say "this is the year". The TML are one of the richest clubs in the NHL, and have some of the best players, who always underperform in the play-offs. England last won their only major international competition, the World Cup, in 1966, yet every 2-4 years fans say "it's coming home". Similarly, the Premier League is the richest in the world, and their players among the best in the world, yet they fail miserably in international competitions.

Thanks for the detailed explanation Markus.

Pictures and words are interpreted differently by different people. That's why mathematics are used to describe physical processes. You would do well to learn some; you might learn that your pictures aren't conveying the information you intend, but rather gibberish, and you are drawing non-sensical solutions from them. get a book; Newtonian gravity is simple algebra and easy to understand. Then you can move on to understand GR and QFT.

Congrats @joigus; a well deserved win. ( we'll do this again at the Worlds in two years ) It seems England's national is the Toronto Maple Leafs ( hockey ) of the soccer world. ( 68 years without a major trophy win )

As absolutely flat ( Minkowski ) space-time is not realizable ( gravity has infinite range ), and only used to simplify calculations for 'nearly flat' space-time, the question then becomes what level of background space-time curvature can the Alcubierre metric support to still remain stable ? If any background curvature renders it unstable, then Alcubierre is just mathematics without a physical application.

Italy may be out, but England, my ''back up' team, is still in there. No patriotic fervor here, but they do have some of the best players in the world at the moment. Unfortunately, individual brilliance can't make up for lack of team play ( or coaching ), where Spain has them beat. Im hoping they get lucky again; sorry Joigus, but I'll be wearing my English national jersey tomorrow while watching the game. And a shout-out to Canadian futbol players and fans. Canada did extremely well in Copa America, losing only to Argentina ( twice ). Great 'warm-up' for the World Cup in North America in two years.

You're right. His recent behavior over the past year does lead one to believe his mental competency is in decline. But through years of experience, has managed to recognize reliable people he can call upon to run a government much more effectively since 2020, than the previous 4 years. And I realize it's 'whataboutism', but his opponent in the future election has been acting erratically for the past couple of decades, along with demonstrated criminal behavior, anti-social misogynistic behavior, severe reality denial, and surrounds himself with ass-kissing yes men. ( at least until they realize he may be quite mad ) So who would you suggest should be taken 'off the road' ?

Sorry, Posted expansion factor and CMB temp from memory, and they are wrong, but can't edit my post any longer. Should be 3000o K and 1100 times.

Thought someone had restarted this thread; alas, only news of some old guy finally kickin the bucket. All those names from years ago that I used to enjoy arguing with. Only one I have left is you, INow.

But that's not always the only option. Sometimes, they don't see it because its not there. ( we just discussed how these terms aren't clearly defined; authoritarianism to you, is not to someone else )

The Big Bang has no spatial 'origin', because it happened everywhere. The Big Bang does have a temporal origin, however, and this implies that the further away we look, the farther back in time we see. Since we all acknowledge that the universe is expanding, it follows that looking back at earlier periods we see regions of higher density, compared to nearby regions. In fact, if we look back at a distance shortly after the beginning of the Big Bang, we see a region where temperature/density was high enough to dissociate atoms. But this density did not red shift light as it comes towards us. It is red shifted by an expansion of about 1040 times, such that we see that temperature ( the CMB ) as 2.7o instead of 3500o. IOW, the Big Bang model already explains it.

So, because of D Trump, populism, or the will of the people which we used to call democracy, has been redefined to this

I have no use for labels myself , and only used the term because some people self-label themselves as 'liberals' or 'progressives'. And note I did say "hope you're not offended ...", but sure enough, some of you seem to be. My post wasn't meant to be about labels, but how words change to reflect an agenda. Populism used to mean the will of all people, or what we commonly call democracy, and that kept authoritarianism , the will of an elite few, or despotism, in check. Now populism, the will of all people has bad name also, leaving me thoroughly confused as what agenda the people who re-purpose these terms actually want. You can go with the M-W dictionary definition , but we all know what they actually mean; everyone has a say regarding their governance, or, just the few who are/consider themselves better than ' the basket of deplorables'. Or, after the re-purposing of the 'isms', they now mean mob rule, or dictatorship.

I hope you guys don't take it as an insult when I call you 'liberals', but why is it 'liberals' seem to have a penchant for re-defining words to suit an agenda ? Authoritarianism has a specific meaning; imposing your will and wants on others. Capitalism used to mean the attempt to better oneself, usually through the gain of resources. Now, since D Trump has made authoritarianism the new 'boogey-man catchword for everything bad' people are starting to sweep everything they personally dislike under its ever growing rug. My earlier post was not meant as a joke, Dim. Any society has to have an element of capitalism, but it needs to be tempered with elements of socialism. The hard part is deciding how much of each to incorporate into our society, as too much of either one will be bad. When you take it for its original meaning 'populism' is the exact opposite of authoritarianism, as it means all the people's choice, not the imposed will and wants of the elite few. Now the wealthy, or capitalists, want to impose their will and wants over the rest of the people so they must be authoritarian. Somehow, even if they want to start new businesses, with their resources, which will provide jobs for the unemployed, is now seen as a bad thing because it will also result in gains for the capitalist, and so must be authoritarianism ? But when people demand more civil rights, better social benefits, more social money spent in their neighborhoods, etc. that is NOT imposing your will and wants on others because we recognize it as a good thing, and so is not authoritarianism ?

Tell that to the shrinking 'middle class'. For some 'authoritarianism' is becoming somewhat like 'racism'; if you can't find it, you're obviously not looking hard enough. Ah, the 'elitism' that led to 'populism' ( as originally defined ).

The 'scatter brained' approach to learning Physics ?

No. Gravity 'creates' weight, not mass. Mass is an intrinsic property of the system; equivalent to its 'internal' energy. This is not the only energy a system can possess; there are also 'external' sources, such as momentum and stresses/strains, which, all taken together, modify space-time to produce the geodesic paths we attribute to gravity.

Oh, now you've really lost him with your sterile neutrino analysis, Mordred. Maybe now he'll ask if electrons are actually bound neutrinos ...