studiot

10 minutes ago, King Phenomenon said:

You’re right. My bad. The problem still remains though.

The present should be unreachable if the past is truly infinite.

The causal chain leading to “now” is infinitely long.

There is no ultimate cause. How can an effect exist if its causal history never “starts”?

But like I said, you’re one of those people who will probably die believing that an endless chain of causality is possible within the framework of all existence. You equate numbers with existence. Which is fine. Thats your preference. If that helps you understand things then have at it.

You are still wrong.

By the way scientists don't believe in things - they deduce them - Belief is for religous folk.

Did you not re-read what I wrote.

Postulate 1 defines a start. In the case of the natural numbers that is 1, yet the natural numbers do indeed go on to infinity.

Existence is of course a much less well defined concept.

What do you mean by existence /

You seem to be entertaining only material objects, but there is much that is immaterial in our universe.

For instance the configuration of the solar system is immaterial but since the material solar system exists its configuration must also exist.

7 minutes ago, King Phenomenon said:

I’m not talking about real numbers. I’m talking about events happening within space.

Nor was I

Read the reply yourself.

There was a BBC programme about mines in Northumberland and Durham being extended under the North Sea and carbon being sunk in them.

This has been successfully ongoing for several years now.

But I think it is another crying shame waste of billions of public money because our great and good leaders will not pay out for alternatives that will carry on into the indefinite future without the need for carbon sinking.

Carbon sinking in any location obviously has a limited life.

It has already cost billions to convert Drax and there was indeed a scandal when a huge contract to supply the pellets from cutting down areas of the Brazilian rain forest.

16 minutes ago, MigL said:

Zeno's paradox ???
There is a greater infinity of points ( yes that is possible ) between the real numbers 1 and 2, than there are real numbers.

I don't think so.

The cardinality of the reals is the greatest known there is.

It is also a property of infinite sets that any subset, any interval of the real line in this case, may be matched one-to one with the entire set.

49 minutes ago, King Phenomenon said:

Well, if an endless chain of causality makes sense to you, then have at it. As a scientist, you’re pretty gullible.

Am I gullible ?

Here is an endless chain of causality

Postulate 1 There is a first natural number

Postulate 2 Every natural number has a successor

Result there is an infinite chain of natural numbers each number causing the next number in the chain.

Note to MigL

The reals have a greater cardinality than the naturals.

1 hour ago, Anton Rize said:

@studiot I honestly tried to understand what are you saying but - no clue. I just cant see any physics behind this numbers and symbols manipulation.
If it make you feel better: "I promise not to use c=1 in my derivation's"🙂

So you can't follow the fact that if I replace a 1 in any of your equations (for example the one you are having a love-in with KJW over) by c, or c² or c³ or... or hbar or e^πi or (sin²x + cos²x), where x is any number, you have changes the physics of that eqaution ?

26 minutes ago, exchemist said:

I had been led to believe Dundee was rather a dump, but in fact I passed a very informative day there.

I have to agree that Dundee is rather depressing in parts. I often wondered why they didn't brighten up the old place by painting all that dirty grey render, and is currently in the doldrums with the decline in the offshore oil industry.

I also agree that it has some very interesting bright spots. Did you get up the Law or the astronomical observatory ?

(Law in scottish mean a conical hill.)

Dundee was also famous for children's comics and timex watches.

Finally, like some university cities, Dundee University has an interesting museum, particularly in the medical sciences as several innovations came from there.

Exeter too is in that lucky position, but I realise that, coming from Oxford these museums are on a much smaller scale than you may be used to.

5 hours ago, Nia20855 said:

There is no “rocket equation” in the IRM, but it can approximately represent the course of a rocket.

Well it's your show and I did ask how you would acomplish this.

5 hours ago, Nia20855 said:

Please excuse me, I’m not sure I follow. Could you clarify what you mean by “no forces” in this context?

In its complete form N1 also addresses the absence of any forces acting on a body.
This is done separately for a good reason.

Nowhere is there a speed limit stated in Newton's Laws.
A wooly hand waving ah-but is not acceptable.
You did not say you model only works up to some speed limit.

6 hours ago, Nia20855 said:

In the video, the Cartesian coordinate system addresses this issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z0UHBhLvbM

Your answer need to be stated here, I have not watched a video.

You could embed the video here and state the timestamp where you explanation occurs.

You are going too far before completing the first part

I have only gone as far your fig 9 and Newton's laws.

These need to be cleared up before proceeding.

10 hours ago, Anton Rize said:

Yes but I cant follow your logic from this c=1 to this c = -(e^πi).

You have made four propositions . viz

that you only need simple arithmetic

that of the three independent variables required for mechanics (normally called mass length and time) two may be fixed (leaving you only one degree of freedom in your equations) by the expedient of defining

c= 1 and hbar =1.

Here are some interesting consequences of doing this

Propositions

[math]\hbar = 1[/math]

[math]c = 1[/math]

Mathematical Identities

[math]{e^{\pi i}} = - 1[/math]

[math]{\sin ^2}x + {\cos ^2}x - 1 = 0[/math]

Consequences

[math]c = - ( - 1) = - {e^{\pi i}}[/math]

[math]\hbar - c = 1 - 1 = 0[/math]

[math]{\sin ^2}x + {\cos ^2}x - 1 = 0 = \hbar - c[/math]

[math]{\sin ^2}x + {\cos ^2}x = \hbar = - {e^{\pi i}}[/math]

23 minutes ago, Anton Rize said:

7 hours ago, studiot said:

Are you suggesting that

c = -(e^πi) ? or any of your natural constants, set to unity ?

Sorry I have no idea what you mean by this. Cant see any connections at all. There must be some misunderstanding between us.

Have you heard of Euler's identity ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity

e, i and π are all pure numbers, 1. That is they have no units at all.

So if you are saying that c, etc = 1 as a pure number you are saying that it satisfies what I wrote above.

That is why these constants cannot do without units and why you are incorrect to say.

23 hours ago, Anton Rize said:

The blog post you quoted is correct that c=1 is a formal change of unit system, but it is philosophically incorrect to call it "WRONG".

That is why marcus at the university of waikato is correct in his statement of the units of c that cannot be left out.

My further apologies I did say by mistake it was the university of Otago (where my contact is a professor of geology, not physics).

My esxcuse is that it was late here. The link I gave is correct.

My concern is that mathematically you have not started at the beginning, but have invoked mathematics which have nothing to do with algebra, whilst claiming this as you 'proof'.

You want to talk about a manifold, OK, but you need to start with a basic set.

You can turn that set into a manifold by specifying suitable additional structure.

Conventionally we go even further by specifying a metric etc but that is not necessary.

If you do not specify a metric you cannot use the properties of the disk as is done in complex analysis (since you have the whole plane to play with).

However you require a circle, not a disk.

This is also why it is taking me so long to unravel what you are doing. It was as though Euclid had started halfway through book 1 instead of at his 5 postulates.

Thanks for reminding me of the terminology +1

That is exactly what I was getting at when I was discussion 'relational geometry'.

57 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

Is A brief history of time a good pop sci book in your opinion? It was written in 1988 if I recall correctly, understanding of some things in physics might have changed since then.

So has the book.

Wikipedia

Editions

• 1988: The first edition included an introduction by Carl Sagan that tells the following story: Sagan was in London for a scientific conference in 1974, and between sessions he wandered into a different room, where a larger meeting was taking place. "I realized that I was watching an ancient ceremony: the investiture of new fellows into the Royal Society, one of the most ancient scholarly organizations on the planet. In the front row, a young man in a wheelchair was, very slowly, signing his name in a book that bore on its earliest pages the signature of Isaac Newton ... Stephen Hawking was a legend even then." In his introduction, Sagan goes on to add that Hawking is the "worthy successor" to Newton and Paul Dirac, both former Lucasian Professors of Mathematics.^[10]

The introduction was removed after the first edition, as it was copyrighted by Sagan, rather than by Hawking or the publisher, and the publisher did not have the right to reprint it in perpetuity. Hawking wrote his own introduction for later editions.

• 1994, A brief history of time – An interactive adventure. A CD-Rom with interactive video material created by S. W. Hawking, Jim Mervis, and Robit Hairman (available for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows XP).^[11]

• 1996, Illustrated, updated and expanded edition: This hardcover edition contained full-color illustrations and photographs to help further explain the text, as well as the addition of topics that were not included in the original book.

• 1998, Tenth-anniversary edition: It features the same text as the one published in 1996, but was also released in paperback and has only a few diagrams included. ISBN 0553109537

• 2005, A Briefer History of Time: a collaboration with Leonard Mlodinow of an abridged version of the original book. It was updated again to address new issues that had arisen due to further scientific development. ISBN 0-553-80436-7

4 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

The subject matter seems quite different though.

Note quite, but different yes.

Orzel's book is a lot more up to date and tells you a lot more about clocks and time itself, and a lot less about cosmology.

But relativity, QM, the double slit, Pound Rebka, are all well explained.

While you are thinking about Markus' questions ( and actually answering mine), and since I am an Applied Mathematician here are a couple of tongue in cheek questions.

Are you suggesting that

c = -(e^πi) ? or any of your natural constants, set to unity ?

Since you are listed as living in Brisbane I am suprised you need AI to write English for you. Do you not speak English ?

If this latter is true, fair enough, we at SF often need to help folks over a language barrier.

52 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

The subject matter seems quite different though.

Suit yourself.

29 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

Is A brief history of time by Stephen Hawking still a good book? It's from late 1980s, I bought a Polish version in 2018 but never read it, I plan to read it after finishing three books on Soviet history.

This is a much better book.

I think the title was inspired by the Hawking book.

My apologies, I forgot to include the link to my quote.

https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/physicsstop/2011/08/01/natural-units/

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

lack of good faith disturbing.

good faith ?

something a bit ironic there.

😄

Great summary +1

The only thing I would add is not only is the 'Bible' a folder containing several books from disparate sources, there are different versions with a different selection of books.

10 hours ago, Anton Rize said:

Please tell how to use Latex here this reformatting in to Unicode every time will drive me crazy soon 🙃.

Considering the rant from a few days ago I don't see why I should help you but I am not like that.

On 10/25/2025 at 1:55 PM, Anton Rize said:

It’s been three days since my last detailed response, and so far none of the critics have addressed or verified a single one of the derivations presented above - despite shown earlier confidence and patronising tone that should not be used in scientific discus.

This silence is quite telling: once the discussion reached the level of explicit formulas and transparent definitions, the enthusiasm for debate seems to have disappeared.

For readers genuinely interested in the content rather than posturing, all derivations, unit checks, and equivalences have been provided in full detail above. Unless new, substantive objections are raised, I will take the current pause as tacit agreement with the correctness of the presented results. It was far from the level of discussion I was hoping for.

The forum uses Mathjax.

Mathjax also allows MathML I use this.

The following code appears as

[math]{z^2} = \sqrt {{{\left( {\frac{{\Delta y}}{{\Delta x}}} \right)}^2} - {{\left( {\frac{{\Delta p}}{{\Delta q}}} \right)}^2}} [/math]

As a model I have removed the leading and trailing square half-bracket

math]{z^2} = \sqrt {{{\left( {\frac{{\Delta y}}{{\Delta x}}} \right)}^2} - {{\left( {\frac{{\Delta p}}{{\Delta q}}} \right)}^2}} [/math

What is in between the mathml tags is pure Latex

others will perhaps offer other methods such as using the backslash, I am not so familiar with that.

Due to other vagaries of this forum you may have to either refresh the page or the go to another page and then return.

Finally I told you right at the beginning you are hiding some Physics by using natural Units.

Here is a useful explanation from the University of Otago Physics blog.

I have emboldened the most important part.

Now, do you agree that this is a touch confusing?  If we have E = m_e, it looks like we have an energy on the left hand side of the equals sign, and a mass on the right hand side. That can’t work in physics. An energy equals an energy; a mass equals a mass.  It’s because our particle physicists take a few liberties with the units when they say c = 1, h-bar = 1, m_0 = 1. (Or worse still, c = h-bar = m_0 = 1).  And I see plenty of textbooks that are written like this. Writing this is WRONG; what should be written is c = 1 natural length unit per natural time unit; h-bar = 1 natural mass unit natural length unit squared per natural time unit, and m_0 = 1 natural mass unit.  The units are not dispensable. Take them out and you start losing the physics. Saying c = h-bar = m_0 = 1 is claiming that the speed of light equals the mass of the proton. The two are utterly different entities.

Finally I amstill waiting for a response to my previous post.

21 minutes ago, geordief said:

You walk down the road and mistake a flash in a dark corner as a knife and walk into the road to be run over by a car.

Or you see the flash and do not mistake it for a knife and carry on walking.

Are those 2 classes of thought ("wrong" and ""corrrct") or is that just a post factum categorization ?

Is there any way ,even in theory by examining the physical structure of the brain and body that it could be possible to gauge whether or not the physicality of a thought lies in either category?

Or is this just a question that can be asked but never answered other than to examine the consequences that flowed ? (and even then different observers will have different interpretations -if the person in the scenario was on their way to commit mass murder for example)

Interesting subject geordief. +1

Is your question asking about the misinterpretation of the flash of light or something else ?

There was a most interesting discussion, with plenty of examples, in Stafford Beer's book in the late 1960s of such situations.

Unfortunately my copy got lost in one of my many moves and I can't trace it on Wikipedia (he has written quite a few books).

This is sad, not only because it contained lots of cogent thinking, but because his books are now fetching hundreds of £s S/H.

The book I am thinking of I'm pretty sure was a Pergammon publication.

Thanks for the quick answers folks.

The only person I know (and who made a pretty good living out of being one 1975 - 2005) sort of fits CharonY's first definition. But her research was conducted at the Bodliean on a self employed basis, mostly for specific topics on contract.

A number of new members recently have arrived describing themselves as 'an Independent Researcher'

It would be interesting to hear what other members understand by this self reference.

20 hours ago, Pathway Machine said:

It has been my experience that when I post that video the unbelievers don't respond well to it.

I find the term 'unbeliever' to be perjorative.

7 hours ago, npts2020 said:

My biggest problem with religions is when the practitioners want impose their own beliefs (which almost none of them follow 100% of the time, anyway) on others.

I agree that practicve has defoinitely crossed the line.

9 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Sound's more like a politician, not every priest/religious teacher wants to impose anything or fails to follow their chosen moral code; I'll bet the politicos get much closer to 100% bc political morality is very fluid/ambiguous/optional and is mostly for others...

We are meant to be discussing extremism here, not benign exceptions.

32 minutes ago, swansont said:

Any equation can be written that way. F=ma can be written as F/ma = 1

Unless of course a or m or both = 0.

Which also applies to anything Anton Rize writes.

Nor do I accept his use of 'emergence' or we could be saying things like

if 2p + 3q =7 and p + q = 1 then it emerges that p is -4 and q is 5.

That is not what I understand by emergence.

Nor can nabla 'emerge' from anything.

1 hour ago, Pathway Machine said:

Okay.

I must say that since you came here to discuss the relationship between science and your beliefs, you have show remarkably little interest in what they have to say, despite starting several threads and posting a great deal about what you think.

I don't see how that can lead to sustainable discussion.