Pete

or if he was dropped hard as a baby.

I assume that you're joking? Is there a forum policy/rule about not using ad hominem attacks? If not then, IMHO, there should be.

 

QM is the treatment of the behavior entities as waves. I think Severian once pointed out that "wave mechanics" would be a more apt description.

I disagree. There is more to quantum mechanics than a solely wave description can handle. For example; the state ket

 

[math]|\psi> = a|+> + b|->[/math]

 

represents the super position of a particle which in a superposition of the spin up state and the spin down state. There is no wave function associated with this ket.

What a tedious argument.

 

Okay, so in summary: religion was allegedly brought up, people were offended, arguments started, fun happened, people were put on ignore lists.

 

Sounds to me like the original problem has been solved. Unless there are any other important issues I've missed, let's just let this thread die.

I completely agree. At this point I believe that forcing a misinterpretation of a comment, regardless of the authors stated clarification which may follow, would belong to an entirely different thread. but I'm not really interested in starting a new thread on this sine I'd be better of asking forum administrators about it and do so in PM. To whom do you recommend that I address such a question to?

Okay, so in summary: religion was brought ...

 

Just as a matter of point - Let's not exagerate as to what was brought up? One bogus claim that religion was brought up was because I said something to the effect that "even such and such isn't mentioned in the Bible." We were talking about morals and I was giving an arguement that something wasn't really a moral issue by comparing it to what many people consider to be the most rigid standard of morals, i.e. the Bible. That's a use of an analogy, not an attempt to discuss religion. If I said that without wings a plane would drop like a stone would you think I was taking the discussion off topic by bringing up geology? I don't think so.

 

The reason I mention this is due to the fallacy of logic that was attempted here which is against forum rules, is it not?

That's true, but I'm pretty sure that the spacetime in a Newtonian would be 4D, whereas in relativity it is 3D with one time dimension. That is, the time dimension in Newtonian physics would be completely separate from the space dimensions, whereas in relativity they are intertwined.

It makes no difference in which theory one defines spacetime because it is not theory dependant. Spacetime is the collection of events and consists of one time coordinate and three spatial coordinates making a total of four coordinates. Since the number of coordinates neccesary to uniquely define a point is the dimension of the space at hand it follows that spacetime is 4-dimensional. Its the stucture added to the spacetime which determines what theory one is considering.

I know, but what I don't know is what is so different about the time dimension. Hence, I was curious as to how things like rotations would be different in 4D and 3+1D.

The difference between dimensions has to do with the physical meaning of the dimension itself. Space has a different physical meaning than time. Only in certain respects are they treated mathematically on the same footing. If you were to look at two Minkowski coordinate systems super imposed on each other then the time axis is rotatred with respect to the space axis. This doesn't happen with a Galilean transformation. However the spatial axis of the new coordinate system is also rotated with respect to the old one when both the Lorentz transformation and the Galilean transformation are used.

Dak - Give it a rest and stop whining. You're acting like a two year old

So, most people think of rotation in 3D with respect to an axis, which is like rotating each 2D plane perpendicular to the axis. But relativity says we live in a 4D universe, although time is a rather special dimension.

Its not quite right to say that the 4D universe was something that relativity told us. We can go back to Newtonian physics and describe physics there in terms of spacetime as well. As far as teh universe being "4D" its misleading to think of it as such. There are 3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension. But space and time have very different physical meanings.

 

*Rotation in the real world. How is the time dimension affected?

*Rotation in 4 normal dimensions (called [math]R^4[/math]?)

*Rotation in spacetime, along the time axis.

*Rotation in spacetime, as if it were [math]R^4[/math]

Please elaborate what is being rotated. Thanks.

 

Pete

By the way' date=' this may be a good time to mention that there is an ignore function available.

[/quote']

Thanks. I just blocked iNow. His last sad attempt at proving I was discussing religion was the last straw. Thanks mucho Mr Skeptic!!!

 

Best wishes

 

Pete

To Paralith, Glider, john5746, Mr. Skeptic, and Pioneer

 

I wasn’t planning on visiting this forum again but I realized that I should post at least once more to say that I’m sorry for my part in all of this. I fully admit that I let myself get dragged into responding to the bogus claims made about me and by letting myself get angry about iNow insulting theists for believing in God. I have no excuse for my actions. I only hope that I can rectify this situation by admitting my error.

Pete' date=' iNow has a bit of a hangup when it comes to the God issue. You'd be better off ignoring any posts he makes on that subject, than respond as you have, which would accomplish little more than turning a thread into a flamewar. …

[/quote']

Thank you Mr. Skeptic. You couldn’t be more right. I seem to have let other people antagonize me. It didn’t help that I was also discussing religion with an atheists on the Christian discussion forum that I belong to. After so many insults and bogus arguments made by people I can get a bit touchy. I should have shut the computer off and watched TV,. Of course that’s a very easy thing to do when anyone tries to defend themselves (Have you ever noticed that? It seems that no matter how innocent a person is they will almost always seem to come off a bit guilty when they try to defend themselves!)

but you are the only one who has used it every five minutes for the past week

Since you’re going to start lying and insulting me I’ll be ignoring your comments and making bogus claims in the (near?) future.

Pete when you say Publicly' date=' do you mean like the 2 posts above ...

[/quote']No, of course not! The term public refers to posting a comment in a thread. The term private refers to filing a report and sending a message in PM. I won’t be doing that again unless I also state it in the post I’m reporting it since it was made clear today that such information will be made public knowledge when the moderator wants to behave poorly.

time for all of us to stop talking about god

That's your problem and how you started this nonsense. Besides Pioneer (whose comments about religion were actually relevant) there was nobody talking about religion accept you. Even then you only happened in your mind and from the way drastically exaggerated it so in an attempt to drag me into a debate about God and religion so that you could insult theists. Shame on you.

why didn't you just accept that you'd been (apparently too) subtly told to stop discussing religion by a moderator?

Because I never discussed religion in the first place. Seems like iNow succeed in erroneously convincing you that I did discuss religion. Don’t bother trying to deny it.

Pete, please stop trying to use the post reporting function as a weapon for clubbing people with whom you have a disagreement. That is not what it is there for.

It very clear that you're posting your complaint against me publicly when such a thing belongs in a private setting, e.g. you should have sent me a PM. There is only one reason to post such a complain in public and that's publicly embrass me.

 

If you don't like when people report violations then you should remove the report function, not try to guess what the motive is for filing a report.

 

I am going strictly by SFN Forum Rules which are stated at http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/announcement.php?f=51&a=14

 

As far as using the report function I am assuming that what is said in SFN Forum Rules and Science Forums Etiquette are correct. That more than one has been sent only reflects the attitude the members have settled into by their violations being ignored to date. I have used in only two types or complaints. In the pages mentioned above they read as

 

If they're intentionally insulting people, don't reply--just use the Report Post function to let the moderators know about it.

 

Stay on topic. Posts should be relevant to the discussion at hand. This means that you shouldn't use scientific threads to advertise your own personal theory, or post only to incite a hostile argument.

 

Dak's recent post tells me that he doesn't know that his comment can easily invoke a negative response. After all, what was he hoping to accomplish? Why didn't he send me a PM instead?

 

Do to negative attitudes demonstated in this forum in the last week I had every intention of leaving permanently. However I've grown to admire Phi in all of this since he not only did took action which is consitent with the forum rules but he also politely pointed out areas in which I myself screwed up, i.e. I may have fractured a rule myself. But he did so privately in PM. Not in public like you and Dak did. My guess is that Phi will recommend that I leave since I have zero tolerance for poor and unprofessional behaviour. I'll leave you and your forum to the way it was, the way you seem to like it.

I see. You're one of the extremely poor choices of a moderator that they chose who's on a power trip. Well screw you and good by to all you asshole

Dak - You're acting like a child. What did you hope to gain from your last post?

well, if you're going to ignore each other from now on, i guess that's the end of it.

 

hint, hint.

In the first place I had stated quite clearly that I won't be posting here again until I heard back from the moderator. In the second place there's no reason to assume that a thread is dead because one or two particular people are not currently posting in it. In the third place I see nothing here that I'm interesting in discussing or anyone's post that I want to comment on. Then the post took a turn into an area that I will not discuss in a science forum, i.e. into religion.

 

However I have heard back from the moderator and am happy with the response I recieved. Since I respect the moderators actions and attitude I've decided that this is a great place to continue discussing science. So if it comes to science I'll be more than happy to continue. I will not comment on any religious side tracks unless they are made in PM or in the religion forum that I go to where I do discuss these kinds of things.

 

Now, on to the most recent post.

 

i reckon morals are psychosocial constructs that are created by the psychosocial nature of the culture that one is born into. eg if i am born in a western industrialised culture then certain psychosocial constructs exist that i will be educated too and thus use to navigate my way in the world.

 

if i was born in a tribal' date=' nomadic society i would simply be educated in the psychosocial constructs (morals) that apply there.

[/quote']

Interesting that you should mention this just now. In that book that I mentioned that I'm reading, i.e. What Evolution Is the author Ernst Mayr writes on page 259

The propensity for altruistic behaviour toward other insiders of the special group is an all-important component in the evolution of genuine genetics. But it requires a cultural factor, the preaching of a religious leader or a philosopher, to be implemented. It is not automatically produced by evolution. Genuine ethics is ther result of the thought of cultural leaders. We are no born with a feeling of altruism toward outsiders, but acquire it through cultural learning. It requires the redirecting of our inborn altruistic tendencies toward a new target: outsiders.

That paragraph is in a section entitled The Evolution of Human Ethics. Seems like a nice treatment by a legend in the field of evolution. I scanned that section and placed it into a PDF file. If you'd like I can make it available to you so that we can discuss it.

Yet another ad hominem attack I see. So instead of either ignoring my posts or refuting the errors I pointed out to you, you instead participate in character assasination. That's pretty sad iNow.

 

 

This post is a reply to iNow in this thread here. Posts split off because they are off-topic.

Where, in your estimation, have I demontrated a poor understanding of the philosophy of science? Once you have provided specific examples, I'd also like to know how that negates any of the points I've made. Thanks.

In post #70 I wrote

I'll be back if/when this situation is resolved. I won't post in a forum where my religious beliefs are attacked.

Did you not read this? Perhaps guess you ignored it. After I post this message to clarify myself and my previous comments I will refrain from posting until I hear back from the moderator.

 

One of the reasons I didn't respond to your comments in post #74 is because you made too many invalid statements for me to want to address. For example you wrote

While we both share a right to free speech' date=' neither of us has a right not to be offended. So really, that's just tough noogies.

[/quote']

Freedom of speech has nothing to do with this. Just because it’s not against the law to post insults it doesn’t mean that you’re not violating the forum rules that you must have agreed to when you joined this forum. One of the reasons I chose this particular science forum is because its a moderated discussion group and there are rules to go by! When you joined this forum I assume that you agreed to abide by the forum rules, did you not?

 

You then posted the following comment

Actually, the implication is true.

Not only are you propagating a bogus stereotype but you’re going against one of the tenants of critical thinking. I.e. the willingness to consider the possibility of being wrong. You are clearly unwilling to consider the possibility that you could be wrong.

 

You then posted

You seem to live in a rationalized dichotomy of mind whereby you study physics and you study other sciences so call yourself a rational and critically thinking person (which, in those instances, you are),

Here you demonstrate a lack of understanding of a basic human characteristic. You summarily dismissed, with absolultely no justification whatsoever, the notion that a person is either adept at critical thinking or they aren’t. It’s not something that is topic dependant. If you disagree then you should have provided an argument demonstrating that fact rather than merely stating your opinion. A person either knows how to construct a logical arguement or they don't. A person's ability do so is not limited to a particular subject.

 

After that you wrote

..but then you also believe in iron age fairy tales and purple unicorns and somehow expect us to transfer the previously ackowledged rationality on to these other topics.

Not only did you use a straw man here (the purple unicorn is a bogus analogy), but you mistakenly assumed that you know why I believe in God, i.e. you asserted some nonsense about fairy takes. You incorrectly assumed that I believe in God because of some "fairy tale". The fact is that you have no idea why I believe in God. Here you make another error in critical thinking, i.e. you show contempt for those holding conflicting views.

 

After that you wrote

What interests me is how insecure you seem to be about your belief system, ..

Here you pulled an assertion out of the air by assuming I experienced a particular motion (insecurity) and strongly so. In fact there was nothing in anything I wrote which even hints at such a thing. I have no insecurities about my beliefs whatsoever. You then pulled the same stunt again when you wrote

and how deeply my (a stranger on an internet forum) words offended you.

Here you greatly exaggerated a simple distaste I have for the way you insulting theists. Where in the world did you get the idea that I was “deeply” offended? This is clearly an exaggeration. It seems to me that you showed a lack of understanding of basic human nature in that the average person will be offended when you insult them. You should also keep in mind I was merely expressing my distaste at the way you insult people for their religions beliefs. You simply took the strongest possible interpretation of the phrase “I take offense” and made it seem as if I was deeply hurt. Your comment that followed, i.e. “Suck it up” is just plain rude. No problem. I can deal with rude people and its not something that the moderators need concern themselves with

If your beliefs have merit, then there is nothing to be ashamed of and you should be immune to my harsh criticisms, and in fact be able to respond with rational ways to support those beliefs.

Your criticism means very little to me since you have no idea why I bn. What I find rude is the way you insult people’s religious beliefs.

 

You then go on to write

Yep. That doesn't make their belief in god any less silly. There are lots of really bright people all over the planet who do and believe some really stupid nonsense, but that doesn't make the stupid nonsense in which they believe and on which they act any more reasonable.

Here you once again demonstrate a lack of critical thinking by drawing a hasty conclusion based on your limited experience. By this it is meant that you summarily dismissws their reasons for believing that God exists, without even knowing what they are., perhaps because you think that you’ve heard it all before. You’ve hastily concluded that that the people I mentioned must be wrong – even though you have absolutely no idea what their reasons are.

 

Then you once again post

I encourage you to wake up and open your eyes to the ridiculous crowd you've chosen to hang out with by having this belief in iron age fairy tales.

which again shows that you’re unwilling to consider that you might be wrong. In this case you even assumed that you knew why I believe in God and summarily claimed that, whatever it is, must be wrong.

 

This post is so long because of the large number of errors you’ve made here. There’s no way I’m going to keep doing this much work with every post of yours if there are this many mistakes in them

It not only is a blatant strawman, due to the differing natures of worship/religion and folklore, but it ALWAYS causes friction in threads where it's mentioned. It's belittling, it's supercilious and it's unnecessary.

As well as against Science Forums Etiquette, which is posted at http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8730 i.e.

Don't Flame

Just because someone doesn't agree with you, doesn't mean you need to insult them. They may be ignorant, but try not to flame them out of the forum. If they're intentionally insulting people, don't reply--just use the Report Post function to let the moderators know about it. They can deal with insult wars and rule-breakers more efficiently than regular users.

...

Don't Strawman

Don't strawman. It is quite annoying and you will lose your credibility, and seriously undermines any argument.

...

Don't be Mean

If you don't agree with someone, don't attack them. Tell them politely why you think they're wrong, and give them evidence. Insulting people won't get you anywhere but suspended.

iNow's post has been reported. I'll be back if/when this situation is resolved. I won't post in a forum where my religious beliefs are attacked. Especially by someone who demonstrates a poor understanding of the philosophy of science.

While I agree that unobservable phenomenon have little significance to scientific discussions' date='

[/quote']

I disagree. Its a well known fact that particle physicists use objects called virtual particles to explain the interaction between particles. Virtual particles cannot be observed in principle. Consider also the concept of a quark. So far it appears that free quarks cannot be observed. All we are able to observe are hadrons, i.e. 2 or three quark bound states. So while we can think in terms of individual quarks it appears to be theoretically impossible for them to exist.

 

Glider - I will only be checking my PMs until this problem has been resolved (if it indeed is resolved). Please send me a PM containing proof of your assertion about this Islamic law that you say exists. Thanks.

 

Thanks for your help in this thread everyone. I greatly appreciate it.

 

Pete

I'm going to leave alone your comments about god because god is bunk, and has no place in a discussion among rational and critically thinking people, accept perhaps when discussing history or psychology.

I have to say that I take offense at this comment. When you start making comments like this you're really just insulting people like me. I've never insulted your intelligence so please don't insult mine, okay? After all I've never insulted you for being an atheist have I? No, I haven't. There is no need to imply that those of us who believe in God are not logical/rational/critically thinking people. It took a great deal of logic and critial thinking for me to have graduated college with a BA with in both physics and mathematics.

 

There are some really brilliant physicists in this world who are extremely smart, rational and critical thinkers who also believe in God.

 

And I didn't make any comments about God. anyway. I was only talking about the hypothesis of the God gene. This hypothesis has been postulated by the geneticist Dr. Dean Hamer. He's the director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the U.S. National Cancer Institute. I.e. I was talking science (i.e. genetics), not God. And I'm not discussing religion here because this is not the place for that kind of discussion.

 

I've been doing my best to leave religion out of this. But when scientists postulate things like the so-called God gene it becomes a legitimate topic of discussion here.

 

By the way, I already looked at Pioneer's comments in this thread and saw nothing deserving of what you said to him. Please don't dump on people merely because you disagree with them. There is no reason to do so and its rude to do so. Please tell me exactly what he said to deserve this. You can PM me with the information if you'd like. Thanks.

For example' date=' under Islamic law, it is illegal to kill a virgin (whatever her [it usually tends to be a 'her''] crime). In order to carry out a death sentence, the woman must first be raped (usually by the prison guards) after which, no longer being pure, it's fine to kill her.

I asked a Muslim friend about this and he tells me this is pure nonsense. I myself have never come across such a thing in my studies of Islam. Where in the world did you hear this anyway?

 

My friend gave me some great advice, i.e.

Generally speaking, when you see someone (a muslim or a nonmuslim) talking about Islam without providing any evidence from authentic islamic sources (ie Quran and Sunnah) you shouldn't pay attention to what he/she's saying.

Just encountered an interesting article that suggests a neutron bombardment method might, in a couple of decades, be able to speed the decay of radioactive waste in hundreds of years.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com:80/releases/2008/09/080922100148.htm

 

If so, this would be a great development, and would enhance nuclear fission as an energy source. Anyone got any further information?

Too bad we can't simply put the radioactive material back where we found it.

Now there is an interesting thought, possibly worthy of its own thread. What happens when your photon is large enough that the expansion of the universe would "split" it in pieces? Or would it be impossible to get a photon with less than the Plank energy, giving it a maximum wavelength? But then what happens when you red-shift that photon?

I find this to be a confusing response. A photon doesn't have a spatial extent. Its not like the length of a photon is one wavelength or anything like that. Wavelength is physically realized by the spatial distribution associated with the wavelength.

I'd probably go with, it's mechanics on which scale the uncertainty principle is not negligable...

How would you employ this definition to the photo electric effect and the quantinization of radiation?

 

Pete

Pete,

 

No problem, it is I who should apologize. I thought you were trying to put words in others' mouths and were bordering on trolling, so my intent was to kick at you a little. Of course, its your decision whether to put your shin or balls in the way, but a reaction was expected. I'm not the smartest person around here, so I would be one of the last people to imply that I am smarter than another. I was attacking your intentions, not your intelligence but I was wrong and I apologize.

 

Best Regards,

Thank you John. Your apology is accepted and greatly appreciated. Your response demonstrates that you are a gentleman and a scholar and a good judge of legs, wine and women.

 

I'm not sure how you came to believe that I was trying to put words in others mouths or gave the impression that I was trolling. I never do that on the internet. I did my best to ask the original question and respond to comments in such a manner so that I would not come across as trolling. I guess I failed to do that. You would do me a great service if you could send me a PM and let me know how you got impression. I ask so that I can make any adjustments to my writing style so as to avoid posting things which may lead to misunderstandings in the future. Thank you.

 

FYI - Perhaps people will understand me better if I explain myself on this point a bit. I'm a Christian and a physicist. I'm one of those Christians who does not accept the Because God did it. explanation of the phenomena in nature. As a physicist I believe that would be like giving up on the search for an understanding of the universe when they do that. I always try to look for a better understanding of reality. Putting these two philosophies together I think it can be described in the same way Einstein phrased it - I want to understand the universe because I want to know what God is thinking. (or something like that).

 

Was that your way of saying that you are going to blatently ignore every single counter point which has already crushed your argument and that you are going to continue repeating the same inaccuracies anyway? Fascinating.

I'm very confused by your response to this notion. You seem to be a little harsh to Pioneer when he may be right in some sense. It is my understanding that there is something that has been referred to as the God gene hypothesis which proposes that human beings inherit a set of genes that predispose them to belief in a higher power. I did a search on the internet and found this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_gene. An article on this subject also appeared in Time Magazine. See http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101041025/. It also appeared in the Washington Times too. See http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/nov/14/20041114-111404-8087r/. The author writes

An American molecular geneticist has concluded after comparing more than 2,000 DNA samples that a person's capacity to believe in God is linked to brain chemicals.

Have you ever heard of this God gene? If you have do you reject such an hypothesis? Perhaps I misunderstood your comments on this.

 

I'll be ignoring the comments about religion since I'm trying to avoid discussing religion on a science forum. I'll try to restrain my comments to only the God gene hypothesis and do my best not to get into such discussions along the line of Which part of religion is moral, again?

 

Note - I'm currently reading the book What evolution is, by Ernst Mayr - a well known scientist in the study of evolution. It has a section entitled The Evolution of Human Ethics. If anyone wants to read it I can send scans of those pages in E-mail. I could upload them onto my website and post the URL to the PDF file that the scans are in but I'm not too sure about the copyrights on doing this. If there isn't a problem with copyrights I can do that, if anybody wants to read it that is.

For example, under Islamic law, it is illegal to kill a virgin (whatever her [it usually tends to be a 'her'] crime). In order to carry out a death sentence, the woman must first be raped (usually by the prison guards) after which, no longer being pure, it's fine to kill her.

Where did you learn this from? It doesn't sound like Islam at all!

 

Best wishes to all.

 

Pete

E=mc² is not valid for photons. You need to use the full version of the equation:

 

E²=p²c²+(mc²)²

 

So any conclusions you find would be invalid.

That depends on what m is and he clearly defined it as relativistic mass which makes it correct for photons.

Not that I know enough particle physics to give an informed response, but I voted yes.

Same here. I'm fairly ignorant on things like QED, Field theory, particle physics etc. But from what I have learned I think it would make a complete picture. E.g. imagine a puzzle with a few puzzle pieces missing. Then one might predict that if they looked around the floor and under the couch etc. then they might find the missing pieces. Seems like a valid analogy to particle physics. Actually I just finished chapters 1 and 2 of Introduction to Elementary Particles by David Griffiths. This seems like a nice text and fairly rigorous. Anybody ever read this book or parts of it? ajb?

I dont think scientists around the world dont even consider funding for TIME TRAVEL analysis. Its just impossible. Unless some wormhole is created by the HADRON COLLIDER, then thats a different story.

I disagree. E.g.

 

Time Travel, Deser and Jackiw, Nucl.Part.Phys. 20 (1992) 337

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9206094

 

Notice the part where it says

This work is supported in part by funds provided by the National Science Foundation under

grant #PHY-88-04561 (SD) and the U. S. Department of Energy (D.O.E.) under contract

#DE-AC02-76ER03069 (RJ).

A particle going twice the speed of light (i.e. a tachyon) would not violate special relativity (SR). However it does seem to violate SR for something like tachyonic matter (non-particles like a spaceship). How would one transform to such a frame? If they did then objects in that frame would be at rest violating the assumption of tachyonic matter. For that reason I agree with swansont.

 

re - At double the speed of light time is going back "reversed " - I don't see where this came from. Its not a meaninful statement in SR. At least if you can't have tachyonic clocks. It'd be a strange thing if they existed. If you have a tachyonic particle which decayed in its own frame of reference then it would appear to "un"decay from other frames. Totally wacky stuff.

Thanks salaw. I was a bit off my game yesterday and didn't get around to uploading it and posting the link. I just did so. Its now at

 

http://www.geocities.com/pmb_phy/exercise_2_17.doc

 

I should note that one of the authors is an aqauntance of mine. I E-mailed him and he told me that I got the following response

Peter;

Your solution is correct and very detailed. Since each variable has its own differential equation the problem can be solved either formally or numerically. See http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Quadrature.html

 

So I'm scratching my head too. And I don't have extra hair up there to spare so please help soon!

 

Thanks salaw. I was a bit off my game yesterday and didn't get around to uploading it and posting the link. I just did so. Its now at

 

http://www.geocities.com/pmb_phy/exercise_2_17.doc

 

I should note that one of the authors is an aqauntance of mine. I E-mailed him and he told me that I got the following response

Peter;

Your solution is correct and very detailed. Since each variable has its own differential equation the problem can be solved either formally or numerically. See http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Quadrature.html

 

So I'm scratching my head too. And I don't have extra hair up there to spare so please help soon!