fargolime

Look up the relativistic rocket equations on the Usenet Physics FAQ. Calculate in a spreadsheet what a crew member of a thrusting rocket would observe after throwing a ball upward at close to the speed of light. Chart the path of the ball's free fall. Use general relativity's equivalence principle to realize the same initial behavior must be observable to a person standing on the ground. You've found "dark energy". A little logic from there shows that high-redshift supernovae must accelerate away from us (the 1998 discovery that lead to the idea of dark energy). Good luck finding anyone else who'll look at your numbers.

> I would argue that the Constitution absolutely overrides laws to the contrary

We're agreeing with each other? It's up to each person who takes an oath to defend the Constitution, to ignore and even fight against unconstitutional laws, i.e. ones that in an ideal world would be overridden by a fair Supreme Court.

Couldn't reply earlier due to "you're posting too fast" limitation, even after a day. I may have to wait several days to reply again.

Thanks downvoters! One of the sources listed above is the first link Google showed. It really does work.

So was Rosa Parks. We have a whistleblower law, along with a gov't oath to defend the Constitution, that potentially trumps other laws. So his prison potential isn't so clear.

To get sources, I highlighted the sentence, right-clicked and chose Search Google for...

He'd be imprisoned for a long time for sure. But note that Rosa Parks wasn't. As a nation we're more ruthless now.

The average American thinks an arrest is tantamount to guilt; one of many signs of this is that mugshots are made public here. Snowden should stay exiled.

I had a reasonable polite comment here but got a downvote within 10 seconds. Downvote away further. Geez.

We should consider the alternatives. We're borrowing $trillions annually, so we have to pick our battles carefully. Why spend $billions to maybe possibly discover something like that, when the same $$$ can definitely pay back on some other crucial item? For example, most NASA funding should already have been diverted to solving the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico; that's a more critical need that's currently being ignored. And that's only one of many giant cleanup tasks left to be done.

That's why I said not now anyway. In the past, sure, it drove innovation to a great degree. But at this point we've wrung out the biggest gains. Almost anything NASA develops nowadays has little benefit to the public at large. It's entertainment mostly.

Are you suggesting there are no adverse consequences to the "borrowing", similar to borrowing?

If the benefits and carryover paid for it, fine. But I doubt it, not now anyway. If it wasn't borrowed money, I'd say throw .5% at at it. But no way when it's borrowed, unless it can be proven beyond doubt that the outcome is net positive.

Note that some of the private sector can't fail now either.

It's fine by me if a dictatorship takes the lead in space. Their people might suffer as a result. Our goal should always be to raise the average standard of living. If that means taking a back seat in some area, why not?

Well put. Of voters that have long term vision, I can't see them wanting space exploration over many better investments. We have so many huge problems to deal with that need funds before space exploration and its relatively small chance of payback for the average voter. Especially when it's all borrowed money.

Maybe it's the voters? I'm all for space exploration paid in advance, when the national debt is falling as well. Otherwise, no way. Why should my kids get only the bills? That would be rude. Let downvotes commence.

Imagine how interesting this is going to get. You call up some bank to plead with them that you're the real you, the loan wasn't your doing, and the person you're talking to, who's disbelieving you, just spent their morning on the other end of the stick.

Nor does the US' past direction. Since the 1950s it has toppled two democracies and thwarted another. The (final) overthrow of its own democracy may become possible through such technology.

Well put. I know someone who has elegantly solved five major outstanding problems in physics. The mystery of dark energy, one of the top 10 physics problems, is only one of them. But science is an industry nowadays, and there's no grant money in these solutions (indeed, grant money would more likely be pulled) so the odds of this person being listened to is nil.

> But if you have an inertial frame which is falling into a black hole any signal sent from beneath the event horizon will not reach any other point until that point has also fallen beneath the event horizon.

Problem is, the escaping particle never falls beneath the horizon. So an inertial frame in which that particle is at rest cannot extend below the horizon at all. That's a violation of law K for a frame falling into a black hole. By violating law K, the latter frame cannot be inertial. Note that law K is about allowing inner frames be extended to fill all of an outer frame.

Let a cloud of particles straddle the horizon. Let all the particles above the horizon be escaping to infinity. According to GR, such cloud must be splitting apart. The particles below the horizon must move inexorably inward, toward the singularity at the center of the black hole, whilst the particles above the horizon move ever outward, away from the black hole. Then a frame falling through the horizon of a black hole cannot be inertial, for in an inertial frame the cloud needn't be splitting apart (since law K applies). For example, in an inertial frame in Earth's atmosphere you can have a cloud of particles in which half the particles are given to be escaping to infinity, and the cloud needn't be splitting apart (just let all the particles escape in formation).

See https://finbot.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/toward-a-new-theory/. It's not my blog.

As not a physics PhD it seems so much easier to realize that GR's equivalence principle fails at the event horizon, in which case black holes are a mistake of GR. (Let downvotes commence since I must be a crackpot.)

Let a particle be above the horizon and escaping to infinity, as GR allows. By definition of a black hole, a signal can't be sent from below the horizon to the escaping particle. In an inertial frame, signals can be sent between any two points in the frame. Then an inertial frame relative to which the escaping particle is at rest can't extend below the horizon. That's a violation of the equivalence principle, because (we'll call this law of physics K:) inertial frames can wholly contain other inertial frames, and the inner frames can be extended to fill all of the outer frame. But as we've proven, a frame falling through the horizon of a black hole violates law K. An inertial frame relative to which the escaping particle is at rest cannot be extended to fill all of a frame falling through the horizon. Texts on GR tell us that an inertial frame can fall through the horizon, but we've just proven that such frame cannot be inertial without violating the equivalence principle. That principle is the core of GR, so black holes need be rejected as a mistake of the theory.

Black holes are predicted by the Schwarzschild metric. That metric can be tweaked to not predict black holes, while still agreeing with all physical experiments of Schwarzschild geometry to date. In the tweaked metric the escape velocity is always less than the speed of light (including at r < 2M), so that escape is always possible in principle. Singularities vanish (with escape always possible, no body need implode to one), so no quantum gravity is needed to make GR compatible with QM, and much better agreement to Occam's razor. Also solves the black hole information loss paradox.

Please downvote this major advance of physics if you haven't already.

Liked the story!

> near–terrorist plofkraak squad

How terrorist in any regard? The word seems to be thrown around these days.

They get the PIN with a video camera; this is why you are wise to cover the keypad with your other hand. They get the card number from a skimmer.

There's an update on the blog post now.

If a paper describing the new theory of special relativity would be round-filed today, it tells me that Einstein got lucky. In 1905 he was in the right place at the right time, getting reviewed by Planck, perhaps the only reviewer who wouldn't have summarily rejected the papers. If not for Planck the anomalous perihelion shift of Mercury might well still be a mystery, for Einstein's answer to that came a decade later. Presumably he'd have been ignored if his 1905 papers hadn't already opened the doors to academia.

> In physics now there are plenty of people with world-class math talent, but no one with Einstein's intuition, insight, and creativity.

I think because physics is now an industry in which deep creative insight is pretty worthless. For example, someone who could convince the gov't to award a $10 million grant to seek physical evidence of dark energy is likely going to have more success than a theorist who can show that dark energy is superfluous.

In Einstein's time physics was more like a hobby. An Einstein today, if they started as a patent clerk they'd more likely progress to IT than physics. At least in IT their creativity can be employed.

The way I see it, you hear about thought experiments in physics because of Einstein. Because of him they can't avoid giving them some credence. But the odds of a new thought experiment purporting to show a bug in general consensus physics being given consideration today is nil, and I'm talking about before the text is read. Using thought experiments to discuss current physics is fine as a starting point only. For new physics they are junk that immediately labels one as a crackpot.

Yep, yours is probably different from physicists' mental experiences, not software developers'. One thing I've learned from discussions about physics is that the thought processes that are common to software development are largely foreign in the realm of physics.

Take for example Einstein's Relativity of Simultaneity thought experiment. [1] This is akin to discussion about a bug among software developers. Like developers can agree that a bug exists after discussion alone, a software developer could read the thought experiment and conclude there's a bug in physics (i.e. the general consensus at the time). But physicists don't seem to work that way. In discussions with many super smart physics-minded people, I've found that most reject that thought experiment, nay any thought experiment, as having value. Only a mathematically-based argument suffices for them. Imagine showing software bugs only mathematically!

[1] In Einstein's words: http://www.bartleby.com/173/9.html

> This was mostly based on the fact that Albert approached Physics as a "New age day dreamer" (e.g.: thought experiments) rather than primarily from mathematical models or experimental insights.

Remains true today. Certainly no paper consisting only of a thought experiment could get published in a top journal. Many self-described physicists have told me that thought experiments have zero scientific value. Brian Greene who wrote The Elegant Universe says he thinks Einstein's original papers would've been round-filed if submitted today. (And they weren't just thought experiments.) I suspect we know about Einstein today only because of the open-mindedness of Max Planck, who was Einstein's original reviewer.