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VagabondSpectre

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"A handfull of photons" is such a crude term that it demonstrates you don't understand what a photon is (it's an electromagnetic particle-wave). How m...
September 29, 2017 at 20:20
Unfortunately "a handful of photons" is so inaccurate and unscientific a description that the entire piece "isn't even wrong". Furthermore "weak photo...
September 29, 2017 at 20:06
You're not explaining the setup clearly at all, which leads me to believe you have not understood what I laid out earlier, but assuming you do underst...
September 29, 2017 at 19:53
The strength of light is drastically reduced when it diffuses against a surface and spreads out in many directions. So yes, it's possible that you cou...
September 29, 2017 at 19:21
"Visible" depends on the quality of the apparatus, in this case, your eye. If the light has become too diffuse you might not be able to see it (maybe ...
September 29, 2017 at 19:02
Consider the following: Light comes from the sun and bounces off of me (and other places) and then some of it travels to your eyes, rendering me visib...
September 29, 2017 at 18:51
We don't. If no light is reaching something from any direction, and producing no visible light of it's own, then that thing sits in darkness. Light re...
September 29, 2017 at 17:50
1: They had a few large telescopes in the 17th century, but again, we don't need to identify rotation, we just need to identify the lunar emergence fr...
September 28, 2017 at 01:15
OK, I will highlight the crucial points of error numbered, in bold and underlined and explain why they are errors down below 1: We do see rotation of ...
September 28, 2017 at 00:23
The question of your refraction pattern has no apparent connection with your hypothesis(?) that telescopes have access to light that might be millions...
September 27, 2017 at 23:25
Why does the contemporary assessment of the speed of light break down when it comes to distant objects and great distances? When the captain looks thr...
September 27, 2017 at 23:16
We try to remove ambiguity in philosophical writing because otherwise we go around and around, talking about everything, and nothing, until the origin...
September 27, 2017 at 22:51
Can you explain your setup in more detail? A laser pointer is shining at a mounted pinhole lens that is attached to a camera (a camera with a separate...
September 27, 2017 at 22:39
Light diffracts as it travels as it travels around the edge of an object, in this case, the inside edges of your pinhole. How far away from the pinhol...
September 27, 2017 at 21:45
You lucky dog! I would love to attend a live show but Derren isn't exactly well known in Canada... I've not read read Tricks of the Mind yet but I've ...
September 27, 2017 at 21:29
What you've produced is called an Airy Disk, which results from the light which diffracts when traveling through a very small aperture (comparable to ...
September 27, 2017 at 21:19
If we're to get anywhere meaningful in a discussion, we need to understand each other. That means removing ambiguity and being clear about the things ...
September 27, 2017 at 19:17
It's a verbal soup that that can vaguely be equivocated with "truth". These terms can only be made useful if we give them specific and robust definiti...
September 26, 2017 at 23:34
Same goes for the transgender military ban tweets. In Trump's world these are lighthearted controversies that appeal to some while distracting from hi...
September 26, 2017 at 22:29
Differing levels of awareness (conscious focus) seems to be one of the main aspects of the mind that mentalists like Derren are able to hijack so impr...
September 26, 2017 at 17:44
I do wonder about the nature of this deep running streak of cruelty. I wonder if there's an evolutionary cause for it or if it's just a psychological-...
September 25, 2017 at 17:24
This is actually a very interesting question... In high school one of my english teachers snagged her foot on a power chord and - almost - face plante...
September 20, 2017 at 07:33
Special pleading.
September 19, 2017 at 06:08
So it's not true that we are unable to make confident and precise predictions about the long term ramifications of climate change because Big Energy m...
September 18, 2017 at 05:24
Climate change is foremost a big uncertainty; we know that it WILL change, but we don't know just how severely, how quickly, and what the end result w...
September 18, 2017 at 01:28
What existing infrastructure lasts longer than say, 50 years, before it gets replaced by something new? I firmly believe that the fungal like resilien...
September 17, 2017 at 22:00
As I have explained, yes, Methane has a lifespan of 12 years (give or take) in the atmosphere, but it has a global warming potential of 28 (compared t...
September 17, 2017 at 21:58
In the worst case scenario, all the ice at the poles melts and land mass is reduced while temperatures continue to soar. This change would take about ...
September 17, 2017 at 21:42
Without looking at any of the sources, I can tell you that what the 100 times number refers to is warming potential. You take the decay rate and facto...
September 17, 2017 at 21:25
Where did you get this information? A far as I know methane doesn't last long at all compared to other GHG's.
September 17, 2017 at 20:40
I am envisioning a quaint British castle overlooking pristine shire-land below, dotted with fields, cottages, and cattle. In a cobble room adorned wit...
September 06, 2017 at 20:53
Is this an anime where a regular dude is surrounded by magical chicks and is forced to take them out with a regular old face-punch? That's hilarious.....
September 06, 2017 at 19:48
Pro: not Hillary Clinton Con: emotionally petty and politically uninformed Pro: holds up a mirror to the retardation of American politics Con: holds u...
September 05, 2017 at 20:30
Gaia theory is speculative nuttery (as least when and where I have been exposed to variations claiming that moniker). There are plenty of feedback loo...
September 05, 2017 at 20:04
Under this new regime of power and identity, black people cannot possibly be racist because they "have no power" and so even if a black person was rac...
September 04, 2017 at 20:36
I've been immersed in this subject for about three years now... Long story made short: Radical feminism is now taught using a suite of sociologically ...
September 04, 2017 at 20:25
The steam and the combustion powered engine. They do all the work.
September 03, 2017 at 10:58
The more electrons we check in the experiment I described, the closer and closer the results correspond to our predictions based on past experience. D...
September 03, 2017 at 02:35
When we measure an electron, we cause it's "wave-property" to collapse. This experiment isn't affected by the Heisenberg principle because what it mea...
September 02, 2017 at 20:08
There is consistency in Newtonian scales and experiments are eminently repeatable. That said, experiments on the quantum scale are also repeatable (th...
September 01, 2017 at 21:10
Causality (what the laws of physics seek to describe) has to do with determinism because it "determines" how matter and energy behaves. Experiments mu...
August 31, 2017 at 22:06
I'm sold. And if anyone disagrees, I've got my pitch fork handy!
August 31, 2017 at 22:03
Naa man, lets like, make, like, ... Elon Musk the God Emperor of all mankind! Surely if we had one genius and clearly benevolent central ruler who cou...
August 31, 2017 at 21:53
I've been meaning to open a thread to rehash our disagreements regarding telos, morality, sexuality, etc..., but I never did get to the bottom of how ...
August 31, 2017 at 21:46
How do you know the origin of how i came to pragmatically or tentatively accept that determinism is the case? Proposing an economically motivated cons...
August 31, 2017 at 21:35
Actually my, tentative acceptance of determinism is an off-shoot of science. It's kind of like the assumption that gravity is all pervasive; an assump...
August 31, 2017 at 21:17
Well, assuming that he could build the wall without going tens of billions over budget, I don't think this is enough to get him re-elected... Trump co...
August 31, 2017 at 19:18
There are mountains of evidence suggesting that if you damage the brain, you alter the mind. We know that thought somehow emerges from networks of con...
August 31, 2017 at 19:09
Ironically though, democracy itself entails "talking about what our favorite policies would be". Asking "what is the ideal form of government for Amer...
August 31, 2017 at 00:16
The "best" government is not knowable by us because America is too complex. If you ask a chess grandmaster what the best chess strategy is, they won't...
August 31, 2017 at 00:01