ZetaX

Now you made me nostalgic... Someone should make a english translation. I think it is still produced, but I don't know if the quality is the same.

Are you at least living in australia¿

The same teachers that tell you centrifugal forces don't exist.

No, there is nothing novel to it. All they seem to do is using lenses to make the bundle of light smaller in radius, presumably by just converging to a focal point, then making the rays parallel again after, and then add a second such aparatus to revert to mirroring caused by the first half. On the mirror examples: those have the obvious flaw that there is no direction from which it is truly cloaked (you will always see the mirror). The lenses work at least form one direction.

Your training as a geologist might not have trained you to recognize the fact that they orbit a planet. After all, earth's geologists needed until Galileo to figure such a thing out. But seriously, if geology is your main definition, then Jupiter is no planet, for it is completely lacking geology.

Don't forget the tidal effects on jupiter, especially the clouds

I don't think it's really nationalism, it's probably plain old conservationism (or whatever the concept behind being conservative is called). Maybe people also objected when Ceres was demoted, but much less due to the lack of fast communication like the internet.

Obviously the definitions will be vague as long as you ever want to distinguish things. That's why one always should leave some freedom to allow to "follow your gut". For example, yours is bad as now shooting a marble into space, orbiting the sun, adds a full planet. Sorry, but that's not an argument.

We should hold a vote to decide if the moon is made of cheese.

Well, definitions are just a consense. Thus theoretically, it is relevant. Practically, only the involved scientists will get a vote, and the problem itself is pretty uninteresting (define it whatever you want; it's not like it has any real implications).

I am pretty sure to have seen such a construct before and am a bit baffled by a university selling it as "novel". But that might just be me imagining things. The actual research in "cloaking devices" has a different goal, though: researching metamaterials. Cloaking is just a byproduct.

So the Moon, Ganymede and Titan are planets¿

The whole solar system satisfies that. Jupter and the sun alone already do if I remember correctly.

While "moon" is generally used for certain satellites of other planets, "sun" is not that often used for other stars in non-fiction. Just get used to saying "that was a nice Alpha Centaury A rise this morning" and you are ready for the future But that's not a good reason against it. Just take any example where things changed, be it scientific, political or other, and imagine what would happen (or actually happened, think about Galileo) if people would insist on their old versions staying true.

There obviously is "scientific critisism". There is a huge difference between being very very improbable and just not being confirmed. You can claim that the sky is green all you want, but the scientific critisism is simply "no it is not". @Dominatus: in regard to the thread starter, it might be on topic. Discussion directly with gpisic is not and cannot be.

There is a difference between the profession of being a critic and the act of being a critic. The latter has no professionality and can be done by everyone. The wikipedia article on professional critics has a disambiguation page, you know. Also, wiktionary is probably better for this kind of things and it very clearly says as first and third options: A person who appraises the works of others. One who criticizes; a person who finds fault. And for everyone who really want to know what science is about: it is about deducing hypotheses form observed things, then testing these things. Not: making stuff up, then trying to reason why it is true. As soon as someone debunks your stuff, it is done for; no "you are not imaginative enough"; you can come back if you have a better idea that does not have all those flaws. Hint: the alcubierre drive was researched a lot before being published. It's not like some guy just shouted "Nah, FTL should work".

To everyone trying to answer gpisic: do not try to convince him, his non-understanding of science is probably beyond what we can cure, especially because he is not open to rational arguments at all. Just take a look at my recent "dicussion" with him in the "FTL communication" thread. Better focus on debunking his nonsense to others who might otherwise believe him. At least, this looks like a better way to spend your ressources (be it thinking or time) and looks morally better (why trying to help the stubburn guy when you can save many from his crap¿), too.

So your evidence is that you maybe once saw someone saying it. Great!.... There is also no solid evidence the tooth fairy does not exist. Two¿ And nope. So better prepare for living hell under the tooth fairy's regime. You don't know my real name, so yeah, I might be the tooth fairy.

There are actually not many reasons for colonization. You may want to put a (nonhuman) science outpost there, but it is pretty useless as a place to live. If we every get around to make a Dyson sphere, then the iron is definitely useful, but I would not call that colonization. None of these were ever observed. And why should one need other universes to explain black holes¿ General relativity definitely does not and suffices for their existence.

I am not aware of any tehcnology that could "beam" an amount of energy comparable even to normal jet turbines, even less for SCRAMjets. Can you give any sources¿

Nothing (I could see). That was because N_las was already saying most of what I could add, so I restricted myself to try to find out what exactly your problem was. I have no problem with you, never had. I am happy to discuss things as long as the others are (mostly) following the basic principles I wrote down before, and I did not see you violating them. I cannot fully answer your main question as I am not that afluent with quantum mechanics that I am certain to what I say (I am a working mathematician, who learned some physics in the past), but it sounds as it is also directed at me, so take the following at least with a grain of salt (and hopefully someone else goes further): I am actually not sure how to treat the meaning of "perspective" here, and I lack a good understanding of decoherence. Thus the best I can answer is "neither" and "reality". We know it to have this state untill we actually observe it, but in the moment we do that, it does not exist in this state; that's why I find it difficult to give an answer without a proper meaning of that word. The main thing I learned from quantum mechanics is that one should not think of the world like Newton did, but see it as huge and complex probability space. So what is traveling is essentially the probability itself. But your post sounds as if you are aware of this already. If my understanding is correct, and this is a big "if", then no: the "change in probability" moves (at most) at the speed of light and should even be observer-dependant. But I really do not want to give an actual answer to that. @Gpisic: I will apologize if I think I was wrong, not because you demand it. If me being rude by calling you "annoying" is that bad you might leave the internet now. Everything I said about you is true, or at least I see no reason to change that perspective. And to demonstrate why I think so, just take a look at your last post: a) You say I "swap the facts" when I said first that "N_las already gave a proof that FTL transmissions cause time travel" and then that "I said that FTL implies time travel (and vice versa)" This statement is ridiculously nonsensical! The only meaning I can even assert is that you are complaining not giving N_las credit the second time, but I actually don't need to: I was saying I agree with his conclusion (thus implicitely saying that FTL causes TT), and then the second time I simply reconfirmed that I said this. I also think I said it another time before, but am too laze to look that up. And yeah, let everyone else look it up if they want. I feel very threatened at the thought that people might realise that at first I said "A is true" and then later said it again. You answer my very very random example of a magical teapot with: No, it is not. And yet it is not really worse than what you are saying. You seem to think that even a "god of the gaps" (look it up, it's a standard refrence) is better than admitting a lack of knowledge. That's completely unscientific again. c) You really need to learn what sarcasm is. Also, those examples are excatly that: examples. I nowhere said they are real (most of them are pretty random), but I made sure they actually are compatible with all physics I could think of; you may point out errors if you wish so. d) Nope, general relativity (e.g. Alcubierre drives) or other things might allow it. I just want your stuff to be consistent with what we already know (I think I am repeating myself for the fifth time now). e) This is probably the only part of your post I agree with. The only problem is that your are dealing with this matter like a crackpot ("they doubted Einstein and Wegner but they were right all along, therefore my weird theory is also correct!") than a scientist ("hmm, this fact disagrees with my prediction, maybe I need to adapt my hypothesis or revoke it"). The difference is probably this: the crackpot tries to make as many assertions true as possible (with a very heavy bias towards his own), while the scientist is more focused on weeding out the false ones. Actually, learning some mathematical logic may help you and others understand this. And no, mathematical logic is not such simple stuff as implications, AND, OR, but I am talking about things like axiomatic systems, formal proofs, undecidability and the difference between unfalsifiable and provable. Your other fallacies are so heavy that I don't think anyone reasonable needs an explaination why they are wrong, so I will just stop here. Have fun ignoring me for not bowing to your unfounded demands of an apology. I will continue to point out your nonsense to others, it's your decision if you don't respond to that; I definitely have no objection to that.

K^2: It also requires a classical channel, so I would not say that it is pure teleportation. Do we agree that it is "transmitting quantum states via classical channels" (assuming prior existence of entangled pairs)¿ Thus the "only" thing truly teleported is the quantum aspect (which carries a lot of meaning, still). That's why I would prefer "quantum transmission" for that one. Well, changing the term is probably not a realistic option anyway. I have also given this some more thought and I am unsure about my previous oppinion in this matter: anyone who really gets into physics will learn the correct meaning anyway, and everyone else does not need to know (and will not cause any harm; this point is quite different on other topics like basic analysis, where an engineer failing something might cause fatalities). Thus the cool naming schemes might cause a net profit, despite feeling a bit dishonest, by provocing more people to learn actual phyics. Would you at least read my posts fully instead of putting stuff out of context¿ I never said what you wrote there, instead I explicitely made clear what I mean later in the post! Again: there is a huge difference between persons seeking answers to their questions, and people just wanting to be reassured of their (wrong) oppinions. I will gladly teach the former (and actually do that a lot in my free time; not talking about the internet, but about giving talks/courses/similiar things to younger people), but I refuse to treat the latter the same. If someone's errors have been pointed out several times and his best responses are "you just don't want this to be true" then being nice and letting him spread his wrongness will help nobody. To take you as an example: you insisted on things about entanglement those articles never said; but as you seemed interested in actually finding out the discrepancy between us, I had no problem continuing the discussion on the physics level. I think I only responded badly once in this thread (to WestAir), and I already said I am sorry for that.

K^2: I know that and already said so in an earlier post. While the term is technically correct, it is still don't like it due to seemingly promissing more than it really does. I met just too many people that got almost everything about quantum mechanics wrong (just take a look at this forum...), and I think this is partially due to the naming schemes. Physicists are somewhat following the rule of cool, and in an ideal world that would be fine (and cool ;-) ); but sadly, reality has things like idiotic media and ill-informed people. Anyway, I find this nitpicky discussion pretty useless as long as that many horribly-misinformed people are here in the forum, despite this one being about science. Done what¿ I said that FTL implies time travel (and vice versa), so how is this an answer to that¿ Well, I am in agreement with what you can find in books or the non-crank physics of the web (e.g. Wikipedia). Also, it's not just me, but also N_las, K^2 or whoever else probably got at least some university level physics education. I am in full agreement with the latter two I think (except on some naming schemes ;-) ). And exactly here lies the difference between a rational and scientific person and you: the former would never claim such things he is not quite sure about or has not cross-checked with the state of the art science. If someone tells me that I am wrong in saying that all swans are white, then I go check; and if I fail to find any such evidence against me, then I ask for proof, and accept it if I get such. But actually, I would probably never belief such a thing in the first place as the only argument for that example would be that I never saw any other, which is very weak. Spreading things you don't really know is almost as bad as spreading lies. One of the major sins of rationality, one could say. So a "god of the gaps" is fine as an explaination of everything we don't understand¿ Or if I say that "dark energy" is actually my magic teapot pushing quantum-space-matter away, then this is better than "I simply don't know"¿ It is always better to know what you don't know and to openly admit that than to just make stuff up. Hypotheses are not just made up from nothing, but are made after observing the relevant things for a bit, then trying to formalize what you saw. The physics is not politics. Convincing other people is. That anything people come up with is in agreement with already well-tested science like special relativity, or that people stop using things that have been shown to be in disagreement with that physics. Remember what I said about SciFi not being fantasy¿ It's exactly that difference. And by the way, I did not even claim FTL and/or time travel is impossible. I just said that assuming some philosopical stuff (see many pages back; but I think we both use those assumptions anyway) implies that those two are equivalent. So you either have to throw away causality, or have special kinds of determinism (including that the universe is determined to never cause causal contradictions), pr some censorship, or just add such a thing like "then the universe simply crashes and our god/admin deletes it"; or whatever else that makes it work. It is pretty cheap to dismiss physics arguments like that.

Having 10 times the ships mass as kinetic energy would already be rather close to the speed of light. After that, additional energy will essentially only go into a much shorter flight time from the ship's crew point of view, but not from the outside.

Implying I want to be nice to someone who completely ignores what people tell him, despite his rambling being as unscientific as it gets. I will be nice to people that actually want to learn something, or to people that have interesting things to say or teach. But I will not always be nice to someone who repeatedly ignores others that actually know physics, and who tends to throw his unscientific comments into every second discussion. And that is why I won't ignore such behaviour: it is spreading misinformation. Your posts actually tell people wrong things, and thus they need to be corrected. And ideally, you should stop making them, but I gave up on that part. The problem are not those asking questions. The problem are those that claim to have an answer despite actually not having a clue about physics. This is not politics where things generally get down to more or less founded oppinions. I am happy to answer questions, but prefer if people would read the last few pages of a thread before answering to it, as responding to the same stuff three times in the span of a few hours is just annoying. Anyway, if you are actually seeking an answer and not just search for confirmation of your weird theories, you are welcome to ask.