I am just sad for all the victims of rape in the UK that haven't probably seen, even remotely, the same police efforts made for this accusation. It happened in a different country, and parts of the accusation wouldn't even be a crime in the UK, and obviously there are political goals behind, given the strange sequence of police work.
I'm thinking about what would happen if instead of Assange we were dealing with a person from a country where religion and government are intertwined, and that person was asking for asylum to the UK for accusations that are not crimes in the UK.
The issue is not only about mass. Any mass could form a black hole, the main point is about mass density, and that's not trivial to obtain.
That aside, real infinities is a vague concept. What's important is that any theory of gravity has to deal with the fact that the current understanding of classical gravity and quantum field theory make (when you combine them) a theory that has problems at the Planck scale. Those are problems that any theory of quantum gravity or every theory of everything have to deal with.
But it doesn't mean that those potential theories would have any infinities. Such a theory, though, has been very elusive.
With the exception of string theory, which is the leading theory in terms of its success, most theories tend to have fundamental problems. String theory research is certainly not complete, but it's in my opinion currently the best shot we have. Online, and in academia, you can find lots of very opinionated discussions about it, which include aspects of testability, predictivity, etc. which means that some people really dislike string theory and prefer other approaches.
From a physics perspective, the many-world, as ridiculous as it sounds, is a more sound theory (believed to be correct by some top physicists) than negative gravity.
The explanation of why gravity is only positive is a complex one, but physicists believe it's almost axiomatic.
This doesn't mean that you can't have repulsive type of effects, similar to one of the contributions that's believed to make the universe expand more quickly than with the simple 4 fources (often called fifth force, maybe related to dark energy, and to the rate of the universe expansion acceleration).
PS.
There are a number of Sci-Fi stories that use this idea, including a famous one from Asimov, in which if I recall correctly the normal gravitational force was working negatively when traveling in FTL speed. Obviously that seemed fishy but the book was cool (Nemesis).
Today is the first day that H-1B for next October are accepted, and apparently they know for sure that the limit will be reached so soon that "the agency is prepared to use a random selection process to meet the numerical limit" [1], like last year.
Steve Carlip used to be my advisor in grad school and his style of writing shows his beautiful way of explaining (and thinking about) deep questions in physics.
One think that I believe is important to point out is that this short essay is focusing on the experimental aspect of the measurement of the speed of gravity. It gives an explanation on why this is even an intelligent question to answer and why the answer we commonly accept is that gravity moves at the speed of light. I will never have better words than him so I won't add anything to what he said.
What I would like to point out, is that this essay is not talking about whether or not theoretically would be possible to have a speed of gravity faster than the speed of light. General relativity and special relativity have been tested on several aspects, and they pretty much are in agreement with all experimental constraint. There is no other theory that can explain everything we see (some theories tend to explain a few things, but not all of them, or they are too vague).
A theory in which the speed of gravity is faster than the speed of light isn't unconceivable per se, but no one has been able to write a completely consistent one yet, mostly because it would have large consequences on what special and general relativity imply for cosmology and particle physics (and causality). If gravity moved faster than the speed of light then we'd have to 'fix' a lot of problems coming down to paradoxes and stuff like that.
So take this essay as a way to appreciate how elegant and fine some experimental questions on gravity (and physics) are.
I don't think we disagree on that. I'm not talking about the product side of things. I said and mean that Amazon is pushing for standards, regulations, laws etc. also by showing the possible demand side.
The reason why Google doesn't have a product, can be for multiple reasons, for example because they may (who knows) only want to create an Android OS-like self driving system, not necessarily building the cars. It's the same they did with smart phones.
If they want to dominate the car OS market, they might not need to present it as a product at this stage.
They just need, as Amazon, to push it enough to gain momentum and be one of the early players.
I think that a lot of comments here are missing a crucial point: in the next few years unmanned vehicles are going to play a major role in most of the transportation landscape, whereas this is for people or objects.
Amazon here is trying to play the same role that Google has been playing for a long time with their self driving cars. They are setting a standard and pushing for regulations and laws.
It is not that difficult to think that the future of unmanned vehicles won't be as naive as people may think. There will probably be a combination of different sets of vehicles that would go around for large distances and/or sizes, and different vehicles covering smaller distances and/or sizes. They can be used in series to optimize the traveling salesman problem in terms of what's powering these vehicles.
It's not that different from thinking of an ant-like distribution system.
And not that different from the Google approach of crawling the web, then crawling the actual world with google street view cars, eventually moving into self driving cars. Except you'll also get lots of metadata with it, that can be used and sold.
Amazon is now part of the game, moving the attention to drones and self flying objects.
Isn't this the same problem eBay has been having for seller who aren't stores?
In that case buyers just buy expensive objects and then open a dispute under the 'object not respondent to description' or 'broken' or something like that... (and they don't send the objects back)
Does anyone know a good list of approaches to take against this kind of scams?
This is a pretty silly statement, because it implies that what someone could do with google glass they don't normally already do.
What about a TomTom? Is that illegal? Is it better to look at its screen wherever you positioned it in the car?
What about billboards? Aren't they there to catch your attention while driving? Are they illegal?
What about checking your speedometer or the gas level, or gas mileage?
In the future things like google glass or even active screens/windshields will be more and more able to show the same information and more, without necessarily implying any unsafe behavior on the road.
I liked the website and the idea. I didn't mean 'wavy' as offensive, but just that this above may be correct assumptions, but I fail to see whether or not are mathematically rigorous.
For example. I agree that within the circle of safety you can readjust your position however you want, given enough time for you to readjust.
What I don't necessarily see, is that one straight line is the best way to maximize the escape. For example, I could consider going at pi/2 for a bit, having the monster trying to catch up counter clock wise, and then slightly bend toward pi/2 + alpha.
This may be wrong, and maybe it's easy to see, but I failed at understanding whether or not that is possible from the explanation. After all, it's a similar strategy to the pi/2 one. I.e., the monster will have to get there covering more space. This would be very different from aiming at that point when you are at the edge of the safety circle, since now the monster is at a different relative position. So it depends on whether or not there is no solution that gives you some extra time.
For example, why is a spiral (that keeps being a spiral after leaving the safety circle) worse than a J shape? (same point as above but with a curve instead of two straight lines at an angle).
Another point is the optimal strategy for the monster. If the monster waits for a second waiting for you to move, would pi/2 still be the best strategy?
To be honest I think that the solution sounds perfectly reasonable. I just thought I wasn't mathematically 100% convinced.
And I liked the website and the other puzzles (I'm still thinking about the Ace of Spade, on which I have a question).
The determinant factor is not the direction, but the current angle of both entities.
The monster will always have to run towards the direction where the angle between itself and the boat is smaller, otherwise it'd be choosing a longer path.
In facts, if at some point the monster decides to go clockwise, the boat could simply choose the symmetrical direction compared to the relative position of the monster.
This being sad, I'm not sure I am convinced that no other trajectory can be faster, since many of the arguments seem to be a little too wavy.
Steve Carlip used to be my advisor in grad school and his style of writing conveys completely his beautiful way of explaining (and thinking about) deep questions in physics.
One think that I believe is important to point out is that this short essay is focusing on the experimental aspect of the measurement of the speed of gravity. It gives an explanation on why this is even an intelligent question to answer and why the answer we commonly accept is that gravity moves at the speed of light. I will never have better words than him so I won't add anything to what he said.
What I would like to point out, based on some comments I read here, is that this essay is not talking about whether or not theoretically would be possible to have a speed of gravity faster than the speed of light.
General relativity and special relativity have been tested on several aspects, and they pretty much are in agreement with all experimental constraint. There is no other theory that can explain everything we see (some theories tend to explain a few things, but not all of them, or they are too vague).
A theory in which the speed of gravity is faster than the speed of light isn't unconceivable per se, but no one has been able to write a completely consistent one yet, mostly because it would have large consequences on what special and general relativity imply for cosmology and particle physics (and causality). If gravity moved faster than the speed of light then we'd have to 'fix' a lot of problems coming down to paradoxes and stuff like that.
So take this essay as a way to appreciate how elegant and fine some experimental questions on gravity (and physics) are.
Just to make it clear. If gravity was propagating faster than light, then general relativity for how we conceive it would have to be reformulated.
It would be similar to the problem of if neutrinos were actually going faster than the speed of light (they're not).
Either you say that something is dangerous (as in your example, drugs, weapons... etc), or it has to be considered a scam.
I may be wrong and I would like to understand this better, but I don't see how they can declare it illegal to buy unless they find a loophole (money laundry, etc).
But just saying you're not allow to buy it, without associating with it a motivation (which could eventually be challenged via various Courts), doesn't see easy to me in the US.