Because of a power failure at a remote location that can't be sorted
out until the new year s.a.r. postings are going via a different route
from the usual one and it is possible that some postings are in a
queue that we can't access. There may be delays over the next few

Hello everybody,

I have completed, at least for now, the relativity sections of my
website. I am motivated by the fact that I do not believe any progress
in foundations is possible if the general theory is not properly
understood, and because a proper understanding of gtr is necessary to
understanding cosmology, particularly issues like cosmological
expansion. I have put together an introductory level course, from first
principles, including sections on the required mathematics for those who
either have not done it, or need revision.

http://www.teleconnection.info/rqg/MainIndex

My aim has been to put rather more weight on clarifying the kind of
thinking that lead Einstein to the special and general theories than one
finds in text books, and also to make the mathematics as straightforward
and succinct as possible. Certainly it is a lot shorter, and I hope more
approachable than any textbook that I know of, as I have found a number
of treatments which simplify, and I hope clarify, those from the books
(though I don't treat every topic one might find in a textbook).

Any comments on anything inadequate or not clear will be gratefully
received. This can be done either on the site or here.

Sorry not to have this in the prior posting,
I just naturally found my link to it right
_after_ I posted.

This is the "fund raising thermometer" of progress
toward gathering a bias check resampling of
a subset of the Galaxy Zoo target objects, with
associated text explanation:

http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=8792.0
or
http://tinyurl.com/2vppqg

xanthian.

Maybe 25 of these dust study candidates are "mine"

http://www.galaxyzoo.org/pr_201207.aspx

of which this is by far the most spectacularly
pretty recent example:

http://cas.sdss.org/astro/en/tools/chart/chart.asp?ra=161.05090111&dec=6.7588143...
or
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yuj7w4

xanthian.

There is now an update the the FAQ page "What is the experimental basis
of Special Relativity?".

There has been a renaissance in tests of Special Relativity (SR), in
part because considerations of quantum gravity imply that SR may well be
violated at appropriate scales (very small distance, very high energy).
It has been seven years since the last update of this page, and there
are over 60 new experiments, many of which are recent, ingenious, and
improve bounds on violations of local Lorentz invariance by several or
many orders of magnitude.

The update also includes a larger section on "Experiments Which
Apparently are not Consistent with SR/GR", giving MUCH better reasons
for dismissing many of the results -- in most cases errorbars or
considerations related to them provide a solid and compelling reason for
considering the experiment to be inconclusive or downright wrong.

The update can be found here:
http://www.edu-observatory.org/physics-faq/Relativity/SR/experiments.html

CALL FOR PAPERS
and
Call For Workshop Proposals

WORLDCOMP'08
The 2008 World Congress in Computer Science,
Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing
July 14-17, 2008, Las Vegas, USA

(composed of 25 Joint Conferences)

ACADEMIC SPONSORS: Research labs at Harvard University, UCLA,
Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Austin,
University of Iowa, and others (see below).

You are invited to submit a paper (and/or a proposal to organize
a session/workshop). All accepted papers will be published in the
respective conference proceedings.

The 2008 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering,
and Applied Computing (WORLDCOMP'08) is composed of the following
25 conferences (all will be held simultaneously, same location
and dates: July 14-17, 2008, USA):

Now that we have been warmed up by the flat versus hyperbolic geometry
discussion, it might be of interest to consider the long-running
controversy over whether the distribution of matter on scales
exceeding 100Mpc continues to be fractal, or goes over to a
homogeneous distribution at about 200 Mpc. Note that the "bar" was
orininally put at about 60 Mpc for the crossover to homogeneity, but
the bar keeps floating upward mysteriuosly.

I am going to introduce the issues using direct quotations from the
principals involved in the dispute. I do this for novelty's sake and
for the fact that some of the quotations are truly remarkable. My
source is an article in the 10 March 2007 issue of New Scientist
written by Amanda Gefter. You need not feel compelled to remind me
that this is hardly the most authoritative source of scientific
information; I am fully aware of that. However, this is a well-
written article that deserves to be noticed. And it has delicious,
verbatim quotations.

The basic issue is whether the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data (release
I) favors a fractal or a homogeneous observable universe.

In article hercules.herts.ac.uk>,
"AstroAyers@gmail.com" gmail.com> writes:

I'm reminded of Fritz Zwicky's statement that he and Galileo were the
only astronomers who knew how to use a small telescope. :-)

Seriously, there might be a real need in variability studies. The late,
great Bohdan Paczynski wrote a long article on this a few years ago.

The Galaxy Zoo internet cooperative astronomy research
project (in which I'm one participant among at least
100,000 participants), modeled on the Seti at Home
project, but using human eyes as processors rather
than merely handing off stray computer power has
received some publicity in the Daily Telegraph:

http://tinyurl.com/24qr2o

That URL is probably volitile and will go away
eventually; newspaper online archives seem
impermanent.

It seems that the universe-as-we-see-it may not be
as isotropic as expected; spiral galaxies may have a
tiny bias in their preferred chirality. Work is
currently underway to check the classifications for
sources of bias to make sure this is a universe bias
and not a human classifier bias.

This anisotropy, if confirmed, leaves room for all
kinds of cosmology speculations.

See also

On Nov 22, 4:06 am, "michalc...@aol.com" aol.com> wrote:

While I can't give a detailed answer to the original question, it's
worth mentioning that fluffy interplanetary dust particles are indeed
collected in the stratosphere. Don Brownlee is probably the person
best known for this work, but I don't find a good review article in a
quick ADS search.