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Bill Angel

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About Bill Angel

  • Rank
  • Birthday 01/30/1948

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  • Location
    Baltimore Maryland
  • Interests
    physics, photography
  • College Major/Degree
    Physics (B.S.)
  • Favorite Area of Science
  • Biography
    worked as a physicist and as a software developer
  • Occupation
    "independently directed"
  1. Here's a question related to the findings about black holes. The image released yesterday is of a black hole with a mass of 6.5 billion suns. That is apparently a mass sufficient to ensure that nothing, neither energy nor mass, can escape the black hole's gravitational pull. When the universe came into existence the total mass created was far greater than that of 6.5 billion suns. And the mass was concentrated in a volume as small or smaller than the volume of a black hole. So how could this mass overcome its mutual gravitational attraction to fly apart and create what we presently obser
  2. That black hole at the center of Messier 87 has a mass of 6.5 billion solar masses. One wonders if any of those 6.5 billion suns had planets which supported intelligent life. It would be a real bummer if the astronomers of an alien society had to inform their population that in the distant future their sun and the planet that this alien society occupys are going to be sucked into their galaxy's black hole and annihilated.
  3. Could the entire universe be considered as having a single quantum mechanical wave function? At the time of the Big Bang the universe was extremely small, of dimensions in which quantum phenomena were dominant compared to gravity, as the entire universe was smaller than a proton. As the universe expanded, matter filled a much larger region, but particles whose wave functions were entangled would have remain entangled. A textbook analogy would be what happens when two elections with equal but opposite momentum are emitted from a source. The resultant particles can become separated by the s
  4. Interesting article for the non specialist reader: "Study finds 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' may not exist – here's what to make of it" — http://theconversation.com/study-finds-dark-matter-and-dark-energy-may-not-exist-heres-what-to-make-of-it-88181 What is worth mentioning is that the authors' theory and its confirmation by astronomical observations only deals with the rotational motion of galaxies, but makes no mention of the observations of "gravitational lensing" which result in the light from distant galaxies being bent when it passes near galaxies that are closer to the Ear
  5. Also check out:U.S. Says Russia Directed Hacks to Influence Elections http://nyti.ms/2dLavGe
  6. Here's the question that I think the moderator should ask the Presidential candidates at one of those debates: "If you are elected President, would you invite Vladimir Putin to address a Joint Session of Congress?"
  7. Ben Carson isn't the only neurosurgeon espousing strong religious/spiritual beliefs. Another is Eban Alexander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Alexander_(author)
  8. Those are very good questions that you have raised, and it is unclear if even his closest Associates could answer them. The following article from The New York Times does provide some useful information about his career and his controversial views. With Ben Carson, the Doctor and the Politician Can Vary Sharply http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/23/us/politics/with-ben-carson-the-doctor-and-the-politician-can-vary-sharply.html
  9. What about molecular hydrogen H2? What would cause H2 to decay, assuming the molecules arn't bombarded with radiation or collide with each other?
  10. I'm 68 and my doc has me on Simvastatin to control my cholesterol level and Losartan together with Amlodipine to control my high blood pressure. The meds appear to work well together.
  11. When I was growing up a lot of the kids including myself were active in religious-based youth groups. Are there youth groups for atheists? I'm assuming here that the parents of these children are atheists, otherwise their kids would likely be active in these groups.
  12. What Trump has managed to do is engineer a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, much as a businessman might engineer a hostile takeover of a corporation. But the product he is attempting to sell, a political agenda tailored to the perspective of disaffected uneducated white males, doesn't have enough appeal to other groups of voters to enable him to beat his competition.
  13. The brain is a machine, and purported "out of body experiences" can be explained as manifestations of alterations or disruptions of its neural activity. Here is one such example: Recreational Drug Creates Out-of-Body Illusions See http://www.wired.com/2011/02/ketamine-drug-hallucinations/
  14. Scientists can do good work and then for problematic reasons, such as emotion triumphing over reason, become proponents of repugnant ideologies. Here is one example. Philip Lenard migrated from being an honored physicist to being an ardent Nazi. Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard (7 June 1862 20 May 1947) was a German physicist and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 for his research on cathode rays and the discovery of many of their properties.... An advisor to Adolf Hitler, Lenard became Chief of Aryan physics under the Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_Lena
  15. True. But some of the tests evaluate one's problem-solving ability and also one's ability to concentrate. Also, there's been speculation about whether or not Ronald Reagan exhibited some signs of Alzheimer's disease while he was still serving as President.
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