Johannes Kepler – A Mysterious Cosmographist Re: # 44

The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting on it. And the constant of proportionality is the inertial mass of the object.

Tragic Deaths of Three Great Scientists A more recent example is that of Yutaka Taniyama, a Japanese mathematician, who committed suicide in 1958. He along with Goro Shimura gave the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture. In early eighties it was shown that proof of this conjecture is equivalent to the proof of Fermat`s last theorem. It was this conjecture which was proved by Andrew Wiles ten years ago.

The following is from an article by Dijon Surendran.

In November 1957, he met a girl called Misako Suzuki and they got engaged a few months later. By the time of his 31st birthday they were busy preparing for their wedding. Five days later, he killed himself. The suicide note was three pages long, and included this extract:

``Until yesterday I have had no definite intention of killing myself. But more than a few must have noticed I have been tired both physically and mentally. As to the cause of my suicide, I don`t quite understand it myself, but it is not the result of a particular incident, nor of a specific matter. Merely may I say, I am in the frame of mind that I lost confidence in my future. There may be some to whom my suicide will be troubling or a blow to a certain degree. I sincerely hope that this incident will cast no dark shadow over the future of that person. At any rate I cannot deny that this is a kind of betrayal, but please excuse it as my last act in my own way, as I have been doing all my life.``

He then went on to describe how his belongings were to be shared out, which books had to be returned to which library, where he was with the courses he was teaching, and so on. Meticulous and considerate to the end.

His friends were utterly shocked and his fiancee killed herself less than a month later `to join him`.

Tragic Deaths of Three Great Scientists Gill Sahib, I may not always agree with your conclusions but I
appreciate the effort you put in writing about topics related to
science.

Will the String Theory Tie Them All Together? It is quite unlikely that string theory will be able to achieve all that is mentioned in the conclusions. It has been clear for some time now that the theory has no unique vacuum (representing something similar to our universe) instead it has billions upon billions of consistent vacua even non-perturbatively. This fact alone reduces the predictive power of the theory. The fact that it seems to be a consistent theory of quantum gravity is a major reason why so many people are working on it (since nobody understands what string theory really is non-perturbatively it is hoped that once it is understood everything will work out ok). However, string theory is not the only theory which claims to be consistent with quantum mechanics and general relativity. The other approach known as ``loop quantum gravity`` also has many strong points, but certainly not ``sexy`` enough for people to pay attention.

Is Physical Science Socially Constructed? # 29 soysauce
Scientist are indeed part of the larger society but there are
questions and answers which are independent of the influence
of this larger society. The answers about the fundamental
particles, Big Bang, existence of black holes etc are independent of specific cultural background of the scientist.

What Was There Before the Big Bang? Dear Inquirer, I apologize if I was not polite in the earlier email.
What irritated me about your earlier post was the total incoherence
of what you were saying. It seemed like you have come up with
another crackpot theory like so many other people who email the
physics newsgroups.

I do know a little bit about relativity and that is the reason without
even knowing the details of your theory I am almost completely
convinced that its not a scientific theory. I would appreciate it if
you can explain your theory in a bit more detail. Thanks.

What Was There Before the Big Bang? Inquirer, Care to expand a little on the nonsense about quasi-interacting equilibria?
Time is measured using a real variable, is a concrete physical quantity which mixed up with spatial directions thanks to special relativity. Many experiments have confirmed special relativity to a many decimal places.

Your statement ``objective reality in terms of interacting equilibria, each one of which is inherently unstable`` may confuse a lay person into believing that you know something but is essentially a meaningless collection of words.