A black hole would eventually stretch a person into spagetti, but not necessarily near the event horizon. For a small black hole the effect might be well outside the event horizon while for a supermassive black hole the effect would be well inside of it.

This is because the event horizon of a super-massive black hole is so large that while the gravitational pull there is enormous, the variation in the graviational forces in a human-sized volume is quite small. It's the variation in the forces that stretches you.

Likewise, while the total gravitation pull well outside the event horizon of a small black hole is much less than the total gravitational pull near the event horizon of a super-massive one, the variation is much higher.

For someone who understands the time-dependent Schrödinger equation? Not so many years more years.

All I can say is that the Page-Wooters paper suggests that time does not, in fact, work this way and this current paper, if correct, provides evidence that Page and Wooters may have been right about it.

Maybe, but I don't think so. I did some work in this area for my MS.

The paradox comes about because I used the word "observe" in two different contexts. From the abstract: "We implement this mechanism using an entangled state of the polarization of two photons, one of which is used as a clock to gauge the evolution of the second: an "internal" observer that becomes correlated with the clock photon sees the other system evolve, while an "external" observer that only observes global properties of the two photons can prove it is static."

The Schrödinger equation does evolve over time. But the Schrödinger equation is a non-relativistic approximation which does not even attempt to incorporate gravity. This story is about the Wheeler-DeWitt equation which is much more fundamental than the Schrödinger equation.

The theory requires no outside, God-like, observer, nor does it propose one. The point is that time is measured by "events" and "events" occur when the quantum states of two systems become entangled, but only to the systems that became entangled. To an "observer" that has not become entangled, a system is static and no event has occurred.

In the Copenhagen interpretation, one would say that according to the entangled observer the "wavefunction has collapsed" whereas according to the unentangled observer, it hasn't.

I like their space labelled "Recombobulation Area" just beyond the screening. Almost makes up for everything smelling like stale beer.

We have a place in town that advertises on the radio to hurry in and buy your new computer from them because they are still selling Windows 7 but won't be able to do so for long. Given all the airtime they are buying, I have to assume their are a lot of people who don't want Windows 8. I wonder what makes Microsoft think they are going to want it on their Xbox.

Worst? Depends on definition.

Ahead in the numbers? Yes.

http://www.examiner.com/article/atheist-vs-christian-whose-killed-more-and-who-will-survive

More to the point, it's not Java. It's Scala.

Yet strangely I can work computations using pen and paper using only the evolution of the poorly understood system consisting of my brain, arm, hand and eyes.

Exactly correct. The most important reform our government needs is district-drawing reform so they're ALL swing districts. I just don't know how to accomplish this.

"STOP THE GERRYMANDERING!" isn't a very inspirational campaign slogan.

Why is this modded a zero? It's bang on!

Outside the US, they send drones...