Slashdot Mirror
The End Of Gravity As a Fundamental Force
An anonymous reader writes "At a symposium at the Dutch Spinoza-instituut on 8 December, 2009, string theorist Erik Verlinde introduced a theory that derives Newton's classical mechanics. In his theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of information in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings. He does not consider gravity as fundamental, but as an emergent phenomenon that arises from a deeper microscopic reality. A relativistic extension of his argument leads directly to Einstein's equations." Here are two blog entries discussing Verlinde's proposal in somewhat more accessible terms.
Update: 01/12 04:48 GMT by KD : Dr. Verlinde has put up a blog post explaining in simpler terms the logic of the gravity from entropy paper. He introduces it with: "Because the logic of the paper is being misrepresented in some reports, I add here some clarifications."
Update: 01/12 04:48 GMT by KD : Dr. Verlinde has put up a blog post explaining in simpler terms the logic of the gravity from entropy paper. He introduces it with: "Because the logic of the paper is being misrepresented in some reports, I add here some clarifications."
But it sure sounds promising.
And even if it's not true, if the math works, it still might be useful. Newton's and Einstein's theories aren't strictly "true" but they are incredibly useful despite that.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
That's one funny thing about math, "close doesn't count", until you get to a certain advanced point. Then we say "this works for all but a few special cases... close enough."
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I couldn't begin to assess how plausible this theory is; neither could most of the people on Slashdot. However, I do know the arXiv is not a peer-reviewed journal, which mean that we can't even rely on the peer-review system to gain information on how sound the underlying research is. Many excellent publications appear on arXiv before being published in excellent journals, but some fairly questionable research ends up there as well.
Rather than post completely uninformed comments on the subject, leave that to people in the field.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
At least half the comments on this story will boil down to one or more of the following:
There. That should save everyone some time.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
FTA:"Starting from first principles, using only space independent concepts like
energy, entropy and temperature, it is shown that Newtons laws appear naturally and
practically unavoidably. Gravity is explained as an entropic force caused by a change
in the amount of information associated with the positions of bodies of matter. "
and "... the holographic hypothesis provides
a natural mechanism for gravity to emerge. It allows direct contact interactions
between degrees of freedom associated with one material body and another, since all
bodies inside a volume can be mapped on the same holographic screen."
If this is proven correct - that gravity and inertia are emergent from information entropy
and statistics, it would be very, very exciting if for no other reason than it would be yet
another support (probably the strongest yet) for the holographic universe description /
the 'reduced dimensionality' description. This could also resolve some of the impossibly
inconsistent problems in physics integrating gravity with microscopic forces and spooky
effects like action at a distance.
So far all we've had to support a holographic universe is black hole physics and string
theory conjectures.
It's mind warping to imagine that the whole of our existence necessarily depends
on encodings that are 2-dimensional in nature. If this is the case, what a world
it would be. Philosophers and religious folk will argue over what that might mean.
Damn it. I knew I should have sold back my college Physics textbooks when I had the chance...
But 'here is two', um, seriously? English is my third language and I've yet to have problems with using is for singular and are for plural.
On a sidenote, it's interesting how tiny a force gravity ultimately is... The gravity effect of the whole...friggin...planet on your body can be countered with the atomic bonds in a comparatively meager rope. Fascinating really.
.: Max Romantschuk
I see a lot of explanations and mathematics, but I don't see anything in the way of testable predictions.
Scanning through the paper the word prediction occurs twice. Here's both of them:
Wake me when the guy comes up with at least one, and it's testable.
AccountKiller
Well, it does make a jump from a fundamental force we can't seem to detect into a latent, emergent phenomenon which we, er, also can't detect the source of.
So it transfers one critical unknown into a less important, impossible to verify unknown. Then it links up with Relativity somehow. Not exactly a "theory of everything".
I have a gut feeling that golden ratio will fit into all this somewhere.
Meh.
From http://www.scientificblogging.com/hammock_physicist/holographic_hot_horizons the first of the two blog entries:
The value for G comes out correctly if you enter for Abit the value corresponding to a Planck area. However, the Planck area (G/c3) is defined in terms of Newton's gravitational constant G. Have we not introduced a circular reasoning here? I am actually not sure.
This does seem like an issue. However, it looks like you can do this with G as a variable. The upshot then is not that you get the right value for G at the end but that you get Newton's inverse square law (up to a scalar) which by itself would be really impressive even if one can't a priori get the value of G.
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm a math grad student not a physicist so I could be completely wrong here.
Indeed. Until there is some confirmation of string theory, it, and anything extrapolated from it, while interesting in an academic sense, is ultimately meaningless in an empirical sense.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
An atom around a massive object is a raindrop to space, but a perfect sphere to itself.
That's what I got to when I was 15.
I wish I knew the math to make more of it, but it seems that this article is heading in that direction.
Maybe someday.
Nice use of entropy BTW.
I've read ideas that gravity isn't an attraction between two masses, but a force radiating from all the suns/stars in space, so, the space inbetween two objects acts as a vacuum, and things fall toward each other because of an external push.
"He does not consider gravity as fundamental, but as an emergent phenomenon that arises from a deeper microscropic reality."
If that doesn't make you the life of the party in one fell swoop, NOTHING ever will.
But 'here is two', um, seriously? English is my third language and I've yet to have problems with using is for singular and are for plural.
The traditional analysis supporting "here are two" treats the sentence as having been inverted into verb-subject order, an unusual order for English. Dialects admitting "here is two", on the other hand, treat "here" as a singular subject referring to "the set presented here", in the same sense that "everyone" is singular, and "two" becomes the complement.
Like when you study information theory because don't like physics, and the basis of physic world, like gravitation, turns to be information theory.
Black holes entropy, urundu effect, holographic principle, dark matter, dark energy ....
Q few years back I could understand quite a good amount of hot new physic's concepts thanks to a book about string theory, from newton to einstein's relativity, calabi yau spaces, but I am completely lost in all those new theories. I got some math and physics background, but all this is just too far away from what I can understand.
Are there any good and simple books explaining most of all those astrophysics and quantum concepts ?
I mean something that presents clearly with a lot of analogies all those cutting edge works in physics so I don't miss the point when a good article like this one pops up ?
Stéphane
If the math works, then "shut up and calculate" (ascribed to both Dirac and Feynman regarding quantum mechanics). Non-mathematical forms of understanding may follow, eventually, perhaps even including opinions on "truth". If the math does not work, the hypothesis will be quickly abandoned or revised.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Indeed. The truth is, it is all a dream. My dream, in fact. It all emanates from me, I designed it all based on what you know as mathematical principles.
That assertion can also never be proved wrong, and it is mathematically sound.
Qxe4
Lubos Motl (string theorist, formerly at Harvard), has recently blogged about this: http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/01/gravity-as-holographic-entropic-force.html. His conclusion is "I remain undecided".
I had this crazy idea about gravity. I've always though gravity was a "push" rather then a "pull". The way I see it, matter (quarks and other subatomic particles) doesn't occupy space/time, but rather displaces it. Meanwhile, space/time is trying displace the void that is matter. It's sort of like having a sheet of rubber and then creating a small pin prick in it. If I try hard enough, I could push my finger through it, but the rubber will try and displace that bigger hole I'm creating.
Which leads me to a system of proportional displacement. If the distance of space/time is greater on the outside vs between two objects, they get "pushed" toward each other. However, if the distance of space/time between two objects becomes great enough, they pulled apart. Kind of like how galaxies coalesce stars, but galaxies them selves are so far away from each other, the entire universe gets expanded as we speak.
Anyways, just may crazy messed up idea. No proof what-so-ever to back it up. Granted, I'm not ignorant to the real math a science we know today. After all, the written laws of physics is what gets us to the moon and mars. :)
Life is not for the lazy.
Here is two blog entries discussing Verlinde's theory in somewhat more accessible terms.
Perhaps this should be, "Here are two..." ?
but I was the anonymous coward that submitted this. I've been lurking here for a dozen years or more and....I couldn't be more happy.
I'm having a complete nerdgasm.
A theory is as good as its predictive power. If it predicts reality better than the previous one, who cares if it's "true", whatever that may mean.
May the source be with you.
The one funny thing about the way the majority of people use math, "close does count", until you get to a certain advanced point. Then we say "this works for all but a few special cases... close enough"
Obviously Newtonian gravity is much more understandable to your average person than say general relativity and also offers a good aproximation of expected behaviors of the physical world.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
In his theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of information in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings.
One of those words is not like the others. The word “information” does not fit in there. I can’t put it into words, but I can show you what I mean:
Bad:
In his theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of thetans in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings.
In his theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of hope in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings.
In his theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of imagination in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings.
Good:
In his theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of gluons in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings.
In his theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of $particleToBeFoundByLHC in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings.
In his theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of neutrinos in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings.
(Not saying that’s right. Just saying this would be an argument that one could build something around. As opposed to the bad examples.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Ah yes, midichlorians. I've heard of this before.
I think we could put this to the test in the real world. We could gather various entities, some of which are known to have a very low concentration of information, like marketing people and bureaucrats, and see whether they cause a local reduction in gravity.
"Hotblack Desiato's chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent."
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Have we conclusively shown that relativity isn't quite exactly right? Or do you just mean that relativity hasn't been rectified with quantum mechanics?
I do like the idea of not needing an explanatory tool like "Dark Energy" ... that has always bothered me. Far more than "Dark Matter".
[signature]
My understanding of an "entropic force" is that it can be described in terms of fundamental forces. The pressure in an ideal gas, for instance, can be derived by looking at the impulse created by a single molecule, and then extending that to a collection of N molecules. This guy seems to be saying that gravity is an entropic force and therefore NOT a fundamental force, but it seems to me that entropic forces are just an abstraction that allows us to ignore the underlying fundamental forces. Of course, I didn't read the whole article, but what I read was poorly written and that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Maybe I'll take another look if it gets published.
If you allow special pleading, then nothing can ever be proved wrong. That's why science doesn't allow it.
By the way, I have a pet dragon.
Odd how you need to inject this racist conjecture into the thread. Feeling insecure? Ashamed that we all have genes that likely come from Africa, but you're ashamed of that small penis? Tsk tsk.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
There is a difference between assigning names to things and understanding them. While we have loads of empirical stuff to back up our theories, not a single one of those theories is grounded in actual understanding. This is true for string theory, for the theory of relativity, for quantum electrodynamics, and on and on.
Even the simple things that you take for granted, such as Inertia, is not understood. Nobody can explain why there is Inertia, or what mechanisms makes it a requirement.
What is important is that we can model things. If two such models fit observations, then there is no reason to dismiss one of them (such as string theory) out of hand. In the end, neither model is truth. Model's can't explain "why."
"His name was James Damore."
Shenanigans!
They say explaining ability of a theory is more important than predicting. Otherwise religion would be the best theory - everything will happen exactly as the god wants. As soon as you start asking what exactly he wants under given circumstances you start asking for explanations.
emerges naturally from a few very simple assumptions about light and vacuum.
Though I hate the tag Casimir force, since its just a bulk Van der Waals or London's force, not some spooky new energy source.
Even further off topic....People speak of vacuum energy, quantum foam, virtual photons and whatnot, but nobody calls it the ether anymore. Of course earlier pre-relativistic concepts of the ether were flawed, and overturned by observation and better theories. But it still seems to me that what is now called 'vacuum' could be called ether, and that the word ether would be more appropriate in some regards. Maybe someone better qualified would like to comment on this.
Now all the new-agers will jump on this and we'll never hear the end of it.
"But space is a hologram! Scientists said so!"
It very well may be, but new agers tend to jump on the most specious of claims and parrot them as fact...
(Thing is, I actually agree with the new-agers on some things, but I'm not going to try to prove it scientifically, I wonder if it's even possible!)
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
I don't know about you, but all of this is too heavy for me.
That's one funny thing about math, "close doesn't count", until you get to a certain advanced point.
I didn't realize irrational numbers, a huge portion of the rational numbers, and trigonometry, were considered advanced.
But this really isn't about the *math* being close, but not exact, it's about the math being close to *reality*, but not exact. Again, however, this is not advanced. Even grade school science is close but not exact. What's the temperature outside? How many inches of water did it rain last night? What's the circumference of the Earth? And Newtonian physics (which is also not advanced) is close, but not exact. Even at the slow speeds and low gravities of our mundane lives. Special and General Relativity have the honor *not* of being exact, but merely of being closer to exact than anything else so far.
The only common types of math where "close doesn't count" are basic arithmetic (excepting fractions) and pure algebraic manipulation.
In your high school physics class, do you *really* think you were exact when you used 186,000 mi/s or 300,000 km/s for the speed of light? Or in grade school, that the Earth rotates in exactly 24 hours (as measured from solar zenith to solar zenith)?
Or even before that, when you bought one candy bar at 3 for a dollar, and you got 66 cents in change?
Precision and accuracy are two terms you should have been made aware of by high school science, and rounding errors by middle school math.
- 42 ... profit!!
-
- in Soviet Russia, you suck gravity! (??)
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
And here I was thinking they closed Rasbiologiska Institutet around 1958... Oh. Wait. ;-)
Agreed. Being a brainiac means nothing to a sexually-frustrated troll if he's unable to reproduce because he can't thrust deep enough.
Evolution has not yet caught up to higher-level intelligence. That's why, even though I am a mixed non-African, I manage to get laid -- I beat my chest and don't wear deodorant. My superior genes allow me to produce pheromones which make women flush and juice-up on the spot.
My legacy will live on, his will not. All because real men don't yap like chihuahuas, they just grunt here and there. Jealous, racist trolls just don't get it. There is a foolproof method to attracting women:
Speak slowly, in a deep voice, using as few words as possible.
GP is just a copypasta troll with the beginning modified to fit this article.
Nothing interesting.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Well, it does make a jump from a fundamental force we can't seem to detect into a latent, emergent phenomenon which we, er, also can't detect the source of.
*EVERYTHING* in the universe is based on some fundamental thing which we "cannot detect the source of". Even something as simple as math, or logic, is based on a set of axioms, or givens, which can never, themselves, be explained in terms of where they come from.
In physics, things like quarks (or if there's something that makes those, then that thing), or the fundamental forces, are all currently unexplained regarding why or how they exist.
What this work does (or at least, claims to do) is connect gravity with the rest of physics.
But your opening line is actually quite wrong:
Well, it does make a jump from a fundamental force we can't seem to detect into a latent, emergent phenomenon which we, er, also can't detect the source of.
Not at all. Presently, gravity is an axiom. It is a thing that exists, and upon which much is built, but below which nothing can be known. With this theory, gravity is just like things built upon gravity (such as orbits, gravitational singularities, etc.), which can all be explained by something below them. At some point, everything ends up as an axiom. This theory removes one of science's present axiom, and any time you can do that, you've done nothing less than fundamentally enhanced our understanding of the universe.
If gravity is truly not fundamental and works as described by the paper, then you can kiss the antigravity machine goodbye!
Then we say "this works for all but a few special cases... close enough."
Actually we don't - we just say that we don't know any way to do it better and it seems to work outside of these cases....so until someone can come up with something better we'll go with the best we have.
Indeed. The truth is, it is all a dream. My dream, in fact. It all emanates from me, I designed it all based on what you know as mathematical principles.
That assertion can also never be proved wrong, and it is mathematically sound.
Well, we can scan your brain to see if you are dreaming, or through more permanent means, ensure you aren't dreaming, which would fairly conclusively debunk your assertion.
Do you have any concrete prediction of religion which became true? And no, "everything will happen exactly as the god wants" is no prediction (unless you accompany it with an exact description of what the god wants). It is an explanation, though (it explains why things happen as they do, namely "because god wants them that way"), it's just not a very satisfying explanation (well, unless you are a True Believer(TM), then the explanation is perfectly satisfying :-))
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
So this proves that information density is the cause of gravity?
That explains the Christians expectation of a holy ascent. 0 intellegence == 0 gravity.
I'm (yes, me; above was an impostor) dreaming on the higher plane on reality, which doesn't translate to REM state in this construct.
Also, what appears as my physical destruction merely causes me to manifest myself in a different place, different way.
One that hath name thou can not otter
So... information wants to be free?
-- Joren
Rebel Science News explains the real cause of gravity. It has to do with energy conservation and the fundamental nature of motion. In brief, Aristotle was right all along, surprise! Motion does need a cause and, as a result, we are immersed in an immense lattice of energetic particles.
This theory has nothing to do with string theory.
You're muddling the distinction between the concept of exact measurement with exact model.
When we say that Newtonian physics is "about" right, we're saying that, given the properties of the area of the physical world we inhabit (about sea level on an Earth sized planet), Newtonian physics is a model that can predict the behavior of bodies in motion pretty accurately. Relativity theory models those same bodies more accurately, and in a wider area of application. In this way, our models of the universe could be said to be asymptotically approaching "correctness".
When we say that the speed of light is "about" 3 x 10^8 m/s, everybody but the most retarded physics students know that it's not exactly that, but that that number is close enough that it's usable. Same as saying pi = 3.141 and g = 9.81 ms^-2 at sea level on Earth. Those are imprecise but "close enough" approximations of natural constants which do not have integer values, so we just truncate them to the desired level of accuracy for the current use. I don't need pi to a hundred places to be able to triangulate the hats on the sports oval for the experiment in 10th grade. Hell, pi to eleven places will calculate Earth's circumference to within a millimeter, which is "accurate enough" for pretty much all everyday uses.
Don't mix these two concepts, a model can be 100% accurate even if we are incapable of measuring fully, and vice versa.
I hate printers.
A day from solar zenith to solar zenith is about 360.97 degrees of a rotation... I've always thought it was a better measurement to consider a full rotation to be a "day".
FanFictionRecs.net
Tajmar and DeMatos discovered that in a rotating superconductor, a counter-gravity force can be produced. How does that relate to this theory?
Finally, proof that the universe is a computer simulation!
I can disprove it in 3 steps
1)If this were a dream, hot chicks would fuck you constantly.
2)You are currently on slashdot, thus not getting fucked.
3)QED you did not dream this world.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
My understanding is that there has been no disproof of general relativity, but that it is fundamentally irreconcilable with quantum physics (and string theory).
Since string theory is the current hot fad, people think that general relativity is going to blink first. I'm not so sure, myself. Although it very well may be an emergent phenomena... but most of our physical laws are, like thermodynamics. It doesn't make them any less true.
Any child can (and often does) ask the question "Why?" repeatedly past anyone's endurance. That does not mean the respondent does not understand anything. Also sometimes one is simply not well informed. For instance the question of why there is inertia is addressed by the work of Higgs and the theoretical Higgs boson. One of the main stated goals of the LHC in Europe is to have collisions energetic enough to get experimental verification of the Higgs boson.
Will science leave me anything I learned in class ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
We told you earthlings this a long time ago. Do pay attention if you want to get of the rock.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
a difference in concentration of information
Information wants to be free.
God help us if it ever becomes so.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Is Higgs Boson still needed?
That's not to say that science is right, of course. It might really be the case that nothing can ever be proved wrong. We'll never know! (Although, since doing science might work, and not doing science won't, the smart thing is still to do science. Although I can't prove that.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
If gravity is no longer available as a fundamental feature of the universe... does that mean it's now a premium feature? Do I have to pay extra for that?
I was just joking with one of my staff the other day that they left the gravity on over the weekend. Now it turns out they didn't?
I can disprove it in 3 steps
1)If this were a dream, hot chicks would fuck you constantly.
2)You are currently on slashdot, thus not getting fucked.
3)QED you did not dream this world.
You do understand, when it comes to fucking, there is a person who does the fucking, and a person who gets fucked, right? If he's getting constantly fucked by hot chicks, there is something extremely freaky going on...
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
So advanced math is like hand grenades or horseshoes?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Nobody can explain why there is Inertia, or what mechanisms makes it a requirement.
What an odd thing to say.
Tell me -- is there anything that you think we do "understand"? Because I think the problem here is that you're abusing the word.
I understand my wife. That does NOT know that I know why she does exactly everything that she does -- only that I have enough knowlege of her to appreciate her point of view and be a fair judge as to her sense of normalcy.
Anyone who knows that intertia exists and has internalized this fact enough to, say, drive a car, understands inertia.
Yes, i think although many people long for the knowledge of the structure of the world, we've somehow have to accept that we might not be able to do know it as such. Instead we do the next best thing, find models that allow us to understand how the world works. I.e not how it looks.
A day from solar zenith to solar zenith is about 360.97 degrees of a rotation... I've always thought it was a better measurement to consider a full rotation to be a "day".
That one is called stellar day.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Ah, the notorious college male freshman fallacy, where it is claimed that since all I ever want to do is have sex, therefore all anyone ever wants to do is have sex. Sex is entertainment, don't let it distract you from life.
Qxe4
1: You're missing an apostrophe
2: You're confusing intelligence with an absence of religion. While people cannot be good scientists when it comes to questions about which they have religious convictions, the presence or abscence or such convictions does not correlate with their intelligence. There are plenty of morons who don't believe.
3: Even if we accept the Athesist's candard that "atheism is not a religion", you're happily proving that Atheism does have not only a primary religious conviction, but also the unfortunately secondary conviction of bigotry. Well done!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If the LHC fails to find the Higgs particle then the current theories of gravity are probably unworkable.
Nice timing dude - propose the theory at a time when the scientific community will be scrabbling around for answers ...
One way to beat the system ....
All you need then is an anti-information machine. So SF-writers would have to dream up a machine capable of annihilating information gathered in centuries before in order to compensate for gravitational effects. Oh... wait.. the internet exists... we just have to wait for its effects to get big enough: Buying an amnesia of, say, two years will buy you a journey to alpha centauri in the near future. ;)
Nothing about modern physics is true in this sense. It's all just mathematical models which fit data to a greater or lesser extent.
That's just an opinion. A theory with great predictive power but zero explanatory power would be considered a terrible theory by many scientists. For example, an oracle with perfect predictive power would not even be considered a theory.
I just look at it like a game of Ikaruga... just make sure the dark bullets and ships don't touch your light-oriented ship. Or else you explode violently.
Don't mix these two concepts, a model can be 100% accurate even if we are incapable of measuring fully, and vice versa.
No, it can't.
If you are claiming your model is better than your measurements of reality, how do you prove this? What is your model an accurate representation of? Your expectations of reality?
Hell, pi to eleven places will calculate Earth's circumference to within a millimeter, which is "accurate enough" for pretty much all everyday uses.
And also completely useless. "Earth's circumference" is not a measurable physical quantity like "the circumference of the geodesic at the equator" is. "Earth's circumference" refers to a spherical abstraction of Earth. To calculate that to within a millimeter is to calculate what you think Earth should be, not what it is. Accurate within furlongs is "good enough" here. Anything more is just wanking, because the model sucks.
That's one funny thing about math, "close doesn't count", until you get to a certain advanced point. Then we say "this works for all but a few special cases... close enough."
That's not math. In math, close NEVER counts. Once close enough starts counting, you're talking about Physics, not math.
Do you have any concrete prediction of religion which became true?
Not generally, although a primary reason for that is that the historical predictions were dated due to their mention of the database facts that they predicted. And, to the extent that such a prediction cannot be post-dated, it would then be explained as a pre-existing belief which was attached to latter events, instead of a prediction.
God's biblical prediction of the course of human civilization is a good one, though. "You suck now, but will get better latter."
Within the boundaries of science, if a theory has better prediction power than any other theory, that theory is true until someone invents one better.
These two statements are equivalent in science:
"This is true if the assumption A is true."
"This works, assuming A."
I'm not even sure if the concept of truth has any place in natural science, apart from being one of the values in boolean algebra.
While some fields are closed to some due to social or political reasons this is NOT all and you can almost always find someone to publish your poorly written rehash of what some Russian did 20 years ago. No it won't be Science or Nature but then again it shouldn't be. Peer review can be a pain but most reputable journals will allow you (and sometimes encourage you to) request a change of referee. I don't know what field you are in and maybe it has problems but don't think all of academia is a big popularity contest just because your field is.
Do you know why two bodies in relative inertial motion stay in motion? No you don't, even if you think you do. Does Erik Verlinde understand motion? I doubt it. My point is that, if you don't understand motion, what makes you think you can understand gravity?
And no amount of math will help you either. It is not math that explains physics. It's the physics that explains the math.
Physics: The Problem With Motion
Rebel Science News
Anyone who knows that intertia exists and has internalized this fact enough to, say, drive a car, understands inertia.
If you have 2 masses, they exhibit an attractive force upon each other. We call this phenomenon "gravity", and we are experienced in predicting it and comfortable with our models of it.
If you have a mass and try to accelerate it, it exerts a reaction force upon you. We call this phenomenon "inertia", and we are also experienced in predicting it and comfortable with our models of it.
What nobody has satisfactorily explained is this: why are these two related? Why can't you increase inertia without increasing gravitation? What is the connection between the two? Why do gravitational mass and inertial mass always measure to be the exact same value?
Granted, the anthropic principle is at work here. As the Earth orbits the Sun, it experiences two primary forces: one is a gravitational force directed towards the Sun, the other is an inertial force directed away from the Sun. It's good that these are identical, even if the Earth gains or loses mass. If they weren't always identical, we wouldn't be here to wonder why.
And that gentlemen is how you argue reductio ad absurdum.
The one funny thing about the way the majority of people use math, "close does count", until you get to a certain advanced point. Then we say "this works for all but a few special cases... close enough"
Obviously Newtonian gravity is much more understandable to your average person than say general relativity and also offers a good aproximation of expected behaviors of the physical world.
I'd say there is a good chance it is all one Unified Field. When including torque in Einstein's equations (and not assuming you are locked on the spinning object), this guy's solution works from the micro to the macro. Check it out.
http://www.theresonanceproject.org/
Removing the "fundamental force" label from gravity is an insult and shows just how little respect these young physicists have for the universe. Next thing you know they'll be ignoring it completely while they sit all smug in their floating universities.
I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
Same bloody thing. Relativity isn't quite exactly right (or, to put it more bluntly, is totally wrong) on small scales, so it seems that, just as Newtonian physics are now derivable as an asymptotic approximation of GR, so GR should be derivable as an asymptotic approximation to $THEORY that "works better" in the sense that it's valid over a larger domain of parameters, not that it gives us .experimentally resolvable improvements in accuracy over the same domain.
I knew this whole "gravity thing" was just a fad.
Indeed. The truth is, it is all a dream. My dream, in fact. It all emanates from me, I designed it all based on what you know as mathematical principles.
That assertion can also never be proved wrong, and it is mathematically sound.
You're pretty confident for a figment of my imagination....
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
You're just pissed because the Empire ended up being defeated.
‘You see what I have done?’ he asked the ceiling, which seemed to flinch slightly at being yanked so suddenly into the conversation. ‘I have transformed the problem from an intractably difficult and possibly quite insoluble conundrum into a mere linguistic puzzle. Albeit,’ he muttered, after a long moment of silent pondering, ‘an intractably difficult and possibly insoluble one.’ --Dirk Gently.
I'm just shooting from the hip, but isn't the extra bit of rotation to account for orbit in addition to rotation so that a "day" is roughly the same throughout the year?
one key one was newton's assumption that the effect of gravity was instant.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Tell me, in layman's terms --- Does this mean my flying car and anti-gravity jetpack are finally going to be on sale at wal-mart any time soon?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
A concrete prediction must incorporate some explanation, like: if you move a certain mass twice as far away it's gravitational force will become four times as weak. When you start making concrete predictions you start adding elements and relations between them AKA explanations.
Religion doesn't explain anything, there is no structure, just a God and everything else is him. So the only prediction that is possible - anything can happen anytime, which is becoming true every second.
Is it possible to make concrete predictions not based on some explanation? Even astrology has a structure (explanation): celestial bodies and relations between them and human being's fate.
What does this mean for singularities and black holes?
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
So does the end of gravity mean we will all be flung off into space? If so, I have to say Verlinde sucks!
You do understand, when it comes to fucking, there is a person who does the fucking, and a person who gets fucked, right? If he's getting constantly fucked by hot chicks, there is something extremely freaky going on...
No, that just means he's going to strip clubs. You never have sex with hot chicks in a strip club but you will get fucked by them...
I've never really cared for gravity to begin with. Toss it on the heap with Pluto, I say.
If the math works, then "shut up and calculate"
That's very unscientific. If you don't understand the problem in the first place, how do you know what the limits of the math are and under what circumstances it no longer works? We only know Newtonian mechanics is flawed because we've encountered problems that don't fit the math, but we also know the boundaries of where it does work well enough to get people to the moon.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
You're mixing physics with the concept of continuity. But the laws of physics and the math we use to describe them can deal perfectly well with irrational numbers and continuity. Newtonian physics is a complete theory.
Precision only comes into play when you are not happy with your representation but want a solution in a less natural form (say as a decimal number).
We can however show that certain theories do not describe the observed world, even in their exact and precise form.
From quantum mechanics, arises entropy, which explains things on a macroscopic level, i.e. multiple particles. Gravity however, opposes entropy, since it pulls particles together, into a lower entropy state.
This guy takes the opposite approach, by taking entropy as the fundamental property of nature, of which the forces arise. He must define entropy in a different way than usual, obviously with information, which somehow produces gravity. Generally entropy arguments are used when gravity is not an issue, showing how dense concentrations diffuse, with the particles repelling each other. Quite the opposite of gravity.
Sounds quite creative, but I'm probably not going to read through 29 pages of Ph.D. level string theory and understand anything, although if someone wants to explain his definition of information entropy, that would be most helpful.
If they find the Higg's boson, wouldn't that mean this guy's theory is all wrong and it is a fundamental force?
one key one was newton's assumption that the effect of gravity was instant.
What's the "speed of gravity" then?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Isn't it simply an imaginary force that "looks" like it exists because we are standing on a body with a mass that warps space time by exactly that amount?
Instead of seeing ourselves as separate from everything around us, this view allows us to recognize that we are embedded in a fractal feedback dynamic that intrinsically connects all things via the medium of a vacuum structure of infinite potential. This research has far reaching implications in a variety of fields including theoretical and applied physics, cosmology, quantum mechanics, biology, chemistry, sociology, psychology, archaeology, anthropology,
My bullshit detector just asplode.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
...but since the articles are publicly available, doesn't that mean that they can be more widely reviewed than traditional peer-reviewed papers?
Not necessarily. Peer reviewed articles can be and often are available in public domain sources.
It didn't sound like it was research, but rather mathematical theory based on looking at existing principles from a different direction. If there is enough underlying research in newtonian physics and general relativity, then wouldn't that same research also apply here?
I can't say without looking at the model but odds are that the model would still need at least some specific experimental confirmation.
Granted, I'm no mathematician, but it just seems a bit cliquish to say "don't pay attention to this" because of where the first publication is happening.
Only if you don't understand why people say that. The quality of research articles and standards of publications are not all the same between all journals just like not all research is equally important. Getting published in a journal like Nature requires a quality of research and significance of the results that is much higher than many other publications. Accordingly it is more likely that an article in such a journal will contain research that is worthy of attention. This is not to say that articles published elsewhere are poor research or unimportant but like any data you need to consider the source.
Let me put it another way. Would you be more likely to trust the information in an article from The Wall Street Journal or from The National Enquirer? One has earned a reputation for consistently providing high quality journalism and the other is widely considered a tabloid frequently containing outright fabrications. The same principle is at work with scientific and mathematical journals.
May the Force be with you Erik...
Until the skies turn blue...
Until the air of freedom strikes us...
I designed it all based on what you know as mathematical principles.
Aha. I knew it! All those people talking about 'intelligent design' were right after all... except for the 'intelligent' bit. :p
Well, that's what I meant. "Earth' circumference" is a reasonable concept that is usable, despite the fact that Earth is not a regular sphere, nor is its surface smooth.
Modelling the Earth as a sphere is a better model than the flat Earth model, but not as good as modeling it as an integrated ellipse. Yet, this is still not a perfect model. (I actually don't know what the current "best" model is. I only know that Earth is slightly flattened due to centrifugal forces and other effects.)
I concede, however, your point that a model can't be proven to be correct if its accuracy has been demonstrated to the limit of our ability to measure it. That's what I was alluding to in mentioning Newtonian physics; the model was good enough to measure their physical universe to the accuracy that they had access to. I.e., relatively rudimentary experiments carried out on the ground.
I think you and I agree, I was just not clear in my earlier post what I meant. Apologies for that.
I hate printers.
I smell a Nobel prize in this guy's future. His idea has all the advantages of a stochastic electrodynamics (SED) theory while neatly avoiding the fatal time-reversal flaw in SEDs. Above all, the theory is simple and compelling.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
I've always understood it to act at the speed of light, but I suppose that's a fairly baseless assumption. Then again, Wikipedia suggests that they are one and the same.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Does this mean he is now a flying dutchman?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You understand your wife? Are you positive she is a human female?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I think part of the root of the problem is the outsourcing of manufacturing to overseas. Its more difficult to do real, useful R&D when you're disconnected from the concrete applications.
And this affects a college researcher how exactly? Nice appeal to populist sentiment but I don't think you understand manufacturing, outsourcing or research when you spout nonsense like that. Research can be outsourced too you know. Lots of companies do research and then either sell the results or even the entire company. Happens in pharmaceuticals and other technology sectors all the time. And academic research is only weakly affected by the physical location of manufacturing plants.
What's the "speed of gravity" then?
Same as the speed of light
What's the "speed of gravity" then?
The unproven and untested theory is that a gravity wave travels at the speed of light.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
That last one there always bothers me.
If I don't believe in Santa Claus, how does that make me religious?
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
So,
If gravity is based on some entropic value and not 'mass', shouldn't this immediately lead to testable hypotheses? Eg. Change the entropy of something by a different value than mass and re-weigh it.
Or, he's just found a new way to 'describe' mass. In which case the above experiment can never be done.
Liberty.
I read the description of the paper from the hammock physicist (I studied computers in university, took enough relativity in ....a philosophy class... to know that I don't have near enough math to swallow this in full. But the description reads easily enough. It basically takes a backwards approach. Its not a slam dunk, as stated there is a lot of hand waving (details left to fill in) but it covers a very broad range of physics, most of which fits nicely already. There are a few litmus tests that will be applied. Does it predict anything, and do those predictions hold true? If gravity is merely a side-product, what is the causation of it (exactly), what is the frequency of the energy, and how is it temperature related (the paper says things are tied together). Fundamental questions waiting to be asked.
While I agree with your basic premise, let's examine your statement with regards to the number PI.
We have a whole bunch of different equations that calculate what PI is to billions of digits of accuracy.
Is our model of PI more accurate than our measurement of a circle in reality?
Does this mean our model of PI can not be more accurate than our measurements?
Or is there some other way to 'prove' that our model of PI is exact regardless of what our universe measures it as?
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
My understanding is that there has been no disproof of general relativity, but that it is fundamentally irreconcilable with quantum physics
However GR is valid over a much wider range (velocity, distance, time, whatever) than QM.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Energy, matter, and information equivalence
In principle a model could comply with an objective reality with 100% convergence, but we would be forever unable to prove it 100% because there is no direct access to objective reality's fundamentals, only experimentation & prediction. That doesn't mean the model isn't 100% accurate, it just means we can't say (with 100% confidence) that it is.
That's one funny thing about math, "close doesn't count", until you get to a certain advanced point. Then we say "this works for all but a few special cases... close enough."
That whole "dark matter" thing all over again? UGH!
Home of The Suki Series
And even if it's not true, if the math works, it still might be useful.
Sometimes things are useful if the math DOESN'T work out.
For example in control theory, if you have a numerator of a fraction that is zero, and you want to get rid of it, sometimes if you are careful you can get rid of it by dividing by zero so the zeros cancel out. A no-no in math, but perfectly valid in control theory.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
The most fundamental force in the universe is not gravity - it's SLACK!
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
... which was attached to latter events ... You suck now, but will get better latter ...
Is this one of those jokes like the aliens who asked the FBI agents to take them to their larder? Cause I don't get it.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
If I'm not mistaken, General Relativity was also 'derived' by another physicist who considered space-time as elastic and thus gravity as a springiness, in contrast to a mass deforming a space-time continuum. But, General Relativity was/is beautiful. Could the final GUT, if ever found be ugly?
Or even before that, when you bought one candy bar at 3 for a dollar, and you got 66 cents in change?
Yes, I noticed that I was extorted for 1 cent: I should have received 67 cents. Grrr.
No scientific theory or law is objectively true, or likely to be rather. Nor are they meant to be. They are meant to be a descriptive simulation of the truth, as close as we humans can get.
I don't think anyone is trying to disprove relativity. It is already well know that there are situations where it doesn't work. Same for QM, they both work in areas where the other fails.
QM and relativity are irreconcilable with each other, but string theory is not fundamentally irreconcilable with either since the whole point of it is in fact to be one theory that can replace both QM and relatively and be used to model the universe at all observable scales.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
What's so hard to understand about human females? They want to enjoy the most with the least possible effort, just like human males, only females are bred with the conviction that they actually deserve it. That's all.
Now on to something more challenging, please.
I speak England very best
I'd be surprised if there were more than one force that explains everything. Matter, energy, light, sound, etc... they all seem to be waves of energy operating at different frequencies and amplitudes... it's these differences that cause observable differences.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
If Verlinde has made gravity and the Equivalence Principle derivative, is he still using a property of entropy as a given? That is what axioms does his theory still rest on?
only pure algebraic manipulation""
x == y say
x^2 == xy * x
x^2 -y^2 == xy -y^2 - y^2
(x+y) (x-y) == y (x-y) / (x-y)
x+y == y
x + x == x
2x == x
2 ==1
yes yes I know - but but pure algebraic manipulation!
Please don't confuse accuracy with precision.
As long as you keep track of your significant digits, you'll know the exact precision of your result, as well as the margin of error. If the margin of error isn't satisfactory for your purposes, you can take more precise measurements, and/or use more precise constants.
However, precision isn't worth a damn if your underlying measurements are flat-out wrong. If we use 4.27483 as our value of pi, it's more precise than 3.141, but a whole lot less accurate.
Newtonian mechanics is an approximation of relativistic mechanics that works extremely well at low speeds. (In fact, if you're talking about an object at rest relative to your own frame of reference, it works perfectly). You sacrifice a bit of accuracy, but no precision.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Is it possible to increase information in a given space without increasing mass? Then perhaps you could make a gravity or anti-gravity generator.
Actually it's more commonly called a sidereal day.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I'm wondering, if Gravity is inversely related to Entropy, then would this explain the initial rapid expansion of the Universe, the settling out, and the relatively recent accelerated expansion of the Universe towards "Heat Death"?
Instants after the Big Bang, there would have been very little entropy, since the Universe was nearly uniform, with almost no differentiation between particles, forces, etc. With little entropy, everything tends to fly apart, quickly. Over a few hundred million years, the Universe becomes more complex, and gravity starts to take hold, slowing the acceleration outwards.
Yet, it had already reached a critical point of expansion where entropty was bound to continue to increase because of the great distances between everything. Thus, gravity weakens on a grand scale, and the expansion of the Universe begins to accelerate again. Would that be a testable (well, it's already observed, right?) prediction of this theory?
Or maybe I should read up on this more.
I reject your reality and substitute it for my own.
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
I do like the idea of not needing an explanatory tool like "Dark Energy" ... that has always bothered me. Far more than "Dark Matter".
And yet do we not have experimental evidence for this dark energy you don't like? I agree its a very odd concept, intuitively, yet it appears to be more than just a hand-waving or mathematical construct.
Seastead this.
This is different. Consider the diffusion of a gas. You can boil down the "law" that red particles in a room diffuse to a simple observation: that there are more ways for the randomly moving particles to be apart than there are for them to be together. The "force" that drives the red particles apart is really just an illusion in or mind interpreting randomness. See, we lump the nearly infinite number of "diffused" particle configurations under this label "diffused particles". So in fact, it is all in our head. Maybe gravity is the same thing... Frankly this is the only type of law that makes perfect sense and does not invoke some "fundamental force" explanation. -Martin McCormick
You're muddling the distinction between the concept of exact measurement with exact model.
No i'm not, because I'm not addressing it. I was addressing the notion that "That's one funny thing about math, "close doesn't count", until you get to a certain advanced point. Then we say "this works for all but a few special cases... close enough."".
When we say that Newtonian physics is "about" right
Which isn't exact, it's just close. Which is exactly my point. *I'm* the one saying close, or "about right" is perfectly fine. *I'm* the one debunking the notion that things have to be exact. You are replying to the wrong person.
When we say that the speed of light is "about" 3 x 10^8 m/s, everybody but the most retarded physics students know that it's not exactly that, but that that number is close enough that it's usable.
Hmm... "Close enough". That sounds familiar. OH YEAH, THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT! Close enough *does* count.
All you've done is reiterated my point.
Don't mix these two concepts, a model can be 100% accurate even if we are incapable of measuring fully, and vice versa.
No, it can't. Not under present understanding of the universe, at least. Specifically, it is presently *absolutely impossible* to devise a model that will perfectly describe the path of even a single photon through empty space. No model can tell you when the photon is going to just randomly decide to jump halfway across the universe.
But more to the point (and other parts of your post show you understand this, making your closing statement even more strange than it inherently is), science doesn't deal with exact theories or exact models. Well, the theories and models themselves are exact, but they don't have to exactly match the real world, they just have to approximate it better than the previous model, or they can even be less accurate, but simpler (like using Newtonian physics, which are less exact than Relativity, but on the scales we deal with them, the error is not important).
How shall a program deduce the existence of the computer on which it runs?
Just back away from the blackboard...carefully...don't make any furtive motions.
You are under arrest for breaking the law of gravity.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
As part of a psychological experiment, two single men, a physicist and mathematician, were placed in an otherwise empty room with a beautiful naked women at the far end.
They were instructed that they'd be allowed to close half the distance to the women every 10 minutes. Disgusted at the obvious subterfuge, the mathematician walked away in disgust. But the physicist stayed behind, occasionally glancing at his watch.
The experimenters looked puzzled, then asked the physicist, "You do realize, of course, that mathematically speaking, you can never actually reach the woman?"
"Naturally", replied the physician, looking up. "But I can sure get close enough for all practical purposes!"
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Looks like somebody has been reading Greg Bear, ya?
^..^
> Is our model of PI more accurate than our measurement of a circle in reality?
Good question; I've often wondered myself, and wish to know the answer.
By pointing out all the time how stupid kids are... religiously...
And by the way, being religious and believing are also two distinct things.
he needs money for that expensive hawaiian house.
I didn't realize irrational numbers, a huge portion of the rational numbers, and trigonometry, were considered advanced.
So, the irrational numbers aren't advanced -- say, in the sense that most high school graduates have been exposed to the theory of Dedekind Cuts (or Cauchy sequences) of rationals. That's funny. I didn't learn that theory until Advanced Calculus in my junior year of undergraduate math. Just call me slow.
But this really isn't about the *math* being close, but not exact, it's about the math being close to *reality*
Reality. Just what the hell is that precisely? Damned near every day there is an argument on /. about the meaning of words whose definitions appear in dictionaries, and yet we now have some consensus on what constitutes reality? Truly amazing.
Even grade school science is close but not exact. What's the temperature outside? How many inches of water did it rain last night? What's the circumference of the Earth? And Newtonian physics (which is also not advanced) is close, but not exact.
Sigh. You want to know the temperature outside? That is not a properly formed query. Surely, you mean the average temperature over some precisely bounded volume of air. You worry about the difference between an exact answer and an approximation, while failing to realize that the question has no answer whatsoever.
Since when was gravity a fundamental force? It's only the weak warping of spacetime, surely? There's no force involved. Matter warps spacetime. Spacetime bends matter. Somewhat.
We could reinterpret those results under the new construct. It isn't the observation I don't like...
[signature]
If its untested then it would be a hypothesis, not a theory.
It sounds interesting at least.
It connects information and gravity.
It also connect the dots in the latest ideas that the space/time is a holographic projection. I will follow this theory
Here's the kicker though: forget anti-gravity altogether and start targeting the underlying forces to create a derivation that would be perceived as anti-gravity!
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
The notable exception to this smorgasbord of achievement is Africans and Americans of African ancestry. Africans do poorly in comprehending advanced mathematics, which is prerequisite to the work that leads to amazing achievements in science and technology.
But they have better parties, so I wonder who are really the smart ones.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Odd how you need to inject this racist conjecture into the thread. Feeling insecure? Ashamed that we all have genes that likely come from Africa, but you're ashamed of that small penis? Tsk tsk.
Ashamed that we all have genes that likely come from Africa, but you're ashamed of that small penis? Tsk tsk.
Now now. I understand there is a difference, but an average of 1/8 inch isn't all that much on which to build a racial stereotype.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Cause let's just be honest, as a framework for understanding the universe, gravity is just a stone cold bitch that has no answers but lots of demands.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I just look at it like a game of Ikaruga... just make sure the dark bullets and ships don't touch your light-oriented ship. Or else you explode violently.
Deriving a Grand Unifying Theory of Everything is probably easier than Ikaruga.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
But if in GR all inertial forces are gravitational in origin, and this guy's explanation of gravitational forces doesn't require a Higgs boson, could it be possible that the explanation of inertia does not require a Higgs boson?
So, like, with so much information on, like, the interwebs, earth will turn into a black hole in 2012?
"Gravity however, opposes entropy, since it pulls particles together, into a lower entropy state."
I'm not well versed on entropy / thermo-dynamics. The basis of making any of this intuitive is an elastic band - which apparently is a good description of a thermal entropy-chamber with an external force stretching a polymer chain. The temperature affects the restorative force which resists the stretching. In general, this force is not considered a fundamental force. It is the result of entropy - of individual atoms traveling random paths such that a lowest energy state is sought. The net migration of atoms - the diffusion can, on a macroscopic level, have a directional force measured. But this isn't a direct force (like weak-electro-magnetic or the strong nuclear force) - instead it's a net-force - aggregating all atomic paths given a particular orientation of matter at a given point in time.
The next critical piece of information is the mathematical representation of the universe as a 2D holographic surface. Or rather, looking at any particular event as a 2D surface that encloses any piece of information we wish to observe/describe. All the matter/energy/information within the surface is described mathmatically by the surface itself.. And thus the surface carriers information.. And consequently has an information density - the author describes a number of bits per unit area of information.
The author describes a maximum possible density - a minimum surface area that can hold a bit. And this is described as the event horizon of a black-hole.. Namely a 2D sphere with 100% information storage.. Any information that is absorbed by the black-hole corresponds to a growth of the sphere such that the total area has increased slightly, and thus can facilitate an extra bit of information.
Thus any region of space can be thought of as having an enclosed surface.. And if there is ANY energy there-in, there will be bits of information on that surface of a corresponding density.
For two surfaces enclosing different sizes of matter/energy, the density of the surfaces will be different.. Likewise, if two surfaces enclosing the same matter are of different sizes, the density will be different.
The final piece is describing a natural migration of this energy density. Namely, that energy/information that 'moves' from one surface to another will be traveling through different information-densities. Much like a gasious atom moving through a medium. The assymetries in the information-surfaces (like the assymetries in the atmosphere) will constrain the degrees of freedom of the energy. There net effect is equivalent - diffusion. Or more generally, that the laws of thermodynamics dictate the aggregate forcing functions used to describe the enclosed system.
The author then uses various equations to bring about entropy to the classical Neutonian F=ma (specifically F = Gm/r^2), and more impressively into red-shift equations for Einsteins relativity. Meaning he's able to relate the classical force of gravity into more-intuitive/tangible elasticity equations.
The end result is that he feels he can do away with action-at-a-distance, space-time, and gravity as a force. By saying that the attractive force of stellar bodies is really the diffusion of energy as defined by the laws of entropy. Whenever you have a 'gradient' between two adjacent arbitrary surfaces, you'll have a diffusion (as you'd naturally expect in fluids / gasses). This gradient typically has a complex measureable path between 2 or more massive bodies.. And thus any matter traveling along those paths will experience reduced degrees of freedom consistent with entropy/diffusion. The net motion can be measured as a forcing function equivalent to Neuton/Einstein. But the important thing to take away is that this is a NET motion.. NOT a natural force exerted on each particle - as a charged electric field would produce.
This is fundamentally why we have so much difficulty trying to incorporate gravity i
-Michael
How shall a program deduce the existence of the computer on which it runs?
Cogito, ergo sum
You're muddling the distinction between the concept of exact measurement with exact model.
If you choose to ignore the issue of imprecise measurement, you're hand-waiving away the fundamental issue.
We'll never really know how mathematically precise "reality" is if we can't measure it precisely! It may actually be more imprecise than our mathematical models.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I've skimmed the paper, and it looks interesting, but he's missing the point.
I've taken statistical mechanics. You calculate thermodynamic entropy levels from the canonical distribution (or the grand canonical distribution). That involves the energy of the system, which needs to take the forces into account, because force begets potential energy.
He does the calculations backwards and says "oh you have an entropy change due to a change in position, so there must be a force."
DUH.
It does not follow that the force is not real.
He doesn't talk about the fundamental forces at all. And I believe that's important.
An electric force applies to any two particles, no matter how small, and no matter how far apart (though electric has both positive and negative forces which cancel out over large distances). I'm not as well versed at the strong-nuclear force, but it too apparently dies out at relatively short distances. The electro-magnetic force is so uniform, that layers upon layers of equations have been built that operate at incredible levels of resolution - down to individual photon exchanges - and upwards to star-sized regions.
The 'emergent' force of Gravity, on the other hand is like centripetal force, or elastic force, or the forcing function that can describe the diffusion of perfume. Basically a natural mathmatical mode / pattern which statistically directs atoms such that you can aggregate the motion by a simple Force equation.
The difference is that you can NOT apply the aggregate equation of an 'emergent' force to below a few million/thousand/hundred/dozen atoms (depending on the equation). You can with electro-magnetic equations. So there's a huge effective difference.
I believe you might be suggesting that even the electro-magnetic (fundamental) equations may ultimately be aggregating phenomena as well - and that would be sweet if it was ever discovered to be true. But the author has no basis to address that topic.
I HAVE however seen pseudo-scientists try and approach electro-magnetism as a mechanical result due to the existence of more fundamental particles (the collisions of plank-sized perfectly elastic balls that permeate as an oft-debunked aether).
-Michael
It is only true if you can prove that you exist. "Cogito ergo sum" is an axiom, not a proof.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
I understand my wife.
That's not what she tells me.
Thank you for arguing with my semantics and completely ignoring my point altogether. That is a superb way of contributing nothing useful and sounding like a complete ass all at the same time. Kudos.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Because men have copies of every gene found in women, it's quite possible males brains include all the pathways found in women's brains, male biochemistry includes all the chemical responses that are part of female emotions, and so on. (Of course, this is on a statistical average basis, not an individual one, since no individual has all the working versions of all genes. Still, men, since they have genes on the y chromosome that are simply not found in women, have biological structures in their brains built by those genes, plus they get one set of the genes found on the x chromosome with whatever effects on the brain, glands, and peripheral nervous system those have - ergo biology tells us that men in the aggregate can actually fully understand women, but women simply cannot fully understand men, even if they try as a large group.
As proof of this, I understand women so well I know in advance exactly what my ex-wife would think of this idea, which is why I'm going to let someone else tell her.
Who is John Cabal?
I didn't realize $4.99 + tax was advanced math. We almost always use math in a close enough context. Close doesn't count in pure math, but as soon as you apply it to something real you're always talking about close enough.
My bullshit detector just asplode.
Sounds like you needed to adjust the fractal feedback resonator..
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
I think not, I had this idea over 20 years ago that gravity was a a secondary effect of interactions of energy and matter, that in reality there are no black holes. Gravity lenses yes, but black holes no. Given the evidence in recent years supporting the existence of black holes I am not so sure anymore. But it does have some interesting predictions that better match observable reality, for instance a decrease in wavelength with increased entropy at the atomic level. Taking this theory one step further is the idea that there are no innate (attractive) forces. That forces are all reactive, which has even larger implications that just Gravity.
I'd say there is a good chance it is all one Unified Field. When including torque in Einstein's equations (and not assuming you are locked on the spinning object), this guy's solution works from the micro to the macro.
It's cool to think that one bigass equation could describe our entire universe, but I've never understood why people believe that it's actually the case. I can't help thinking of savages looking at a McLaren F1 and thinking "Under the bonnet there must be a complex structure made of Car Molecules. Anything else we find in there, if we divide it sufficiently, will turn out to be made of Car."
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Indeed. The truth is, it is all a dream. My dream, in fact. It all emanates from me, I designed it all based on what you know as mathematical principles.
That assertion can also never be proved wrong, and it is mathematically sound.
You're pretty confident for a figment of my imagination....
You think, therefore I am?
When someone simply holds an opinion, maybe even based on some subset of all known facts, that there is no God, that isn't by itself a religion. But the claim that Atheism as a formal, organized opinion isn't a religion is a different position. If you look at these threads on Slashdot, they start off about subjects such as sciences, and sooner or later, fanatics for both sides start arguing about God. While personally, I don't think I'm a fanatic, and you probably don't think you are either, I admit there are religious fanatics galore on my side. On your side, you have a bunch of Atheist religious fanatics, whether you acknowledge them or not. I'm talking about the Atheists who post the "everybody who isn't a moron knows that Atheists are superior." type remarks. Notice that we have some of that 'intelligence is the absence of religion' part right above this thread.
This sort of atheism is a religious belief system, as in: "My Atheism proves I'm smarter, and my being smarter justifies my Atheism." That's the exact same mechanism as "Of course the Bible was written by God, it says so right in the Bible." Your movement has its ignorant and abusive people who rely on circular logic and cliches to justify their opinions rather than any acts of reason. Your fanatics behave just as badly as our fanatics. You even have organized spokespersons who claim to speak for you. You may find some of them distasteful, or think that they are wrong, but if you are a typical rational atheist you tolerate them, just as many Christians tolerate Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson even while disagreeing with much of what they espouse. What makes your beliefs a religion is you have plenty of religious fanatics, just as we do.
Who is John Cabal?
Do you *really* think that's air you're breathing?
Implying genetics are everything, and education and social environment, and the stereotypes for male/female we eat everyday have no influences.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I believe you are conflating the general usage of the word 'theory' with the scientific usage of the word 'theorem'.
Permanently ensuring he isn't dreaming any more is not a scientific experiment, as it is impossible to reproduce whatever results you get, (especially if waking him up causes the universe to cease to exist). You may, however strap him to a board and administer appropriate dosages of phenobarbitol, morphine, and polysorbate 60, then draw off blood samples at regular intervals. As a control, please make sure he has not been used for cosmetics testing prior to your procedure.
Who is John Cabal?
Uhm, that's how to deal with an aggressive large dog, until you find a club.
Come to think of it, this might work for the original poster too.
Who is John Cabal?
http://xkcd.com/552/
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
unobtanium?
3: Even if we accept the Athesist's candard that "atheism is not a religion", you're happily proving that Atheism does have not only a primary religious conviction, but also the unfortunately secondary conviction of bigotry. Well done!
And you just made the (extreme) logical error of applying a generality based on one specific incident.
To be complete, I should also point out that nothing in the coward's post indicates atheism. You added that in an unsupportable assumption. The coward could be Muslim, for instance, or Jewish. Or Hindu. Or the last unflagging follower of Zeus. There simply isn't enough information to decide, so any conclusion is made on the basis of faith.
I would feel bad if I didn't point out that making conclusions based on faith isn't a great way to demonstrate intelligence.
I just want to point out that c, the speed of light, is a defined constant in the metric system and has an exact integer value.
That's one funny thing about math, "close doesn't count", until you get to a certain advanced point.
I didn't realize irrational numbers, a huge portion of the rational numbers, and trigonometry...
blah blah blah That's a lot of bullshit just to say, "No shit, Sherlock." Are you proud of all the examples you listed???
Dimensional Analysis
Is our model of PI more accurate than our measurement of a circle in reality?
There are no naturally occurring perfect circles. A circle just the concept of a perfectly symmetrical ellipse. I could be mistaken but I'm almost positive that its impossible to form a perfect circle in a universe were there are more then 2 particles interacting.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
"Or the last unflagging follower of Zeus."
WE ARE NOT GONE!
Ah, energy. Tell me, how many joules is it, exactly? And if you haven't actually measured it, then why not?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Seems weird no one has really discussed the potential magnitude of this.
If it leads to the ability to manipulate gravity it could be one of the most important discoveries of all time.
That's just math with a different axiom, which is still a kind of math.
This is where I would normally insert my speech about Euclidean geometry vs. elliptical geometry (and other non-Euclidean geometries). All math, different axioms.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Thus, I am correct when I said that neither of the theories is strictly "true". They can't ever be.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
>If you have 2 masses, they exhibit an attractive force upon each other. We call this phenomenon "gravity",
Yep. And somehow, the author of this article has no idea what it is.
Einstein defined gravity as "the curvature of space." It seems flatly unnecessary (and heretical) to try and re-define it as something else. Why do masses curve space? That's a better question.
>What nobody has satisfactorily explained is this: why are these two related?
From my armchair, they're not related. In fact they seem somewhat opposed. Because of inertia, a massive object will tend to stay in one place. But introduce another massive object, and now they will fall towards each other. Not exactly inertial, now is it?
I doubt they need to be reconciled. They are two different theories operating under different domains. Anyone who sees a "conflict" between the two is probably trying to apply one theory to an inappropriate scenario.
Hahaha oh, thanks. I needed a good laugh tonight. One of their radio interviews quickly devolves into talking about aliens building the pyramids. Awesome stuff.
In other news, passing a number and a symbol to the cons function works the exact same way as passing a string and a cons-cell to it.
....Do you have any concrete prediction of religion which became true?....
The Bible contains many striking predictions concerning Jesus and Israel. After being scattered all over the planet, Israel is being gathered once again in their ancient homeland. There was no nation of Israel since 70AD until 1948. That is when the prediction given here began to be fulfilled.
Deuteronomy 30:3 then Jehovah your God will turn your captivity. And He will have compassion on you, and will return and gather you from all the nations where Jehovah your God has scattered you.
Deuteronomy 30:4 If you are driven out into the outermost parts of the heavens, Jehovah your God will gather you from there, and He will bring you from there.
Deuteronomy 30:5 And Jehovah your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. And He will do you good, and multiply you above your fathers.
Israel is once again a properous nation, back in their own land with the formerly dead language of Hebrew yet again a living language for all Israelis.
Another striking, very specific prediction, not at all vague, is concerning the city of Jerusalem. The thorny problem of what to do about Jerusalem concerns governments around the world today. It was predicted that exactly this would happen.
Zecheriah 12:2 Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling to all the peoples all around, and it shall also be against Judah in the siege against Jerusalem.
Zecheriah 12:3 And in that day I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all peoples. All who lift it shall be slashed, and all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it.
Just north of Jerusalem is the valley of Megiddo, where the final battle of the last war of human history, the battle of Armageddon will take place. It looks like, that the city of Jerusalem, the focus of the world's three greatest religions, will be fought over in that last war. Throughout history, religions have figured prominently in major wars.
There are hundreds of highly accurate, specific predictions that the God of the Bible makes, that have been fulfilled throughout history. However these two mentioned here are being fulfilled in our present time and not too distant future. Israel is once again a nation and Jerusalem is a bone of contention.
Well He said that He would take us out of the Land of Egypt and He did that... Oh, you wanted predictions in terms of physics. And for current-day events. Yeah, God's an arbitrary SOB sometimes.
I'm hopelessly lost. Where are the dudes that can describe this theory in words an average person can get a grip on?
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
I'd say there is a good chance it is all one Unified Field. When including torque in Einstein's equations (and not assuming you are locked on the spinning object), this guy's solution works from the micro to the macro.
It's cool to think that one bigass equation could describe our entire universe, but I've never understood why people believe that it's actually the case. I can't help thinking of savages looking at a McLaren F1 and thinking "Under the bonnet there must be a complex structure made of Car Molecules. Anything else we find in there, if we divide it sufficiently, will turn out to be made of Car."
Car analogies are bad. I hate bad analogies. Therefore, I hate car analogies. But, you sir, have a bad car analogy. And with such a good car, too! DAMN YOU!
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Er, well, the Earth DOES rotate in exact 24 hour segments. The issue with leap years is one of revolutions. Seeing how, you know, the 24 hour day is kind of directly based off of the rotation of the planet. I'm just being picky, though. Carry on! :)
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
I wonder if there are Good Car Molecules as well as Bad Car Molecules?
You probably hate me now, too.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Sage%27s_theory_of_gravitation
The speed of light is EXACTLY 299,792,458 m/s because the speed of light is a definition, not a measurement. Since 1983, the meter has been defined in terms of the speed of light, so refinements in the measurement of the speed of light cause the meter to change in length rather than the value of c in m/s to change.
I won't hate you if you can prove that your mentioning of good and bad car molecules didn't cause them to spontaneously exist. Dammit. Now I'm going to drive around wondering whether or not the car in front of me is a good car or a bad car. Thanks, bastard.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Duh, PI is 3!
But when did the practicing physician enter the room?
There have been some attempts to test it, so I wouldn't call it untested.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Same as saying pi = 3.141 and g = 9.81 ms^-2 at sea level on Earth. Those are imprecise but "close enough" approximations of natural constants
Since we're well into scientific nitpicks already, pi is a natural constant but g = 9.81 ms^2 is definitely not, there's no one true value to approximate because it varies slightly over the earth and earth isn't completely spherical and earth's rotation also has a marginal effect. Were you perhaps thinking of the gravitational constant?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Of course, some would say that having the Y chromosome (being an X chromosome with one of the "legs" left off) leaves men in a genetically inferior state.
On the other hand, the fact that it takes an extra "leg" for the double X to get everything expressed could explain a lot about the female tendency toward talkativeness.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I just finished reading an excellent book on the subject: Logicomix. It's interesting and deep enough for those with an interest in math and science, but approachable even to a layman
http://www.logicomix.com/en/
It's about the search for an absolute/self-defined foundation for mathematics.
I think general relativity is not understandable because it's taught in schools than Newtonian. And even when it's taught, it's taught badly because teachers haven't took time to get a grasp of it. How can you teach something you don't understand! :) GR is easy, one just have to take time and read it through, for starters :)
iirc, newton's theory worked while we where content with in atmosphere behaviors.
but when we got increasing precision in our observations of other planets, stars and other large objects, it started to break down.
what einstein did was come up with a theory matched newton's theory (time tested as it was) while also working for the expanded observational data.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
In Einstein's GRT, Gravity emerges from space-time curvature. In fact the first thought experiment in the classic book "Gravitation" by Misner et al. is to consider the trajectory of a tennis ball, a bullet and a laser ray on Earth, and to find out that in space-time all three have the same curvature. Particles follow world lines and the force of gravity is an illusion. In The Fine Paper, gravity arises from the holographic principle, but reading it (admitedly very quickly), I'm not sure what difference it makes.
The ArXiV paper is verbose and low on technical details. I guess we'll have to wait for the full refereed paper and see if any useful prediction can be made from the new theory.
... intelligent falling?
I mean seriously: In his theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of information in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings.
Are we about to see the theory of intelligent falling, a parody of intelligent design, shown to be real science? Aaaargh!
With respect to the speed of light, it gets used to define the meter, while the second is defined in terms of oscillations of the cesium atom. So the speed of light is *exactly* 299,792,458 m/s and it's the definition of 'meter' that has all the experimental error.
Source
I don't agree - although I think I understand what you mean. Maths is, loosely speaking, the study of logically true statements; so if the maths work, then the conclusions are true - within the limitations of the given assumptions. We don't know, of course, whether those assumptions describe the physical reality we live in, that is always the problem in theoretical physics.
So, therefore the model for PI Is more accurate than any measurement of it.
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
well, given my ( lack of ) life, all i can say is : you need a better imagination !
Sorry for the double posting but it looks like today's XKCD answered my qustion best!
http://xkcd.com/687/
--jeffk++
RGOOMH!!
ipv6 is my vpn
You may not have noticed, but no such oracle exists, has ever existed, or is very likely to exist in the future. Therefore, your point is moot.
May the source be with you.
Gravity was refuted years ago by evangelical scientists.
(I'm surprised that I seem to be the first to link to this Onion gem...)
Ok, ok, I admit it: I am stupid. However, "from fools and babes ...", as they say.
So he explains gravity away with information density, which to me looks just like another model saying more or less the same as the one we had, except that it feels less intuitive. I mean, explaining the force of gravity as somehow related to - or even equivalent to - the shape of space, that is something you can feel comfortable about; but talking about "information" as a fundamental property just seems like advanced gibberish. It certainly doesn't give me feeling of deeper understanding. Well, I have already pointed out a potential explanation for that.
What I don't like about this theory, though, is something more fundamental - it seems to accept the assumtion that "reality is fundamentally quantized" (intuitively, broken up in small, discontinuous bits). Let me expand a bit on that; we have two theories that are both hugely successful, but seem incompatible, General Relativity (GR) and quantum Mechanics (QM).
- GR makes a few fundamental assumptions, most notably that the speed of light is the same in all frames of reference; everything follows from that, more or less.
- QM makes a large number of fundamental assumtions, which leaves us with a large number of loose ends.
I for one would feel a lot happier if we could derive QM from GR; but for almost a century now, physicists have tried to hammer GR into QM with a sledge hammer, while there have been very few attempts at going the other. Far be it from to advance any stupid conspiracy theory, but as far as I can see, that situation stems mostly from Bohr and Heisenberg having fallen into a sort of quasi-religion about things.
What I hope is that somebody will begin to explore the derivation of QM from GR seriously; it isn't about "winning", it is about improving on our understanding of the physical reality. The theories are after all only tools, and we should be pragmatic about it.
What's the temperature outside: T[K]
;~)
How many inches of water did it rain last night: d[cm]
What's the circumference of the Earth: 2*pi*Re[km]
do you *really* think you were exact when you used 186,000 mi/s or 300,000 km/s : c[m/s]
that the Earth rotates in exactly 24 hours: Who the hell uses days? It's omega(e)[1/s] <-- little omega-sub-e, for earth
I think there was a period of about two years where I didn't turn in a single math paper that had 'a number' as the answer to a problem. In fact, I'd be pretty damned surprised if I turned in a single answer that contained a floating point number anywhere in it. Except perhaps to point out how fast ODE45 can go to hell.
Even for those things where you are inherently using a floating point number (PI), you use the symbol. PI *is* the ratio. Properly taught trig *is* exact. You do not refer to the result of a sine/cosine/tan etc operation as a number unless it *happens* to be expressible as a ratio of integer values. For which there are lookup tables, proofs, or the TI-89
I would guess that *most* fields that actually use math find it very, very important that problems remain in algebraic for as long as possible. Certainly any field that uses numeric solvers. Sound odd? Off hand, in orbital mechanics you have the option of just tossing in a solved set of three, 3x3 matrices, which are dotted together. These suckers are chock full of sines and cosines. Or you can solve it out by hand, and end up with the 3x3 resultant with something like 20 fewer sine/cosine operations.
Well, if you divide the car sufficiently, you end up with protons, neutrons and electrons. And neutrons can further decay to protons and electrons. And a proton + electron is, of course, hydrogen. So in a way, the whole car is made from ionized hydrogen.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"In his theory, gravity exists because of a difference in concentration of information in the empty space between two masses and its surroundings. He does not consider gravity as fundamental, but as an emergent phenomenon that arises from a deeper microscropic reality."
I've spent years studying the deeper microscopic reality of Julia Robert's vagina, and am not any closer to it than when I started (Pretty Woman)
-Oz
You asked: If I don't believe in Santa Claus, how does that make me religious?
I answered: It does only by how you take your "non-belief" - do you take it as a religious need to argue with believers or take your opinion higher up than theirs?
I defined Children as the people which believe in Santa Claus. If you don't believe in Santa Claus, you might consider your faith to be more right, than theirs. If you follow your faith in the nonexistence of Santa Claus in a religious way, you might feel the need to bash children about their belief, which makes you a non-believing religious person. That would be of course a very stupid behaviour.
For me religiousness is an elitary behaviour, where your faith concentrates not in the essence of your religion, but in the religion itself. Every human being has a faith. Every faith leads to a basic personal religion (which can be sculptured by a preexisting religion of other people), which defines your rulesets of how you value things, and more importantly, which rules you have to follow for being true to your faith. And you want to be true to your faith, since you want to release yourself from your burden of fearing death in your subconciousness - and if you choose the wrong faith, it might lead to holding on to a wrong kind of salvation.
Not every child believes in Santa. And even if it does, it does not mean, he feels the need to lay cookies and milk in front of the chimney or defend the existence of Santa Claus. Same applies for "faiths" in terms of religious faiths (while Santa Claus is more like an opinion).
Maybe you get my point and understand, I was trying to answer your point from my point of view, if I didn't I would just thought to myself: "stupid analogy" and moved on - or worse.
Usefulness of statements also is a very personal question, I am sorry, you did not find my answer useful, if you still don't just leave it be. In essence, my answer was: believing in something or not has very little to do with being religious or not.
By the way, I don't believe in Santa Claus either.
Yeah, one kinda wonders if they have already decided which string theory they believe in nowadays. Apparently there were some 10^500 different theories, and that's ignoring the fact that the fundamental constants can be chosen rather freely. Furthermore, there is no proof that amongst those 10^500 (or more) theories there is one that has a positive cosmological constant.
Actually the theory has so many different permutations that starts to wonder if it wouldn't happen to be turing-complete, and therefore have zero predictive power. It would be about as useful for determining how the universe works as a calculator without a manual. Well, without the actual calculator I mean.
In connection to that : does this unification make any useful prediction ? Is it too much to presume it must lead to a way to generate gravitational attraction using electrical power, no ? Preferably a method not require TeV collisions ?
He probably just thinks that because of his Retarded Position
For instance the question of why there is inertia is addressed by the work of Higgs and the theoretical Higgs boson.
No, it isnt addressed by it. This is just another theoretical model.
In the case of gravity, begin with Newton.
F = Gm'm"/d^2
This is a model. This does not explain why there is gravity. The fact that we eventually found instances that contradict it lead to another model, general relativity. General relativity doesnt explain why there is gravity either, and we have since found cases where this model too many not hold ('dark energy'.) The Higgs wont dig us out of this lack of understanding, because nobody understands why things at these scales (see the photon) behave the way they do.
120 years ago things were thought to be much simpler. Proton, Electron, and then Photon. That was it. Back then we could at least understand the models, but understanding the model is not the same as understanding reality (obviously, since we were wrong.) Now we have quantum theory and particles behaving like waves (or maybe its waves behaving like particles) culminating in the situation that nobody really even understands how reality could even be like the models.
The model is all we have, and its not a description of reality, but instead a tool to predict observation.
With a good enough model I can tell you where every pool ball on the table will end up. That model need not represent the reality that the pool balls are made up of trillions of atoms each made up of quarks and electrons, that the balls bounce against each other because the individual electrons repel each other while also binding atoms together, that the amount of kinetic energy (heat) in the balls will change, that even the shape of the balls changes as they move.
The pro-pool player need not understand what is really going on to make the shot. His model, just like the model with individual atoms, is just a tool to make predictions. The little boy can ask "why" and the adult can answer, but that answer is not actually correct.
Why do things in motion tend to stay in motion? Nobody knows! We call it Inertia.
"His name was James Damore."
Gravity is something special given the the equality of inert mass and gravitational mass. It seems the ideas of this man are at least interesting to work with. It will be good to see if this makes gravity fully machian. As asked in Newton's Principia, and not convincilly answered yet: What would it happened if we rotate the fixed stars with respect to the bucket of water?
There is a lot of crackpottery here in /., but this guy does not seem the classic crackpotter. It seems that this time we have seen in /. a real scientific breakthrough.
And the denigrators were denialist trols? Probably, it's the big current meme (well, fairly current, Fred Seiss started this off by denying AGW was real and demanding that the IPCC be censured because peer review in a science he never once wrote a paper in (and had for the past 15-20 years been a political figure for big tobacco) was corrupted.
How would he know?
He doesn't.
And so the denialopshere picked it up and ran with it.
i have some serious catching up to do on physics
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
They are good Car particles and bad Car particles - they cancel each other out when they collide, producing energy that the car runs on.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
On the contrary, information wants to be all in one place. Like, locked behind a paten... err... behind the event horizon of a black hole.
We can only hope nobody tells Richard Stallman about it, or he'll probably sue reality for infringing on the rights of those bits. Mind you, he and reality had parted ways a long time ago anyway, but at least it was on mostly friendly terms ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...gravity as gravy ?
My bullshit detector just asplode.
Sounds like you needed to adjust the fractal feedback resonator..
Nope, it sounds like the Heisenberg Compensators are out of phase. Try changing the Flux Capacitor.
-x- Sorry my bad English. I'll have him tarred and feathered. -x-
Considering the story about Eddington (journalist [interviewing Eddington about the solar eclipse photography that provided some of the first tangible evidence that GR is a good description of the universe]: "Apparently only three people in the world really understand the theory, including yourself and Einstein." Eddington : "I'm trying to think who the third one would be."), I think that you're underestimating the subject matter.
Or you're just trying to be funny.
"trying".
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Absolutely disagree. Since I read the paper, off the top of my head could think of a bunch of changes to Star Trek, Honor Harrington, 1632, and others, that still gives us the same observed science plot devices in these universes.
If information is a property, and changing the property changes observed "gravity", this make a great shortcut to describing these same effects in SF.
Information storage in black holes has been used in SF for about 15 years now. Adding the rest of the universe is just more writing territory
A funny thing happed on the way to the (crunch) Ne na Ne na
The only common types of math where "close doesn't count" are basic arithmetic (excepting fractions) and pure algebraic manipulation.
I hope you mean that whether the mathematics "counts" or not is a statement about the utility of applying mathematics as a tool.
That is, as opposed to which mathematical statements are correct. It's emphatically not the case that a function is continuous if roughly all open sets in the codomain have open preimages. The definition says that all open sets have open preimages. The proofs of the properties of continuous functions rely on this, and not just kinda'.
For the purpose of mathematical correctness, close doesn't count. Only being exactly true does.
Close can be useful. That doesn't make it correct.
You are also an atheist; just to a different degree.
I assume you disagree with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Why? They're Christians!
Unless you are a total fundamentalist, there must be some things these guys teach which you simply don't believe. I bet you don't believe in the literal truth of the Bible either - that Adam-and-Eve, creation-in-6-days stuff. Atheists don't believe it either.
You're probably down with Evolution too. You've seen the fossils, you know what the carbon dating shows, and you know that somehow, whoever wrote the bible, they completely forgot to say anything about the Dinosaurs. Because the Dinosaurs were around millions of years ago and there were no people back then, to write about them or be eaten by them.
So you should realise that atheists simply don't believe more of the same kind of stuff that you don't believe. However, atheists have a reason for that non-belief, and that is that there's no evidence to support the truth of it, and indeed quite a lot of evidence which contradicts the biblical stories.
No evidence for the biblical story of creation; much evidence for the big bang theory and evolution. No evidence for a great flood; much evidence for plate tectonics and stratification occurring over geological time periods. No evidence for a historical Jesus; much evidence for a historical Herod. The shroud of Turin is a medieval painting. The Pope shows no evidence of being divinely infallible; much evidence for entrenched Child abuse by the Catholic clergy in Ireland, USA, Australia, no doubt all over the world. And the Pope still makes the false and disgusting claim that condom use promotes HIV.
So I suggest that you talk to your pastor or whoever you get your religious guidance from. Ask them some tough questions. And when they answer, remember that 2000 years of Christian thought have been devoted to rationalising the contradictions inherent in your belief system (such as why a loving god allows such evil in the world and how good people are also killed in freak accidents, or whether babies who die before being baptised will go to heaven).
What's the "speed of gravity" then?
Is that African or European gravity?
I think you're mistaking measurements for math itself.
measurements are always an approximation anyway,
and depend on your point of view or the theories you
mean to apply to what you look at.
Sorry to nitpick your nitpicking, but the earth only has a 24 hour revolution period when you ignore the fact the earth is revolving around the Sun. When a casual alien looks at the earth, it takes about 23h 56m to do a 360 revolution :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_time
What, then - all we need is for a light-bendingly massive object, traveling at relativistic speeds, to pass in front of a star? And to have our telescopes pointed at it ahead of time?
Huh. MacGyver could do that with a touch-tone phone.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Great! Now I sound like the crazy person. Clever jerk =p.
For me, the belief in the supernatural is a necessary component of religion. Possibly because of American culture, I would probably also stipulate that the supernatural being(s) would have to be singular, as it seems to be in any religion with at least a million followers. (Many argue that the Hindu pantheon can be seen as one deity with several faces, much like the father, son and holy ghost, other than that they're all overtly monotheistic, right down to Ahl-e Haqq). People who do believe in a polytheistic system would therefore fall under the "primitive religion" section for me, likely because most cultures have the tendency to shift toward monotheism and away from polytheism. It's not an absolutely all-inclusive world view, but at least I'm honest about it.
That often-used, terrible source of data Wikipedia largely agrees on this definition, sans the monotheistic bent.
Thus my original question could be phrased: "How does not believing in unexplained supernatural phenomena (ie Santa Claus) make me someone who believes in unexplained supernatural phenomena, particularly involving a supreme being (ie Religious)?"
Foolish me, I thought I could use inexact phrasing in an informal medium such as an online forum. My apologies.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
The other big thing that comes out of this, if the reasoning isn't circular, is that intertial mass and gravitation mass are equal. This has always been found to be the case as far as can be measured, but gravity is weak and hard to measure in isolation, so there has always been a sneaking suspicion that somewhere there might be other stuff with a different gravitational field for its inertial mass. If you have dark matter, the worry is there might be a lot of funny stuff that we haven't looked at. If inertia and gravity both come from entropy, then there's only one sort of stuff, and one whole dimension of variables has gone. Wooo!
A mathematical construct, such as a circle, isn't modeling any physical object. It is a purely logical, non-physical entity. Measuring a non-physical entity is meaningless.
As it happens, the value of circumference to diameter (PI) on objects that resemble circles to some arbitrary degree is not constant within our universe. Gravity (ironically enough considering the subject of the article) is caused by warping of spacetime in General Relativity, which in turn changes this ratio (the stronger the gravity field, the smaller the ratio).
Anyway, all this means that a circle (and thus PI) is not a physical entity or process we're trying to model, it's a model which happens to resemble some physical entities enough to give acceptably accurate results when it's used to describe them. Our model of PI is exact by definition; it's the real objects that are inexact circles.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
To nitpick, pi is not a natural constant but a mathematical one, and even then only in euclidean geometry. The observed value of pi is actually variable, since it changes depending on curvature of spacetime.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I started RTFA and stopped at that point (page 4) :
The entropy equals S(E,x)
This sort of atheism is a religious belief system, as in: "My Atheism proves I'm smarter, and my being smarter justifies my Atheism." That's the exact same mechanism as "Of course the Bible was written by God, it says so right in the Bible." Your movement has its ignorant and abusive people who rely on circular logic and cliches to justify their opinions rather than any acts of reason.
Please, PLEASE stop calling it a "movement". There is no movement. There is no "The Atheists". There is no "them" (as in "us vs. them").
There's simply people who happen to share certain views - views that aren't the same but that are generally considered close enough to be lumped in under the same label.
To talk about "The Atheist Movement" makes about as much sense as talking about "The Movement Of People Who Like Eggs And Bacon For Breakfast".
Well, in General Relativity, it's because they're the same thing. Gravity is caused by spacetime getting curved (dunno why it does), which in turn means that what's actually a straight path seems to curve towards a massive object. Basically, if you're not in freefall, you're being accelerated (your path through spacetime is curved), and the weight of an object is actually it's inertial mass resisting that acceleration.
In other words, they're not two things but a single thing.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
This has been proven untrue. Gravity seems to fall into the "Spooky Action At A Distance" category when it comes to speed.
How do *you* know he was practicing ? It might have been his day off or something !
I do like the idea of not needing an explanatory tool like "Dark Energy" ... that has always bothered me. Far more than "Dark Matter".
I always took "Dark ____" to mean unexplained. The here be dragons of universal physics. Having a lump of the stuff in a petri dish or beamline would probably result in a mundane yet technically precise name. But then we'd be off in search of the next dragon.
I think you'll find that they don't *care* about the effort involved, provided it isn't their effort, i.e. if the husband get's his balls broken, that's just him performing his "manly duties".
Case in point, me and the missis, lying on the bed watching TV. She wants to change channel but the remote is on the cabinet on the other side of the room. Bear in mind, the TV is actually within reach and she could change channel by hand if she so desired. Who's the muggins who has to get up and fetch the remote for her every time ?
I rest my case. Provided the effort is not her's then it's not an issue.
I'd disagree; what makes Atheism a religion is that they have an answer to the question, "Is there a God?"
Any concept pervasive in our society will have strong proponents and detractors. Polarized issues aren't unique to religion.
You just can't resist having a go at Linux device drivers can you ?
Notice that this particular scientist also has experimental evidence ostensibly proving his theory. A theory must be falsifiable but other theories can fit the same observations. So it is attractive to remove the need for a complicated concept like "Dark Energy" and substitute an simpler and more orthogonal idea in its stead. This does not mean either theory is anymore correct. Once there is a prediction from one theory that cannot be observed then that theory can be discarded.
So far this work is very early on and is just trying to fit current observations. The observation you point to is one that the theory will have to fit or we can take this observation as falsification of the new theory.
What will be interesting is what other effects this "entropic conservation" would make, what experiments it suggests... and what would falsify the whole thing.
[signature]
Communism, in Soviet Russia, was for all intents and purposes a state religion, despite having no supernatural component. Free-market capitalism is quickly becoming one, at least for some people (unless you want to count the "invisible hand" as supernatural). Nationalism certainly qualifies, with the nation taking the place of a god.
That does rise a question: given that people are prone to religious behavior, are secular religions better or worse than supernatural ones?
Since this would make, for example, Greek pantheon not qualify as religion, I'd suggest rethinking this requirement. Monotheistic religions are pretty new.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
+1 insightful.
[signature]
Observations of pulsars show that the speed of gravity is definitely finite (that is, Newton was wrong), and is likely equal to the speed of light.
He's not abusing the word "understand" (well, maybe a little), he's just using it in a slightly different context. You may be able to predict your wife's behaviour, but if it came down to some sort of rule (she will always choose option 2 in the bottom half of an hour, option 1 in the top half for example) you might not say you understood her. You could predict her behaviour, but you would have no idea why she made choices that way. In reality, you do understand, at least to some degree, why she makes the choices she does.
Copernicus, Kepler et. al. correctly deduced that the planets move in ellipses around the sun (that is, how the planets move), but they had nothing to say about why they should do so. It wasn't until Newton came along that we understood some of the why.
It's true that our understanding of the mechanisms behind quite a bit of physics is a little fuzzy. Until fairly recently both inertial mass and gravitational mass just were. We didn't have any real explanation for why they exist, whether they were always equal, etc. The Higgs field explains much of that, and also connects it with some interesting cosmology fairly elegantly.
From the definition I cited for religion on Wikipedia, Nationalism and Soviet Communism do not qualify as religions. Also, I openly stated that the monotheistic requirement was extremely biased, and gave polytheistic religions a status as simply more primitive, which matches the general trend. Of course, this is all just a restatement of what I said earlier.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Really? Mine wasn't able to get past:
a new solution to Einstein’s field equations which incorporates torque and Coriolis effects.
The poor BS detector just sort of lay there, completely toasted from the overload.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
This has been proven untrue. Gravity seems to fall into the "Spooky Action At A Distance" category when it comes to speed.
Really? Please provide a reference.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
There's a big difference between Erik Verlinde and Newton & Einstein. Newton & Einstein and have data to back up their theories. Erik Verlinde does not.
String Theory is unproven. No data to back it up. So quite honestly it should be called String Hypothesis.
Atheism is not a proper noun and should not be capitalized unless it is the first word of the sentence or is a word in a book title.
Also, maybe you should refrain from ever speaking on the subject at all because you obviously don't understand it.
Then there is the whole matter of you being unable to distinguish between parts and wholes.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
What makes your beliefs a religion
Atheism is a lack of belief, not a belief.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Relatively speaking, the earth's surface is smoother than a ball bearing.
I am tired of physics being 'white mans magic' to me. What four courses textbooks do I need to buy and understand to rectify this? If the four have prerequisites, they need not be mentioned. Just - which four, if absorbed are equivalent to a physics undergrad degree?
Someone writing about something after the fact is NOT a prediction. It's like all the psychic charlatan coming out after an earthquake an "predicting" it.
Wow,
I checked out the last link just out of curiosity and... wow. Just when you think there isn't anyone more crazy.. they appear out of nowhere!
There's always time for PI.
This is heavy.
He said it's unproven, not untested. In fact, the existence of failed tests tend to support his implication that the assertion is false.
Yes more people could review it, and they might even pass their critiques onto the original author, who may incorporate them if he thinks they are valid. However, those changes will go into the final published draft - the version on arXiv is (and in almost all cases will remain) a preprint draft which has not received any peer review. Any unintentional mistakes/typos will remain and continue to cause confusion or mislead future readers. Even if an article is completely debunked by every peer who reviews it will remain on arXiv as-is, with nothing to distinguish it from articles that have been accepted by peer review.
Pre-print posting is a bad reaction to a bad situation, both of which we will have to live with until a better compromise with the journals can be met.
I don't think that "having fanatics" is a good litmus test for religion. That would include most of the pop stars, a few operating systems, halo, and harry potter. It really cheapens religion. But this particular debate always kind of struck me as mere semantics and a pointless waste of time.
Fanatic atheists are as bad as religious fanatics? really? Sure, sure, there are plenty of asshole atheists and a few stupid ones. I suppose there must be some actual fanatical atheists out there, but I haven't heard about their jihad, those who they excommunicated from the secular world, or their murdering ways.
Well then, what's the speed of gravity through glass?
Just think of the applications of refracting gravity!
Also, if gravity travels as a "wave", can it be canceled out with an identical but out-of-phase wave? And I don't just mean at a point between two masses.
Gravity is an electromagnetic wave just like magnetism is. Magnetism is an electromagnetic wave that pulls or pushes on electrons. It is a shorter electromagnetic wave than what the gravity wave is. Electrons are able to transfer that pull force to the proton and neutrons because the protons have a interaction force with the electrons.
Metals readily give up electrons to flow electricity and thus have a bigger tug with magnetism than say something that doesn't conduct a current.
Gravity doesn't pull on electrons, it pulls on the much larger protons and neutrons. It isn't a fabric or bend space, it is an electromagnetic wave.
> This sort of atheism is a religious belief system
You are technically correct in that when I go to dictionary.com, the word "religion" as it's defined there could be used to describe ANYTHING. You are using that as an excuse to attempt to surrepticiously equate our logic with your lack of logic, and claim they're the same, or at least imply that our belief system is just as groundless as yours.
This is what you are saying: "Hey look, we've got a belief system, you've got a belief system, that means you're just like us! How dare you criticize our position, how dare you impune the names of people who have a belief system."
So let's stop using the word religion, as technically you are correct, it clearly does not differentiate the two positions. (( I strongly object to the use of the term Religion to describe my belief system, as it's primary use (despite what dictionaries say) is equated with "belief in imaginary deities", and my belief system clearly does not include that. I strongly object to having my belief system associated with your belief system. That's what calling it "a religion" does. ))
So what shall we call your religion or belief system? I suggest "magic".
What shall we call my religion or belief system? I suggest "science".
There. No way in hell you can claim science is magic and thus suggest we've got anything in common, other than the fact that we both have a "belief system". You believe in magic. I believe in science.
It doesn't? He equates temperature (which I'm assuming he means the activity of an atomic structure) to the speed (or was it acceleration) at which it is traveling. I'm no expert by any means, but I thought the string theory tries to explain that "activity" within a structure that would give it motion and temperature.
I could be wrong because I've only touched on the topics at hand, but I can see a possible correlation. He could have based this idea off of the string theory and it's underpinnings, which could give further evidence to the theory.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Well, that's what I meant. "Earth' circumference" is a reasonable concept that is usable, despite the fact that Earth is not a regular sphere, nor is its surface smooth.
Modelling the Earth as a sphere is a better model than the flat Earth model, but not as good as modeling it as an integrated ellipse.
WTF is an "integrated ellipse"? You make it sound like a line integral. I think from the context the term you are looking for is "oblate spheroid" or "oblate ellipsoid".
Oh, and you brain-dead modders? I'm sure there's a bright future in liberal arts for you.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
He has unified nearly all of physics based on a pure charge model.
His model satisfies the behavior we observe as gravity and relativisitic effects, all without any fundamental gravity force.
http://www.bearsoft.co.uk/
I didn't realize irrational numbers, a huge portion of the rational numbers, and trigonometry, were considered advanced.
By definition an irrational number can't be a rational number, but it is a real number, which is what I think you meant.
Exactly enough time to look down and assess the height, then raise a little sign that says "bye-bye!", if I'm remembering the weekend educational materials from my youth correctly.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
No, because the 'wave' is a ripple in one direction. There is no 'negative' wave able to be generated to cancel out a 'positive' wave. The wave does not oscillate on either side of zero=no gravity.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Unfortunately where you publish *does* matter, especially if you need funding like with large grants
Not for research already completed. You're talking about advancing a career, not publishing already completed research.
Yes, publishing in certain journals can unquestionably be career enhancing. But just because a given article cannot get published in the most prestigious journal doesn't automatically mean that it is bad science, nor does it automatically mean that politics has "shut you out". If the science in question is not of wide interest, chances are you'll end up publishing in a journal with a narrow readership. It's perfectly normal to submit an article to a journal where publication is a long shot and if/when rejected publish somewhere else.
And this is the issue of the "impact factor" that influences an opinion (that can be one of a reviewer) whether it's worth or not.
In the short run yes this is true. However if it is good science, in the long run the good ideas tend to win out, regardless of their original source. Having a well known name can influence opinion but even Einstein found himself on the losing side of some scientific debates.
Bullshit. Total bullshit.
When questioned "Then what is the force that draws objects together?" The scientist took off his glasses, and while cleaning them and offered up, in a resolute voice: "Love."
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
That is the difference between the applied and the theoretical.
The exploding hand-grenade does not care whether you believe it or not...close does count.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Not true. It may be possible to have a theory that is objectively true for a given set of definable circumstances, such as Newton's equations, and it may be possible for us to formulate a theory that is objectively true over most or all circumstances.
Here you have to qualify truth with precision. Newton's theories are true and accurate for nearly all levels of precision used in every-day circumstances. If you define your precision field or relevance it is very possible to have objective truth.
In science you have to remember that nearly everything has the underlying question 'relative to what?' attached.
Bet you can't say that without a lisp....
-Dave Haynie
As soon as you point me at the valid central authority governing English, I'll agree with you.
There is no valid central authority governing English as a whole. However, there exist individual authorities governing English as used by influential publishers. For English as used in publications of your employer, your employer is the authority. But as always, the style guides used by these authorities are subject to change.
How in Hell did they screw up the /. comment system so thoroughly? The status widget says I have 147 full comments & 419 hidden comments and there doesn't seem to be any way to get them except for the ones on the first page by clicking on them individually. My browsing level is set to -1 so I should be getting just about everything, right?
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
I'd be surprised if there were more than one force that explains everything. Matter, energy, light, sound, etc... they all seem to be waves of energy operating at different frequencies and amplitudes... it's these differences that cause observable differences.
It's probably some more like the Star Gate Ancient's Dakara Super Weapon that God gets to play with.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Then it's not really a wave, is it?
Need more jiggawatts!!!!!
Obscurantist nonsense. You set up the criteria so that there can be no such thing as understanding. If you want to strike the word understanding from your dictionary, that's fine, but the rest of us have plenty of good use for it. For instance before quantum mechanics was understood things as different as transistors and Bose-Einstein condensate could not be created and used. Now they can be. In fact semiconductors are ubiquitous in our contemporary world. I would agree they are not understood by the vast majority of people who use them. To claim they are not understood by those who create and design them just strikes me as nonsense. YMMV
Not true. All theories of this type are supported by logical induction, which cannot indicate truth, but only a very great certainty of truth.
When I used the word truth, I meant the absolute, no-holds-barred true beyond any uncertainty kind of truth. It takes deduction to make a truth like that.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Word of mouth, unfortunately. It was called "information mechanics" (which has been used to describe several unrelated things as well). Then the word was that it not only explained gravity but derived several of the "fundamental" constants from others to some large number (9?) of significant digits.
The thing I do remember from the not-fully-grokked explanation was that gravity in the theory was related to the smaller amount of information needed to represent the relative positions of objects when they are closer together and the energy involved in the information in question.
And according to the guy who mentioned it, the original work was very hard to follow.
I'm wondering if this is the same stuff - either finally presented by the original guy in a form that is more readily accepted by the physics community, rediscovered by someone more articulate, or more fully worked out by either or both.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Here's a theory that might act as a counter to that in being a theory that is objectively true then.
'Existence is.'
At this level what we are really doing is dickering over the meaning of the word truth.
Funny that you mention a missing apostrophe, and the proceed to misspell the words "Atheist's" and "canard".
This region of spacetime has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. All unsaved objects will be lost.
And an oblate spheroid isn't entirely accurate either; Earth is somewhat "pear shaped" with longer lines of latitude in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern (IIRC).
And even pulling it down to that, you'll not get the circumference at the equator down to the millimeter unless you are somehow grossly smoothing out all the surface features (do you "dip down" in the oceans and take a "tightest string" approach, or remain at the highest point in the surface along the equator, or somehow average all the "heights" from the center of the earth assuming a perfect circle for the equator?
All of which just brings us back to the original point: very few models are ever completely accurate. They may be precise, and they may be useful, but they are rarely completely accurate.
The only models which are "completely accurate" are those which are accurate by definition (such as, prior to the rebasing of the second to a precisely quantifiable atomic vibration, it was completely accurate that there were 24 hours in a day, as an hour was defined as exactly 1/24th of a day... and the distance that light in a vacuum travels in one year is exactly one light year no matter how precisely you measure it...).
The Unruh effect has nothing to do with string theory, and none of the ideas in the paper are based on string theory. He is a string theorist, and he gives some thoughts about what his ideas could mean for string theory, but none of it is derived from string theory.
In addition to the zenith-to-zenith particular (because we are also revolving around the sun, it takes longer to get the sun back at zenith than a full rotation with a non-solar frame of reference), the earth also wobbles slightly due to gravitational effects and has a general long-term decrease in rotational velocity, such that not all rotations are of the exact same duration.
We have defined the second precisely based on atomic vibrations (which are not directly related to the rotational velocity of the Earth), and minutes and hours are a precise number of seconds. It is therefore impossible for every earth day to be exactly 24 hours.
A few hundred years ago, when an hour was by definition 1/24th of the time from zenith to zenith (whatever that happened to be on the particular day in question), you would have been correct. But, today, 1/24th of a (sidereal) day is no longer an accurate description.
Is thinking about stuff like this heavy lifting for the brain?
No, a sidereal day is about 0.008 seconds shorter than a stellar day. (See the second paragraph.)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
For instance before quantum mechanics was understood things as different as transistors and Bose-Einstein condensate could not be created and used. Now they can be.
I think you are both saying the same thing (I hope so, because I agree with you both!):
The model is all we have, and its not a description of reality, but instead a tool to predict observation.
will things still fall when I drop them? Ok good.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Hmm... I suspect a better answer is that it is the speed of observation. Light is the quickest observational tool we have and setting C to a constant sorts out a lot of observational issues and their associated computations. The quantum communication stuff may trigger a new round of observations that open new doors....
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
No. While concrete predictions usually do come with explanations (because those explanations are what is used to make those predictions), it's perfectly possible to make predictions without explanations. All you need is to recognize some regularity, and to assume the regularity also holds in the future.
A simple prediction without explanation: "If you hit your thumb with a hammer, it will hurt." It's a prediction (which most likely will turn out true if you try it), but it contains absolutely no explanation (it doesn't say why it hurts when you hit your thumb with a hammer).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Well, it does make a jump from a fundamental force we can't seem to detect into a latent, emergent phenomenon which we, er, also can't detect the source of.
*EVERYTHING* in the universe is based on some fundamental thing which we "cannot detect the source of". Even something as simple as math, or logic, is based on a set of axioms, or givens, which can never, themselves, be explained in terms of where they come from.
In physics, things like quarks (or if there's something that makes those, then that thing), or the fundamental forces, are all currently unexplained regarding why or how they exist.
What this work does (or at least, claims to do) is connect gravity with the rest of physics.
But your opening line is actually quite wrong:
Well, it does make a jump from a fundamental force we can't seem to detect into a latent, emergent phenomenon which we, er, also can't detect the source of.
Not at all. Presently, gravity is an axiom. It is a thing that exists, and upon which much is built, but below which nothing can be known. With this theory, gravity is just like things built upon gravity (such as orbits, gravitational singularities, etc.), which can all be explained by something below them. At some point, everything ends up as an axiom. This theory removes one of science's present axiom, and any time you can do that, you've done nothing less than fundamentally enhanced our understanding of the universe.
I'd only add one thing.
Before the axiom of Gravity was codified, we had the observation that planets traveled in ellipses around stars, and moons in ellipses around planets (Kepler's laws of planetary motion, which in turn had built off previous models of circular orbits). With the understanding of gravity we can see not only that these are not radically separate observations, and also that the same force (gravity) acting on them can cause perterbations (ie, the moon travels in a perfect ellipse around the Earth except that it gets pulled away by the Sun and so doesn't travel in a perfectly regular path, etc). We still can't model these perterbations accurately (our equations tend to fail us at some level whenever the universe has more than two entities in it, alas), but without an understanding of where these perturbations come from and hence how to predict them and grossly quantify them, we would not have set foot on the Moon.
Whenever we understand the "thing below the axiom" we open up a wealth of practical knowledge not just about that thing but about related things (which we now can see as related). While it may seem quixotic to you (and indeed if your stated goal is "the Ultimate Truth" then you should understand right from the start that Science is a bus that never reaches that particular destination), it is far from useless.
The extra bit of rotation is so that a "day" is the time between two consecutive midnights. But yes, the difference is because of the orbit (and indeed, it's actually a mean day, but that wouldn't be needed if the stellar day was used, because the earth's own rotation doesn't change along the orbit; the solar day does, however, due to the excentricity of the Earth's orbit.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
An interesting reframing of Newton's Paradox. =)
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
That's related to Descartes' "I think, therefore I am".
From that, existence as a generalization can be deduced. If one mind thinks "I am" then it exists, therefore generally speaking, existence exists.
As far as I know, anything that is deductively true (so far to our experience) lies in mathematics, where quite a few things can be built up from axioms without any input from the senses.
Everything we can observe is inherently inductive, because we observe through our senses. And while it's highly unlikely, our senses could have been fooling us about everything.
When I said "all theories of this type" I meant physical theories, which describe things we observe in the world. Of course, Newton's laws of motion have two existences; one as a mathematical construction of laws of motion, and another as a description of what we see. The laws of motion are true mathematically, but they are (were) only probably true descriptions of what we see.
I don't think we're dickering over the meaning of the word truth. You're asking me what I meant, and I'm answering. My meaning of the word is probably the same as what you mean by the word. You're just confirming that.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Something I gained from reading this article: Verlinde posits that a finite region of space can only contain a finite amount of information. We can derive the uncertainty principle (something I've always found weird) from this: if a point particle had its properties known exactly, then the density of information at that infinitesimal point would be infinite.
The only difference I see in your example about Copernicus, Kepler et. al. and Newton is that they answered different questions. I.e. "Why do these dots move so? Because they're planets in elliptical orbits." - "Why does a planet move in elliptical orbit? Because of gravity and inertia".
One can likely go infinitely in either direction: generalization or specialization. The limit would be in ourselves and it's this limit that each new discovery tries to push farther. That's what the child's series of "why"s is about. We don't stop asking "why" because we understand it completely, but because we're either satisfied with the current level of understanding or we just don't know how to move forward yet.
For instance, I'm quite satisfied in knowing that to modify the speed of an object, I have to apply a force proportional to its mass and that this is related to the kinetic energy being transferred to/from it. This is useful for the "what do I generally need to alter the speed of an object" question. If I replace "object" by "photon", maybe I'll need something more sophisticated that may even not be available yet.
"To make a pie from scratch, first you have to create the Universe". Does that sound familiar?
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
not a single one of those theories is grounded in actual understanding.
There is no absolute "understanding" in science. There is measurable or quantifiable prediction. If theory B does a better (measurable) job of predicting events than theory A, B is said to be a better theory...or, we "understand" things better with B.
Yes, it's quite true, "why" can regress infinitely. Nevertheless, you can use reasonable limits. Generally if you can't answer "why" to even one level, most people would question your claim to understanding.
The original example was inertia, and the context is physics. We know that inertia appears in the formula F=ma. We can predict it's effects very well. But that formula is descriptive, as far as inertia is concerned, rather than explanatory. It tells us there is a quantity called inertial mass, and suggests how we could measure it, but it doesn't tell us anything else about it. 'm' is just something Newton made up to describe what he saw. Based on that, it's not unreasonable to conclude that we don't really understand inertial mass, even though we can measure it and describe it's effects.
The current proposed explanation is that inertial mass is produced via an interaction with a Higgs field. You can then turn around and ask why a Higgs field supports this particular type of interaction. If you can't answer the Higgs question I might question whether you understand Higgs fields or not, but as far as inertia is concerned, you've successfully provided some explanatory power.
So what is the energy that is moving about / creating the asymmetrical surfaces? In a vaccuum, gravity obviously exists, even if there is no energy being exchanged between two bodies.
Right?
Do you realize that you are claiming understanding while responding to a /. echo of a piece on an alternative model of gravity, one that comes up with the same equations as general relativity, right?
"His name was James Damore."
Yes, I do. But what is being disputed is whether the word understanding can have any meaning. Your position seems to be that no matter what it can never be achieved. I'm presenting the argument that the term can be usefully applied in many cases. For instance, before the theory of quantum mechanics was created there was essentially no chance a BEC (Bose-Einstein Condensate) would be encountered. By 1925 enough of quantum mechanics was understood to predict the possibility of BEC and by 1995 technology had advanced enough to create it in the laboratory.
I would use that as an example of understanding of nature that is far from just playing with models. There are many more though I don't doubt you would dismiss them all as falling short of the requirements of true understanding. This seems to devolve into some sort of theological dispute which just doesn't interest me enough to pursue further.
Here is the theory with one fundamental thing as the basis for everything...
http://www.gootar.com/gravityboy/
It's a 50% cycle wave. Kinda like the wave at sporting events (arms up, then back to start).
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
This sort of atheism is a religious belief system, as in: "My Atheism proves I'm smarter, and my being smarter justifies my Atheism."
It is theistic religion that has the burden of proof, remember? But religion responds with appeals to faith, which is self-referential.
You seem to find forward, out-of-hand dismissals of your religion by some atheists to be distasteful. They may even be ignorant about many things and operating on a 'faith' that the religion is untrue. Even so, your side (popular or not) has the burden of producing a compelling body of evidence.
Your side also regularly mischaracterizes atheists confidence in tangible things, like the reasoning and research performed by others, as fanatic religious faith. But that expression of confidence in others could just as well be science and you wouldn't care. Lamentably, this pattern of smearing has been brought to other debates where conservatives are waging war against coping with new information, most notably global warming, despite enviros having a compelling body of evidence against business as usual. Its as if intellectual dishonesty is enshrined as a tradition.
That many atheists think they're smart is beside the point. You will never like how we say these things as long as you look toward faith as a source of support and comfort.
Oh damn. :( My mistake.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
No - PI is perfectly accurate within the field of geometry. Math is purely abstract, though - it's not reality.
circles may not actually exist - therefore PI is only truly "accurate" in an imaginary world where they do.
Absolute zero doesn't exist either but is commonly used as a base point. The oracle example just demonstrates the direction of thinking.
Knowing that hitting your thumb with a hummer hurts, explains a lot about the world. Especially for a kid or somebody else for whom it is an amazing prediction.
Imagine that you are playing a computer game and after some action you see your "hurt" points increased I think you will get some understanding how the game works.
So what is the energy that is moving about / creating the asymmetrical surfaces? In a vaccuum, gravity obviously exists, even if there is no energy being exchanged between two bodies.
As I understand this, there is no energy creating the surfaces; the surfaces are simply an abstraction of how much information is required to model the interior. But the universe seeks the lowest energy state and, equivalently, everything seeks to be modeled as simply as possible. One thing moves towards another because, in that way, it requires less information to be modeled; there are fewer possibilities involved (for example, possible locations) that must be representable.
But there's nothing actually causing the move. Instead, like how gasses diffuse because the atoms simply bounce away from each other, possibilities condense towards simpler descriptions because they are less likely to encompass more complex descriptions. It just so happens that there is a correlation between description complexity and area. Thus, the area between things tend to decrease. Thus, gravity.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Just because the math works doesn't mean it's true
Once again, a relevant XKCD comic appears that very day.
How does he do it? Is it magic? Is he like Merlin, living backwards through time?
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Uh, no... that's simply saying that it's 0.008 seconds less than star-rise to star-rise.
A sidereal day is about three and a half minutes less than a solar day.
FanFictionRecs.net
Perhaps you can help me on this. I read the paper, and absorbed most of what he had to say. The style is very clear. If only others in arxiv would follow... What I did not get was how distance is created. Time is taken care of with a Killing vector,which amounts to saying that "time is". But distance is supposed to be emergent. The discussion on 'foliation' might cover this, but if so I did not get it. If diffusion - as you term it - is to happen, then there needs to be some form of cardinality. That is, if there are three 'masses-behind-a-screen', A, B and C, then if A is to diffuse to C, it needs to know that B is in the way; or that B is "closer" than C. Second, if screens are essentially arbitrary - any collection of mass has a screen, and thus all configurations of all the mass there is can bs (are, in the theory) assigned to arbitrary sets, each with a screen - then does one not rapidly run into infinities and worse, combinatorial infinities, if the cardinality issue is not somehow settled?
And the latter is called stellar day and is the actual time of one full rotation of the Earth around its axis.
That's completely irrelevant to the distinction between stellar day and sidereal day.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Wake me up when he can actually use it to make a prediction. For example, he could use it to calculate the value of G. Or the mass of a fundamental particle. Apparently the information content of an electron and a neutrino are different, but why? Can he use his technique to calculate the ratio of the mass of the proton and electron? Till then it's just mental masturbation.
Support SETI@home
cons: 'alpha -> 'beta -> ('alpha X 'beta)
Thanks for that explanation. Verlinde himself has clarified his paper a little more here: http://staff.science.uva.nl/~erikv/page18/page18.html
A quick (ctrl + f in Firefox) search of this thread finds NO references to L Space! What the hell is wrong with Slashdot these days? Instead of parroting "That's no moon" every time someone sees a funny shaped rock in space, people should be pouncing on obvious things like this!
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
I'm not the one you replied to, but if you think that the politics in YOUR branch of academia are the same level as ALL branches, you are foolish.
Some are more political religion than science.