Parents of public school kids run the gamut from "cares a lot about the child's education" to "doesn't care about the child's education." The set of all parents who homeschool their kids filters out the "doesn't care" end of that scale.
A parent's care for their child's education is no simple factor in this system. Having a care doesn't necessarily mean they are capable of helping, and I've personally seen more than a typical number of situations where it was this very care that caused the learning deficit.
You are comparing [apples, oranges] to beef.
The source of the implications raised by the article can be traced by simply asking: "are these people indeed receiving education from the same place, or simply going to the same buildings?"
I can speak from personal experience and say I educated myself, regardless of what government-owned structure I was legally required to walk into every weekday. I don't imply that I'm the quintessential case here, but consider: Is it logical to reason that those that are more apt to learn also have the extra initiative to learn on their own, while those future illiterates do not?
I think if parents play a role in this, the time period to consider is the infancy of the child in question, not his/her school-faring years.
I could not possibly say anything more perfectly to the point. So I will just say, "yep" and nod my head. And as far as the implications of this: I think that if this story won't be noticed by anyone, it is in OUR best interests to see that it BECOMES noticed. Just as the free-sklyarov people are saying. This is really, really important. The Big Picture is to get the DMCA repealed, but more immediately important is that we stir a ruckus that gets Dmitry out of jail. How much does anyone want to bet that this will not create nearly as much trouble as the Mitnick ordeal did? What's the difference? Mitnick was a very stupid guy who got his rights taken away. We didn't support his freedom because he was nice, and we didn't contest that he broke the law. The beef was that he wasn't getting rights he was supposed to be guaranteed. Now Dmitry is just the converse. He didn't do anything illegal, except under the DMCA, which I personally refuse to accept as law, and if I could find a good and stirring way to break it, I would. He was OFFICIALLY arrested for that, but I hope we ALL know the REAL reason was because he happened to piss off Adobe Systems. Plus he's not being allowed to speak with his embassy. Plus he wasn't the only author of the software in question. Plus the COMPANY that released the software in Russia isn't getting any blame attached. They distinctly arrested Dmitry. Plus Adobe BOUGHT this software a month prior, so there isn't even any ethical argument here. That's the danger of the DMCA. Let the SELLER beware. Not the buyer. Dmitry is personally being held accountable for something that an escrow service that answers to the company that Dmitry works for did. So why won't this get the same support that Mitnick did? Because we can't really condense our entire argument to one easily-memorized sentence. That, and even a great deal of American people who read Slashdot don't seem to care, because althought this happened on US soil, this is still an 'over there' problem, simply because Dmitry is Russian.
Ok, this is my last post on this thread, really. Now, I'm not stupid, Genoaschild. You don't have to flame anonymously like a baby, like it somehow reinforces your misguided banter. And speaking of one sided theories, perhaps nobody else reading this thread find it ironic that you, er, Genoaschild, keeps going on about how no theory can ever be proven, and yet you, er, he, accepts his ideas as proven fact. Now at this point, I know you, er, he, doesn't know what the phrase 'a priori' means. Because I've said it more than once, and it hasn't even made an impact yet. You, er, he, is contradicting himself. Now I really, really, really am not going to be dragged further into this quite childish flame fest, when anyone who reads the thread can plainly see you, er, Genoaschild, for what he is. A child who can't deal with being wrong. If you, er, he, can't see through his own ideas as being dated, and OUT dated at that, and you, er, he, doesn't have the sense to read a single history book to realize that he is about the twenty thousandth person to come to this line of reasoning, you, er, he, will have to be proven blatantly incorrect, and stupid to boot, the hard way. I won't do that further than I already have.
Now I've heard everything. You're just being a troll now. You obviously have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, and despite all the corrections I could make on this, and future posts you make, I'm not going to waste my time, because it's apparent you are not capable of understanding physics or quantum mechanics.
And someone like you saying 'get a clue' is exactly the ad hominem crap I'd expect from someone who is willing to believe a priori that a theory is false, simply because they want to believe that. You certainly are a metaphysicist, and not a philosopher. You're only engaging in escapism to continue your line of thinking, and I've done my best to try to explain why the people that came before you that thought the same things abandoned their unreasonable theories. You have no grasp on many fundamental laws, and I will only cite one more. Ockham's Razor. You are certainly inventing unnecessary steps.
No matter how ad hominem your reply to my other post is, let me lay your mind to rest here: I'm not going to reply to it.
I'm really getting embarassed having to reply to these posts. You can't just keep 'zooming' in on particles and finding smaller particles, ad infinitum. There is a point where there are no longer any smaller particles, and modern quantum mechanics would have us believe that quarks are the bottom of the barrel. And I would hope your 20-page philosophy paper got a failure grade, because that has nothing to do with philosophy. It's metaphysics, and contrary to ignorant belief, they aren't nearly the same thing just because many philosophers were also metaphysicists. Philosophy relies on logic. Metaphysics is the use of unproved assumptions as a priori knowledge to interpolate other assumptions that, consequently, can't be proved. Metaphysics is mental masturbation. Anyone above the age of ten could disprove your theory, and I personally don't even think it's reasonable to believe it, let alone attempt to prove it. You're trying to compare planets with subatomic particles, which brings us to another FUNDAMENTAL PART OF QUANTUM MECHANICS, which is that it doesn't obey the same laws as the macro world. Planets and particles are not analogous in any way. Electrons do NOT circle a nucleus in the same way that planets orbit a star, and that's been commonly accepted for the last twenty years.
I also find it curious that you are mixing material particles and virtual particles in your arguments, as if they have anything in common. I believe you don't understand the fundamental difference between a mass-carrying particle and a virtual particle, and the fact that one cannot be expressed in terms of the other. You are trying to explain photons, which are virtual, in terms of electrons, which are material. Don't do that.
I'm sorry, but have you ever even studied relativity? Your conception of relative velocities doesn't hold anywhere near the speed of light. If two particles are going in opposite directions at 0.75c, the velocity of one relative to the other is NOT 1.5c, it's closer to 0.99c.
And maybe you've never heard of 'wave-particle duality' either. Go figure. That's pretty fundamental to quantum mechanics. Photons can act like waves or particles, depending on the situation. Light is NOT measured in waves, it's measured in quanta. That's another little nugget of fundamental quantum mechanics you neglected. Light has a wavelength, but that's not a quantitative measurement. Knowing the wavelength of some light will not tell you how much of it there is.
And the mass of a photon is not 'very tiny'. Photons are virtual particles. They have no mass, by definition. As far as different 'color' photons being of different 'masses', that's relativistic mass. Relativistic mass depends on velocity. Real mass doesn't. M = E_0 / c^2. E_0 is the energy of the object at rest.
Energy does not really exist? What is that supposed to mean? Do you know the difference between 'does not exist' and 'is not matter' ? Anything that affects reality in any way 'exists'. Of course energy is not matter. You could just as easily (and more correctly) say that velocity and mass do not exist, being spinoffs of energy. And I really have no idea what your last three sentences are supposed to mean, but I suspect you aren't familiar with the Constancy of the Speed of Light principle. If that's not what you're getting at, I certainly hope English is not your first language.
I strongly suggest you actually pick up a book and read something about relativity and quantum mechanics, because your seem to know about as much about the two as any American who has never read anything more in-depth than a high school physics text book. I personally recommend Hawking's A Brief History of Time.
There are a number of promising methods of getting information (everything's information, right?) from one place to another faster than the fascist 186k mi/s speed limit. It seems to me they fit into two categories:
taking advantage of common phenomena,
and
finding clever ways to bypass the problem.
--
The most immediately promising way to transmit information faster than light is by exploiting the nature of photons. One learns early on in quantum mechanics that photons are very weird creatures. They can become entangled. The exact nature of this relationship is beyond current human capacity to understand, I believe, but it makes for a very convenient situation. Almost a deus ex machina? Anyway, when photons become entangled, they become very self-conscious. They become obsessed with keeping up with the latest fashion trend. They become so obsessed that when their entangled pal changes her polarity, the other one changes to complement the polarity NOT at the speed of light, NOT "extremely fucking holy-shit fast", but INSTANTLY. And to make the situation further seem almost too convenient, entangled photons don't need to be materially near each other. After photons entangle, they can move to opposite sides of the universe and still INSTANTLY complement each other's polarity. Meaning if you change one, the other one changes. Meaning we as humans should be able to devise a system that takes advantage of this nature of photons. I have heard (I am sure most of you remember that/. article a while back on this) that "they" are experimenting with this phenomenon to "clone" photons, by using an odd double-entangled procedure. This same article said something to the effect that it violates sumsuch quantum law to pass MEANINGFUL information in this way. I myself don't see how that's possible. I don't understand why a machine cannot be devised that passively measures some effect of the photon's polarity change. This wouldn't violate the integrity of the photon's polarity, because it's only being PASSIVELY measured. Then why can't they use THAT setup to pass digital information across light years instantaneously? I guess I need to look into that.
The second method is a little less polite. Speed of light? We don't need no stinking speed of light. The light barrier only applies to space-time. So even a child can postulate that if this odd "space-time" thing is giving us so many problems, why don't we just NOT USE IT as the medium? And I would pat that child on the head, smile, and say, "YOU JUST GOT AN ANSWER FOR EVERYTHING, DON'T YOU, YOU LITTLE LOUDMOUTH SHITHEAD?!" But I digress. That's the basis behind the Einstein-Rosen bridge (you know it from Contact, Event Horizon, and probably lots of other movies that don't cross my mind now). Basically it goes that since our space and time are pissing us off with these heinous limitations, we can just create our own alternative kind of space that connects two definite points in space and time. This alternative kind of space and time is not stable enough to use as a parallel universe, and though there are doubts that physical matter could pass through it and still remain intact, we're MARGINALLY sure that electromagnetic radiation could pass through it with an acceptable loss. So I guess that means that wormholes are lossy transportation protocol:) There is a theory floating around (probably has been for some time) that certain naked singularities (black hole without an event horizon, because the singularity spins so fast) that are toroidal in nature instead of spheroidal could mark access points to ERB's because the donut hole would be subject to a whole lot of weird forces. I can't intelligently comment on that, because I don't know how something like that would work. But maybe someone else can elaborate.
--
As always, come and point out my stupid mistakes.
It's easy to say it's not a destructive process when you watch the event from orders of magnitutes of light years away, using the Hubble. But just because it looks purty over there doesn't mean such an event happening to OUR galaxy wouldn't be quite existance-threatening.
Yes, galaxies are mostly empty space. Even still, there would be an uncountable number of collisions.
No, astral bodies don't need to SMACK INTO each other in order to cause major changes in gravitation, orbit, climate, etc.
Migrating to other star systems is a moot point in light of this event. How will populating another system in THIS GALAXY do anything to ensure our survival in an event that affects the entire galaxy?
If we collide with Andromeda, I assure you that the entire structure of both galaxies will change forever, because we don't live in a Newtonian universe. The event won't simply undo itself.
I think you need to read a little Gleick, Briggs, Peat, Lorenz, Hofstadter, Russel, Prigogine, Bohm, or Poincare. They all understand the nature of cause and effect a lot better than you seem to.
Sterilizing the planet has been demoted to one of our minor feats for quite a while.
The theoretical particle experiments that are going on at Fermilab and CERN right now are potentially able to create a certain theoretical particle called an instanton, which is supposed to be able to destroy the UNIVERSE, by resetting it's ground state. Something akin to that book in which a more stable form of water that is solid at room temperature is discovered and then a sample is accidentally thrown in the ocean.
Comedy ensues.
Oh, and, uh... as far as "we're not really a long term concern for nature".... that's a rather unhealthy anthropomorphism. 'Nature' isn't an entity, despite what some crackpot Gaians may tell you. Those people just read Clarke's Beyond the Fall of Night one too many times. Humans are just as 'natural' as anything else in the universe. The fact that some people consider the word 'artificial' to be the opposite to the word 'natural' just shows how meaning can be distorted by years of misunderstanding. If you consider what humans create to not be 'natural' then you have to consider honey in the same way. It's manufactured by bees, and it wouldn't exist without them. And, if you dig deep enough, you will find that 99% of everything you see when you go outside fits this relationship template.
--
"Seeker, what do you think of galactic civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea."
I agree. Anybody versed even slightly in applied psychology will tell you that anticipation of effect sensitizes the person to that effect. I'm sure that there are MORE than hundreds of studies that validate psychosomatic effects, of which placebo is one.
But the article isn't saying that the above is not true. The article, to me, and "I Am Not An Expert," suggests that people will be equally sensitive to psychosomatic effects whether they get a sugar pill or not. This says, to me, that you can't study such a thing using placebo data, because there can't be a control group. Inherently, everyone is affected by this phenomenon, even the people that get the real medicine.
I'm not against new ideas, but I believe that when one single study contests uncountable numbers of previous ones, there should be abnormally careful attention paid to the procedure, and abnormal amounts of skepticism as to it's validity. This is the same line of thinking that got polygraph tests admitted without skepticism as substantial evidence in a court of law. If you look into that, you will learn that the "99% accurate" slogan is a far cry from true.
Fair game.
May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.
--Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter of 18 October 1967
Ahem, are you stupid or something? How could this possibly be viewed as anything other than a direct threat? Do you actually mean to tell me you believe this is some pathetic attempt to describe a way to improve the functioning of the organization? Give me a fucking break. This is a direct threat to MY life.
Stick to your toys, Clams, and leave us to our work.
The Asker is saying that by using wave energy as a power source, the moon will some how lose energy?
I don't see the connection, and surprisingly, am pretty well versed in thermodynamics.
To believe the moon would AT ALL, EVER, be affected in such a way first assumes that our use of waves will somehow make the seas more turbulent than they are.. which won't happen, due to the complex nature of how water in the oceans interacts; it's really hard to grasp chaos-theory stuff. I digress.
I mean you'd have to get a pretty fucking huge soliton wave going to make any gravitational effect at all; soliton waves hundreds of miles long already regularly travel through the ocean, and don't SEEM to be doing jack shit as far as pulling in the moon... so the effect of our disturbance in the water would have to be REALLY REALLY INCONCIEVEABLY MASSIVE for it to REGULARLY create soliton waves all throughout the ocean.
Nothing short of that would do a damn thing. Moon-tidal stuff happens on a global scale, and unless you can stop the oceans moving, nothing we do to the sea will change the moon's kinetic energy in that way.
Someone please tell me where my embarassing and glaring error lies.
I DO seem to remember another/. article that talked about Nuking the Moon
I'm sorry this isn't correct. Brain cells are grown in bone marrow. This is relatively old news. There have been some quite interesting experiments in which rats are injected with something radioactive in the bone marrow, and later their skulls are opened to find half the brain glowing. The phrase 'once enough of them are dead you are too' is correct no matter what bodily agent you are talking about.
As for living forever, brain cell death was never the barrier to a longer life anyway, it was the body that usually couldn't hold out, not the mind. Things like Alzheimers are exceptions, of course. This breakthrough will be a huge step in creating facilities that will allow a person to live for as long as they want. As far as these 'recipes' you speak of, we built the first atomic bomb through trial and error, so I don't know why you don't have more faith in the scientific community. That was sarcasm.
If there were no air up there, they wouldn't be able to burn up, because the friction of re-entry into the AIR is what causes the heat. By the time they NEED the balloon-chutes, they will work. Don't interpret this article as meaning they are going to be in deep space at the time, because this is still considered a low-Earth orbit. And they won't be 'orbiting' because that requires a very specific acceleration to maintain. It's a lot easier to fall to the Earth than it is to stay in orbit. Something about gravity.... you'd have to ask Newton for the specifics.
Where did you get -670 C from?
on
Space Diving
·
· Score: 1
Hydrogen boils at 20 Kelvin, or about -253 Celsius. -670 Celsius isn't even a valid temperature, as it's impossible to get colder than NO heat. Absolute zero is -273.15 Celsius, and absolute zero is impossible as well, due to the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics. And if you think Hydrogen has the lowest boiling point, it doesnt. Helium does. It boils at 1 Kelvin, which means it's liquid even in deep space, which maintains a constant 2.73 Kelvin.
I also feel the need to point out that the Air Force has already done this twice successfully.
Remember though it requires "animals with closely-related".
That nullifies a majority of extinct species.
Yes, but wouldn't we be able to rectify that problem in a few generations? After we bred the newly-reborn-recently-extinct animals for genetic purity (assuming they wouldn't be sterile, no I'm not a biologist), couldn't we then use THEM as carriers for other extinct species that they are more closely related to than any other existing species?
Is this even feasible?
If it is, we could eventually have enough samples to be able to clone up any animal, extinct or not.
This might be beneficial solely for it's cross referencing potential to our understanding of how evolution works...
I don't want to sound like a stupid offtopic troll, but Iceland *is* in North America tectonically. Interesting factoid. I guess it's not fair to blame all the geography mishaps on Americans after all.
More important than that, this article is getting more replies than I have ever seen on/. before. Amazing. Anyone know the record for replies? Or is this it?
I might be misunderstanding you, but I believe that is backwards; In it's own frame of reference a falling object will reach the event horizon, and if you happen to be in this object, and are still alive to look back the way you came in, you will see the universe ending behind you. That is, if the Big Crunch theory is right. Otherwise I can't guess what you might see. To an outside observer, on the other hand, the object will never reach the event horizon, and, in fact, wont even appear to be moving. That's just the way I understand it, and I, of course, hold no degrees in any physics, but that is the way it seems to make sense. I've been reading some very interesting stories about just this idea, as told by Greg Egan. I particularly like his short story, "The Planck Dive". You can find his stuff at http://www.netspace.net.au/~gregegan/index.html
Using that line of logic, it's not currently possible to determine the existence of black holes: we're not liable to "actually find one" since they elude all sorts of detection. That is why Hawking radiation is such a big deal, it's been our biggest lead lately. If we sent a few thousand probes in every direction continuously streaming back noise, and marked the point they stopped transmitting, a black hole is only one of a thousand possible explanations (reinforced by NASA's field record of less-than-perfectly functioning equipment). We could find one visually if it were close enough, or if we had a powerful enough telescope, by noticing that stars behind it are all not where they are supposed to be, and sometimes appearing twice. Since our current sky-scanning equipment can't even handle 25% of the sky, this isn't likely either. Maybe we will get lucky and the Hubble will find the phenomenon for us while it's shooting something else:) My point is, physical evidence is not always the best way to discover something, especially when talking about space. Statements that begin with "The only proof..." or "The only way..." ultimately tend to be false. Limiting options is counter-productive to the future.
Wow. Amazing. Well, since you took the time to be sarcastic, snide, and insulting, why don't I return the favor?
I did nothing of the sort. It amazes me how defensive people get here at slashdot, and, though I am not a qualified psychologist (you seem to care a great deal about credentials), I think what you need is a heaping dose of "get over it". It would be a shame if you turned into a troll before my eyes. I infer that you think I was trying to be argumentative, which is not the case. I'm rather sure of it since you constantly refer to "the argument" and your victory. You may not believe this, but not every conversation is an argument. The world isn't out to get you! I attacked neither your belief nor you personally, I just asked for elaboration. If that is enough to get you to write a 2 page flame post, I hope you don't typify the vast majority of people. Originally this post was much longer, but I realize now I can't reach you no matter how elaborate I get. It's plain that some people get it and some don't. I recognize my error, and if you were offended I apologize. I never claimed to be an authority, and it was your mistake to assume that. If the fact that my last post was not in my name bothers you, though I can't imagine why it would, remind yourself that I am not the author of the code slashdot uses, and therefore have no control over when it authenticates me and when it doesn't.
A quick refresher on the chemistry of water, CO2, and life:
Last time I checked, at 1 atm, the boiling point of CO2 was 194.5 Kelvin and the freezing point of water was 273.2 Kelvin. So either you don't know that liquid CO2 and liquid water cannot coexist at 1 atm, or you imply that the atmospheric pressure was somehow higher at the time.
For liquid water and liquid CO2 to coexist, the surface pressure of the planet would have to be over 10 atm at an average planetary temperature of 273 K. I believe that it would then be possible, but the temperature of ancient earth would have been much higher than this, and the pressure would have been much lower.
Furthermore, there was little oxygen at the time anyway, and water was rare. The atmosphere at the time of the first single celled organisms on this planet was volatile by current standards. High sulfur content, low oxygen content. High CO2 amounts as well, which is why the first life was plant life. Photosynthesis would have been the most efficient way to stay alive. Animal life came much later, when the atmosphere could finally support it. THAT is the beauty of our evolution. Our distant, DISTANT single celled plant ancestors terraformed this planet, and they made it ready for the next stage in evolution, which was animal life. This illustrates the symbiotic nature between plants and animals.
If there is any oxygen at all there, it's in very trace amounts.
You need to understand that Jupiter is not a "planet" in the classical sense, and is actually more closely a star. In fact, if Jupiter achieved a mass of about 75 times it's current one, it would reach critical mass and ignite. Jupiter is by and large mostly hydrogen, and the interesting clouds that make it so famous are just trace gasses. They would burn away quickly. There is no "solid" mass on Jupiter, unless you consider pressurized hydrogen a solid mass.
Europa is out best bet in the solar system for free water, with Titan, a moon of Saturn next.
Neptune could possibly have oxygen on it, or at least I hear that's the rumor. But then I also heard Neptune had a carbon layer, and the pressure on the planet is so great that it rains diamonds.
Slashdot Mirror
Parents of public school kids run the gamut from "cares a lot about the child's education" to "doesn't care about the child's education." The set of all parents who homeschool their kids filters out the "doesn't care" end of that scale.
A parent's care for their child's education is no simple factor in this system. Having a care doesn't necessarily mean they are capable of helping, and I've personally seen more than a typical number of situations where it was this very care that caused the learning deficit.
You are comparing [apples, oranges] to beef.
The source of the implications raised by the article can be traced by simply asking: "are these people indeed receiving education from the same place, or simply going to the same buildings?"
I can speak from personal experience and say I educated myself, regardless of what government-owned structure I was legally required to walk into every weekday. I don't imply that I'm the quintessential case here, but consider: Is it logical to reason that those that are more apt to learn also have the extra initiative to learn on their own, while those future illiterates do not?
I think if parents play a role in this, the time period to consider is the infancy of the child in question, not his/her school-faring years.
I could not possibly say anything more perfectly to the point. So I will just say, "yep" and nod my head. And as far as the implications of this: I think that if this story won't be noticed by anyone, it is in OUR best interests to see that it BECOMES noticed. Just as the free-sklyarov people are saying. This is really, really important. The Big Picture is to get the DMCA repealed, but more immediately important is that we stir a ruckus that gets Dmitry out of jail. How much does anyone want to bet that this will not create nearly as much trouble as the Mitnick ordeal did? What's the difference? Mitnick was a very stupid guy who got his rights taken away. We didn't support his freedom because he was nice, and we didn't contest that he broke the law. The beef was that he wasn't getting rights he was supposed to be guaranteed. Now Dmitry is just the converse. He didn't do anything illegal, except under the DMCA, which I personally refuse to accept as law, and if I could find a good and stirring way to break it, I would. He was OFFICIALLY arrested for that, but I hope we ALL know the REAL reason was because he happened to piss off Adobe Systems. Plus he's not being allowed to speak with his embassy. Plus he wasn't the only author of the software in question. Plus the COMPANY that released the software in Russia isn't getting any blame attached. They distinctly arrested Dmitry. Plus Adobe BOUGHT this software a month prior, so there isn't even any ethical argument here. That's the danger of the DMCA. Let the SELLER beware. Not the buyer. Dmitry is personally being held accountable for something that an escrow service that answers to the company that Dmitry works for did. So why won't this get the same support that Mitnick did? Because we can't really condense our entire argument to one easily-memorized sentence. That, and even a great deal of American people who read Slashdot don't seem to care, because althought this happened on US soil, this is still an 'over there' problem, simply because Dmitry is Russian.
Ok, this is my last post on this thread, really. Now, I'm not stupid, Genoaschild. You don't have to flame anonymously like a baby, like it somehow reinforces your misguided banter. And speaking of one sided theories, perhaps nobody else reading this thread find it ironic that you, er, Genoaschild, keeps going on about how no theory can ever be proven, and yet you, er, he, accepts his ideas as proven fact. Now at this point, I know you, er, he, doesn't know what the phrase 'a priori' means. Because I've said it more than once, and it hasn't even made an impact yet. You, er, he, is contradicting himself. Now I really, really, really am not going to be dragged further into this quite childish flame fest, when anyone who reads the thread can plainly see you, er, Genoaschild, for what he is. A child who can't deal with being wrong. If you, er, he, can't see through his own ideas as being dated, and OUT dated at that, and you, er, he, doesn't have the sense to read a single history book to realize that he is about the twenty thousandth person to come to this line of reasoning, you, er, he, will have to be proven blatantly incorrect, and stupid to boot, the hard way. I won't do that further than I already have.
Now I've heard everything. You're just being a troll now. You obviously have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, and despite all the corrections I could make on this, and future posts you make, I'm not going to waste my time, because it's apparent you are not capable of understanding physics or quantum mechanics.
And someone like you saying 'get a clue' is exactly the ad hominem crap I'd expect from someone who is willing to believe a priori that a theory is false, simply because they want to believe that. You certainly are a metaphysicist, and not a philosopher. You're only engaging in escapism to continue your line of thinking, and I've done my best to try to explain why the people that came before you that thought the same things abandoned their unreasonable theories. You have no grasp on many fundamental laws, and I will only cite one more. Ockham's Razor. You are certainly inventing unnecessary steps.
No matter how ad hominem your reply to my other post is, let me lay your mind to rest here: I'm not going to reply to it.
I'm really getting embarassed having to reply to these posts. You can't just keep 'zooming' in on particles and finding smaller particles, ad infinitum. There is a point where there are no longer any smaller particles, and modern quantum mechanics would have us believe that quarks are the bottom of the barrel. And I would hope your 20-page philosophy paper got a failure grade, because that has nothing to do with philosophy. It's metaphysics, and contrary to ignorant belief, they aren't nearly the same thing just because many philosophers were also metaphysicists. Philosophy relies on logic. Metaphysics is the use of unproved assumptions as a priori knowledge to interpolate other assumptions that, consequently, can't be proved. Metaphysics is mental masturbation. Anyone above the age of ten could disprove your theory, and I personally don't even think it's reasonable to believe it, let alone attempt to prove it. You're trying to compare planets with subatomic particles, which brings us to another FUNDAMENTAL PART OF QUANTUM MECHANICS, which is that it doesn't obey the same laws as the macro world. Planets and particles are not analogous in any way. Electrons do NOT circle a nucleus in the same way that planets orbit a star, and that's been commonly accepted for the last twenty years.
I also find it curious that you are mixing material particles and virtual particles in your arguments, as if they have anything in common. I believe you don't understand the fundamental difference between a mass-carrying particle and a virtual particle, and the fact that one cannot be expressed in terms of the other. You are trying to explain photons, which are virtual, in terms of electrons, which are material. Don't do that.
I'm sorry, but have you ever even studied relativity? Your conception of relative velocities doesn't hold anywhere near the speed of light. If two particles are going in opposite directions at 0.75c, the velocity of one relative to the other is NOT 1.5c, it's closer to 0.99c.
And maybe you've never heard of 'wave-particle duality' either. Go figure. That's pretty fundamental to quantum mechanics. Photons can act like waves or particles, depending on the situation. Light is NOT measured in waves, it's measured in quanta. That's another little nugget of fundamental quantum mechanics you neglected. Light has a wavelength, but that's not a quantitative measurement. Knowing the wavelength of some light will not tell you how much of it there is.
And the mass of a photon is not 'very tiny'. Photons are virtual particles. They have no mass, by definition. As far as different 'color' photons being of different 'masses', that's relativistic mass. Relativistic mass depends on velocity. Real mass doesn't. M = E_0 / c^2. E_0 is the energy of the object at rest.
Energy does not really exist? What is that supposed to mean? Do you know the difference between 'does not exist' and 'is not matter' ? Anything that affects reality in any way 'exists'. Of course energy is not matter. You could just as easily (and more correctly) say that velocity and mass do not exist, being spinoffs of energy. And I really have no idea what your last three sentences are supposed to mean, but I suspect you aren't familiar with the Constancy of the Speed of Light principle. If that's not what you're getting at, I certainly hope English is not your first language.
I strongly suggest you actually pick up a book and read something about relativity and quantum mechanics, because your seem to know about as much about the two as any American who has never read anything more in-depth than a high school physics text book. I personally recommend Hawking's A Brief History of Time.
There are a number of promising methods of getting information (everything's information, right?) from one place to another faster than the fascist 186k mi/s speed limit. It seems to me they fit into two categories: /. article a while back on this) that "they" are experimenting with this phenomenon to "clone" photons, by using an odd double-entangled procedure. This same article said something to the effect that it violates sumsuch quantum law to pass MEANINGFUL information in this way. I myself don't see how that's possible. I don't understand why a machine cannot be devised that passively measures some effect of the photon's polarity change. This wouldn't violate the integrity of the photon's polarity, because it's only being PASSIVELY measured. Then why can't they use THAT setup to pass digital information across light years instantaneously? I guess I need to look into that.
:) There is a theory floating around (probably has been for some time) that certain naked singularities (black hole without an event horizon, because the singularity spins so fast) that are toroidal in nature instead of spheroidal could mark access points to ERB's because the donut hole would be subject to a whole lot of weird forces. I can't intelligently comment on that, because I don't know how something like that would work. But maybe someone else can elaborate.
taking advantage of common phenomena,
and
finding clever ways to bypass the problem.
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The most immediately promising way to transmit information faster than light is by exploiting the nature of photons. One learns early on in quantum mechanics that photons are very weird creatures. They can become entangled. The exact nature of this relationship is beyond current human capacity to understand, I believe, but it makes for a very convenient situation. Almost a deus ex machina? Anyway, when photons become entangled, they become very self-conscious. They become obsessed with keeping up with the latest fashion trend. They become so obsessed that when their entangled pal changes her polarity, the other one changes to complement the polarity NOT at the speed of light, NOT "extremely fucking holy-shit fast", but INSTANTLY. And to make the situation further seem almost too convenient, entangled photons don't need to be materially near each other. After photons entangle, they can move to opposite sides of the universe and still INSTANTLY complement each other's polarity. Meaning if you change one, the other one changes. Meaning we as humans should be able to devise a system that takes advantage of this nature of photons. I have heard (I am sure most of you remember that
The second method is a little less polite. Speed of light? We don't need no stinking speed of light. The light barrier only applies to space-time. So even a child can postulate that if this odd "space-time" thing is giving us so many problems, why don't we just NOT USE IT as the medium? And I would pat that child on the head, smile, and say, "YOU JUST GOT AN ANSWER FOR EVERYTHING, DON'T YOU, YOU LITTLE LOUDMOUTH SHITHEAD?!" But I digress. That's the basis behind the Einstein-Rosen bridge (you know it from Contact, Event Horizon, and probably lots of other movies that don't cross my mind now). Basically it goes that since our space and time are pissing us off with these heinous limitations, we can just create our own alternative kind of space that connects two definite points in space and time. This alternative kind of space and time is not stable enough to use as a parallel universe, and though there are doubts that physical matter could pass through it and still remain intact, we're MARGINALLY sure that electromagnetic radiation could pass through it with an acceptable loss. So I guess that means that wormholes are lossy transportation protocol
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As always, come and point out my stupid mistakes.
It's easy to say it's not a destructive process when you watch the event from orders of magnitutes of light years away, using the Hubble. But just because it looks purty over there doesn't mean such an event happening to OUR galaxy wouldn't be quite existance-threatening.
Yes, galaxies are mostly empty space. Even still, there would be an uncountable number of collisions.
No, astral bodies don't need to SMACK INTO each other in order to cause major changes in gravitation, orbit, climate, etc.
Migrating to other star systems is a moot point in light of this event. How will populating another system in THIS GALAXY do anything to ensure our survival in an event that affects the entire galaxy?
If we collide with Andromeda, I assure you that the entire structure of both galaxies will change forever, because we don't live in a Newtonian universe. The event won't simply undo itself.
I think you need to read a little Gleick, Briggs, Peat, Lorenz, Hofstadter, Russel, Prigogine, Bohm, or Poincare. They all understand the nature of cause and effect a lot better than you seem to.
Not that I'm trying to sow discord.
Sterilizing the planet has been demoted to one of our minor feats for quite a while.
The theoretical particle experiments that are going on at Fermilab and CERN right now are potentially able to create a certain theoretical particle called an instanton, which is supposed to be able to destroy the UNIVERSE, by resetting it's ground state. Something akin to that book in which a more stable form of water that is solid at room temperature is discovered and then a sample is accidentally thrown in the ocean.
Comedy ensues.
Oh, and, uh... as far as "we're not really a long term concern for nature".... that's a rather unhealthy anthropomorphism. 'Nature' isn't an entity, despite what some crackpot Gaians may tell you. Those people just read Clarke's Beyond the Fall of Night one too many times. Humans are just as 'natural' as anything else in the universe. The fact that some people consider the word 'artificial' to be the opposite to the word 'natural' just shows how meaning can be distorted by years of misunderstanding. If you consider what humans create to not be 'natural' then you have to consider honey in the same way. It's manufactured by bees, and it wouldn't exist without them. And, if you dig deep enough, you will find that 99% of everything you see when you go outside fits this relationship template.
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"Seeker, what do you think of galactic civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea."
I agree. Anybody versed even slightly in applied psychology will tell you that anticipation of effect sensitizes the person to that effect. I'm sure that there are MORE than hundreds of studies that validate psychosomatic effects, of which placebo is one.
But the article isn't saying that the above is not true. The article, to me, and "I Am Not An Expert," suggests that people will be equally sensitive to psychosomatic effects whether they get a sugar pill or not. This says, to me, that you can't study such a thing using placebo data, because there can't be a control group. Inherently, everyone is affected by this phenomenon, even the people that get the real medicine.
I'm not against new ideas, but I believe that when one single study contests uncountable numbers of previous ones, there should be abnormally careful attention paid to the procedure, and abnormal amounts of skepticism as to it's validity. This is the same line of thinking that got polygraph tests admitted without skepticism as substantial evidence in a court of law. If you look into that, you will learn that the "99% accurate" slogan is a far cry from true.
Fair game.
May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.
--Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter of 18 October 1967
Ahem, are you stupid or something? How could this possibly be viewed as anything other than a direct threat? Do you actually mean to tell me you believe this is some pathetic attempt to describe a way to improve the functioning of the organization? Give me a fucking break. This is a direct threat to MY life.
Stick to your toys, Clams, and leave us to our work.
This binary system idea seems to be a point attractor for weird and complex theories.
This is my favorite:
http://www.darkstar1.co.uk/
It explains everything from Sumerians to Sirius. All for your viewing pleasure.
Let me try to understand this question....
/. article that talked about Nuking the Moon
The Asker is saying that by using wave energy as a power source, the moon will some how lose energy?
I don't see the connection, and surprisingly, am pretty well versed in thermodynamics.
To believe the moon would AT ALL, EVER, be affected in such a way first assumes that our use of waves will somehow make the seas more turbulent than they are.. which won't happen, due to the complex nature of how water in the oceans interacts; it's really hard to grasp chaos-theory stuff. I digress.
I mean you'd have to get a pretty fucking huge soliton wave going to make any gravitational effect at all; soliton waves hundreds of miles long already regularly travel through the ocean, and don't SEEM to be doing jack shit as far as pulling in the moon... so the effect of our disturbance in the water would have to be REALLY REALLY INCONCIEVEABLY MASSIVE for it to REGULARLY create soliton waves all throughout the ocean.
Nothing short of that would do a damn thing. Moon-tidal stuff happens on a global scale, and unless you can stop the oceans moving, nothing we do to the sea will change the moon's kinetic energy in that way.
Someone please tell me where my embarassing and glaring error lies.
I DO seem to remember another
Scientists at Los Alamos comment:
"The line between compression utility and deletion utility JUST GOT FUZZIER!"
Los Alamos is currently compressing their entire archives with LZIP, as a theft deterrence system.
More at 7.
I'm sorry this isn't correct. Brain cells are grown in bone marrow. This is relatively old news. There have been some quite interesting experiments in which rats are injected with something radioactive in the bone marrow, and later their skulls are opened to find half the brain glowing. The phrase 'once enough of them are dead you are too' is correct no matter what bodily agent you are talking about.
As for living forever, brain cell death was never the barrier to a longer life anyway, it was the body that usually couldn't hold out, not the mind. Things like Alzheimers are exceptions, of course. This breakthrough will be a huge step in creating facilities that will allow a person to live for as long as they want. As far as these 'recipes' you speak of, we built the first atomic bomb through trial and error, so I don't know why you don't have more faith in the scientific community. That was sarcasm.
If there were no air up there, they wouldn't be able to burn up, because the friction of re-entry into the AIR is what causes the heat. By the time they NEED the balloon-chutes, they will work. Don't interpret this article as meaning they are going to be in deep space at the time, because this is still considered a low-Earth orbit. And they won't be 'orbiting' because that requires a very specific acceleration to maintain. It's a lot easier to fall to the Earth than it is to stay in orbit. Something about gravity.... you'd have to ask Newton for the specifics.
Hydrogen boils at 20 Kelvin, or about -253 Celsius. -670 Celsius isn't even a valid temperature, as it's impossible to get colder than NO heat. Absolute zero is -273.15 Celsius, and absolute zero is impossible as well, due to the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics. And if you think Hydrogen has the lowest boiling point, it doesnt. Helium does. It boils at 1 Kelvin, which means it's liquid even in deep space, which maintains a constant 2.73 Kelvin.
I also feel the need to point out that the Air Force has already done this twice successfully.
Remember though it requires "animals with closely-related".
That nullifies a majority of extinct species.
Yes, but wouldn't we be able to rectify that problem in a few generations? After we bred the newly-reborn-recently-extinct animals for genetic purity (assuming they wouldn't be sterile, no I'm not a biologist), couldn't we then use THEM as carriers for other extinct species that they are more closely related to than any other existing species?
Is this even feasible?
If it is, we could eventually have enough samples to be able to clone up any animal, extinct or not.
This might be beneficial solely for it's cross referencing potential to our understanding of how evolution works...
Can anyone elaborate on this prospect?
I don't want to sound like a stupid offtopic troll, but Iceland *is* in North America tectonically. Interesting factoid. I guess it's not fair to blame all the geography mishaps on Americans after all.
/. before. Amazing. Anyone know the record for replies? Or is this it?
More important than that, this article is getting more replies than I have ever seen on
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Still shackled to the shadow
They will gain their own intelligence and come back to Earth and hurl asteroid chunks at us for opressing their organic brethren.
Hey, it IS 2001!
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Enjoy it while it las~@[EOF from client]
I might be misunderstanding you, but I believe that is backwards; In it's own frame of reference a falling object will reach the event horizon, and if you happen to be in this object, and are still alive to look back the way you came in, you will see the universe ending behind you. That is, if the Big Crunch theory is right. Otherwise I can't guess what you might see. To an outside observer, on the other hand, the object will never reach the event horizon, and, in fact, wont even appear to be moving. That's just the way I understand it, and I, of course, hold no degrees in any physics, but that is the way it seems to make sense. I've been reading some very interesting stories about just this idea, as told by Greg Egan. I particularly like his short story, "The Planck Dive". You can find his stuff at http://www.netspace.net.au/~gregegan/index.html
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Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow
Using that line of logic, it's not currently possible to determine the existence of black holes: we're not liable to "actually find one" since they elude all sorts of detection. That is why Hawking radiation is such a big deal, it's been our biggest lead lately. If we sent a few thousand probes in every direction continuously streaming back noise, and marked the point they stopped transmitting, a black hole is only one of a thousand possible explanations (reinforced by NASA's field record of less-than-perfectly functioning equipment). We could find one visually if it were close enough, or if we had a powerful enough telescope, by noticing that stars behind it are all not where they are supposed to be, and sometimes appearing twice. Since our current sky-scanning equipment can't even handle 25% of the sky, this isn't likely either. Maybe we will get lucky and the Hubble will find the phenomenon for us while it's shooting something else :) My point is, physical evidence is not always the best way to discover something, especially when talking about space. Statements that begin with "The only proof..." or "The only way..." ultimately tend to be false. Limiting options is counter-productive to the future.
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Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow
Wow. Amazing. Well, since you took the time to be sarcastic, snide, and insulting, why don't I return the favor?
I did nothing of the sort. It amazes me how defensive people get here at slashdot, and, though I am not a qualified psychologist (you seem to care a great deal about credentials), I think what you need is a heaping dose of "get over it". It would be a shame if you turned into a troll before my eyes. I infer that you think I was trying to be argumentative, which is not the case. I'm rather sure of it since you constantly refer to "the argument" and your victory. You may not believe this, but not every conversation is an argument. The world isn't out to get you! I attacked neither your belief nor you personally, I just asked for elaboration. If that is enough to get you to write a 2 page flame post, I hope you don't typify the vast majority of people. Originally this post was much longer, but I realize now I can't reach you no matter how elaborate I get. It's plain that some people get it and some don't. I recognize my error, and if you were offended I apologize. I never claimed to be an authority, and it was your mistake to assume that. If the fact that my last post was not in my name bothers you, though I can't imagine why it would, remind yourself that I am not the author of the code slashdot uses, and therefore have no control over when it authenticates me and when it doesn't.
A quick refresher on the chemistry of water, CO2, and life:
Last time I checked, at 1 atm, the boiling point of CO2 was 194.5 Kelvin and the freezing point of water was 273.2 Kelvin. So either you don't know that liquid CO2 and liquid water cannot coexist at 1 atm, or you imply that the atmospheric pressure was somehow higher at the time.
For liquid water and liquid CO2 to coexist, the surface pressure of the planet would have to be over 10 atm at an average planetary temperature of 273 K. I believe that it would then be possible, but the temperature of ancient earth would have been much higher than this, and the pressure would have been much lower.
Furthermore, there was little oxygen at the time anyway, and water was rare. The atmosphere at the time of the first single celled organisms on this planet was volatile by current standards. High sulfur content, low oxygen content. High CO2 amounts as well, which is why the first life was plant life. Photosynthesis would have been the most efficient way to stay alive. Animal life came much later, when the atmosphere could finally support it. THAT is the beauty of our evolution. Our distant, DISTANT single celled plant ancestors terraformed this planet, and they made it ready for the next stage in evolution, which was animal life. This illustrates the symbiotic nature between plants and animals.
There is no water on Jupiter.
If there is any oxygen at all there, it's in very trace amounts.
You need to understand that Jupiter is not a "planet" in the classical sense, and is actually more closely a star. In fact, if Jupiter achieved a mass of about 75 times it's current one, it would reach critical mass and ignite. Jupiter is by and large mostly hydrogen, and the interesting clouds that make it so famous are just trace gasses. They would burn away quickly. There is no "solid" mass on Jupiter, unless you consider pressurized hydrogen a solid mass.
Europa is out best bet in the solar system for free water, with Titan, a moon of Saturn next.
Neptune could possibly have oxygen on it, or at least I hear that's the rumor. But then I also heard Neptune had a carbon layer, and the pressure on the planet is so great that it rains diamonds.