The one simple rule for spotting pseudo-science is to look for terms such as gravito-xxxxx force. Anything that links gravity to something else is at best plying the fringe of science or at worst is hokum. The reason is that established science cannot reconcile gravity with any of the other forces or with quantum mechanics. Therefore there is no gravitomagnetic or gravitoelectric force in mainstream science.
Doesn't mean any of it is wrong, it should just raise a flag that this person is way out there.
Just to point out the obvious, this paper plane is no more made from paper than your typical 747. In fact it's made from the same stuff as a 747 - aluminium. I think it would be much more fun to run the experiment with paper. That way it would be a Flaming Laser Powered Paper Plane.
Gravity isn't well understood. One theory is that it is "implemented" using a carrier particle (like the electro-weak force), say the graviton. These would be descrete particles that spew out of all massive objects and carry the gravitational force to other objects. Obviously there would be lots of these to simulate, though!
Yes but a diamond crystal isn't composed of molecules. It's a packed structure of carbon atoms (about 1000 of them in this case). You could think of the entire crystal as a molecule, but in some case they can weigh several kilograms (not diamond crystals usually)!
The article doesn't give much information and is pretty poorly written, IMHO. It says nothing about how the buckminster fullerene molecules (chemists tend to hate the name "buckyball") are used to form these tiny crystals. You would need only 20 or so C60 molecules to form a C1000 diamond crystal, so that might be something to do with it.
I think people need to be pretty careful before declaring that this isn't music. Stating that it's merely sound puts you in the same camp as all the people who said the same about jazz, rock, metal, rap, etc. Everything new gets labeled noise/sound by people who don't appreciate it at first.
I don't appreciate lowercase either yet, but the way I look at it is it's like hearing a language you don't understand. It sounds like noise, but intellectually you know it isn't. You just need to learn to understand it.
I think that even if it takes 10-20 years of hard effort, that this is something that must be done. It is an incredible test case for techniques that could be applied to many extinct species.
Lastly, I think the PCR breakthrough is important because it shows that the DNA strands are undamaged in these specimens. That means that they can be replicated and potentially sequenced in the manner of the human genome project. This way we can record the Thylacine genome permanently on a CD instead of in a jar, something we can only dream of for the dinosours in Jurassic Park. If this can be done for enough specimens, then it doesn't matter how long it takes us to develop the techniques - we should eventually be able to resurrect the tiger. The digital information isn't going anywhere.
Yeah but you seem to be assuming that the priority for the mission will be to give the absolute best possible chance of success, rather than any other political or symbolic goals. Say the best possible chance of success was 83% using a team composed mostly of white american men. If the mission planners could use a politically correct team (whatever that means - equal male/female more ethnically diverse, etc) by picking perhaps not exactly the absolute best people for the job and at the same time reduce the overall chance of mission success to 82.5%, then they should probably do so.
I really think that there are more "best of the best" top people out there than you realise. There will be millions of volunteers to choose from. The cream of the crop, the people who are all so good you can't really measure them, will number in the dozens at least. It would be easy to then make selections that are more or less politically correct as well.
A magnetic field could divert the protons and electrons emitted in a solar flare, but wouldn't effect the x-ray and gamma-ray radiation which are uncharged photons. I'm pretty sure the electromagnetic radiation is far more dangerous and can only be blocked by putting something massive between the sun and the traveller. The Mars literature covers this (see Red Mars by KSR). Usually there is a hidey-hole where the travellers ride out the storm partially shielded by the water/fuel tank. Also, you would travel in a minimum of the solar 11 year cycle. These are around 2006, 2017, 2028, etc. In any case there's no doubt you would receive a large dose on a trip to Mars. It probably wouldn't kill you immediately but it would most likely sterilise a male. You would want to stock your sperm beforehand on Earth and have a cure for cancer handy at the time as well.
The fact that you think we got bored with the whole thing doesn't speak much to your grasp of the issue. It makes as much sense as saying that a marathon runner gets bored with the whole thing when he stops running at the end rather than continuing to jog on the spot for a few hours. Once you win a race you stop running it. With the moon shots, it's that simple.
Also, we don't need "to ask a crew of people to risk their lives", we would simply have to allow a handfull of the millions of volunteers to do so. The very difficult tricky bit will be deciding who gets to go. I honestly think I'd go in a heartbeat.
Um, yeah and yesterday it seemed like this kind of attack was absolutely impossible. That's cause no one had tried it properly yet. Today, no one has tried it properly under real-world conditions.
In fact we can pretty much assume that if it is possible then the NSA or CIA has been doing it for years and at the same time conspiring to hold up the prices of flat-panel displays that are immune to the attack.
The problem with the bowling ball and the light foam ball is that it doesn't show anything with much accuracy unless you remove the effects of air resistance. In air the forces due to gravity are different in each case but the accelerations due to gravity are identical. Brilliant, however the forces due to air resistance are the same (at the same velocity) and the accelerations due to air resistance are different. That's why the feather and hammer experiment "needed" to be done on the moon.
Which brings me to another pet peeve. A previous poster said that Apollo 14 proved something with this experiment. Clearly they did not, it was just a bit of fun.
Yeah it has the potential to cause those things, but who knows if it actually does? It would be quite hard to test the substance in humans. Probably one of the health effects that has been measured is something like "twitching in the tail", but that didn't make the cut in the EPA report for humans.
If the EPA had been aware of the levels of acrylamide consumed in french fries, etc then they may not have rated it so badly. As it was, they had the option of setting the MCL at 0.5 ppb (very low) for the purposes of water treatment and then they covered themselves by listing the nasty "potential health hazards" which were probably measured by injecting mice with the stuff until they were 50% acrylamide by weight.
Anyway, the EPA never needed to do an in-depth study of this substance, but thankfully the Swedish agency is doing so now.
The idea that if somebody just works out the correct grand unified theory we'll be able to control space and time at will is laughable.
I don't think anyone involved in this discussion has suggested this, least of all me. I just think that the opposite extreme position is equally laughable. If we both accept that technological advances are built upon science, then what you're saying is that there are no technological advances in our future that do not rely upon our present understanding of physics. If this is the case it's the first time in our history that it's been true.
An excellent case in point is the potential application of quantum entanglement to computation. Pre-quantum-theory, people such as yourself could claim with utmost confidence the limits of computability (Turing, et al). These ideas are now being turned on their heads by the possibiilities offered by quantum computation. The challenges remaining to quantum computation appear to be practical, rather than theoretical. While there's a long way to go, it is now absurd to hold to the absolute limits imposed by classical computing theory.
It's equally absurd to claim, as you do, that any future insights into the structure of the universe cannot have a macroscopic impact on technology. And please don't bother to argue that information theory is fundamentally different to things like gravity shielding. They are both grounded in our incomplete understanding of physics.
works out the correct grand unified theory we'll be able to control space and time at will is laughable.
I don't think anyone involved in this discussion has suggested this, least of all me. I just think that the opposite extreme position is equally laughable. If we both accept that technological advances are built upon science, then what you're saying is that there are no technological advances in our future that do not rely upon our present understanding of physics. If this is the case it's the first time in our history that it's been true.
An excellent case in point is the potential application of quantum entanglement to computation. Pre-quantum-theory, people such as yourself could claim with utmost confidence the limits of computability (Turing, et al). These ideas are now being turned on their heads by the possibiilities offered by quantum computation. The challenges remaining to quantum computation appear to be practical, rather than theoretical. While there's a long way to go, it is now absurd to hold to the absolute limits imposed by classical computing theory.
It's equally absurd to claim, as you do, that any future insights into the structure of the universe cannot have a macroscopic impact on technology. And please don't bother to argue that information theory is fundamentally different to things like gravity shielding. They are both grounded in our incomplete understanding of physics.
You don't seem to understand the difference between the deep theoretical desire to understand quantum gravity and the limited real world effect such an understanding would have.
Wow, you seem to understand exactly what the implications of a deep theoretical understanding of the universe would be. That puts you way ahead of the rest of the scientific establishment. Scrap the idea of writing to Discovery Magazine - write to Science instead and get the message out there!
They're trying to sell copy. I'm not going to fault pop-sci publications for trying to do that. But from a *PRACTICAL* point of view we understand gravity at large distance scales. Just like we understand mechanics at large distance scales.
Besides, I'm not talking about a *PRACTICAL* understanding of gravity. If you want to completely rule out claims like Podkletnov's and label them a scam, you need more than a practical understanding. You need a thorough theoretical understanding, and we don't have that.
The interesting thing about gravity is that it isn't well understood by modern physics. Totally untrue. General relativity is understood very well. Predictions for Binary pulsar systems agree very well with observation (many decimal places).
General relativity is fine, but we have no way of reconciling it with quantum physics. Or rather, we have a bunch of competing theories, but none of them is proven yet. Discovery magazine listed as one of it's 11 unanswered questions for modern physics "What is gravity?". Maybe you should write in and explain it to them?:)
The Standard Model of particle physics does not account for gravity. It is assumed there is a carrier particle for gravity called the gravitron, but this has not been detected. If anyone is still reading this thread, many many illuminating links can be found from this google search.
...and a complete scam. It was about an alleged anti-gravity disc, made from a 12" superconducting ring that looked not unlike a brake pad.
This is far from being consigned to the scam basket (although it may end up there). The easiest way to demonstrate this is to note that NASA has invested in research to try to replicate Podkletnov's results.
The interesting thing about gravity is that it isn't well understood by modern physics. We know how it behaves (we think) but we don't know what causes it really. This makes it equally ripe for psuedo-science as for breakthrough science. In any case, an April Fool's day scam it isn't.
There are a bunch of other links here and a good overview here.
The Lifter v4.0 is maintained on the ground base with 4 thin nylon threads to avoid that it escapes to the ceiling...
Of course, one easy way to film this is to place the table upside down and mounted on the wall. Then film the "UFO" falling under gravity in slow motion. It will appear to rise under "electrogravity" and be caught by the nylon threads. I would suggest that there is no way to tell from the photos and movies which way is actually up.
Overall a neat toy, but most of all very reasonably priced for those who like to rip their tunes at the highest compression rates.
Highly compressing your tunes leads to low bit rates.:) So, actually people who rip their tunes at the lowest-compression rates need the most storage space.
We know how long a second is. Time as we measure it is based on Earth's rotation and revolution.
Nah we stopped doing that a long time ago. The revolution of the Earth is slowing down as the Earth sheds angular momentum to the moon. There are other relatively minor effects on the rate of the Earth's rotation. One of the ways we measure change in astronomical periods is by using incredibly accurate atomic clocks.
The original poster had a very good question: How do we define the second with such accuracy. The answer is basically: arbitrarily. In the end it doesn't matter as long as we all agree on a very accurate estimate.
As an interesting side note, even the calender is not completely determined yet. Since the number of days in a year is not a round number we have a number of rules for ammending the calender. Everyone knows about the leap year every 4 years. But this rule is skipped on years divisible by 100. The second rule is skipped on years divisible by 400. Even these adjustments are not sufficient and the interesting bit is that IIRC, noone has decided on how to handle additional corrections. The current drift rate is around 1 day in 3300 years, so if you want to book that venue for your 5000 birthday now, it will be difficult to get the date right.
Slashdot Mirror
The one simple rule for spotting pseudo-science is to look for terms such as gravito-xxxxx force. Anything that links gravity to something else is at best plying the fringe of science or at worst is hokum. The reason is that established science cannot reconcile gravity with any of the other forces or with quantum mechanics. Therefore there is no gravitomagnetic or gravitoelectric force in mainstream science.
Doesn't mean any of it is wrong, it should just raise a flag that this person is way out there.
Just to point out the obvious, this paper plane is
no more made from paper than your typical 747.
In fact it's made from the same stuff as a 747 -
aluminium. I think it would be much more fun to
run the experiment with paper. That way it would
be a Flaming Laser Powered Paper Plane.
Gravity isn't well understood. One theory is that it is "implemented" using a carrier particle (like the electro-weak force), say the graviton. These would be descrete particles that spew out of all massive objects and carry the gravitational force to other objects. Obviously there would be lots of these to simulate, though!
Yes but a diamond crystal isn't composed of molecules. It's a packed structure of carbon atoms (about 1000 of them in this case). You could think of the entire crystal as a molecule, but in some case they can weigh several kilograms (not diamond crystals usually)!
The article doesn't give much information and is pretty poorly written, IMHO. It says nothing about how the buckminster fullerene molecules (chemists tend to hate the name "buckyball") are used to form these tiny crystals. You would need only 20 or so C60 molecules to form a C1000 diamond crystal, so that might be something to do with it.
I think people need to be pretty careful before declaring that this isn't music. Stating that it's merely sound puts you in the same camp as all the people who said the same about jazz, rock, metal, rap, etc. Everything new gets labeled noise/sound by people who don't appreciate it at first.
I don't appreciate lowercase either yet, but the way I look at it is it's like hearing a language you don't understand. It sounds like noise, but intellectually you know it isn't. You just need to learn to understand it.
I think that even if it takes 10-20 years of hard effort, that this is something that must be done. It is an incredible test case for techniques that could be applied to many extinct species.
Lastly, I think the PCR breakthrough is important because it shows that the DNA strands are undamaged in these specimens. That means that they can be replicated and potentially sequenced in the manner of the human genome project. This way we can record the Thylacine genome permanently on a CD instead of in a jar, something we can only dream of for the dinosours in Jurassic Park. If this can be done for enough specimens, then it doesn't matter how long it takes us to develop the techniques - we should eventually be able to resurrect the tiger. The digital information isn't going anywhere.
Yeah but you seem to be assuming that the priority for the mission will be to give the absolute best possible chance of success, rather than any other political or symbolic goals. Say the best possible chance of success was 83% using a team composed mostly of white american men. If the mission planners could use a politically correct team (whatever that means - equal male/female more ethnically diverse, etc) by picking perhaps not exactly the absolute best people for the job and at the same time reduce the overall chance of mission success to 82.5%, then they should probably do so.
I really think that there are more "best of the best" top people out there than you realise. There will be millions of volunteers to choose from. The cream of the crop, the people who are all so good you can't really measure them, will number in the dozens at least. It would be easy to then make selections that are more or less politically correct as well.
A magnetic field could divert the protons and electrons emitted in a solar flare, but wouldn't effect the x-ray and gamma-ray radiation which are uncharged photons. I'm pretty sure the electromagnetic radiation is far more dangerous and can only be blocked by putting something massive between the sun and the traveller. The Mars literature covers this (see Red Mars by KSR). Usually there is a hidey-hole where the travellers ride out the storm partially shielded by the water/fuel tank. Also, you would travel in a minimum of the solar 11 year cycle. These are around 2006, 2017, 2028, etc.
In any case there's no doubt you would receive a large dose on a trip to Mars. It probably wouldn't kill you immediately but it would most likely sterilise a male. You would want to stock your sperm beforehand on Earth and have a cure for cancer handy at the time as well.
The fact that you think we got bored with the whole thing doesn't speak much to your grasp of the issue. It makes as much sense as saying that a marathon runner gets bored with the whole thing when he stops running at the end rather than continuing to jog on the spot for a few hours. Once you win a race you stop running it. With the moon shots, it's that simple.
Also, we don't need "to ask a crew of people to risk their lives", we would simply have to allow a handfull of the millions of volunteers to do so. The very difficult tricky bit will be deciding who gets to go. I honestly think I'd go in a heartbeat.
You can touch digital models. See Reachin and SensAble.
Um, yeah and yesterday it seemed like this kind of attack was absolutely impossible. That's cause no one had tried it properly yet. Today, no one has tried it properly under real-world conditions.
In fact we can pretty much assume that if it is possible then the NSA or CIA has been doing it for years and at the same time conspiring to hold up the prices of flat-panel displays that are immune to the attack.
The problem with the bowling ball and the light foam ball is that it doesn't show anything with much accuracy unless you remove the effects of air resistance. In air the forces due to gravity are different in each case but the accelerations due to gravity are identical. Brilliant, however the forces due to air resistance are the same (at the same velocity) and the accelerations due to air resistance are different. That's why the feather and hammer experiment "needed" to be done on the moon.
Which brings me to another pet peeve. A previous poster said that Apollo 14 proved something with this experiment. Clearly they did not, it was just a bit of fun.
Yeah it has the potential to cause those things, but who knows if it actually does? It would be quite hard to test the substance in humans. Probably one of the health effects that has been measured is something like "twitching in the tail", but that didn't make the cut in the EPA report for humans.
If the EPA had been aware of the levels of acrylamide consumed in french fries, etc then they may not have rated it so badly. As it was, they had the option of setting the MCL at 0.5 ppb (very low) for the purposes of water treatment and then they covered themselves by listing the nasty "potential health hazards" which were probably measured by injecting mice with the stuff until they were 50% acrylamide by weight.
Anyway, the EPA never needed to do an in-depth study of this substance, but thankfully the Swedish agency is doing so now.
The idea that if somebody just works out the correct grand unified theory we'll be able to control space and time at will is laughable.
I don't think anyone involved in this discussion has suggested this, least of all me. I just think that the opposite extreme position is equally laughable. If we both accept that technological advances are built upon science, then what you're saying is that there are no technological advances in our future that do not rely upon our present understanding of physics. If this is the case it's the first time in our history that it's been true.
An excellent case in point is the potential application of quantum entanglement to computation. Pre-quantum-theory, people such as yourself could claim with utmost confidence the limits of computability (Turing, et al). These ideas are now being turned on their heads by the possibiilities offered by quantum computation. The challenges remaining to quantum computation appear to be practical, rather than theoretical. While there's a long way to go, it is now absurd to hold to the absolute limits imposed by classical computing theory.
It's equally absurd to claim, as you do, that any future insights into the structure of the universe cannot have a macroscopic impact on technology. And please don't bother to argue that information theory is fundamentally different to things like gravity shielding. They are both grounded in our incomplete understanding of physics.
works out the correct grand unified theory we'll be able to control space and time at will is laughable.
I don't think anyone involved in this discussion has suggested this, least of all me. I just think that the opposite extreme position is equally laughable. If we both accept that technological advances are built upon science, then what you're saying is that there are no technological advances in our future that do not rely upon our present understanding of physics. If this is the case it's the first time in our history that it's been true.
An excellent case in point is the potential application of quantum entanglement to computation. Pre-quantum-theory, people such as yourself could claim with utmost confidence the limits of computability (Turing, et al). These ideas are now being turned on their heads by the possibiilities offered by quantum computation. The challenges remaining to quantum computation appear to be practical, rather than theoretical. While there's a long way to go, it is now absurd to hold to the absolute limits imposed by classical computing theory.
It's equally absurd to claim, as you do, that any future insights into the structure of the universe cannot have a macroscopic impact on technology. And please don't bother to argue that information theory is fundamentally different to things like gravity shielding. They are both grounded in our incomplete understanding of physics.
You don't seem to understand the difference between the deep theoretical desire to understand quantum gravity and the limited real world effect such an understanding would have.
Wow, you seem to understand exactly what the implications of a deep theoretical understanding of the universe would be. That puts you way ahead of the rest of the scientific establishment. Scrap the idea of writing to Discovery Magazine - write to Science instead and get the message out there!
They're trying to sell copy. I'm not going to fault pop-sci publications for trying to do that. But from a *PRACTICAL* point of view we understand gravity at large distance scales. Just like we understand mechanics at large distance scales.
Ok, but they got their list from Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos, a report of the National Research Council. Which admittedly didn't use the wording "What is gravity?", but the point is the same.
Besides, I'm not talking about a *PRACTICAL* understanding of gravity. If you want to completely rule out claims like Podkletnov's and label them a scam, you need more than a practical understanding. You need a thorough theoretical understanding,
and we don't have that.
The interesting thing about gravity is that it isn't well understood by modern physics.
:)
Totally untrue. General relativity is understood very well. Predictions for Binary pulsar systems agree very well with observation (many decimal places).
General relativity is fine, but we have no way of reconciling it with quantum physics. Or rather, we have a bunch of competing theories, but none of them is proven yet. Discovery magazine listed as one of it's 11 unanswered questions for modern physics "What is gravity?". Maybe you should write in and explain it to them?
The Standard Model of particle physics does not account for gravity. It is assumed there is a carrier particle for gravity called the gravitron, but this has not been detected. If anyone is still reading this thread, many many illuminating links can be found from this google search.
...and a complete scam. It was about an alleged anti-gravity disc, made from a 12" superconducting ring that looked not unlike a brake pad.
This is far from being consigned to the scam basket (although it may end up there). The easiest way to demonstrate this is to note that NASA has invested in research to try to replicate Podkletnov's results.
The interesting thing about gravity is that it isn't well understood by modern physics. We know how it behaves (we think) but we don't know what causes it really. This makes it equally ripe for psuedo-science as for breakthrough science. In any case, an April Fool's day scam it isn't.
There are a bunch of other links here and a good overview here.
The Lifter4 website bears the following caption.
The Lifter v4.0 is maintained on the ground base with 4 thin nylon threads to avoid that it escapes to the ceiling...
Of course, one easy way to film this is to place the table upside down and mounted on the wall. Then film the "UFO" falling under gravity in slow motion. It will appear to rise under "electrogravity" and be caught by the nylon threads. I would suggest that there is no way to tell from the photos and movies which way is actually up.
Overall a neat toy, but most of all very reasonably priced for those who like to rip their tunes at the highest compression rates.
:)
Highly compressing your tunes leads to low bit rates.
So, actually people who rip their tunes at the lowest-compression rates need the most storage space.
I don't know why, but this was one of the funniest things I've read on slashdot for a while.
I think I need more sleep...
A detailed analysis and debunking of the Ancient Egyptian/Australia theory (hoax) can be found in this usenet discussion.
We know how long a second is. Time as we measure it is based on Earth's rotation and revolution.
Nah we stopped doing that a long time ago. The revolution of the Earth is slowing down as the Earth sheds angular momentum to the moon. There are other relatively minor effects on the rate of the Earth's rotation. One of the ways we measure change in astronomical periods is by using incredibly accurate atomic clocks.
The original poster had a very good question: How do we define the second with such accuracy. The answer is basically: arbitrarily. In the end it doesn't matter as long as we all agree on a very accurate estimate.
As an interesting side note, even the calender is not completely determined yet. Since the number of days in a year is not a round number we have a number of rules for ammending the calender. Everyone knows about the leap year every 4 years. But this rule is skipped on years divisible by 100. The second rule is skipped on years divisible by 400. Even these adjustments are not sufficient and the interesting bit is that IIRC, noone has decided on how to handle additional corrections. The current drift rate is around 1 day in 3300 years, so if you want to book that venue for your 5000 birthday now, it will be difficult to get the date right.
Man, if it's a plug then you're representing yourself as the author or someone involved in the publishing, etc.
;)
Or maybe you're Orson Scott Card?