It is remarkable in the fact that all of the previous attempts to mix Quantum-"anything" with Relativity have pretty much spectacularly failed.
Well, except for the attempt in 1931 by Dirac that was spectacularly successful and united Special Relativity with Quantum mechanics giving rise to the field of particle physics. You can even quantized GR but you have to put an energy cut-off in to make it renormalizable. Since there is no justification for such a cut-off such models are regarded as seriously flawd so we have a problem with GR+quantum but not SR+quantum.
A common misconception. The Higgs field only explains the mass of the fundamental particles i.e. the electron, the quarks, W and Z bosons etc. The mass of the proton has always been hand-wavingly assigned to the binding energy of the quarks. Now we can stop waving our hands and say that it is definitely due to the binding energy of the quarks.
Reduce the atmospheric warming effect of contrails by microwaving and thereby heating the atmosphere...
Actually they are cooling: they reflect sunlight back into space and produce global dimming which counteracts the greenhouse effect. There was a study done comparing day-night temperature differences over the period around the 11/9 attacks when air travel was grounded over the US that suggested air travel had a significant contribution to global dimming.
Of course it is still a stupid idea: reduce global dimming which offsets the greenhouse effect by burning more fuel which makes the greenhouse effect worse.
Supernovae produce U-238 and U-235 (I may have got the mass numbers slightly off) in roughly equal quantities. If we measure the relative abundance of these elements on Earth then we can see that they were produced roughly 6 billion years ago.
Of course there would very likely be material from other sources as well, not just that one particular star going bang but since the Earth is at least 4.5 billion years old the sun must be slightly older it is hard to imagine multiple supernovae contributing over time because that would some earlier than 6 billion years ago. You could, of course, have several supernovae all occurring at roughly the same time I suppose but, whether it was one or more stars going bang we do have some evidence that at least one of those stars went bang roughly 6 billion years ago.
As long as the energy required to create the positrons is less than MC^2 (and I would imagine it would be)
You imagine wrong. The only way to produce positrons is to convert energy into mass. This requires at least 'mc^2' worth of energy to start with. In fact, because in the vast majority of cases you have to produce an electron along with the positron, you actually need 2mc^2 and when you recombine them you get 2mc^2 worth of energy back. So, assuming you could store it safely anti-matter, it is really just like a battery.
To make use of anti-matter as a power source we would need to find a way to convert matter into anti-matter. Energetically this is allowed but various conservation laws get in the way. However, since we know that the symmetry between matter and anti-matter is a broken one (we live in a Universe dominated by matter if you need proof) it might be achievable in the future depending on exactly what causes the symmetry to be broken. With our current understanding, while not technically forbidden by any fundamental conservation law, we know of no process which could, say, convert a neutron to an anti-neutron.
Further, when it comes to the universe we have no idea what the underlying rules for its creation are, so we would have no idea what the paths for possible outcomes are.
You are correct, w don't know them yet. What I was merely trying to point out is that what would likely be a far more desirable (but not necessarily correct!) paradigm would be one where, despite the apparent myriad of different possibile universes we find that the fundamental properties we measure today interrelate in a way that inevitably leads to a Universe similar to what we observe today. There are precedents for this: for example there are almost an infinite number of different models for Supersymmetry but all of them (just about) lead to the 3 forces in the Standard Model converging at a point i.e. you can pick the parameters anyway you like but the end result is the same.
Of course we don't know whether SUSY exists and the convergence of the forces is not a good argument for it (but there are other better ones) but it is nevertheless "interesting" to see this model independent behaviour. Perhaps, on a larger scale, this also applies to the Universe. We don't know but I would argue that it is an aesthetically more pleasing possibility than a infinite number of universes.
I thought that this idea has been around for a while, or at least it was the logical conclusion of having a multiverse.
It has been around for a while and it is still an unpalatable then as it is now. Personally I think a better goal for science would be to see if there can only be one basic outcome regardess of the initial conditions. For example If you drop some water on a mountain top you know that eventually it will arrive at the ocean. It might have a long trip , severa re-evaporations and rains etc but it will eventually get there. Suppose the universe is the same way? Regardless of what path it takes you will always end up with c being large, G and h bing small etc. However, untill we actually know where these funadmental constants come from we have no hope of explaining why their values are the way that they are.
Something must have come before this, and something before that, and something before that, ad infinitum.
Not so. Since the Big Bang created the space-time of the Universe there is doubt as to whether time existed before it....and if time did not exist then there is no longer any simple concept of causality so the problem we really need to ask is how can anything exist without space-time as we know it existing because clearly something did exist in order to create the Universe we observe. I think. Well I'm pretty sure at any rate.
More people are starting to find it a viable alternative for many circumstances, and opt not to explicitly buy MS Office.
While OO might not have all the bells an whistles of MSOffice some of the features are vastly superior such as equation editing. OO has a plugin, OOLatex, which lets you use LaTeX syntax to enter and edit equations. This is far, far superior to the MSOffice equation editor for those of us with complex equations to present.
Even the built in math editor lets you enter equations in text form, although the syntax is irritatingly not LaTeX. I know this is a rather specialized application but, at least in this one regard, OO far outshines MSOffice or Keynote and is why I use it.
Because it bypasses protections established by extradition treaties (or lack thereof).
No it doesn't. The person in question still has those protections they just, stupidly, decided to not to avail themselves of them. Supposing the interview had been real? the border guard could still have got him based on the name in his passport. It's really quite clever and, since they are not inducing him to do something illegal in anyway at all, quite moral.
I'd much rather see them use their brains like this than some of the tactics they have deployed in Canada which involved illegal kidnapping and lying to Canadian officials. THAT is something which bypasses the protections established in extradition treaties....not to mention an excellent way to spark major diplomatic incidents and lose allies if the agents get caught.
Just because I can't explain the beginning of the universe, it does not mean that it required a god to do it.
That's true. However this is a different statement to saying the the universe does not need god in order to exist - it might. Scientifically speaking we simply do not know because we don't know what caused the Big Bang.
There are many theories about the beginning of the universe. While none of them are proven, or may ever be, none of them require a god to do it.
Careful. There is only one scientific theory about the beginning of the Universe and it is called the Big Bang. At least after about 10^{-12}s it has be proven to be correct, at least beyond any reasonable scientific doubt. However, as to the cause of the Big Bang science is completely silent...other than for the odd wild speculation which are arguably on no firmer footing that religious creation stories and these generally do require god.
This assumes that dark matter generates gamma rays, a form of electromagnetic radiation. Has anybody ever scientifically demonstrated that it is possible to generate such electromagnetic radiation by means OTHER than moving electrical charges?
You are quite correct. They are making a huge assumption that dark matter can annihilate with itself. Whether it can do this depends on the type of dark matter - in some models it can in others it cannot. This is not pointless though - their work will either see it or at least put a limit on how well it does annihilate which we may be able to use to give us a better idea where to look at the LHC.
One way to avoid having charges produce photons is to have your particle partly consist of the EM field. For example, although the experiment has never been done, I think (if you are a particle theorist feel free to correct me!) you could annihilate two Z bosons to give two photons because the Z consists partly of an EM field.
If they do detect such gamma radiation, how will they ascertain that this radiation is NOT caused by an electrical phenomena rather than some unknown action of undiscovered dark matter?
When you have an annihilation like this the photons produced are mono-energetic. Hence you will get a large spike in the emissions at a particular energy value. Since dark matter has a mass in the 10's of GeV minimum (for most models) this would be extremely hard to produce by other means and certainly not in a mono-energetic fashion. Of course, this is not concrete proof that it comes from dark matter but if all the physics we know about cannot explain it then it would have to be dark matter or something else completely new.
"Actually the problem with proving God exists or does not exist with science is that you need to compare something created by God to something not created by God"
Actually I think Douglas Adams had the right idea. If you could find something naturally produced by the universe that was so incredibly unlikely to have occurred by normal processes (even given the vast number of worlds which may sustain life) then that would be some step towards evidence....so start looking for that Babel fish!
Scientifically speaking to know this you would need to know the cause of the Big Bang. If so then please enlighten us all with evidence to back you up, if not then your conclusion is flawed.
"There is no such thing as laws of nature. Every so called law of nature is mankinds attempt to put the things mankind perceives into understandable terms."
Just because our efforts to codify the laws of nature are not yet perfect does not mean that there are no laws of nature. If we follow your logic then nothing exists because all we observe is just our senses turning what they perceive into understandable terms.
I would not call it radioactive - I would say that it emits radiation. Radioactivity is a property of an atomic nucleus see here and here. If you are generous you could extend it to decays of subatomic particles but it does not really stretch to radiation produced by interacting subatomic particles!
While I do agree that Steorn is a joke (based on models I have seen), there are many other devices that show great promise. There are many people who have claimed to have successfully developed perpetual motion devices.
Yes, unfortunately every single one of those claims have been proven false. In order to create energy you need to have a universe where the physical laws differ based on location: you have to break the translational symmetry of space-time. This throws relativity out the window. Given that relativity is the most accurately tested scientific principle ever I have extreme doubts that you, or some Irish company, have proven it not true. It is about as believable as claiming you have found faeries at the bottom of your garden.
Slashdot Mirror
It is remarkable in the fact that all of the previous attempts to mix Quantum-"anything" with Relativity have pretty much spectacularly failed.
Well, except for the attempt in 1931 by Dirac that was spectacularly successful and united Special Relativity with Quantum mechanics giving rise to the field of particle physics. You can even quantized GR but you have to put an energy cut-off in to make it renormalizable. Since there is no justification for such a cut-off such models are regarded as seriously flawd so we have a problem with GR+quantum but not SR+quantum.
A common misconception. The Higgs field only explains the mass of the fundamental particles i.e. the electron, the quarks, W and Z bosons etc. The mass of the proton has always been hand-wavingly assigned to the binding energy of the quarks. Now we can stop waving our hands and say that it is definitely due to the binding energy of the quarks.
Actually they assume E^2=p^2c^2 + m^2c^4. The simplified version of the the equation, E=mc^2 is only valid for particles with zero momentum.
Reduce the atmospheric warming effect of contrails by microwaving and thereby heating the atmosphere...
Actually they are cooling: they reflect sunlight back into space and produce global dimming which counteracts the greenhouse effect. There was a study done comparing day-night temperature differences over the period around the 11/9 attacks when air travel was grounded over the US that suggested air travel had a significant contribution to global dimming.
Of course it is still a stupid idea: reduce global dimming which offsets the greenhouse effect by burning more fuel which makes the greenhouse effect worse.
Supernovae produce U-238 and U-235 (I may have got the mass numbers slightly off) in roughly equal quantities. If we measure the relative abundance of these elements on Earth then we can see that they were produced roughly 6 billion years ago.
Of course there would very likely be material from other sources as well, not just that one particular star going bang but since the Earth is at least 4.5 billion years old the sun must be slightly older it is hard to imagine multiple supernovae contributing over time because that would some earlier than 6 billion years ago. You could, of course, have several supernovae all occurring at roughly the same time I suppose but, whether it was one or more stars going bang we do have some evidence that at least one of those stars went bang roughly 6 billion years ago.
uranium is costly to enrich but the hard work of creating the uranium atoms was done for us by the sun a long time ago.
Not quite. It was done by a star which preceded the sun and which went supernova about 6 billion years ago.
As long as the energy required to create the positrons is less than MC^2 (and I would imagine it would be)
You imagine wrong. The only way to produce positrons is to convert energy into mass. This requires at least 'mc^2' worth of energy to start with. In fact, because in the vast majority of cases you have to produce an electron along with the positron, you actually need 2mc^2 and when you recombine them you get 2mc^2 worth of energy back. So, assuming you could store it safely anti-matter, it is really just like a battery.
To make use of anti-matter as a power source we would need to find a way to convert matter into anti-matter. Energetically this is allowed but various conservation laws get in the way. However, since we know that the symmetry between matter and anti-matter is a broken one (we live in a Universe dominated by matter if you need proof) it might be achievable in the future depending on exactly what causes the symmetry to be broken. With our current understanding, while not technically forbidden by any fundamental conservation law, we know of no process which could, say, convert a neutron to an anti-neutron.
Of course. However since time had not yet been created it is a very short video.
Further, when it comes to the universe we have no idea what the underlying rules for its creation are, so we would have no idea what the paths for possible outcomes are.
You are correct, w don't know them yet. What I was merely trying to point out is that what would likely be a far more desirable (but not necessarily correct!) paradigm would be one where, despite the apparent myriad of different possibile universes we find that the fundamental properties we measure today interrelate in a way that inevitably leads to a Universe similar to what we observe today. There are precedents for this: for example there are almost an infinite number of different models for Supersymmetry but all of them (just about) lead to the 3 forces in the Standard Model converging at a point i.e. you can pick the parameters anyway you like but the end result is the same.
Of course we don't know whether SUSY exists and the convergence of the forces is not a good argument for it (but there are other better ones) but it is nevertheless "interesting" to see this model independent behaviour. Perhaps, on a larger scale, this also applies to the Universe. We don't know but I would argue that it is an aesthetically more pleasing possibility than a infinite number of universes.
I thought that this idea has been around for a while, or at least it was the logical conclusion of having a multiverse.
It has been around for a while and it is still an unpalatable then as it is now. Personally I think a better goal for science would be to see if there can only be one basic outcome regardess of the initial conditions. For example If you drop some water on a mountain top you know that eventually it will arrive at the ocean. It might have a long trip , severa re-evaporations and rains etc but it will eventually get there. Suppose the universe is the same way? Regardless of what path it takes you will always end up with c being large, G and h bing small etc. However, untill we actually know where these funadmental constants come from we have no hope of explaining why their values are the way that they are.
Something must have come before this, and something before that, and something before that, ad infinitum.
Not so. Since the Big Bang created the space-time of the Universe there is doubt as to whether time existed before it....and if time did not exist then there is no longer any simple concept of causality so the problem we really need to ask is how can anything exist without space-time as we know it existing because clearly something did exist in order to create the Universe we observe. I think. Well I'm pretty sure at any rate.
No, thanks to relativity a parked car will be illegal according to a speeding camera but the camera itself will think of itself at rest.
Of course a parked Toyota could be doubly illegal...
More people are starting to find it a viable alternative for many circumstances, and opt not to explicitly buy MS Office.
While OO might not have all the bells an whistles of MSOffice some of the features are vastly superior such as equation editing. OO has a plugin, OOLatex, which lets you use LaTeX syntax to enter and edit equations. This is far, far superior to the MSOffice equation editor for those of us with complex equations to present.
Even the built in math editor lets you enter equations in text form, although the syntax is irritatingly not LaTeX. I know this is a rather specialized application but, at least in this one regard, OO far outshines MSOffice or Keynote and is why I use it.
Because it bypasses protections established by extradition treaties (or lack thereof).
No it doesn't. The person in question still has those protections they just, stupidly, decided to not to avail themselves of them. Supposing the interview had been real? the border guard could still have got him based on the name in his passport. It's really quite clever and, since they are not inducing him to do something illegal in anyway at all, quite moral.
I'd much rather see them use their brains like this than some of the tactics they have deployed in Canada which involved illegal kidnapping and lying to Canadian officials. THAT is something which bypasses the protections established in extradition treaties....not to mention an excellent way to spark major diplomatic incidents and lose allies if the agents get caught.
Just because I can't explain the beginning of the universe, it does not mean that it required a god to do it.
That's true. However this is a different statement to saying the the universe does not need god in order to exist - it might. Scientifically speaking we simply do not know because we don't know what caused the Big Bang.
There are many theories about the beginning of the universe. While none of them are proven, or may ever be, none of them require a god to do it.
Careful. There is only one scientific theory about the beginning of the Universe and it is called the Big Bang. At least after about 10^{-12}s it has be proven to be correct, at least beyond any reasonable scientific doubt. However, as to the cause of the Big Bang science is completely silent...other than for the odd wild speculation which are arguably on no firmer footing that religious creation stories and these generally do require god.
Box diagram with virtual charged fermions works.
This assumes that dark matter generates gamma rays, a form of electromagnetic radiation. Has anybody ever scientifically demonstrated that it is possible to generate such electromagnetic radiation by means OTHER than moving electrical charges?
You are quite correct. They are making a huge assumption that dark matter can annihilate with itself. Whether it can do this depends on the type of dark matter - in some models it can in others it cannot. This is not pointless though - their work will either see it or at least put a limit on how well it does annihilate which we may be able to use to give us a better idea where to look at the LHC.
One way to avoid having charges produce photons is to have your particle partly consist of the EM field. For example, although the experiment has never been done, I think (if you are a particle theorist feel free to correct me!) you could annihilate two Z bosons to give two photons because the Z consists partly of an EM field.
If they do detect such gamma radiation, how will they ascertain that this radiation is NOT caused by an electrical phenomena rather than some unknown action of undiscovered dark matter?
When you have an annihilation like this the photons produced are mono-energetic. Hence you will get a large spike in the emissions at a particular energy value. Since dark matter has a mass in the 10's of GeV minimum (for most models) this would be extremely hard to produce by other means and certainly not in a mono-energetic fashion. Of course, this is not concrete proof that it comes from dark matter but if all the physics we know about cannot explain it then it would have to be dark matter or something else completely new.
"Actually the problem with proving God exists or does not exist with science is that you need to compare something created by God to something not created by God"
Actually I think Douglas Adams had the right idea. If you could find something naturally produced by the universe that was so incredibly unlikely to have occurred by normal processes (even given the vast number of worlds which may sustain life) then that would be some step towards evidence....so start looking for that Babel fish!
"The universe does not need a god to exist"
Scientifically speaking to know this you would need to know the cause of the Big Bang. If so then please enlighten us all with evidence to back you up, if not then your conclusion is flawed.
"There is no such thing as laws of nature. Every so called law of nature is mankinds attempt to put the things mankind perceives into understandable terms."
Just because our efforts to codify the laws of nature are not yet perfect does not mean that there are no laws of nature. If we follow your logic then nothing exists because all we observe is just our senses turning what they perceive into understandable terms.
Who do you trust to remain objective, the scientists or the priests?
It depends on whether the scientists have been down to the bookies recently...
It was a Colin Baker episode not a Tom Baker one.
I would not call it radioactive - I would say that it emits radiation. Radioactivity is a property of an atomic nucleus see here and here. If you are generous you could extend it to decays of subatomic particles but it does not really stretch to radiation produced by interacting subatomic particles!
While I do agree that Steorn is a joke (based on models I have seen), there are many other devices that show great promise. There are many people who have claimed to have successfully developed perpetual motion devices.
Yes, unfortunately every single one of those claims have been proven false. In order to create energy you need to have a universe where the physical laws differ based on location: you have to break the translational symmetry of space-time. This throws relativity out the window. Given that relativity is the most accurately tested scientific principle ever I have extreme doubts that you, or some Irish company, have proven it not true. It is about as believable as claiming you have found faeries at the bottom of your garden.
It's such a great hoax that there are still people who believe it! :-)