Dark matter, dark energy -- keep these concepts in mind before you speak so confidently about the extent of human knowledge or Science's map of Reality. I've said it before and i'll say it again -- the human need of the scientist to remain the arbiter of what IS is the biggest barrier to fundamental developments in science. Individually it's psychological, collectively it's sociological; in both scopes there's a resistance to the idea of reconsidering or abandoning an supposed Knowledge, despite the pressure of anamolous observation, because the individual or collective ego is threatened with annihilation by such a change.
But Reality doesn't care if your model is incomplete. Edison summarily dismissed AC power systems as impractical, even dangerous, even after Tesla had succesfully developed the theory and practice of polyphase AC, because Edison's ego was heavily invested in DC systems. He ended up licensing and selling AC systems because Edison was above all a businessman. If he'd been an academic, say, whose career was built on the idea that AC power was untenable, perhaps he would have gone to his grave defending DC.
...of Mills' math. The page you pointed to simply recapitulates the basics of the standard Bohr atom, INCLUDING the assumption that particles are pointlike -- and therefore essentially abstract, as Bohr preferred to think. The author never engages Mills math or his reasoning.
Mills explicitly assumes that the electron, to be physical, must have an sensible extended form. His solutions to the Schrodinger equations don't describe a 3D 'cloud' of statistically-probable positions for each point charge spread through space at each given time. He has instead found a valid set of equations that describe the electron as a 2D 'shell' of charge. Read his book for more, argued better than I can. His math spits out the hydrogen atom we observe quite accurately.
It's frustrating that many people won't take more time to understand Mills' proposals. That's the problem with paradigm shifts; to grapple with the different model, you have to posit that the model might be sufficiently descriptive, even if that invalidates assumptions of your own model. And when you've had seventy years of the Copenhagen interpretation of the atom, you've got some basic assumptions that people don't like to see threatened -- so they won't consider a new model, or will only point out that, in terms of the old model, it doesn't make sense. But it's by definition impossible to understand the new paradigm solely in terms of the old; if it weren't you wouldn't need a new paradigm.
Very much related. Wolfram makes this connection himself in "A New Kind of Science," pointing to spin networks as a possible link to his all-encompassing network automaton. Note, however, that Woflram's network doesn't just divide space into cells; the network precedes space or time. We perceive three-dimensional space and time, matter and energy due to the evolutions of the underlying network, but the network itself doesn't necessarily match our physical concepts of spatial continuity. So, conceivably, connected nodes in this network could represented what we see as spatially separated points. I personally think he was just leaving the door open for non-locality, and that spatially separate points will always be separated in the network.
Disprove what? Knee-jerk skepticism based on a Google search? Go read Mills' papers and try to explain the ABSOLUTELY REPEATABLE results -- anomalous spectral lines and high-energy H species are produced when hydrogen is reacted with other elements that have ionization energies equal to a multiple of the potential energy of hydrogen. Why? Mills theorizes hydrinos, based on a mountain of math -- a model which has led him to make predictions, perform further experiments, and confirm those predictions. Methodically. Repeatably.
This is NOT pseudoscience. THIS IS SCIENCE. I suggest that you, the rest of the Slashdot knee-jerk skeptics and the scientific establishment figures who dismiss Mills' hydrino theory AND HIS EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS out-of-hand because you just 'know' they can't be true should examine your faculties for emotional attachment to other theories that, while they may be useful, are clearly incomplete. Not that Mills' theories are complete; we have no COMPLETE model of physics and probably never will. But his model describes and predicts a wider range of phenomena than the theories he proposes to replace.
There is NO valid reason to remain attached to ANY scientific model that cannot describe observable phenomena without essentially saying "and then some magic happens." Exclusion of observable phenomena from dominant theories is as old as science, probably. In the domain of energy production, take a look at Faraday's homopolar generator for an example. EM theory as we generally conceive today cannot fully explain this device, so it is excluded as anomalous. Far better to include reality rather than exclude it, I say.
Remember, Emagic sells MIDI and audio interfaces and the superb new Logic Control DAW control surface as well. I'm getting visions of an Apple mixer with an embedded Mac, Logic, CoreAudio plugins, maybe hardware expandability, all in icy white. Like a Mackie Digital 8-Bus, but (maybe) (a little) cheaper.
Oh, who am I kidding. If Apple makes a mixer it'll still cost tons of money.
My take? Apple is driving towards a future of multimedia as structured MPEG-4 streams, with easy multi-platform exchange. Logic already does ProTools' Open Media Format, which has been the closest thing to a DAW interchange format. But a structured multimedia document format, like full MPEG4 profiles, is much more likely to end up in audio manufacturers' hardware too, making for seamless integration between some future Apple version of Logic and those popular Fostex, Akai, Roland, Mackie and Alesis hard-disk recording-studios-in-a-box.
I've read everything that's come out of BLP for the last four years. I suggest this paper for starters, as it's the most compact statement Mills has made on CQM to date. Mills ideas are elegant and simple. Oh, and CQM reasonably explains electron spin in a completely clear way, something standard quantum mechanics hasn't managed. You'll find further papers here.
In any case, it might not matter if anyone 'believes' in hydrinos. BLP has developed materials with novel properties through the BLP process, and they'll get these materials to market long before mainstream physics even begins to take CQM seriously.
Go see what they've done, and if you can, come up with a better explanation for the results of BLP's experiments -- all of them. If you come up with a reasonable alternate explanation (besides "it's a hoax" or "they're just really bad scientists") then by all means come join the Hydrino Study Group.
'Oh, nothing'll topple MP3 - it's got too much mindshare!' 'I don't see the point - wasn't MPEG open?"
A good, free CODEC really IS vital for free/open online multimedia. Remember that the uses for compressed/streaming audio go beyond Shoutcast stations or packing a million songs on your harddrive. Vorbis will end up in free versions of online music collaboration software, I'm sure, as well as conferencing, telephony perhaps... places where it's really important to minimize bandwidth usage without the inconvenience or licensing fees for proprietary CODECs/APIs.
Look at something like Rocket Network's online studios. Sounds cool, huh? But who would pay for the technology license to develop and deploy a free (in both senses) Rocket Network server? Nobody, I'm guessing. You can get a 'free' online studio now - as in beer - but what if you wanted to make that your business? Lotsa money, no control of the technology.
For these systems to develop in the free/open software community, we need control of all segments of the technology. Think of this in terms of GIF vs. PNG, with a lower practical barrier since the entire world of online mutlimedia is still emerging and CODECs are inherently pluggable in multimedia apps.
Well, if these brown dwarfs and megaplanets ARE produced in large numbers in our galaxies stellar nurseries, and then sent wandering, I'd guess a few might end up being captured -- say, somewhere in the vicinity of the Oort cloud of a certain M-type star. And since the megaplanets, at least, would rapidly cool, such a captured planet would be dark even in IR and hard to detect, not to mention having a highly eccentric and inclined orbit that would make it hard to locate. Just like the planets speculated about in this space.com article.
I'm looking for more info from the scientists quoted in the space.com articles (Matese and Murray) - I've read the papers before, and they're pretty interesting. They both present circumstantial evidence for dark Jupiter-mass-or-higher companions to the sun disturbing comets in the Oort cloud in a telltale pattern. Not quite the old comet-flinging Nemesis, but pretty close.
At the very least, this new information could prove that such dark objects exist, and that's half the battle, right?
Well - despite RobLimo's writeup, the article doesn't mention religious leaders - just a broader debate and ethical discussion. So those boiling-over threads about science and religion are IMHO beside the point. Ethical discussion doesn't equal religious thought.
Ahh, the ending is just... priceless. Al really is a SW nerd! Maybe the song for Episode 2 will be to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
Slashdot Mirror
Dark matter, dark energy -- keep these concepts in mind before you speak so confidently about the extent of human knowledge or Science's map of Reality. I've said it before and i'll say it again -- the human need of the scientist to remain the arbiter of what IS is the biggest barrier to fundamental developments in science. Individually it's psychological, collectively it's sociological; in both scopes there's a resistance to the idea of reconsidering or abandoning an supposed Knowledge, despite the pressure of anamolous observation, because the individual or collective ego is threatened with annihilation by such a change.
But Reality doesn't care if your model is incomplete. Edison summarily dismissed AC power systems as impractical, even dangerous, even after Tesla had succesfully developed the theory and practice of polyphase AC, because Edison's ego was heavily invested in DC systems. He ended up licensing and selling AC systems because Edison was above all a businessman. If he'd been an academic, say, whose career was built on the idea that AC power was untenable, perhaps he would have gone to his grave defending DC.
...of Mills' math. The page you pointed to simply recapitulates the basics of the standard Bohr atom, INCLUDING the assumption that particles are pointlike -- and therefore essentially abstract, as Bohr preferred to think. The author never engages Mills math or his reasoning.
Mills explicitly assumes that the electron, to be physical, must have an sensible extended form. His solutions to the Schrodinger equations don't describe a 3D 'cloud' of statistically-probable positions for each point charge spread through space at each given time. He has instead found a valid set of equations that describe the electron as a 2D 'shell' of charge. Read his book for more, argued better than I can. His math spits out the hydrogen atom we observe quite accurately.
It's frustrating that many people won't take more time to understand Mills' proposals. That's the problem with paradigm shifts; to grapple with the different model, you have to posit that the model might be sufficiently descriptive, even if that invalidates assumptions of your own model. And when you've had seventy years of the Copenhagen interpretation of the atom, you've got some basic assumptions that people don't like to see threatened -- so they won't consider a new model, or will only point out that, in terms of the old model, it doesn't make sense. But it's by definition impossible to understand the new paradigm solely in terms of the old; if it weren't you wouldn't need a new paradigm.
Very much related. Wolfram makes this connection himself in "A New Kind of Science," pointing to spin networks as a possible link to his all-encompassing network automaton. Note, however, that Woflram's network doesn't just divide space into cells; the network precedes space or time. We perceive three-dimensional space and time, matter and energy due to the evolutions of the underlying network, but the network itself doesn't necessarily match our physical concepts of spatial continuity. So, conceivably, connected nodes in this network could represented what we see as spatially separated points. I personally think he was just leaving the door open for non-locality, and that spatially separate points will always be separated in the network.
Disprove what? Knee-jerk skepticism based on a Google search? Go read Mills' papers and try to explain the ABSOLUTELY REPEATABLE results -- anomalous spectral lines and high-energy H species are produced when hydrogen is reacted with other elements that have ionization energies equal to a multiple of the potential energy of hydrogen. Why? Mills theorizes hydrinos, based on a mountain of math -- a model which has led him to make predictions, perform further experiments, and confirm those predictions. Methodically. Repeatably.
This is NOT pseudoscience. THIS IS SCIENCE. I suggest that you, the rest of the Slashdot knee-jerk skeptics and the scientific establishment figures who dismiss Mills' hydrino theory AND HIS EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS out-of-hand because you just 'know' they can't be true should examine your faculties for emotional attachment to other theories that, while they may be useful, are clearly incomplete. Not that Mills' theories are complete; we have no COMPLETE model of physics and probably never will. But his model describes and predicts a wider range of phenomena than the theories he proposes to replace.
There is NO valid reason to remain attached to ANY scientific model that cannot describe observable phenomena without essentially saying "and then some magic happens." Exclusion of observable phenomena from dominant theories is as old as science, probably. In the domain of energy production, take a look at Faraday's homopolar generator for an example. EM theory as we generally conceive today cannot fully explain this device, so it is excluded as anomalous. Far better to include reality rather than exclude it, I say.
Remember, Emagic sells MIDI and audio interfaces and the superb new Logic Control DAW control surface as well. I'm getting visions of an Apple mixer with an embedded Mac, Logic, CoreAudio plugins, maybe hardware expandability, all in icy white. Like a Mackie Digital 8-Bus, but (maybe) (a little) cheaper.
Oh, who am I kidding. If Apple makes a mixer it'll still cost tons of money.
My take? Apple is driving towards a future of multimedia as structured MPEG-4 streams, with easy multi-platform exchange. Logic already does ProTools' Open Media Format, which has been the closest thing to a DAW interchange format. But a structured multimedia document format, like full MPEG4 profiles, is much more likely to end up in audio manufacturers' hardware too, making for seamless integration between some future Apple version of Logic and those popular Fostex, Akai, Roland, Mackie and Alesis hard-disk recording-studios-in-a-box.
I've read everything that's come out of BLP for the last four years. I suggest this paper for starters, as it's the most compact statement Mills has made on CQM to date. Mills ideas are elegant and simple. Oh, and CQM reasonably explains electron spin in a completely clear way, something standard quantum mechanics hasn't managed. You'll find further papers here.
In any case, it might not matter if anyone 'believes' in hydrinos. BLP has developed materials with novel properties through the BLP process, and they'll get these materials to market long before mainstream physics even begins to take CQM seriously.
Go see what they've done, and if you can, come up with a better explanation for the results of BLP's experiments -- all of them. If you come up with a reasonable alternate explanation (besides "it's a hoax" or "they're just really bad scientists") then by all means come join the Hydrino Study Group.
'Oh, nothing'll topple MP3 - it's got too much mindshare!' 'I don't see the point - wasn't MPEG open?"
... places where it's really important to minimize bandwidth usage without the inconvenience or licensing fees for proprietary CODECs/APIs.
A good, free CODEC really IS vital for free/open online multimedia. Remember that the uses for compressed/streaming audio go beyond Shoutcast stations or packing a million songs on your harddrive. Vorbis will end up in free versions of online music collaboration software, I'm sure, as well as conferencing, telephony perhaps
Look at something like Rocket Network's online studios. Sounds cool, huh? But who would pay for the technology license to develop and deploy a free (in both senses) Rocket Network server? Nobody, I'm guessing. You can get a 'free' online studio now - as in beer - but what if you wanted to make that your business? Lotsa money, no control of the technology.
For these systems to develop in the free/open software community, we need control of all segments of the technology. Think of this in terms of GIF vs. PNG, with a lower practical barrier since the entire world of online mutlimedia is still emerging and CODECs are inherently pluggable in multimedia apps.
Or maybe my head's up my butt.
G-type star, dammit! M-type planet, Earth. Or somethin'.
Well, if these brown dwarfs and megaplanets ARE produced in large numbers in our galaxies stellar nurseries, and then sent wandering, I'd guess a few might end up being captured -- say, somewhere in the vicinity of the Oort cloud of a certain M-type star. And since the megaplanets, at least, would rapidly cool, such a captured planet would be dark even in IR and hard to detect, not to mention having a highly eccentric and inclined orbit that would make it hard to locate. Just like the planets speculated about in this space.com article.
I'm looking for more info from the scientists quoted in the space.com articles (Matese and Murray) - I've read the papers before, and they're pretty interesting. They both present circumstantial evidence for dark Jupiter-mass-or-higher companions to the sun disturbing comets in the Oort cloud in a telltale pattern. Not quite the old comet-flinging Nemesis, but pretty close.
At the very least, this new information could prove that such dark objects exist, and that's half the battle, right?
Well - despite RobLimo's writeup, the article doesn't mention religious leaders - just a broader debate and ethical discussion. So those boiling-over threads about science and religion are
IMHO beside the point. Ethical discussion doesn't equal religious thought.
Ahh, the ending is just ... priceless. Al really is a SW nerd! Maybe the song for Episode 2 will be to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."