...Einstein's theory of relativity was not invented to explain the movements of Mercury... The tiny anomalous aberrations in the orbit of Mercury are interpreted to be due to Einstein's relativity, but this particular aspect of relativity measurement is based on the assumption (belief) that gravity is the ONLY force that affects Mercury's orbit. A number with 36 zeros behind it is unimaginably big, and that is how much more powerful the electric force is than gravity. If there is only a tiny charge imbalance, that is, if the sun and Mercury are not EXACTLY electrically neutral towards each other, such an electrical force could lead us to misinterpret the orbital aberrations. (...This presupposes that Jesus Christ existed...) Yes it does and he did. We know the same way he existed, that we know Julius Caesar, Alexander the great, Aristotle or Confucius or any other historical figure existed. There is an excellent book, which you may get, which was written by a former atheist journalist by the name of Lee Strobel called "The Case for Christ". After his wife became a Christian, her personality changed for much the better. Lee, her husband, who was also a lawyer, put his journalistic and legal skills to work to prove that Jesus Christ and the record we have of him are fictitious. At first, he was very angry with his wife for having put her faith into what he considered a silly myth. After painstaking and exhausting research, because he was an HONEST skeptic, he too came into a personal relationship with the living Christ. Being a Christian is not about a religion, but a relationship with the real living Jesus Christ. Hitler may have been a Roman Catholic, but he obviously did not have a personal relationship with God. (...Anything that is "supernatural"...) is only labeled that, because we have insufficient knowledge. There is really nothing supernatural about turning water into wine. Grapes, with the help of humans do it all the time. Because Jesus, who claimed he is God the Creator has perfect knowledge of his creation, he is able to arrange atoms and subatomic particles any way he wishes. How that works we know nothing about, at least not yet. To him who created life in the first place, it is no big deal to bring the dead back to life. Jesus said that the time will come when we will have no more questions. Someday, in the world beyond this one, we will be given the intellect to fully understand God and whatever he might want to tell us. For now, though he asks us to BELIEVE him. Everyone, without exception can believe, but only if they WANT to. (...But despite the similar motivation, they represent wholly different methods...) Exactly right! Science and its methods are limited by our senses and understanding. A four-year-old could not understand differential calculus, but he or she can BELIEVE what their daddy tells them. Later, when kids mature, they can understand things which they could not before. There are two paths to knowledge. One is experience and the other is faith. A little kid can believe that an adult telling them that jumping off the cliff will kill him or he can jump and experience what he has been told will happen. (...Religion demands that you turn off your brain and believe on faith...) Some religions do that, but the Bible encourages us to have faith based on reason. It is not a blind faith, a jump in the dark, but a reasonable faith. If you have the faith that your God is all-powerful and can do anything at all, then it is not unreasonable to believe that he can bring back the dead. I believe in a God that is big enough and powerful enough to have flung the galaxies throughout the unfathomable depths of space and yet that he also loves me personally. Jesus Christ became one of us humans, although he is God. His knowledge of us is not theoretical, but he experienced being human even to the point of a horrible death as a criminal. (....plenty of evidence against a personal god who answers prayers....) I used to believe that, but since my mother was twice miraculously h
...Hence we will know it if we see it... Either they are not very plentiful or they don't exist at all, otherwise we should have already detected one in cosmic rays, whose energies make those of the LHC look puny. If we do detect one at the LHC or elsewhere, how will that enhance our knowledge of this world? I do hope they find something new, for all the billions of taxpayers money they spent and are still spending on this grand experiment.
...So I have to ask: Do you dispute Newton?... No, of course not! He did it right in that first he observed and then came up with a mathematical explanation of what he had observed.
(...What is your evidence for this? Or, what is your reasoning for this?...) Black holes and the singularity of the Big Bang are all based on the assumption (belief) that gravity is the only force that controls the large scale movement we observe in this universe. We know by observations that stars, planets, and galaxies all have magnetic fields associated with them. We know of no way to generate a magnetic field without the movement of charges, that is electrical or ionic currents. To drive these currents requires electrical potentials which could be in the trillions of volts or more in the case of galaxies. We also observe incredibly high energy cosmic radiation. We know of no mechanism on earth that can produce such radiation except by the application to a charged object the electric force which is 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity. An unmeasurable tiny electric field of only a few microvolts per kilometer applied to a charged particle over galactic distances can easily accelerate such a particle to the energies we observe. (...Zero certainly exists...There are currently zero apples...) That is true if you are dealing with integer objects, but not with particles and time and space. There is no such thing in nature as absolutely nothing. Google "zero point energy" sometime if you're interested to find out why. (...black holes don't require the singularity to be a point...) I'm not completely up on the latest theories of black holes, but I do know that if they have a singularity, it doesn't matter if that is at a point or not, but the fact is that both a singularity and a point are valid mathematical constructs even though they have no reality in the physical world. (...Quarks and electrons...) But don't you understand that we can measure quarks and electrons? The ultimate measure of what is real and what isn't, is more philosophical or even religious than science. Jesus Christ gave us a few glimpses into a reality that cannot be measured by our senses or their extensions. He talks of demons, angels, places called heaven and hell and does things which we call miracles. I'm sure you've heard the saying about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic or the miraculous. The bottom line to all this is that all of reality cannot be grasped by the scientific method. (...If you accept string theory...) It is a good and fun mathematical exercise, but like black holes, dark matter, dark energy and gravitational waves has no bearing or connection to the physical world we currently inhabit. It also makes a lot of assumptions which cannot be verified philosophically or scientifically. There are other conjectures, such as multiple universes. In my view, science and religion are two sides of the same coin in man's search for truth. Jesus Christ once made a very audacious statement in John 14:6 which is either crazy or true. It cannot be proven or disproven, but only believed or disbelieved. I happen to believe that he spoke the truth and answers the most important questions that any human being can ask.
...his mathematics were used to make predictions...
Exactly, and that is the way it should be done, first observe and then do the math, which could predict what further observations corroborate. The same scientist that does the math, isn't always the one who makes the observations. Einstein did the math, but countless other scientists verified by observation, that the equations corresponded with actual reality. (...We have observed its effects...) All we really have observed directly, are some anomalies in the orbit of Mercury. We interpret that to be due to the operation of gravity alone, but that is an interpretation, not a measured fact. There are other forces operating in the universe, such as the electric force, being 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity. Only a tiny charge imbalance between the sun and Mercury could also cause anomalies in the latters orbit. It is an assumption (belief) and not a measured fact that the Sun and Mercury are electrically neutral with respect to each other. (...the effects of relativity, not relativity itself....) That's like saying when we measure an electric current, we do not count the electrons, but it's magnetic effect in a Galvanometer. Besides that, it isn't even true. When the electrons reach the end of Stanford's two-mile linear accelerator, they have an effective mass, directly measured by magnets, of about 40,000 times their rest mass, before they started their two-mile journey. Also, the accelerating tube has to take into account the increasing speed of the electrons only in the first 10 feet. After that the velocity is essentially constant for all practical purposes. All the electrical energy is nicely converted into mass, just as predicted by Einstein's famous equation. All this is measured by instruments, not theorized by a model in a computer. (...why black holes don't seem wholly "fictitious" to me...) Black holes as well as the universe as a whole, before the so-called Big Bang, are theorized to contain a SINGULARITY which has no existence in the physical world, but is ONLY a mathematical construct. The concept of zero, infinity and a point also are purely mathematical, but do not exist in the physical world. (...people did not throw out Newton's models...) First of all, Newton and even Einstein only describe how gravity WORKS, not what actually constitutes or is behind gravity. We know that somehow mass generates gravity. Gravity itself is still a deep mystery. However, we experience it every day and steer our spaceships by the equations that Newton came up with, showing that in this model of how gravity works, is still valid to a high degree of accuracy.
Science is first about observation and experiment but mathematics has been very valuable in quantifying and trying to make sense of what we observe in the world around us. I am not against mathematics, believe me.
By this I mean to perceive with our senses or scientific extensions thereof. With field emission microscopy scientists have actually photographed atoms for example. So no, I do not dispute the existence of atoms. The word "atom" comes from the Greek which means indivisible, because the Greeks gave that name to what they thought could no longer be divided into smaller pieces. Of course, in modern times, we found out they were wrong about this.
(...So what, exactly, is your criteria for "direct" observation?...) We can observe and measure, for example all sorts of electromagnetic radiation coming from the sun, as well as solar neutrinos. We can use radar or lasers to accurately measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon. He can observe the motion of stars and galaxies directly. Real science is all about measurement, experimentation and accurate observations. Newton supposedly did get hit by an Apple or whatever, but at any rate he observed and THEN he used mathematics to try and make sense out of what he observed. Much of cosmology today does it the other way around, in that they come up with theories and models and then try to explain the observations in terms of those. When they come up with anomalous observations, that don't fit the models, they invent fictitious things like black holes, dark matter and energy, rather than scrapping their obviously wrong models. That is what I mean when I say cosmology has lost its way. (...Nobody has observed a quark, as far as I know...) The Standard Model, in high-energy physics is based on what has been observed and I measured in thousands of experiments around the world. The idea of quarks is based on observation and measurement, not mere mathematical theory. First comes the observation and measurement and then comes the math. In particle physics it is still done mostly this way. (...I must ask, are you actually a scientist?...)
No, I am an electronics engineer that worked in the physics department of a world-class university. (...Our "limited understanding" which allows us to make predictions...)
There is a big difference between knowing how to make use of something and actually knowing what it is that we are making use of. Another example is the one of time. We can measure time, divide it into smaller increments more accurately than any other physical quantity that we have learned how to measure, yet no scientists anywhere knows what time actually consists of. It is rather ironic I think. (...moreover, relativity has been shown...) to be correct by a multitude of experiments at particle accelerators and with accurate cesium beam clocks. It is not based merely on mathematical models, but on actual observed physical reality. (....What tool would you use in place of mathematics?...) I object to the order in which science, especially cosmology, is done these days. It used to be, that scientists would do an observation or experiment and then apply mathematics to gain a fuller and quantitative understanding of nature. Today, some scientists do nothing but sit at computers all day running their models, based quite often not only on solid observed data, but unproven assumptions (faith). Mathematics has become the master of science, rather than its servant.
....high energy particles that can create Higgs bosons if they exist...
Since we have never seen one before, how would we know if he met one? Since we are still here, one has not yet been made or nothing much happened as a consequence of one appearing and decaying into whatever they decay into.
step 1) The scientist is born. step 2) The scientist goes through the time machine, and kills his grandfather. step 3) the grandfather is raised from the dead as Lazarus was by Jesus Christ step 4) the scientist is convicted of murdering his grandfather sent to hell step 5) the grandfather dies, as Lazarus did again, and goes to heaven
...What if Jesus or other prophets were similar "outliers"?...
What if Jesus really is who he says he is, namely God come to earth in human form? What if he really did conquer our biggest enemy -- death? What if what he said about heaven and hell are true? What if the miracles that he did are a technology so advanced, that even our most imaginative science-fiction writers have not thought of it yet? Walking on water is not difficult at all for someone who understands all the fields and forces in what scientists so glibly call "matter". If it is really true that Jesus Christ is God and God made all life in the first place, then bringing somebody back from the dead is not a big deal at all. You can read a pretty awesome description of him, as he is today in the eternal dimension, in the first chapter of the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.
While he was here on the earth, he repeatedly promised to return and fix this world, because it is his not ours. Jesus once said that if he did not intervene, things on this planet will get so bad, that no human would survive. Personally, I am looking forward to that day, because this world is increasingly messed up.
It used to be that science was about observation and then scientists use mathematics as a way of quantifying and explaining the observations. Now, with computer modeling we have turned that on its head. Scientists make a computer model, where they usually make certain assumptions, and then try to observe what the computer puts out. That is why millions of dollars are being spent on searching for black holes, dark matter and energy, gravity waves and other mathematical fictions. We are told that the universe started with a singularity, which of course is a mathematical fiction, out of which came the so-called Big Bang. Mathematics has become the master of science rather than its servant.
....The universe doesn't have a fixed reference frame....
If you had said the universe doesn't APPEAR to have a fixed reference frame, you would have been more correct. Since we have never seen or found the end of the universe, we cannot say for sure whether the earth is or isn't a the center of the universe or any particular place in it.
except that nobody has ever observed one anywhere. Science, especially cosmology has lost its way. Originally, modern science got started, when somebody we now call a scientist observed something about nature. As part of trying to explain and make sense of the observations, mathematics is used as a tool that has been extremely helpful.
Lately though, especially with the advent of modern computers, mathematical modeling computations have taken precedence and a life of their own over simple observation. Yes, the mathematics says that black holes should exist, but the sad FACT is, that nobody has ever observed one. The same goes for dark matter and energy as well as gravitational waves. Just because a computer model or theory says something should exist or be so, doesn't mean it actually is. A singularity, such as theorized as being at the center of a black hole, is a mathematical fiction, but no such thing exists physically. Mathematics must be the servant of science, not its master.
If the earth had an opaque atmosphere, such as Venus, how would we ever know about the existence of the sun? Could we ever know anything about planets and stars? Mathematical models and theory tell us there must be a black hole at the center of our galaxy, but nobody has ever directly observed or measured it. Current theories and mathematical models concerning the motion of galaxies and the stars within them, combined with our limited understanding of the force of gravity, makes it necessary to invent constructs such as dark matter and energy. Maybe the mathematical Emperor really doesn't have any clothes.
Despite spending millions of dollars on incredibly sophisticated detectors, no one has ever really detected gravity waves. We experience time and gravity everyday of our lives, yet both of them are in essence is still very mysterious.
There are still large gaps in truly understanding how superconductivity actually works. There are certain theories, that state that resistance cannot be exactly 0, but in actual measurements in the laboratory it is zero within the capability of the measurements we're able to make.
The way this has been tested is to build a superconducting magnet which is energized from an external power source to a given field. Then a superconducting short-circuit bridge is connected to the ends of the coil, and the external power source is removed. If this is done right, there will be no measurable decrease of the magnetic field over time, which means there cannot be any loss whatsoever in the coil. It is however technically difficult to make a truly super conducting joint.
...however you imply that there will be a voltage across the superconductor... There is never a voltage drop in the superconductor, because that is the very definition of what constitutes a superconductor. However, superconductors suddenly lose their superconducting ability at some finite magnetic field which implies a finite current.
The Pacific Intertie is a non-superconducting high voltage DC transmission line which runs from the Columbia River to Sylmar in Southern California. It has two conductors, at +500,000 V to ground and another at -500,000 V ground. At maximum load it can carry 3.1GW of power. For those interested in more detail, you can look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
Because superconductors can carry huge currents at no loss, it is possible to reduce the voltage of such a power line system in order to keep the insulation problems manageable. Even though a superconducting electrical line has no direct loss, it must be properly refrigerated and that uses power. For a few miles, the refrigeration power is moderate, but if they wanted to replace the Pacific Intertie within an underground superconducting line for that entire distance, I suspect the refrigeration power would be more than the electrical losses of the present system. It would likely also be an order of magnitude more expensive to build.
...One major issue right off the bat is how much of the efficiency gained by using the superconductor...
Power equals volts times amps and to transmit 5 GW requires lots of both. If you go up in voltage, then you have insulation challenges. Large currents produce tremendous I^2R heat losses. To build a conventional transmission line capable of transmitting that kind of power over even a few miles is nearly impossible technologically.
If this superconductor can carry a large current, cooling it with liquid nitrogen is well within current technology. Liquid nitrogen is cheap and readily available. On the other hand, if it has to be cooled with liquid helium, such as the magnets in the LHC, that even is still doable, but at considerably higher expense.
The problem with renewable energy, is that it is intermittent and usually available in places where there are not too many customers. This means that the energy has to be transported to its users. Electricity is hard to store and transmit, it has to be generated as consumed.
....Naiive question, but what limits the capacity of superconductor?....
The magnetic field it is in or generates. Anytime you have an electric current, you have associated with it a magnetic field. Add some value of magnetic field, the superconducting wire becomes an ordinary wire with resistance, which quickly burns out unless the power is shut off immediately.
At the CERN LHC they use lots of superconducting wire wound into coils to make powerful magnets that have no losses. Another thing that quenches, that is making non superconducting, is a higher temperature. In these magnets, the superconductor is kept at 4.2 K. Presumably, the superconducting wires remain superconducting at a higher temperature for these proposed power lines. Keeping everything superconducting, especially where conductors are joined, is still an art more than a science. It was a bad joint that cost the spectacular failure at the startup of the LHC.
To transmit 5 GW, will require both high voltages and high currents. To transmit 10,000 amperes at 500,000 V is a nontrivial engineering problem.
...they are criminals in spirit... who violate the Golden rule. Unfortunately, that includes every one of us every day. In the Bible, those that violate it are called sinners. However, the good news is that God offers mercy to sinners. Those that refuse to accept his mercy will be judged by that law.
...no one will make copies of their stuff to the new format?...
Like everybody makes backsups of their data right now? People are lazy and forgetful and do not faithfully copy old, long forgotten data. Also, magnetic media decay just by sitting there and the equipment to read ancient tapes and disks is no longer generally available, making data recovery tedious and expensive. Unless the ancient data is extremely valuable to current users, it is lost. Even the movie studios are finding out that some of their old films have decayed to the point, that getting them back is expensive and difficult or even impossible. Pressed optical media have the potential of lasting longer, but still have the problem of finding equipment to read them a century or two from now. For durability, long-term, ink on paper, human eyeball readable, is still the only solution.
The media you store your data on will be unreadable and the file formats indecipherable. I have some really old wedding photographs of my great great grandparents from the time when photography was quite new. (1890) I seriously doubt, that very many, if any, computer files, including pictures will be readable in the year 2120 by whatever technology if any, that is available then. If you want to preserve any pictures or other worthwhile data for posterity, better print them on archive quality paper and store that in a suitable environment. Images on paper survived the ravages of time, sometimes for thousands of years. It is not likely that the reading equipment, human eyeballs, will not be available in the far future. Maybe old wax cylinders and 78s may still be playable with a cactus thorn.
I also doubt that anyone would be interested in whatever trivialities are stored on your computer hard drive today, even 50 years from now. Since much of our civilization, if not most of it, is recorded digitally these days, it will be lost to historians 500 or more years from now. People living in the year 4000, will know less about us than we know about ancient Rome.
Free beer, free pizza, everybody wants everything for free these days. Well, TANSTAAFL, (There ain't no such thing as a free lunch) somebody always pays for it, usually the end customer. Free apps from Google aren't free, although they are paid by advertising, all advertisers include the cost of advertising in whatever product or service they provide. Flat rates for telephone calls, Internet service, or in some places still even water, are great, except for those few who abuse such services. There are a few who will spend hours on transcontinental telephone calls and download tens of gigabytes of data. Such hogs may make up about 5% of the total user base, but use up 80% or more of available resources.
but my bank's e-mails are nonexistent, because they have a messaging system on their site, that can only be accessed after a correctly log in. They make a big point of telling their customers that they never under any circumstances use e-mail to communicate. So, if I ever get an e-mail that supposedly came from my bank, I would know immediately that this is a phishing attempt.
...Science is agnostic (because it deals with the natural, not with any kind of potential "supernatural"),....
Indeed, is there any mathematical equation or law of physics that operates differently if God is honored as creator, rather than some other mechanisms that leave God out of the picture? All scientific facts and data are neutral. It is only people's interpretation of the data, that may or may not give God the credit and honor.
Faith goes where science cannot go, because unlike science, faith is not limited to the natural, but indeed CAN go to the supernatural. In the end, faith is more important in all of our lives, then we give it credit for. I'm not talking about blind faith, but reasoned faith. Jehovah God invites us to reason:
Isa 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, says Jehovah; though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool.
There is very little in life, if anything, that we know for certain. It's reasonable to believe, that you,ll wake up tomorrow morning to another day, but it's by no means certain. It's reasonable to believe, that the airplane you're about to get into, will take you to your destination. Sometimes airplanes crash killing everybody aboard. It's reasonable to believe, hope, that other drivers will be sober, keeping on their side of the road, but we all know, that some get drunk and cause deadly crashes. It is reasonable for me to believe in God, whom I have repeatedly seen working in my and my family's life.
If you BELIEVE in the Big Bang, you must logically also believe that the universe has a finite age. Nobody knows what was before the Big Bang. Matter-energy, space-time all came into being together. I BELIEVE that the eternal God Jehovah created the universe out of nothing. He formulated the laws under which it would evolve. Even though the details are very sketchy, there is one refrain in the creation account in the Bible. It says repeatedly that God said "it was very good".
In my estimation, a universe with entropy, that is where things get old, die and wear out is definitely not "very good". The Bible does not go into detail, but does tell us that evil entered into God's very good universe and has messed it up. That's why, in the Bible, God promises to create a new heaven and new earth, a new eternal universe, wherein there will be no more evil.
God has a very simple, universally applicable test to determine who will join him in this new perfect creation. It is found in the most quoted verse of the Bible: John 3:16.
Jesus Christ, God come to earth, defined it this way:
John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
The apostle Peter writes this about the end of the universe:
2Pe 3:7 But the present heavens and the earth being kept in store by the same Word, are being kept for fire until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
2Pe 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a roaring noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat. And the earth and the works in it will be burned up.
Here is another description of the end of the universe, this time by the apostle Joh:
Rev 20:11 I saw a large, white throne and the one who was sitting on it. The earth and the sky fled from his presence, but no place was found for them. Rev 20:12 I saw the dead, both important and unimportant people, standing in front of the throne. Books were opened, including the Book of Life. The dead were judged on the basis of what they had done, as recorded in the books. Rev 20:13 The sea gave up its dead. Death and hell gave up their dead. People were judged based on what they had done.
One way to afford a Mac and PC, is to save your money, sell your PC, buy a Mac, either laptop or desktop and then install Windows in a virtual machine. Virtual machines worked great on the Mac unless you want to play high-performance video games. In that case, Windows has to be installed on your Mac using Bootcamp. This is a good solution especially if you don't have that much space.
Slashdot Mirror
...Einstein's theory of relativity was not invented to explain the movements of Mercury...
The tiny anomalous aberrations in the orbit of Mercury are interpreted to be due to Einstein's relativity, but this particular aspect of relativity measurement is based on the assumption (belief) that gravity is the ONLY force that affects Mercury's orbit. A number with 36 zeros behind it is unimaginably big, and that is how much more powerful the electric force is than gravity. If there is only a tiny charge imbalance, that is, if the sun and Mercury are not EXACTLY electrically neutral towards each other, such an electrical force could lead us to misinterpret the orbital aberrations.
(...This presupposes that Jesus Christ existed...)
Yes it does and he did. We know the same way he existed, that we know Julius Caesar, Alexander the great, Aristotle or Confucius or any other historical figure existed. There is an excellent book, which you may get, which was written by a former atheist journalist by the name of Lee Strobel called "The Case for Christ". After his wife became a Christian, her personality changed for much the better. Lee, her husband, who was also a lawyer, put his journalistic and legal skills to work to prove that Jesus Christ and the record we have of him are fictitious. At first, he was very angry with his wife for having put her faith into what he considered a silly myth. After painstaking and exhausting research, because he was an HONEST skeptic, he too came into a personal relationship with the living Christ. Being a Christian is not about a religion, but a relationship with the real living Jesus Christ. Hitler may have been a Roman Catholic, but he obviously did not have a personal relationship with God.
(...Anything that is "supernatural"...)
is only labeled that, because we have insufficient knowledge. There is really nothing supernatural about turning water into wine. Grapes, with the help of humans do it all the time. Because Jesus, who claimed he is God the Creator has perfect knowledge of his creation, he is able to arrange atoms and subatomic particles any way he wishes. How that works we know nothing about, at least not yet. To him who created life in the first place, it is no big deal to bring the dead back to life. Jesus said that the time will come when we will have no more questions. Someday, in the world beyond this one, we will be given the intellect to fully understand God and whatever he might want to tell us. For now, though he asks us to BELIEVE him. Everyone, without exception can believe, but only if they WANT to.
(...But despite the similar motivation, they represent wholly different methods...)
Exactly right! Science and its methods are limited by our senses and understanding. A four-year-old could not understand differential calculus, but he or she can BELIEVE what their daddy tells them. Later, when kids mature, they can understand things which they could not before. There are two paths to knowledge. One is experience and the other is faith. A little kid can believe that an adult telling them that jumping off the cliff will kill him or he can jump and experience what he has been told will happen.
(...Religion demands that you turn off your brain and believe on faith...)
Some religions do that, but the Bible encourages us to have faith based on reason. It is not a blind faith, a jump in the dark, but a reasonable faith. If you have the faith that your God is all-powerful and can do anything at all, then it is not unreasonable to believe that he can bring back the dead. I believe in a God that is big enough and powerful enough to have flung the galaxies throughout the unfathomable depths of space and yet that he also loves me personally. Jesus Christ became one of us humans, although he is God. His knowledge of us is not theoretical, but he experienced being human even to the point of a horrible death as a criminal.
(....plenty of evidence against a personal god who answers prayers....)
I used to believe that, but since my mother was twice miraculously h
...Hence we will know it if we see it...
Either they are not very plentiful or they don't exist at all, otherwise we should have already detected one in cosmic rays, whose energies make those of the LHC look puny. If we do detect one at the LHC or elsewhere, how will that enhance our knowledge of this world? I do hope they find something new, for all the billions of taxpayers money they spent and are still spending on this grand experiment.
...So I have to ask: Do you dispute Newton?...
No, of course not! He did it right in that first he observed and then came up with a mathematical explanation of what he had observed.
(...What is your evidence for this? Or, what is your reasoning for this?...)
Black holes and the singularity of the Big Bang are all based on the assumption (belief) that gravity is the only force that controls the large scale movement we observe in this universe. We know by observations that stars, planets, and galaxies all have magnetic fields associated with them. We know of no way to generate a magnetic field without the movement of charges, that is electrical or ionic currents. To drive these currents requires electrical potentials which could be in the trillions of volts or more in the case of galaxies. We also observe incredibly high energy cosmic radiation. We know of no mechanism on earth that can produce such radiation except by the application to a charged object the electric force which is 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity. An unmeasurable tiny electric field of only a few microvolts per kilometer applied to a charged particle over galactic distances can easily accelerate such a particle to the energies we observe.
(...Zero certainly exists...There are currently zero apples...)
That is true if you are dealing with integer objects, but not with particles and time and space. There is no such thing in nature as absolutely nothing. Google "zero point energy" sometime if you're interested to find out why.
(...black holes don't require the singularity to be a point...)
I'm not completely up on the latest theories of black holes, but I do know that if they have a singularity, it doesn't matter if that is at a point or not, but the fact is that both a singularity and a point are valid mathematical constructs even though they have no reality in the physical world.
(...Quarks and electrons...)
But don't you understand that we can measure quarks and electrons? The ultimate measure of what is real and what isn't, is more philosophical or even religious than science. Jesus Christ gave us a few glimpses into a reality that cannot be measured by our senses or their extensions. He talks of demons, angels, places called heaven and hell and does things which we call miracles. I'm sure you've heard the saying about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic or the miraculous. The bottom line to all this is that all of reality cannot be grasped by the scientific method.
(...If you accept string theory...)
It is a good and fun mathematical exercise, but like black holes, dark matter, dark energy and gravitational waves has no bearing or connection to the physical world we currently inhabit. It also makes a lot of assumptions which cannot be verified philosophically or scientifically. There are other conjectures, such as multiple universes.
In my view, science and religion are two sides of the same coin in man's search for truth. Jesus Christ once made a very audacious statement in John 14:6 which is either crazy or true. It cannot be proven or disproven, but only believed or disbelieved. I happen to believe that he spoke the truth and answers the most important questions that any human being can ask.
...his mathematics were used to make predictions...
Exactly, and that is the way it should be done, first observe and then do the math, which could predict what further observations corroborate. The same scientist that does the math, isn't always the one who makes the observations. Einstein did the math, but countless other scientists verified by observation, that the equations corresponded with actual reality.
(...We have observed its effects...)
All we really have observed directly, are some anomalies in the orbit of Mercury. We interpret that to be due to the operation of gravity alone, but that is an interpretation, not a measured fact. There are other forces operating in the universe, such as the electric force, being 36 orders of magnitude greater than gravity. Only a tiny charge imbalance between the sun and Mercury could also cause anomalies in the latters orbit. It is an assumption (belief) and not a measured fact that the Sun and Mercury are electrically neutral with respect to each other.
(...the effects of relativity, not relativity itself....)
That's like saying when we measure an electric current, we do not count the electrons, but it's magnetic effect in a Galvanometer. Besides that, it isn't even true. When the electrons reach the end of Stanford's two-mile linear accelerator, they have an effective mass, directly measured by magnets, of about 40,000 times their rest mass, before they started their two-mile journey. Also, the accelerating tube has to take into account the increasing speed of the electrons only in the first 10 feet. After that the velocity is essentially constant for all practical purposes. All the electrical energy is nicely converted into mass, just as predicted by Einstein's famous equation. All this is measured by instruments, not theorized by a model in a computer.
(...why black holes don't seem wholly "fictitious" to me...)
Black holes as well as the universe as a whole, before the so-called Big Bang, are theorized to contain a SINGULARITY which has no existence in the physical world, but is ONLY a mathematical construct. The concept of zero, infinity and a point also are purely mathematical, but do not exist in the physical world.
(...people did not throw out Newton's models...)
First of all, Newton and even Einstein only describe how gravity WORKS, not what actually constitutes or is behind gravity. We know that somehow mass generates gravity. Gravity itself is still a deep mystery. However, we experience it every day and steer our spaceships by the equations that Newton came up with, showing that in this model of how gravity works, is still valid to a high degree of accuracy.
Science is first about observation and experiment but mathematics has been very valuable in quantifying and trying to make sense of what we observe in the world around us. I am not against mathematics, believe me.
...Before we proceed, define observation...
By this I mean to perceive with our senses or scientific extensions thereof. With field emission microscopy scientists have actually photographed atoms for example. So no, I do not dispute the existence of atoms. The word "atom" comes from the Greek which means indivisible, because the Greeks gave that name to what they thought could no longer be divided into smaller pieces. Of course, in modern times, we found out they were wrong about this.
(...So what, exactly, is your criteria for "direct" observation?...)
We can observe and measure, for example all sorts of electromagnetic radiation coming from the sun, as well as solar neutrinos. We can use radar or lasers to accurately measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon. He can observe the motion of stars and galaxies directly. Real science is all about measurement, experimentation and accurate observations.
Newton supposedly did get hit by an Apple or whatever, but at any rate he observed and THEN he used mathematics to try and make sense out of what he observed. Much of cosmology today does it the other way around, in that they come up with theories and models and then try to explain the observations in terms of those. When they come up with anomalous observations, that don't fit the models, they invent fictitious things like black holes, dark matter and energy, rather than scrapping their obviously wrong models. That is what I mean when I say cosmology has lost its way.
(...Nobody has observed a quark, as far as I know...)
The Standard Model, in high-energy physics is based on what has been observed and I measured in thousands of experiments around the world. The idea of quarks is based on observation and measurement, not mere mathematical theory. First comes the observation and measurement and then comes the math. In particle physics it is still done mostly this way.
(...I must ask, are you actually a scientist?...)
No, I am an electronics engineer that worked in the physics department of a world-class university.
(...Our "limited understanding" which allows us to make predictions...)
There is a big difference between knowing how to make use of something and actually knowing what it is that we are making use of. Another example is the one of time. We can measure time, divide it into smaller increments more accurately than any other physical quantity that we have learned how to measure, yet no scientists anywhere knows what time actually consists of. It is rather ironic I think.
(...moreover, relativity has been shown...)
to be correct by a multitude of experiments at particle accelerators and with accurate cesium beam clocks. It is not based merely on mathematical models, but on actual observed physical reality.
(....What tool would you use in place of mathematics?...)
I object to the order in which science, especially cosmology, is done these days. It used to be, that scientists would do an observation or experiment and then apply mathematics to gain a fuller and quantitative understanding of nature. Today, some scientists do nothing but sit at computers all day running their models, based quite often not only on solid observed data, but unproven assumptions (faith). Mathematics has become the master of science, rather than its servant.
....high energy particles that can create Higgs bosons if they exist...
Since we have never seen one before, how would we know if he met one? Since we are still here, one has not yet been made or nothing much happened as a consequence of one appearing and decaying into whatever they decay into.
Here is an outcome just as likely:
step 1) The scientist is born.
step 2) The scientist goes through the time machine, and kills his grandfather.
step 3) the grandfather is raised from the dead as Lazarus was by Jesus Christ
step 4) the scientist is convicted of murdering his grandfather sent to hell
step 5) the grandfather dies, as Lazarus did again, and goes to heaven
...What if Jesus or other prophets were similar "outliers"?...
What if Jesus really is who he says he is, namely God come to earth in human form? What if he really did conquer our biggest enemy -- death? What if what he said about heaven and hell are true? What if the miracles that he did are a technology so advanced, that even our most imaginative science-fiction writers have not thought of it yet? Walking on water is not difficult at all for someone who understands all the fields and forces in what scientists so glibly call "matter". If it is really true that Jesus Christ is God and God made all life in the first place, then bringing somebody back from the dead is not a big deal at all. You can read a pretty awesome description of him, as he is today in the eternal dimension, in the first chapter of the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.
While he was here on the earth, he repeatedly promised to return and fix this world, because it is his not ours. Jesus once said that if he did not intervene, things on this planet will get so bad, that no human would survive. Personally, I am looking forward to that day, because this world is increasingly messed up.
....because maths is not observation....
It used to be that science was about observation and then scientists use mathematics as a way of quantifying and explaining the observations. Now, with computer modeling we have turned that on its head. Scientists make a computer model, where they usually make certain assumptions, and then try to observe what the computer puts out. That is why millions of dollars are being spent on searching for black holes, dark matter and energy, gravity waves and other mathematical fictions. We are told that the universe started with a singularity, which of course is a mathematical fiction, out of which came the so-called Big Bang. Mathematics has become the master of science rather than its servant.
....The universe doesn't have a fixed reference frame....
If you had said the universe doesn't APPEAR to have a fixed reference frame, you would have been more correct. Since we have never seen or found the end of the universe, we cannot say for sure whether the earth is or isn't a the center of the universe or any particular place in it.
....I can know that black holes exist....
except that nobody has ever observed one anywhere. Science, especially cosmology has lost its way. Originally, modern science got started, when somebody we now call a scientist observed something about nature. As part of trying to explain and make sense of the observations, mathematics is used as a tool that has been extremely helpful.
Lately though, especially with the advent of modern computers, mathematical modeling computations have taken precedence and a life of their own over simple observation. Yes, the mathematics says that black holes should exist, but the sad FACT is, that nobody has ever observed one. The same goes for dark matter and energy as well as gravitational waves. Just because a computer model or theory says something should exist or be so, doesn't mean it actually is. A singularity, such as theorized as being at the center of a black hole, is a mathematical fiction, but no such thing exists physically. Mathematics must be the servant of science, not its master.
If the earth had an opaque atmosphere, such as Venus, how would we ever know about the existence of the sun? Could we ever know anything about planets and stars? Mathematical models and theory tell us there must be a black hole at the center of our galaxy, but nobody has ever directly observed or measured it. Current theories and mathematical models concerning the motion of galaxies and the stars within them, combined with our limited understanding of the force of gravity, makes it necessary to invent constructs such as dark matter and energy. Maybe the mathematical Emperor really doesn't have any clothes.
Despite spending millions of dollars on incredibly sophisticated detectors, no one has ever really detected gravity waves. We experience time and gravity everyday of our lives, yet both of them are in essence is still very mysterious.
...Except that R is not (quite) zero;...
There are still large gaps in truly understanding how superconductivity actually works. There are certain theories, that state that resistance cannot be exactly 0, but in actual measurements in the laboratory it is zero within the capability of the measurements we're able to make.
The way this has been tested is to build a superconducting magnet which is energized from an external power source to a given field. Then a superconducting short-circuit bridge is connected to the ends of the coil, and the external power source is removed. If this is done right, there will be no measurable decrease of the magnetic field over time, which means there cannot be any loss whatsoever in the coil. It is however technically difficult to make a truly super conducting joint.
...however you imply that there will be a voltage across the superconductor...
There is never a voltage drop in the superconductor, because that is the very definition of what constitutes a superconductor. However, superconductors suddenly lose their superconducting ability at some finite magnetic field which implies a finite current.
The Pacific Intertie is a non-superconducting high voltage DC transmission line which runs from the Columbia River to Sylmar in Southern California. It has two conductors, at +500,000 V to ground and another at -500,000 V ground. At maximum load it can carry 3.1GW of power. For those interested in more detail, you can look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
Because superconductors can carry huge currents at no loss, it is possible to reduce the voltage of such a power line system in order to keep the insulation problems manageable. Even though a superconducting electrical line has no direct loss, it must be properly refrigerated and that uses power. For a few miles, the refrigeration power is moderate, but if they wanted to replace the Pacific Intertie within an underground superconducting line for that entire distance, I suspect the refrigeration power would be more than the electrical losses of the present system. It would likely also be an order of magnitude more expensive to build.
...One major issue right off the bat is how much of the efficiency gained by using the superconductor...
Power equals volts times amps and to transmit 5 GW requires lots of both. If you go up in voltage, then you have insulation challenges. Large currents produce tremendous I^2R heat losses. To build a conventional transmission line capable of transmitting that kind of power over even a few miles is nearly impossible technologically.
If this superconductor can carry a large current, cooling it with liquid nitrogen is well within current technology. Liquid nitrogen is cheap and readily available. On the other hand, if it has to be cooled with liquid helium, such as the magnets in the LHC, that even is still doable, but at considerably higher expense.
The problem with renewable energy, is that it is intermittent and usually available in places where there are not too many customers. This means that the energy has to be transported to its users. Electricity is hard to store and transmit, it has to be generated as consumed.
....Naiive question, but what limits the capacity of superconductor?....
The magnetic field it is in or generates. Anytime you have an electric current, you have associated with it a magnetic field. Add some value of magnetic field, the superconducting wire becomes an ordinary wire with resistance, which quickly burns out unless the power is shut off immediately.
At the CERN LHC they use lots of superconducting wire wound into coils to make powerful magnets that have no losses. Another thing that quenches, that is making non superconducting, is a higher temperature. In these magnets, the superconductor is kept at 4.2 K. Presumably, the superconducting wires remain superconducting at a higher temperature for these proposed power lines. Keeping everything superconducting, especially where conductors are joined, is still an art more than a science. It was a bad joint that cost the spectacular failure at the startup of the LHC.
To transmit 5 GW, will require both high voltages and high currents. To transmit 10,000 amperes at 500,000 V is a nontrivial engineering problem.
...they are criminals in spirit...
who violate the Golden rule. Unfortunately, that includes every one of us every day. In the Bible, those that violate it are called sinners. However, the good news is that God offers mercy to sinners. Those that refuse to accept his mercy will be judged by that law.
...no one will make copies of their stuff to the new format?...
Like everybody makes backsups of their data right now? People are lazy and forgetful and do not faithfully copy old, long forgotten data. Also, magnetic media decay just by sitting there and the equipment to read ancient tapes and disks is no longer generally available, making data recovery tedious and expensive. Unless the ancient data is extremely valuable to current users, it is lost. Even the movie studios are finding out that some of their old films have decayed to the point, that getting them back is expensive and difficult or even impossible. Pressed optical media have the potential of lasting longer, but still have the problem of finding equipment to read them a century or two from now. For durability, long-term, ink on paper, human eyeball readable, is still the only solution.
...But I suspect that 20 years from now...
The media you store your data on will be unreadable and the file formats indecipherable. I have some really old wedding photographs of my great great grandparents from the time when photography was quite new. (1890) I seriously doubt, that very many, if any, computer files, including pictures will be readable in the year 2120 by whatever technology if any, that is available then. If you want to preserve any pictures or other worthwhile data for posterity, better print them on archive quality paper and store that in a suitable environment. Images on paper survived the ravages of time, sometimes for thousands of years. It is not likely that the reading equipment, human eyeballs, will not be available in the far future. Maybe old wax cylinders and 78s may still be playable with a cactus thorn.
I also doubt that anyone would be interested in whatever trivialities are stored on your computer hard drive today, even 50 years from now. Since much of our civilization, if not most of it, is recorded digitally these days, it will be lost to historians 500 or more years from now. People living in the year 4000, will know less about us than we know about ancient Rome.
...Free phone calls. Free email...
Free beer, free pizza, everybody wants everything for free these days. Well, TANSTAAFL, (There ain't no such thing as a free lunch) somebody always pays for it, usually the end customer. Free apps from Google aren't free, although they are paid by advertising, all advertisers include the cost of advertising in whatever product or service they provide.
Flat rates for telephone calls, Internet service, or in some places still even water, are great, except for those few who abuse such services. There are a few who will spend hours on transcontinental telephone calls and download tens of gigabytes of data. Such hogs may make up about 5% of the total user base, but use up 80% or more of available resources.
...Having a bomb makes it far less likely that your neighbors will invade you...
Unless you are a radical, hateful, extremist, religious dictator, such as Amadinejahd, repeatedly and very publicly threatening to annihilate Israel.
...my bank's emails are pretty sterile...
but my bank's e-mails are nonexistent, because they have a messaging system on their site, that can only be accessed after a correctly log in. They make a big point of telling their customers that they never under any circumstances use e-mail to communicate. So, if I ever get an e-mail that supposedly came from my bank, I would know immediately that this is a phishing attempt.
...Science is agnostic (because it deals with the natural, not with any kind of potential "supernatural"),....
Indeed, is there any mathematical equation or law of physics that operates differently if God is honored as creator, rather than some other mechanisms that leave God out of the picture? All scientific facts and data are neutral. It is only people's interpretation of the data, that may or may not give God the credit and honor.
Faith goes where science cannot go, because unlike science, faith is not limited to the natural, but indeed CAN go to the supernatural. In the end, faith is more important in all of our lives, then we give it credit for. I'm not talking about blind faith, but reasoned faith. Jehovah God invites us to reason:
Isa 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, says Jehovah; though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool.
There is very little in life, if anything, that we know for certain. It's reasonable to believe, that you,ll wake up tomorrow morning to another day, but it's by no means certain. It's reasonable to believe, that the airplane you're about to get into, will take you to your destination. Sometimes airplanes crash killing everybody aboard. It's reasonable to believe, hope, that other drivers will be sober, keeping on their side of the road, but we all know, that some get drunk and cause deadly crashes. It is reasonable for me to believe in God, whom I have repeatedly seen working in my and my family's life.
....to prove that it has a finite age....
If you BELIEVE in the Big Bang, you must logically also believe that the universe has a finite age. Nobody knows what was before the Big Bang. Matter-energy, space-time all came into being together. I BELIEVE that the eternal God Jehovah created the universe out of nothing. He formulated the laws under which it would evolve. Even though the details are very sketchy, there is one refrain in the creation account in the Bible. It says repeatedly that God said "it was very good".
In my estimation, a universe with entropy, that is where things get old, die and wear out is definitely not "very good". The Bible does not go into detail, but does tell us that evil entered into God's very good universe and has messed it up. That's why, in the Bible, God promises to create a new heaven and new earth, a new eternal universe, wherein there will be no more evil.
God has a very simple, universally applicable test to determine who will join him in this new perfect creation. It is found in the most quoted verse of the Bible: John 3:16.
...What is life?...
Jesus Christ, God come to earth, defined it this way:
John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
The apostle Peter writes this about the end of the universe:
2Pe 3:7 But the present heavens and the earth being kept in store by the same Word, are being kept for fire until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
2Pe 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a roaring noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat. And the earth and the works in it will be burned up.
Here is another description of the end of the universe, this time by the apostle Joh:
Rev 20:11 I saw a large, white throne and the one who was sitting on it. The earth and the sky fled from his presence, but no place was found for them.
Rev 20:12 I saw the dead, both important and unimportant people, standing in front of the throne. Books were opened, including the Book of Life. The dead were judged on the basis of what they had done, as recorded in the books.
Rev 20:13 The sea gave up its dead. Death and hell gave up their dead. People were judged based on what they had done.
...Because we (PC users) can't afford them!....
One way to afford a Mac and PC, is to save your money, sell your PC, buy a Mac, either laptop or desktop and then install Windows in a virtual machine. Virtual machines worked great on the Mac unless you want to play high-performance video games. In that case, Windows has to be installed on your Mac using Bootcamp. This is a good solution especially if you don't have that much space.