Again, you've asked questions which will take months to answer. Again, if you’d prefer, I could post without replying to you so that I don't rudely interrupt you.
... I have to ask you one more time: what part of STOP STALKING MY CONVERSATIONS, GO THE FUCK AWAY, AND LEAVE ME ALONE do you not understand??? THIS is a prime example of arrogance, and it is demonstrably no joke. You need to go take a l-o-n-g look in the mirror. And then go the fuck away. I am serious. This is getting to the point of stalking and harassment. Do you really want to go there? [Jane Q. Public]
This bears repeating, Mr. "Khayman80": You appear to have some kind of unhealthy obsession with me and it has gone far beyond the point of simply rubbing me the wrong way. If you do not cease and desist voluntarily, I will be compelled to start looking into what other options may be available. [Jane Q. Public]
Don't flatter yourself. Debunking misinformation and defending scientists against baseless attacks are my unhealthy obsessions. It's hardly my fault that you're one of the most prolific misinformers I've ever seen. If you didn't want people responding to your claims, you probably should've written them in a notebook instead of on a public website. It's also strange that you call my responses to your public comments "stalking and harassment" while quoting hacked private emails from years ago to baselessly attack scientists.
YOU don't have somebody following you around and harassing you with months-old, off-topic comments all over Slashdot. If this had been the only example, I wouldn't mind. But he has done it many times. Frankly, he acts like a stalker and I don't know what his obsession with me is, but I don't appreciate it in the least, and if somebody had been doing it to you, you wouldn't either. [Jane Q. Public]
Let's consider some of the "many times" you mentioned. When I asked for references to support your claims about climate science, you called me a vindictive asshole. Then I responded to your claims about the Casimir effect hours before my presentation at the GRACE science team meeting. Afterward, I wrote another comment about negative energy, then went on vacation. After returning home, I found that you'd dramatically expanded the scope of your claims. When I responded, you complained that I'd taken weeks and accused me of being a stalker.
My response to your claims about neutrino oscillation was interrupted last summer by a cross-country move, after which research quickly diverted my attention. However, the charming comments you left at Dumb Scientist in June reminded me that you hadn't retired. When I responded, you complained that I'd taken MONTHS and accused me of pathetic personal attacks. When I responded just now to your claims about neutrino oscillation, you complained that I'd taken too long and accused me of being a stalker. But refuting your claims about neutrino oscillation is a prerequisite to refuting your other claims about Latour's article, which you've asked for:
Where is your refutation of any argument I made HERE, in this thread? Where is it?... Wh
Update: Actually, the stimulated photon has non-unit fidelity with the original photon due to the no-cloning theorem. But stimulated emission is a "natural candidate for a practical realization of a quantum copier."
It's only arrogance if you're wrong. If you are correct, it's knowledge. If you're wrong, it's arrogance. Sadly, many employers do not understand this little bit of wisdom. [Jane Q. Public, 2012-10-25]
Jane, are you sure you want to use that criterion? Let's reminisce...
How do they know they were the same neutrinos they launched out? [Dr Max]
... they know the beginning ratio and ending ratio of the different types. If they are not the same, then some must have flipped (or rotated, or whatever language the neutrino guys use these days). [global_diffusion]
Not necessarily. They could be different neutrinos, caused by atoms in the way absorbing some neutrinos and emitting others. I am not sure but I suspect that is what GP [DrMax] was getting at. Rather than evidence of neutrinos actually changing from one type to another, it seems just as likely (more likely?) that intervening matter performed a conversion. Just as, say, a crystal or a gas can "change" a laser's color by absorbing photons and then emitting others of a different frequency, maybe matter is absorbing these neutrinos and emitting others with different properties. [Jane Q. Public, 2011-06-17]
Nonlinear crystals can change a laser's color by absorbing photons and then emitting others of a different frequency because photons are mediators of the electromagnetic force, so they interact with comparatively large (~10^(-10) m) electron clouds. But neutrinos only interact via gravity (irrelevant here) and the weak force which has a comparable range of ~10^(-18) m. Since the cross section determines how likely interactions are, neutrinos are roughly ten thousand trillion times less likely to interact with matter than photons. This is just an approximation, but experiments yield similarly tiny cross sections.
If neutrinos have to interact with intervening matter before hitting the detector, an extra interaction is involved. That's why Chris Burke pointed out that detecting neutrino flavor change due to an interaction with intervening matter would depend on the square of the interaction probability. Detection in the conventional flavor oscillation theory just depends on the interaction probability because it only involves a single interaction, so it's trillions of times more likely to explain the observed electron neutrino events.
In fact, that T2K paper acknowledged a much bigger source of noise on page 8: the muon neutrino beam was slightly contaminated by electron neutrinos. This contamination doesn't invalidate their results because it only explains ~1.5 out of 6 observed electron neutrino events.
Anyway, the processes that change a laser's color are given names like "second-harmonic generation" (where a crystal combines two photons into one, commonly used in green laser pointers) and
I emailed the Casimir motor idea to a few scientists, saying: My gut tells me that vacuum energy can't be made to do work. But I don't see an obvious, fatal problem with the following scheme. Do you?
In response, Geoffrey Landis pointed out that there will be a latent heat at the phase transition, even for type II superconductors. He uses the same reasoning that explains why magnetic fields cause latent heat. In other words, Casimir-induced latent heat will exactly cancel the net work done by the plates, which seems to forbid this free lunch...
Maxwell's equations force E=0 inside perfect conductors, which means that vacuum fluctuations with a half-wavelength longer than the separation between the plates can't exist between the plates.
By the way: If you are going to refer to Maxwell's equations, you should use caution. Because often what are referred to as "Maxwell's Equations" are actually just Maxwell's simplifications of Heaviside's and Hamilton's quaternion equations, with introductions of arbitrary "constants" to cancel out inconveniences, much like Einstein's "cosmological constant". There is a good deal of modern evidence that Maxwell's attempt to simplify things may have been wishful thinking, and that Heaviside and Hamilton had it right all along. We rely much on Maxwell, but his conclusions are assumptions. Not only are they not proven, there is significant counter-evidence. [Jane Q. Public]
Good grief. Electric fields are zero in perfect conductors. I explain this fact to freshman physics students by asking: what would happen if we tried to place an electric field across a conductor? Electrons would move opposite the field, and positive electron holes would move with the electric field, exactly enough to cancel out the original field inside the conductor. Better conductors cancel out faster, so electric fields are zero in perfect conductors.
Mentioning that this fact can be derived from Maxwell's equations is meant to be helpful, because all physics students should be familiar with the first theory that emerged in a Lorentz-invariant form. In other words, Maxwell's equations were consistent with special relativity before relativity even existed. They're the basis of all radio equipment, and the correspondence principle checks that quantum electrodynamics (one of the most accurate theories in history) is identical to Maxwell's equations for large systems. If your reaction to hearing "Maxwell's equations" is to spray chaff about quaternions, you'll be disappointed to find that core classes based on junior-level Griffiths and graduate-level Jackson are almost exclusively about Maxwell's equations.
Quaternion notation is useful when desribing 3D rotations, but it's not used in electrodynamics because vector notation is more intuitive. That doesn't stop crackpots from insisting that Maxwell's equations are wishful thinking.
Physicists use Maxwell's vector equations despite the fact that we're well aware of quaternion notation. John Baez even wrote a paper on octonians. As Baez quips, if the noncommutative quaternions are like a shunned eccentric cousin, then the nonassociative octonians are like the crazy old uncle nobody lets out of the attic.
In fact, look at p542 of Griffiths 3rd edition: "Equation 12.136 combines our previous results into a single 4-vector equation-- it represents the most elegant (and the simplest) formulation of Maxwell's equations."
... "zero point" energy is NOT in fact zero (it is actually pretty huge)... [Jane Q. Public]
While talking with my first research advisor around 2003, I mused that it's unfortunate how the Casimir effect only supresses vacuum fluctuations with wavelengths larger than twice the spacing between the plates. Since fluctuations with shorter wavelengths have more energy, the Casimir effect only depletes a vanishingly small fraction of the vacuum energy between the plates. So I agree that a naive quantum calculation leads to a huge vacuum energy. But as I've just explained, the same theory of general relativity [1] that implies stable wormholes and the Alcubierre drive also seems to renormalize the vacuum energy to zero. So this just means that depleting vacuum energy could potentially lead to very negative energy densities.
In fact I thought it was pretty obvious to most people that the fact that "zero point" energy is NOT in fact zero (it is actually pretty huge), has been the motivation for finding ways to "Maxwell's Demon" the quantum vacuum fluctuations. There is nothing theoretically preventing it; one team this year found a possible means of exploiting it. We shall see. [Jane Q. Public]
I looked again, and didn't find anything from this year. So my memory could be incorrect. [Jane Q. Public]
Agreed:
What I am curious about is: assume you get the virtual particles which then tunnel: what is the probability that they will tunnel with the same probability, then recombine properly? It seems to me (without having done the math), that there is some possibility here of ending up with a quantum Goretex, or, in other words, a Maxwell's Demon of sorts, no matter how small its effect might be. [Jane Q. Public, 2009-04-21]
Not having done the math often does lead to quantum Goretex and ironic references to Maxwell's (broken) Demon.
But there's Maclay and Forward, from 2004. There are more recent examples but I will not have time to hunt them up today. [Jane Q. Public]
Maclay and Forward 2004[2] imagined accelerating a mirror fast enough that the dynamic Casimir effect creates real photons. A more recent example was in 2009, which imagined spinning magneto-electric nanoparticles fast enough that the centripetal acceleration created real photons. At the time, I called this device a photon drive. On page 2 of their 2004 paper, Maclay and Forward point out that more conventional photon drives would arguably be better than their propulsion system.
I will add a tidbit that I picked up last night shortly after I wrote the above. You mentioned that since the ground state (not your exact words) of the vacuum is "defined" to be 0, then the energy must be negative. I understand that logic. The problem is that the premise is incorrect. Planck's equations, as refined by Einstein et al. in 1913, show that in fact the vacuum energy of a quantum system must always be above its "potential well", or the theoretical zero state. Thus, "zero-point" energy is NOT "defined" to be zero, but in fact is always positive, and the Casimir effect then, even using your own framework, is not "negative energy". [Jane Q. Public]
If you really did "understand that logic" then you wouldn't have written all that nonsense about vectors. Instead, you'd have skipped immediately to this point, which now implicitly acknowledges that the Casimir vacuum has lower energy than the standard vacuum.
Remember that spacetime is curved near large masses, but ~flat far away from masses where only vacuum energy is present. This implies that vacuum energy exerts ~zero gravitational force, so its stress-energy tensor must be ~zero, so the standard vacuum has ~zero energy.
If you're interested in the details, John Baez summarizes several vacuum energy density calculations. A naive quantum field theory calculation yields a vacuum energy with a mass density of +10^96 kg/m^3, which would've ripped the universe apart[1] before galaxies could form. On the other hand, general relativity and observations of our nearly-flat universe place a more rigorous upper bound at +10^(-26) kg/m^3. It seems like [2] gravity renormalizes vacuum energy to zero, within about one part in 10^122. Even though renormalization was harshly criticized at first, it's necessary to explain why galaxies (and thus humans!) exist.
Here's another, purely quantum-based, argument [3] for renormalization:
"As there is no lower energy state than the ground state, there is no energy level transition available to release the ZPE. Therefore, it can be argued that hf/2 should be dropped before integration of the quantum expression. This procedure is an example of renormalization, which basically redefines the zero of energy."[Abbott et al. 1996]
Footnotes
[1] One might assume that a large positive vacuum energy would collapse the universe just like a large amount of positive mass-energy would. This doesn't happen because in general relativity gravity depends on energy and pressure. In natural units, vacuum energy has pressure equal and opposite to its energy density. Because the stress-energy tensor has three pressure terms (for x,y,z) and only one energy density term, the negative pressure of positive vacuum energy dominates, causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. back
[2] It's also vaguely possible that zero point energy doesn't gravitate at all
Because those fluctuations do exist in the vacuum outside the plates (which is defined to have zero energy), the energy inside the plates is actually negative. The attractive force implies negative energy between the plates because force is the negative gradient of potential energy.
A force being applied in the context of the Casimir effect is definitely a vector. It has direction. Neither a positive or negative vector implies "negative energy": it simply defines the physical direction in which the energy is directed. The coordinates are arbitrary according to vector calculus. There are circumstances in which energy can also be considered a vector, but this is not one of them. The Casimir effect is definitely a measurable vector in a particular direction, and he clear implication then is positive energy. [Jane Q. Public]
Good grief, you're arguing with the definition of potential energy. I was referring to the fact that all conservative forces can be described as the negative vector gradient of a potential energy function. Many of your statements on this topic are confusing:
A force being applied in the context of the Casimir effect is definitely a vector. It has direction. [Jane Q. Public]
Yeah, forces are vectors...
Neither a positive or negative vector implies "negative energy": it simply defines the physical direction in which the energy is directed. [Jane Q. Public]
The force vector points from a region with high potential energy to a region with lower potential energy. That's why an attractive force implies that the Casimir vacuum has less energy than the standard vacuum. No energy is "directed" anywhere because we're talking about potential energy, not calculating Poynting vectors.
"Because those fluctuations do exist in the vacuum outside the plates (which is defined to have zero energy), the energy inside the plates is actually negative."
You're trying to get my goat. Haha. That isn't what it says. According to the article, the force is negative, in relation to the chosen physical framework, which (as it clearly says in the article) merely implies that the energy is lowered when the physical substrates come together. [Jane Q. Public]
The Casimir force between two parallel conducting plates is negative/attractive. Period. More complicatedgeometries can have repulsive Casimir forces, but that doesn't affect the attractive force between parallel plates any more than your meaningless caveat does. Perhaps you meant to say "According to the article, the energy is negative..."
The same phenomenon can be demonstrated with magnets. No "negative energy" is implied. [Jane Q. Public]
This is going to be one of my rare responses to your posts. Prepare to be ignored for the most part, from here on in.... Get a clue. If you are seriously using that link as a citation, then you lose. You did not properly comprehend what it said.... Dude. I know you are a scientist. But do you even really know what the Casimir effect is? Of course I expect you will by the time you answer (if you do). And if you do answer, I probably won't reply. But at this very moment, at the time you first read this, from what you have already stated, I suspect that you really don't know what it is. [Jane Q. Public]
Comments like these suggest that you're not really interested in studying physics. On the other hand, John Cramer's Alternate View columns inspired me to study physics in high school. In 1998, FTL Photons introduced me to the Casimir effect. In 2001, I made an offhand remark about these faster-than-light (FTL) implications to my experimental physics professor, and he asked me to give a presentation to the class.
The next comment I wrote summarized the first part of my presentation. The second part showed that virtual particles actually slow down light in the standard vacuum, because photons spend some of their time as electron-positron pairs that travel slower than "true" lightspeed. Because the Casimir effect suppresses some of these virtual particles, light actually travels faster between the plates (perpendicular to the plates) than in the standard vacuum. This is called the Scharnhorst effect.
The Casimir effect can be modeled mathematically as a negative-mass region; Hawking showed that negative energy is necessary for certain effects on WORMHOLES to take place in conjunction with such a negative mass. But he did not claim that the negative energy was supplied by it. But that does not establish a direct relationship between the two. It is a very FAR cry from equating negative energy with the Casimir effect. [Jane Q. Public]
Why are you talking about Hawking? I already pointed you to "Wormholes, Time Machines, and the Weak Energy Condition":
"The following model explores the use of the 'Casimir vacuum'[12] (a quantum state of the electromagnetic field that violates the unaveraged weak energy condition[11]) to support a wormhole..."[Morris, Thorne, and Yurtsever, 1988]
Nevertheless, Hawking's findings did not point at Casimir effect as a source of negative energy; they merely indicated that negative energy was necessary for the negative mass to have the calculated effect. Not the same thing. [Jane Q. Public]
Again, why are you talking about Hawking? You might want [1] to read "FTL Photons":
"Since the energy density of normal vacuum is defined to be zero, the vacuum between the metal plates actually becomes a region of negativ
What does the Casimir effect have to do with it? That is merely a demonstration of so-called "zero point" fluctuations. It isn't "negative energy", except to the extent that you have particles and their counter-particles spontaneously arising at the same time. Even so, in the case of the Casimir effect it exerts a net positive energy on the affected mass.
The AC is terse but correct. The Casimir effect occurs because vacuum fluctuations are suppressed between two parallel conducting plates that are placed very close together. Maxwell's equations force E=0 inside perfect conductors, which means that vacuum fluctuations with a half-wavelength longer than the separation between the plates can't exist between the plates. Because they exist in the vacuum outside the plates (which is defined to have zero energy), the energy inside the plates is actually negative. The attractive force implies negative energy between the plates because force is the negative gradient of potential energy.
"Exotic matter, by definition, requires violations of the known laws of physics."
No, it doesn't. Antimatter is one valid type of "exotic matter", and it has been manufactured in labs in various (small) amounts for many decades now, without a physics violation in sight.
Antimatter certainly isn't common, but it's not "exotic matter". Stable wormholes and the Alcubierre drive require using exotic matter that has negative mass-energy, which would violate the weak energy condition.
"... we can see it in certain configurations of regular matter, such as the Casimir effect."
What does the Casimir effect have to do with it? That is merely a demonstration of so-called "zero point" fluctuations. It isn't "negative energy", except to the extent that you have particles and their counter-particles spontaneously arising at the same time. Even so, in the case of the Casimir effect it exerts a net positive energy on the affected mass.
The Casimir effect is the best known example of negative energy:
Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever[4] pointed out that the quantum mechanics of the Casimir effect can be used to produce a locally mass-negative region of space-time. In this article, and subsequent work by others, they showed that negative matter could be used to stabilize a wormhole.
THEN they play straw-man, citing a survey that asked scientists "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" What is wrong with that? What is wrong is the fact that a great many scientists believe that land-use changes has has MORE effect on climate than CO2. So this survey is completely useless in determining how many agree about CO2-based warming. [Jane Q. Public]
Could you please provide a citation documenting the claims made by these (unnamed) great many scientists you're talking about?
I have already pointed out that Doran is a straw-man argument, IF you are talking about CO2-based warming (what most people mean when they refer to AGW). The questions they asked do not specifically relate to CO2-based warming. Rather (example: "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?"), it encompasses such things as land-use change, which many scientists consider to be a greater factor than CO2. [Jane Q. Public]
Notice that humans release four significant greenhouse gases, and that methane, nitrous oxide and halocarbons have forced the climate by about +1.0 W/m^2 since 1750. This is a large fraction of the roughly +1.6 W/m^2 due to CO2 alone, which is one reason why climatologists don't focus solely on CO2.
Notice that land-use changes have produced an albedo effect that forces the climate by about -0.2 W/m^2. Clearing rainforests to plant endless fields of identical crops actually increases the albedo, reflecting more sunlight and producing a slight cooling effect.
Notice that the error bars on land-use change albedo forcings actually extend to zero. Modern science can't reliably distinguish land-use change albedo forcings from "zero", which is one reason why the Level of Scientific Understanding (LOSU) is listed as medium-low. Compare these error bars to those the on greenhouse gas forcings which has a high LOSU.
again, Doran was not about just "CO2-based" warming either, which is what most people mean when they say or write "AGW". It includes other anthropogenic causes like land-use changes.... If you include climatologists their average drops below 90%. For ANY anthropogenic warming, not just CO2! [Jane Q. Public]
Yeah, ~88% is less than 90%. The higher percentages in the Doran survey already included all the climatologists who are active publishers on climate change. So agreement is only as "low" as ~88% when climatologists who don't publish regularly about climate change are included.
thanks to your reference, I have solid evidence that a good bit less than of 95% of "the experts" (less than 90% actually) support AGW theory -- and that is any AGW, not just CO2. [Jane Q. Public]
You seem to be implying that land-use changes can warm the global climate in ways that aren't related to CO2. As shown above, land-use changes actually cause a cooling albedo effect. But land-use changes actually do have a warming effect on the climate:
The "mainstream" AGW tale is that the Medieval Warm Period and the Maunder Minimum were both less extreme than scientists thought in the past... I'm not arguing that it is the truth. I'm simply saying that is the story that has been coming out of places like CRU and NASA. Deny it all you like: it's all over the press and even the peer-reviewed publications. [Jane Q. Public, 2012-08-28]
Please link to a peer-reviewed publication that supports your interpretation of mainstream climate science.
The "mainstream" AGW tale is that... we are experiencing "extreme" weather that is not in the historical (by that I mean ice cores, etc.) record at all. I'm not arguing that it is the truth. I'm simply saying that is the story that has been coming out of places like CRU and NASA. Deny it all you like: it's all over the press and even the peer-reviewed publications. [Jane Q. Public, 2012-08-28]
Please be more specific about what types of "extreme" weather you're referring to, and please link to a peer-reviewed publication where mainstream climate scientists claimed that ice cores provide a historical record of these types of "extreme" weather.
(Ed. note: I've been trying to post comments like this one since 2012-09-01, but they never appeared on my article at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. So I finally posted this reply at my website, Slashdot, and Mike Haseler's website Scottish Skeptic.)
Let's get the facts straight. Even doubling CO2, means its greenhouse effect would only rise global temperatures by 1C. That is half the threshold for action set by the IPCC.
But, this scam has nothing to do with their real science. These charlatans would be predicting the same nonsense if CO2's effect were twice as high or half as much, because the real contribution of CO2 is much smaller than the natural variation.
And let's not forget:
1. This scam is based on a rise in temperature from 1970 to 2000 which happens to be coincident with rising CO2. The overwhelming bulk of this rise has nothing to do with CO2 greenhouse effect.
2. Largely the same academics who cry wolf over this short term trend were crying wolf over the short term cooling before the 1970s.
3. It all stopped in 2000 (1998 to be precise). That's 14 years without warming, compared to the 30 year trend they say proves warming will continue till the earth fries (much like we were heading for an iceage)
4. And just to cap it all, it warmed the same amount, for the same period, before CO2 was measured rising between 1910 and 1940 and guess what... we didn't end up global warming doomsday then either. [Mike Haseler, 2012-09-01]
0. Many diverse lines of evidence (paleoclimate, modern observations, fundamental physics) show that doubling CO2 warms the planet by roughly 3C.
1. Human CO2 forcing has increased dramatically since 1970, while solar irradiance, volcanic activity, cosmic rays, solar flares, etc. have remained about the same.
2. Even during the 1970s, most scientific papers were predicting warming.
3. Skeptical Science's "going down the up escalator" shows at a glance that this often-repeated myth about global warming ending in 1998 is wrong.
4. The rate of warming from 1910 to 1940 was about 0.13C/decade compared to about 0.18C/decade from 1975 to 2005. But scientists don't simply compare the rates; they examine natural and human radiative forcings which change the global climate's total energy, which is indeed an average over at least several decades. In the early 20th century there was a lull in volcanic eruptions which usually cool the climate by blocking out the sun over a few years. Early human CO2 emissions and a slight increase in the Sun's brightness also played small roles. Internal variability modes, which shift energy from one part of the globe to another (i.e. climate cycles) are also important. Temperatures measured in the 1940s were warmer than the models; this discrepency is thought to be due in part to Ar
The "mainstream" AGW tale is that the Medieval Warm Period and the Maunder Minimum were both less extreme than scientists thought in the past... I'm not arguing that it is the truth. I'm simply saying that is the story that has been coming out of places like CRU and NASA. Deny it all you like: it's all over the press and even the peer-reviewed publications.
Please link to a peer-reviewed publication that supports your interpretation of mainstream climate science.
The "mainstream" AGW tale is that... we are experiencing "extreme" weather that is not in the historical (by that I mean ice cores, etc.) record at all. I'm not arguing that it is the truth. I'm simply saying that is the story that has been coming out of places like CRU and NASA. Deny it all you like: it's all over the press and even the peer-reviewed publications.
Please be more specific about what types of "extreme" weather you're referring to, and please link to a peer-reviewed publication where mainstream climate scientists claimed that ice cores provide a historical record of these types of "extreme" weather.
I hoped to end this interview with a concise, uplifting challenge to build a better future through human ingenuity. Oh, well. The modern anthropogenic skyrocketing CO2 concentration is a trend I desperately want to reverse, but here's a more relevant answer:
Here is a related question: If the former case, volcanoes produced CO2 and that raised temps, that same rise should also cook CO2 out of the oceans, which would produce an even greater rise in temps. What could reverse this trend?
The end-Permian event and the PETM (linked above) were eventually reversed because accessible carbon sources are finite. Plate tectonics continually exposes new rocks which absorb CO2 as it weathers, and other biochemical sinks absorb CO2 from the air. Positive feedbacks such as those you describe don't necessarily involve runaway warming, any more than geometric series necessarily blow up to infinity. But life during one of these temporary excursions is usually... interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Again, you've asked questions which will take months to answer. Again, if you’d prefer, I could post without replying to you so that I don't rudely interrupt you.
Don't flatter yourself. Debunking misinformation and defending scientists against baseless attacks are my unhealthy obsessions. It's hardly my fault that you're one of the most prolific misinformers I've ever seen. If you didn't want people responding to your claims, you probably should've written them in a notebook instead of on a public website. It's also strange that you call my responses to your public comments "stalking and harassment" while quoting hacked private emails from years ago to baselessly attack scientists.
Let's consider some of the "many times" you mentioned. When I asked for references to support your claims about climate science, you called me a vindictive asshole. Then I responded to your claims about the Casimir effect hours before my presentation at the GRACE science team meeting. Afterward, I wrote another comment about negative energy, then went on vacation. After returning home, I found that you'd dramatically expanded the scope of your claims. When I responded, you complained that I'd taken weeks and accused me of being a stalker.
My response to your claims about neutrino oscillation was interrupted last summer by a cross-country move, after which research quickly diverted my attention. However, the charming comments you left at Dumb Scientist in June reminded me that you hadn't retired. When I responded, you complained that I'd taken MONTHS and accused me of pathetic personal attacks. When I responded just now to your claims about neutrino oscillation, you complained that I'd taken too long and accused me of being a stalker. But refuting your claims about neutrino oscillation is a prerequisite to refuting your other claims about Latour's article, which you've asked for:
Where is your refutation of any argument I made HERE, in this thread? Where is it? ... Wh
Thank you, that was informative and interesting. I also appreciate the replies from several other AC's.
Update: Actually, the stimulated photon has non-unit fidelity with the original photon due to the no-cloning theorem. But stimulated emission is a "natural candidate for a practical realization of a quantum copier."
Jane, are you sure you want to use that criterion? Let's reminisce...
Nonlinear crystals can change a laser's color by absorbing photons and then emitting others of a different frequency because photons are mediators of the electromagnetic force, so they interact with comparatively large (~10^(-10) m) electron clouds. But neutrinos only interact via gravity (irrelevant here) and the weak force which has a comparable range of ~10^(-18) m. Since the cross section determines how likely interactions are, neutrinos are roughly ten thousand trillion times less likely to interact with matter than photons. This is just an approximation, but experiments yield similarly tiny cross sections.
If neutrinos have to interact with intervening matter before hitting the detector, an extra interaction is involved. That's why Chris Burke pointed out that detecting neutrino flavor change due to an interaction with intervening matter would depend on the square of the interaction probability. Detection in the conventional flavor oscillation theory just depends on the interaction probability because it only involves a single interaction, so it's trillions of times more likely to explain the observed electron neutrino events.
In fact, that T2K paper acknowledged a much bigger source of noise on page 8: the muon neutrino beam was slightly contaminated by electron neutrinos. This contamination doesn't invalidate their results because it only explains ~1.5 out of 6 observed electron neutrino events.
Anyway, the processes that change a laser's color are given names like "second-harmonic generation" (where a crystal combines two photons into one, commonly used in green laser pointers) and
I emailed the Casimir motor idea to a few scientists, saying: My gut tells me that vacuum energy can't be made to do work. But I don't see an obvious, fatal problem with the following scheme. Do you?
In response, Geoffrey Landis pointed out that there will be a latent heat at the phase transition, even for type II superconductors. He uses the same reasoning that explains why magnetic fields cause latent heat. In other words, Casimir-induced latent heat will exactly cancel the net work done by the plates, which seems to forbid this free lunch...
Good grief. Electric fields are zero in perfect conductors. I explain this fact to freshman physics students by asking: what would happen if we tried to place an electric field across a conductor? Electrons would move opposite the field, and positive electron holes would move with the electric field, exactly enough to cancel out the original field inside the conductor. Better conductors cancel out faster, so electric fields are zero in perfect conductors.
Mentioning that this fact can be derived from Maxwell's equations is meant to be helpful, because all physics students should be familiar with the first theory that emerged in a Lorentz-invariant form. In other words, Maxwell's equations were consistent with special relativity before relativity even existed. They're the basis of all radio equipment, and the correspondence principle checks that quantum electrodynamics (one of the most accurate theories in history) is identical to Maxwell's equations for large systems. If your reaction to hearing "Maxwell's equations" is to spray chaff about quaternions, you'll be disappointed to find that core classes based on junior-level Griffiths and graduate-level Jackson are almost exclusively about Maxwell's equations.
Quaternion notation is useful when desribing 3D rotations, but it's not used in electrodynamics because vector notation is more intuitive. That doesn't stop crackpots from insisting that Maxwell's equations are wishful thinking.
Physicists use Maxwell's vector equations despite the fact that we're well aware of quaternion notation. John Baez even wrote a paper on octonians. As Baez quips, if the noncommutative quaternions are like a shunned eccentric cousin, then the nonassociative octonians are like the crazy old uncle nobody lets out of the attic.
In fact, look at p542 of Griffiths 3rd edition: "Equation 12.136 combines our previous results into a single 4-vector equation-- it represents the most elegant (and the simplest) formulation of Maxwell's equations."
Page 555 of
While talking with my first research advisor around 2003, I mused that it's unfortunate how the Casimir effect only supresses vacuum fluctuations with wavelengths larger than twice the spacing between the plates. Since fluctuations with shorter wavelengths have more energy, the Casimir effect only depletes a vanishingly small fraction of the vacuum energy between the plates. So I agree that a naive quantum calculation leads to a huge vacuum energy. But as I've just explained, the same theory of general relativity [1] that implies stable wormholes and the Alcubierre drive also seems to renormalize the vacuum energy to zero. So this just means that depleting vacuum energy could potentially lead to very negative energy densities.
I asked which team and you replied:
Agreed:
Not having done the math often does lead to quantum Goretex and ironic references to Maxwell's (broken) Demon.
Maclay and Forward 2004 [2] imagined accelerating a mirror fast enough that the dynamic Casimir effect creates real photons. A more recent example was in 2009, which imagined spinning magneto-electric nanoparticles fast enough that the centripetal acceleration created real photons. At the time, I called this device a photon drive. On page 2 of their 2004 paper, Maclay and Forward point out that more conventional photon drives would arguably be better than their propulsion system.
If you really did "understand that logic" then you wouldn't have written all that nonsense about vectors. Instead, you'd have skipped immediately to this point, which now implicitly acknowledges that the Casimir vacuum has lower energy than the standard vacuum.
Remember that spacetime is curved near large masses, but ~flat far away from masses where only vacuum energy is present. This implies that vacuum energy exerts ~zero gravitational force, so its stress-energy tensor must be ~zero, so the standard vacuum has ~zero energy.
If you're interested in the details, John Baez summarizes several vacuum energy density calculations. A naive quantum field theory calculation yields a vacuum energy with a mass density of +10^96 kg/m^3, which would've ripped the universe apart [1] before galaxies could form. On the other hand, general relativity and observations of our nearly-flat universe place a more rigorous upper bound at +10^(-26) kg/m^3. It seems like [2] gravity renormalizes vacuum energy to zero, within about one part in 10^122. Even though renormalization was harshly criticized at first, it's necessary to explain why galaxies (and thus humans!) exist.
Here's another, purely quantum-based, argument [3] for renormalization:
"As there is no lower energy state than the ground state, there is no energy level transition available to release the ZPE. Therefore, it can be argued that hf/2 should be dropped before integration of the quantum expression. This procedure is an example of renormalization, which basically redefines the zero of energy." [Abbott et al. 1996]
Footnotes
[1] One might assume that a large positive vacuum energy would collapse the universe just like a large amount of positive mass-energy would. This doesn't happen because in general relativity gravity depends on energy and pressure. In natural units, vacuum energy has pressure equal and opposite to its energy density. Because the stress-energy tensor has three pressure terms (for x,y,z) and only one energy density term, the negative pressure of positive vacuum energy dominates, causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. back
[2] It's also vaguely possible that zero point energy doesn't gravitate at all
Good grief, you're arguing with the definition of potential energy. I was referring to the fact that all conservative forces can be described as the negative vector gradient of a potential energy function. Many of your statements on this topic are confusing:
Yeah, forces are vectors...
The force vector points from a region with high potential energy to a region with lower potential energy. That's why an attractive force implies that the Casimir vacuum has less energy than the standard vacuum. No energy is "directed" anywhere because we're talking about potential energy, not calculating Poynting vectors.
The Casimir force between two parallel conducting plates is negative/attractive. Period. More complicated geometries can have repulsive Casimir forces, but that doesn't affect the attractive force between parallel plates any more than your meaningless caveat does. Perhaps you meant to say "According to the article, the energy is negative..."
In my
Comments like these suggest that you're not really interested in studying physics. On the other hand, John Cramer's Alternate View columns inspired me to study physics in high school. In 1998, FTL Photons introduced me to the Casimir effect. In 2001, I made an offhand remark about these faster-than-light (FTL) implications to my experimental physics professor, and he asked me to give a presentation to the class.
The next comment I wrote summarized the first part of my presentation. The second part showed that virtual particles actually slow down light in the standard vacuum, because photons spend some of their time as electron-positron pairs that travel slower than "true" lightspeed. Because the Casimir effect suppresses some of these virtual particles, light actually travels faster between the plates (perpendicular to the plates) than in the standard vacuum. This is called the Scharnhorst effect.
Why are you talking about Hawking? I already pointed you to "Wormholes, Time Machines, and the Weak Energy Condition":
"The following model explores the use of the 'Casimir vacuum'[12] (a quantum state of the electromagnetic field that violates the unaveraged weak energy condition[11]) to support a wormhole..." [Morris, Thorne, and Yurtsever, 1988]
Again, why are you talking about Hawking? You might want [1] to read "FTL Photons":
"Since the energy density of normal vacuum is defined to be zero, the vacuum between the metal plates actually becomes a region of negativ
Continued here.
Just in case.
Which team?
I've explained why FTL travel implies time travel.
The AC is terse but correct. The Casimir effect occurs because vacuum fluctuations are suppressed between two parallel conducting plates that are placed very close together. Maxwell's equations force E=0 inside perfect conductors, which means that vacuum fluctuations with a half-wavelength longer than the separation between the plates can't exist between the plates. Because they exist in the vacuum outside the plates (which is defined to have zero energy), the energy inside the plates is actually negative. The attractive force implies negative energy between the plates because force is the negative gradient of potential energy.
Antimatter certainly isn't common, but it's not "exotic matter". Stable wormholes and the Alcubierre drive require using exotic matter that has negative mass-energy, which would violate the weak energy condition.
The Casimir effect is the best known example of negative energy:
Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever[4] pointed out that the quantum mechanics of the Casimir effect can be used to produce a locally mass-negative region of space-time. In this article, and subsequent work by others, they showed that negative matter could be used to stabilize a wormhole.
... forced the climate by A TOTAL OF about +1.0 W/m^2 ... have produced an albedo effect that forceD the climate
Oops. CO2 stored in the vegetation -> carbon stored in the vegetation as CO2.
Could you please provide a citation documenting the claims made by these (unnamed) great many scientists you're talking about?
Here's a radiative forcings chart that actually does summarize research from many scientists:
Yeah, ~88% is less than 90%. The higher percentages in the Doran survey already included all the climatologists who are active publishers on climate change. So agreement is only as "low" as ~88% when climatologists who don't publish regularly about climate change are included.
You seem to be implying that land-use changes can warm the global climate in ways that aren't related to CO2. As shown above, land-use changes actually cause a cooling albedo effect. But land-use changes actually do have a warming effect on the climate:
The pri
Charming. It's been a pleasure.
In case you missed my previous reply:
Please link to a peer-reviewed publication that supports your interpretation of mainstream climate science.
Please be more specific about what types of "extreme" weather you're referring to, and please link to a peer-reviewed publication where mainstream climate scientists claimed that ice cores provide a historical record of these types of "extreme" weather.
(Ed. note: I've been trying to post comments like this one since 2012-09-01, but they never appeared on my article at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. So I finally posted this reply at my website, Slashdot, and Mike Haseler's website Scottish Skeptic.)
0. Many diverse lines of evidence (paleoclimate, modern observations, fundamental physics) show that doubling CO2 warms the planet by roughly 3C.
1. Human CO2 forcing has increased dramatically since 1970, while solar irradiance, volcanic activity, cosmic rays, solar flares, etc. have remained about the same.
2. Even during the 1970s, most scientific papers were predicting warming.
3. Skeptical Science's "going down the up escalator" shows at a glance that this often-repeated myth about global warming ending in 1998 is wrong.
4. The rate of warming from 1910 to 1940 was about 0.13C/decade compared to about 0.18C/decade from 1975 to 2005. But scientists don't simply compare the rates; they examine natural and human radiative forcings which change the global climate's total energy, which is indeed an average over at least several decades. In the early 20th century there was a lull in volcanic eruptions which usually cool the climate by blocking out the sun over a few years. Early human CO2 emissions and a slight increase in the Sun's brightness also played small roles. Internal variability modes, which shift energy from one part of the globe to another (i.e. climate cycles) are also important. Temperatures measured in the 1940s were warmer than the models; this discrepency is thought to be due in part to Ar
Please link to a peer-reviewed publication that supports your interpretation of mainstream climate science.
Please be more specific about what types of "extreme" weather you're referring to, and please link to a peer-reviewed publication where mainstream climate scientists claimed that ice cores provide a historical record of these types of "extreme" weather.
I hoped to end this interview with a concise, uplifting challenge to build a better future through human ingenuity. Oh, well. The modern anthropogenic skyrocketing CO2 concentration is a trend I desperately want to reverse, but here's a more relevant answer:
The end-Permian event and the PETM (linked above) were eventually reversed because accessible carbon sources are finite. Plate tectonics continually exposes new rocks which absorb CO2 as it weathers, and other biochemical sinks absorb CO2 from the air. Positive feedbacks such as those you describe don't necessarily involve runaway warming, any more than geometric series necessarily blow up to infinity. But life during one of these temporary excursions is usually... interesting.