Science breaks the Absolute Zero barrier. (Alter all the laws of physics!)

Bah!

 

I wish I could remember the conversation, but this is going back over 30 years or so. I had a roommate who was a chemical engineering student and he was telling me about a discussion they were having in class about absolute zero, and they were dealing with negative temperatures (this is 30 years ago). I remember being kind of put off by that, asking how temperatures could be negative, and his explanation was kind of like 'well they're not really negative' but he couldn't really explain it to me.

Then again, where I went to school engineering was more like science at any other school, and science was like nothing at any school whatsoever. So it was probably something theoretical. but as I said, this was over 30 years ago. Still, it made a big enough impression on me that I kinda still remember it.

 

You don't get an opinion on facts. [Edit to add: This sounds harsh, but its also why people feel they can get away with teaching people blatant falsehoods - because you have to respect everyone's opinion] You either pony up evidence proportional to the extra-ordinariness of your claim, or you agree with a claim that has evidence proportional to its extra-ordinariness. There's no 'opinion' - just the degree to which the evidence you have gathered supports or refutes the accuracy of your claim.

For example, a recent test on atomic clock accuracy states:

That's very very precise.


Anyway, re: Crazy funky stuff - yeah, that's probably what happened, and I really really really hope that the experimental results offer a new avenue into looking into Quantum Gravity - it'd be super cool to be able to explain a big bang like situation more thoroughly, and you need QG to do it.

Re: Evidence for The Speed Of Light (R) being constant, here's a list of experiments that, at the very least, strongly support c being constant:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson–Morley_experiment
• Maxwell's Equations (the rate of propagation of EM radiation being constant - note, this can be slowed by interactions with atoms/molecules)
• http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/experiments.html - SR relies on the speed of light being a constant.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light#Measurement
• There's more, but 1 experiment, 1 well established (read: tons of evidence at classical levels + QED as an expanded version) and 2 pages of compilation was more than enough to convince me that light travels at constant velocity.

Re: Measuring mono-atomic masses: We use mass spectrometry. It's fucking fantastic and awesome and if you're at all a nerd you'll be jumping up and down in your seat by the end of it because we can measure the mass of a PROTON with high accuracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry

We can measure charges quite precisely on ions through applying the results of the:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil-drop_experiment

There was some dodginess here (as there always is) - but that's why we have peer review, [this was also a century ago].

 

While I certainly respect the research you have done, I must fall back on my tried and true argument that Humans have not been sentient long enough to know that anything is persistent. That includes time itself.

Please feel free, and infact encouraged to fully ignore me. I have opinions I cannot back up with evidence. You are more than welcomed to call me a willfully ignorant fool.

As for the speed of light, can you reference one singular experiment that was performed outside the heliosphere of Sol? (I know there has been none.) That is why I stated that we have no clue that the physical conditions generally believed to be constant exist as we know them outside our little bubble of magnetically contained certainty.

We can observe things and speculate that since everything works as we observe here, it must also work the same everywhere else. But until a Human manages to leave the heliosphere and measure the time it takes for light to pass between two sensors a few AU apart, I will remain a skeptic.

We can slow light down to a significant fraction of its known "Constant" speed in carefully controlled tests. So how do we justify saying it is universal and the same everywhere?

*Edit* Scratch that. I think that test I am remembering was found to be defective. But does light remain constant inside a Black Hole? Does it go at its normal speed and then suddenly stop when there is enough gravity? Or does it slow down? You can really argue both ways on it, but we just plainly cannot know.

 

My opinion is that this fact sucks.

 

It is possible, via logic and reasoning though, to determine truth beyond what is directly observable, given facts. You MIGHT be able to say that mistakes in either logic or observation are made. But what you cannot do is claim that something is unknowable simply because it is unobservable, or that it has not yet been observed.

Examples include predictions of the location of Neptune based on the indirect observation of oddness in the orbit of Uranus. Similarly, the discovery of Pluto was aided in the same way. Knowledge of orbital mechanics as well as chemistry and physics, has aided us to where we can now say with relative certainty that specific other stars also have planets.

Direct observation is certainly nice, but logic and reasoning and the use of INDIRECT observations can certainly be used to determine truth that cannot be or has not been directly observed.

 

I am Agnostic. I can and do say things are unknowable. This is my belief. You are more than welcomed to have a different and contradictory belief. (BTW, not to make an argument out of this, but rather to try to avoid one, Agnostic can be considered a religion, and thus it would be inappropriate to argue for or against it here. If you want to chat about it, feel free to PM me. I have thick skin, not to mention a thick skull...)

Observation led to the mythos of the flat Earth and other such errors. (Given I was wrong about when that particular belief largely died out, but I wager there are still idiots who believe that.)

Logic led people to conclude that the Mayan calendar foresaw the end of the Earth in 2012. It was not correct logic though.

Like I keep saying, feel free to ignore me. I am stoic and impossible to convince of even the most simple things your pets can learn with ease.

*Edit* To clarify, Wikipedia explains Agnosticism as a means of defining religion. I use it generally. Stripped of the religious parts, this much remains that explains it properly for my uses.
"...agnosticism is the view that humanity does not currently possess the requisite knowledge and/or reason to provide sufficient rational grounds to justify the belief..."

I leave it as a wildcard for many things more learned people have a certain belief about. But I may simply be an ignorant fool.

*Edit* Another good part...
Thomas Henry Huxley said:
Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle...Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.

 

Once more into the breach

As your opinion is in fact subjective, my opinion is :Nyaaah:.

Light travels at c through a material, but it propagates slower due to interactions. It's like how you could, say, run at 10 km/h (say) in an open hall, but you can't even move when you're moving through a revolving door, if that makes sense - the photons are constant emitted and absorbed - this is shown through the speed of light in a substance decreasing as its temperature is decreased - indicating that photons can be 'held' by a substance (absorbed and re-emitted) at a variable rate - the refractive index of a substance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_gravity#Possible_experimental_measurements

This one allegedly measures either the speed of gravity (thought to be the speed of light) or the speed of light (actually the speed of light) depending on which critic you listen to . These experiments are controversial due to the difficulties in measuring shit without using light, due to the weakness of gravity compared to EM forces.

More importantly, I managed to find this (and this is the central evidence from outside Sol): http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/desit-1e.htm

This is blatantly false. Observation leads to the fact that the earth is sphere - with no fewer than at least 3 observations available to the ancients, of which any one would reveal it (the Greeks did, btw)
1) The mast of a sailing ship appears before the hull.
2) A large enough geometrical construct (i.e. using say a trundle wheel or whatever to measure distances on the order of kilometers) would display errors.
3) Here's a bunch more from Aristotle. Deal with it

Aristotle provided physical and observational arguments supporting the idea of a spherical Earth:

• Every portion of the Earth tends toward the center until by compression and convergence they form a sphere. (De caelo, 297a9–21)
• Travelers going south see southern constellations rise higher above the horizon; and
• The shadow of Earth on the Moon during a lunar eclipse is round. (De caelo, 297b31–298a10).

This is all just interpretation of history - and the beliefs of a long-dead culture are in no way predictive - it would be equivalent to considering 13/13/131313 "the end of the world" in a few millenia because of the superstitions of the first 100 millenia.

Probably the big thing to remember is that scepticism is fine, but the entire premise of SCIENCE! (my dear fellow) is that we make a theory, it is confirmed / refuted based on how well it meets three criterion:

• Explanation of observed effects, especially unexplained ones.
• (confirmed) Prediction of unobserved effects, especially ones that can be observed with apparatus that can be made.
• A minimum of 'crap' it has to lug around (i.e. sentient particles, an all-mighty omniscient... narrator that makes things move, "we are in the matrix" etc.)

A theory that meets these three criterion is affirmed and used. One that does not (or falls upon new observations) is cast out.

The exceptions are stuff like Newton's Laws of Motion - those are bloody useful for everything not relativistic.

Anyway, Omni, it sounds like you need more...

Feynman

in your life :







Including whole play list .[/QUOTE]

 

I'm agnostic also, but that's really irrelevant.
And yes, I believe it was Godel who claimed (proved?) that there are things which are unknowable. But that doesn't mean that there aren't things that ARE knowable. Believing that everything is unknowable causes a paradox, because that implies that you don't know that you don't really know that either.

You start with observations, and you form theories based on those observations. The observations, of course, can be faulty, but believing that ALL observations are false, essentially, places you in the stone age, unable to act because you can't believe anything is true. The apple you plucked from that tree could be poison, but you don't know

Therefore, to an extent, you have to trust your senses, until you have reason to doubt them. That forms your starting assumptions. And from there, you can start building a system of knowledge. Can you know everything? Certainly not. But until that system of knowledge is proven to be faulty, you have to assume that every piece of it is true. And when you do find a faulty piece, you simply go back and reexamine the evidence to see where you made a mistake (because you almost certainly did). You keep making corrections and adding more and more to your system of evidence, until you have a huge pile of facts, things that are unassailably known to be true. The whole point is to keep challenging that pile of evidence until you've built a structure that is impervious to attack. While your entire body of knowledge may not be totally impervious, you cannot avoid having a core which you can say you have no doubts about. Everything beyond that falls into one of two categories -- that which we know to be false, and that which we don't know or at least, have very little confidence in (in other words, everything on the very frontiers of science).

 

Its safe to assume that much of what we think we know is wrong. I'm sure every generation of man preceding us felt themselves to be living in a modern age beyond the benighted era just a generation or two ago.

No actual laws of nature were broken.

 

So you are Agnostic, yet for me to also be agnostic I must believe differently from you? And that belief must be that nothing can be known about any subject? Take it easy with the drugs man, they are messing with your head!

Take that as a critical response to only the bold part. The rest I understand and acknowledge. (BTW, I am not a Nihilist.)

As for mining... I will need some time to sleep, then hours to read the thesis you wrote and watch the videos. Then, if I have not died of old age, I will reply and probably be a sarcastic ass then too. Good night everyone.

 

Another excellent Feynman video:

 

Clearly, the only solution is for Mining to challenge Omni to Mortal Kombat. And I don't mean the video game.

 

Feynman sublingulates... There was a time where I did not, then some total jerkbag that sat next to me would read aloud and insisted that everyone read the same stuff with him. I tried to ignore it, but eventually I was trapped hearing myself read the stuff he read aloud in my mind while he read. Since then I have also sublingulated. It is a 'effing disease!

I used to do all my arithmetic and spelling visually and could use the audio portion of my mind for a seperate task. But once I caught this ailment, it could not be removed.

Reading aloud is a crime against multitasking. Even as I type this I sublingulate the very words I am typing.

 

I theorize that the best teachers sublingulate - they can say what they think in such a way that it follows their thought processes, while others can only try to explain their though processes.

 

Yep - my favorite quote is

Re: Agnosticism, I subscribe to David Hume's view:

This is why, for example, I'm not a huge fan of any of the string theories, for various reasons, but I'm quite happy with the statement that "I know that space-time as a concept explains our physical world exceptionally well, with issues in dealing with quanta of mass". Similarly, I'm happy with the statement "F=MA" for all velocities less than 0.1c (and a fair few above 0.1c, based on how accurate we must be).

It is blatantly silly to claim "We can not know X with 100% certainty universally, hence I do not accept X as a satisfactory theory". Try explaining anything without some *s.

 

As long as human beings create the definitions, yes you can know things with absolute certainty.

Actually, that sounded very much like what you said -- I'm not claiming that is true, I'm saying that if you followed your logic from your original statement, that's the implication of what you were saying. I appologize if I misinterpreted you.

 

No need to apologize. That I am a skeptic, a doubter, and a crazy person with delusions of many things is quite understandable.

I am one of those people who sometimes agrees with the concept while throwing a fit at the exact wording used to explain it. You would do well to ignore when I do. It is nothing personal. It is just me.

(BTW, my ISP was down for several hours today and I have still been unable to read and watch all the material in your megapost Mining. I still have it on my agenda.)

 

It's nice to know a crazy person who knows he's a crazy person.

 

Alright. After considerable reading and contemplation, I have come to the easiest answer to your post Mining:
1. Mining, Aristotle and Faynman do not exist, nor does gravity, light, and numbers before and after 1.
1. All of this is a joke. I have no good reply to you. All I can do is bury my head in the sand and pretend the world does not exist.
1. The number one may not exist as well. I need more sand!
#. Sand does not exist.