Can I just step in here to say that this is, in fact, the first time I have ever appeared on television?

Er... no, really.  I like this thread.  This sort of thing is exactly why I love this place.  Even when I'm on an "I hate Poser" kick, the 'Rosity Poser Forum still rocks!  :D

Quote - Can I just step in here to say that this is, in fact, the first time I have ever appeared on television?

No, no we haven't time, because we're just going straight over to Luton.

Quote - >> Answer = transistor <<

Please be clear: are you stating that the engineers and inventors at Bell who came up with the transistor actually had to have a high-theoretical understanding of Quantum Mechanics in order to succeed, and that if QM had not developed as a theory in the years prior to the 50s that creating the transistor would have been impossible?

Notice: I am not asking if QM is how a transistor works at a primal level; I am only asking if the Bell people need to know and understand the explicated theory in their work.

::::: Opera :::::

Transistor was invented by Shockley and is a direct consequence of Quantym theory, without QM it was impossible to make it. Contrary to most inventions the transistor was a theoricaly planed invention, the theory of a transistor existed before it physically existed, is just the opposite of he valve.
A valve or tube was a result of empirical work, walves existed, were used and nobody knew well how it worked, only Quantics was able to explain the valve. Quantics explained the valve, but wasn't needed for its creation and use.
Transistors were invented in the paper and are a direct consequence of the application of Schroedinger equation to a semiconductor. Without Schroedinger no way to know that a juctoon needs two semiconductors contaminated by a small amount of impurities and the ammount of them, well also no way to know a junction itself.
The problem was to make the transistor something usable and reliable, it was a technological problem, the first transistors were very fragile. The firsr commercial transistors were made of Germaniun, Silcon and other semiconductors were known, but Germanium was superior to Silicon and in those days no technology to do something with Silicon that only was used long years after. Silicon is inferior to Germanium, but it resists much higher temperatures, is strong mechanicaly, can be grown and contaminated in a very controlled way and suitable for integration. Also exist from the begining other semiconductors as Gallium-Arsenide, the electron has a very high mobility that allows it to be very much faster than Silicon, but still today there's no technology to use it as we use Silicon, so GaAs applications are limited to simple device as microwave diodes or laser diodes.

Quote - So kawecki I know you intended your statement that Einstein is the Aristotle of the 20th century to be an insult. However, your unintended consequence is to praise with the highest praise.

The problem is not Aristotle nor Einstein, the problem is people that elevated them to God.
Aristotle was a great Greek philosopher and he produced an extense work, ideas and concepts, some were correct and some were wrong.
Aristotle created, probably imported the idea from China, the theory of the four elemnts, a nice , and brilliant heory to explain Nature, some other Greek had the atom theory, but it was not so nice and brilliant. Fine, no problem, one more theory among others.
The problem was that people of middle-age picked Arsistotle's work as the most absolute truth, the other theories, conceptions, ideas, philosophers were plain and simple ignored if not had their work destroyed.
Nobody was allowed to contradict Aristotle, he turned God, no matter if what was observed didn't matched what Aristitke said, he was the tryth and only truth. If someone had another idea, theory or conception, no matter how this matched with the observation, he was ignored and ridiculizsed.
The result is obvious, if you base on a wrong theory no matter if you insist one thousands years with this theory the result always will be wrong and no progress made in those thousand years, in another words, the dark-age.
With Einstein is the same, Einstein had an idea, a concept and made another nice and brilliant theory, his theory explained some things that had in those days no explanation, the same happened with Aristitle in Greek times, the four elements explained many things.
In the same way as in Greece Aristotle made his four elements theory some another guy that nobody remembers his name made the atom theory.
In the XX centurty happened the same, Einstein's made his theory that explained many things, other guys that also nobody remebers their name, made another theories to explain the same.
Einstein was elevated to God and his theory is the most absolute truth, it is impossible to something travel faster than light, it's a dogma and the most absoulte truth, if someone makes a theory that contradicts this dogma no matter how this theory explain many things without explanation, he is ignored and ridiculized and have to wait for the year 3,000 to be discovered again.
There is a huge number of experiments and observations that contradicts Einstein theory, experiments and data that shows that gravity is not what Einstein said, all this that are giving a clue about Nature of something to be researched and discovered is ignored and no progress is made.
For making it worst, Einstein turned into the greatest Genius ever existed, but people said that he was a genius because someone or the media told them that he was a genius and not by taking his work, analyze and the say, "this is brilliant", people repeat only as parrots, there are few people that know his theory, but everybody tells that is the greatest theory.
Greatest in what?, how do you know if is great or a trash if you know nothing about it, you are not able to understand a simple equation,  by the same logic Chinese must be genius, I don't undertand a single painted Kanji.
Only when you know and are able to understand the theory you can say, is good, is bad, I agree, I disagree, he was a genius, he was a dedicated student or even he did nothing and copied the work of another person.

And for the end another clue:
Einstein's theory is a four dimensions theory, we had always three dimensions and Einstein introduced time as the fourth dimension, a great improvement that caused great admiration among people and a nice mathematical construction.
Now we live in an Universe with four dimensions, fine, but did you know that time in Einstein's theory is imaginary and not real?
Time is imaginary!!!, a nice mathematical construction. but it doesn't represent the real world, imaginary numbers only exist in the mind.

Einstein is a Myth
Einstein turned into a myth and not a person or scientist. As anything that disagree with a myth is ignored Einteins himself was added to the ignore list.
Everyone know very well that Einstein did two theories that gave him all the fame, the Special Relativity (1905) and the General Relativity (1915) and here ends the myth of Einstein.
Einstein after his glorious General Relativity, didn't retired, dedicated to bonzai trees, made tourism in the Greek Islands or died, he instead continued with his work! and in 1950 he published his third and last theory, the Unified Field Theory.
Very few people knows that he made a third theory and if know it all end in the title of the theory.
Is almost impossible to find something about this theory
Einstein had the dream of his life that was to make a theory that integrated Gravitation with Electromagnetism, he worked his whole life and did this theory, the problem was that is Unified Field theory failed, appled to an electron gave ridiculous results and here is the problem, as for a myth is something inadmisible, Einstein's Unified Field theory together with 35 years of work was added to the ignore list.
It doesn't matter if the theory failed, it was a result of 35 years of work added to all the work of his previous theories, he could have failed, commited some mistakes, his theory can be revised, corrected the mistakes and turned into something useful , but all has vanished, nothing to analyze, nothing to correct or improve, no concept or idea to be learnt, the MYTH doesn't allows this, so Einsteins life as a scientist ends in 1916, forty years before his death!

Even granting your major premise that Einstein was turned into a myth much as the Church turned Aristotle into a Myth, it behooves us not to hold the original person responsible for that**. If there has been myth-making, it is up to us to break that mesmerization with critical thinking.

And in that light, we ought to stop attaching the mythos of earth-centric cosmology to Aristotle and rebrand him as the father of reason and science.

I would suggest that the dogmatization of Aristotleanism by the Catholic Church was due to the problem of how to handle Aquinas. This guy let reason back into Europe, but attempted to retain faith intact nevertheless. So the Church seized upon the cosmology as dogma rather than reason as modus operandi.

And please note the other pole of this thinking: it would be a mistake to reject Einstein and relativity simply because he DID become dogma.

::::: Opera :::::

** i will modify the above with the sidenote that in fact Einstein may indeed have personally contributed to his own status as a God through 'failure to demur.'

Quote -
In the XX centurty happened the same, Einstein's made his theory that explained many things, other guys that also nobody remebers their name, made another theories to explain the same.
Einstein was elevated to God and his theory is the most absolute truth, it is impossible to something travel faster than light, it's a dogma and the most absoulte truth, if someone makes a theory that contradicts this dogma no matter how this theory explain many things without explanation, he is ignored and ridiculized and have to wait for the year 3,000 to be discovered again.

 
Einstein's theory doesn't state that nothing can travel faster than light. It states that the speed of light in a vacumn is constant. As a easily derivable result of the the theory, it is provable that no mass traveling at less than the speed of light can be accelerated by a finite force to the speed of light. (Or put another way, it takes an infinite force to accelerate a mass from less than the speed of light to the speed of light.) This in turn implies strongly that unless we come up with the right sort of balonium drive, you just can't get accelerate an object faster than light. However, there has been a very real, albeit so far unproven, theory about the possible existance of tachyons -- particles with an imaginary (in the mathemicatical sense) rest mass which travel faster than the speed of light. Interestingly enough, the mathematics show that it would take them an infinite amount of force to decelerate to the speed of light. Everything in Special Relativity derives from about two basic assumptions.

Quote -
There is a huge number of experiments and observations that contradicts Einstein theory, experiments and data that shows that gravity is not what Einstein said, all this that are giving a clue about Nature of something to be researched and discovered is ignored and no progress is made.

 
There has been a lot of work showing that relativity doesn't work at the quantum level.

Quote -
For making it worst, Einstein turned into the greatest Genius ever existed, but people said that he was a genius because someone or the media told them that he was a genius and not by taking his work, analyze and the say, "this is brilliant", people repeat only as parrots, there are few people that know his theory, but everybody tells that is the greatest theory.
Greatest in what?, how do you know if is great or a trash if you know nothing about it, you are not able to understand a simple equation,  by the same logic Chinese must be genius, I don't undertand a single painted Kanji.
Only when you know and are able to understand the theory you can say, is good, is bad, I agree, I disagree, he was a genius, he was a dedicated student or even he did nothing and copied the work of another person.

 
How come most, if not all, theoretical physicists hold Einstein in high esteem? He solved so many problems. And the Special Theory is very understandable if you work through the math. Unfortunately, the best book on the subject, by David Merman, is long out of print. 

Quote -
And for the end another clue:
Einstein's theory is a four dimensions theory, we had always three dimensions and Einstein introduced time as the fourth dimension, a great improvement that caused great admiration among people and a nice mathematical construction.
Now we live in an Universe with four dimensions, fine, but did you know that time in Einstein's theory is imaginary and not real?
Time is imaginary!!!, a nice mathematical construction. but it doesn't represent the real world, imaginary numbers only exist in the mind.

 
Sorry to burst your bubble, but physicists had been treating time as a dimension for a long time. Where Einstein changed things was in how you the transformation of two views of an event, from different reference frames, was handled. In particular, under Newtonian methods, the time between two events was always constant -- any two observers would measure the same time. This is not true in relativity.

Second, we actually (probably) live in a universe with 11 spatial dimensions, but 8 of them are very small. (String Theory). Time has never been treated the same as the other dimensions. You can transform the x and y and z axis via rotation, but you can't transform the t (time) axisinto any other, nor any spatial axis into the time axis. (You sort of can in quantum mechanics -- transforming a diagram for an atomic or partical reaction in one coordinate system by exchanging axis leads to a description of another, also valid interaction. For example, if you flip the diagram for an electron capture by a proton, you get a diagram for the electron release by a neutron.)

Third, time in Einstein's mathematics is not imaginary. (Where imaginary is in the mathematical sense, being a real number multiplied by the square root of -1.) It is always given as a real number.

Quote - Einstein is a Myth
Einstein turned into a myth and not a person or scientist. As anything that disagree with a myth is ignored Einteins himself was added to the ignore list.
Everyone know very well that Einstein did two theories that gave him all the fame, the Special Relativity (1905) and the General Relativity (1915) and here ends the myth of Einstein.

 
Like all the quantum mechanics researchers who disagreed with Einstein's views about the fundamental incorrectness of Quantum Mechanics?

Quote -
Einstein after his glorious General Relativity, didn't retired, dedicated to bonzai trees, made tourism in the Greek Islands or died, he instead continued with his work! and in 1950 he published his third and last theory, the Unified Field Theory.
Very few people knows that he made a third theory and if know it all end in the title of the theory.
Is almost impossible to find something about this theory.

 
That's because he never finished the Unified Field Theory. He was trying to integrate gravity with the other forces. Einstein was hampered on four counts. First, gravity is probably the most difficult of the forces to unify with the others (considering that the electromagnetic and weak forces were unified in the early 70s, in part helped by high-energy collisions and the use of quantum mechanics. There has been no generally accepted further unification -- competing unifications of the electroweak and strong forces are awaiting experimental verification. The second problem Einstein had was that he didn't really understand or fully believe in quantum mechanics, which is the heart of the other unified theories. The third strike is that experimental physics hadn't provided the rich experimental basis for creating unified theories. Simply put, you just can't describe a unified field theory of gravity plus the other forces (especially the nuclear ones) using relativity and classical mechanics alone. The fourth strike is that two of the forces, the weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces, weren't all that well understood in the 1950s (again, due to lack of experimentation.)

Besides, if Einstein has been irrationally and incorrectly deified, despite his obviously :) incorrect theories of relativity, why hasn't his Unified Theory been accepted via dictat, rather like Lysenko's genetics?

Quote -
Einstein had the dream of his life that was to make a theory that integrated Gravitation with Electromagnetism, he worked his whole life and did this theory, the problem was that is Unified Field theory failed, appled to an electron gave ridiculous results and here is the problem, as for a myth is something inadmisible, Einstein's Unified Field theory together with 35 years of work was added to the ignore list.
It doesn't matter if the theory failed, it was a result of 35 years of work added to all the work of his previous theories, he could have failed, commited some mistakes, his theory can be revised, corrected the mistakes and turned into something useful , but all has vanished, nothing to analyze, nothing to correct or improve, no concept or idea to be learnt, the MYTH doesn't allows this, so Einsteins life as a scientist ends in 1916, forty years before his death!

 
It was 35 years of work which didn't accomplish anything other than show which way not to progress. Brilliant as Einstein was, he reached his level of incompetence when dealing with unified fields because thinking about them productively required tools not in his arsenal. He really had no coherent unified field theory, and his papers on unified fields were barking up the wrong tree. That said, it appears (from a cursory, 5-minute google search), that all the papers are still available (though not all online), and that there are several non-kook books out about them, from a philisophical and from a history of science basis. (There are also some clearly kook books out.) I also see some papers (dating from the 80s at least) exploring some consequences of Einstein's Unified Field Theory (mostly having to do with the gravitational consequences), and some history of science articles.

Quote - And please note the other pole of this thinking: it would be a mistake to reject Einstein and relativity simply because he DID become dogma.

The rejection is due that Relavity doesn't explain or agree with many observed  phenomena.

• TheFaraday'a homopolar generator.
• The Sagnac effect.
• The successful experiment of Michelson-Morley (not the failed that Einstein used as base for his theory).
• Gravitational shielding.
• Antigravitation experiments.
• Difference on the value for g depending on the method used for its masurement.
• Antigravitatory forces in gyroscopes.
• Aberration of lights experiments that showed that speed of light doesn't depend on the speed of the source, but yes on the receiver's speed, so is not constant.
• The speed of gravity that is very much bigger than the speed of light.
• Behaviour of Galaxies that suggest the existence of a gravitational force 1/r and not 1/r^2.
• Singularity at r = 0
• The energy stored in a gravitational field gives an infinite value.
• Not inclusion in the theory of the electromagnetic constants that define the speed of light..
• Dubvious interpretation of the Mach principle.
• Much more
• And why in some locations a car with the motor turned off and without brakes climb up a hill?

Quote - Third, time in Einstein's mathematics is not imaginary.

Yes it is, the time coordinate is u = ict.
The imaginary number doesn't appear in an explicit way in Einstein's theory because appears squared and the square of an imaginary number is real.
The geodesic equation used by Einstein is
ds^2 = du^2 - dx^2 - dy^2 - dz^2
If time was real the geodesic equation should have been
**ds^2 = du^2 + dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2

Well, is much worst, in Einstein's geodesic aquation the mimus sign is inverted so it looks as the time is real and the x,y,z coordinates are imaginary.**

Quote - > Quote - And please note the other pole of this thinking: it would be a mistake to reject Einstein and relativity simply because he DID become dogma.

The rejection is due that Relavity doesn't explain or agree with many observed  phenomena.

• TheFaraday'a homopolar generator.
• The Sagnac effect.
• The successful experiment of Michelson-Morley (not the failed that Einstein used as base for his theory).
• Gravitational shielding.
• Antigravitation experiments.
• Difference on the value for g depending on the method used for its masurement.
• Antigravitatory forces in gyroscopes.
• Aberration of lights experiments that showed that speed of light doesn't depend on the speed of the source, but yes on the receiver's speed, so is not constant.
• The speed of gravity that is very much bigger than the speed of light.
• Behaviour of Galaxies that suggest the existence of a gravitational force 1/r and not 1/r^2.
• Singularity at r = 0
• The energy stored in a gravitational field gives an infinite value.
• Not inclusion in the theory of the electromagnetic constants that define the speed of light..
• Dubvious interpretation of the Mach principle.
• Much more
• And why in some locations a car with the motor turned off and without brakes climb up a hill?

 
Whatever. You win.

kawecki, about your list...I, for one, will not gainsay one item on it because I am not educated enough to do so. You may be right, but I am not saying you ARE right. Now, I checked into a few websites about the invention of the transistor, and more than one partially substantiated what you said: that the inventor/engineers were fully knowlegable about QM and used it and needed it to invent the transistor. I have no facts to cite to the contrary at ths time.

::::: Opera :::::

- The successful experiment of Michelson-Morley (not the failed that Einstein used as base for his theory).

Those damned conspiratory Physicists hid that from the rest of us! Darn them!  The Luminiferous Aesther hypothesis has been adequately dismissed in experimental tests in the past hundred and more years.  There is no measurable medium through which EM waves/particles propagate - they propagate through the space-time continuum itself as best determined.

- Gravitational shielding.

???

- Antigravitation experiments.

There is no such thing.  Noone has proposed a hypothesis of anti-gravitation that has become theory.  And the experiments that I've seen of so-called 'antigravity' involve other well-known factors or fraud.

• Difference on the value for g depending on the method used for its masurement.

The value of g (gravitational acceleration on the surface of Earth) varies for many reasons - density, distance from the center (which isn't exactly the same over the planet since it is an oblate sphere - like all planets).  g may vary, but there is no place where it is 2g or 0.5g (ON THE SURFACE OF THE PLANET mind you).

• Antigravitatory forces in gyroscopes.*

Again, I'm skeptical.

- The speed of gravity that is very much bigger than the speed of light.

Current observations agree that the speed of gravity propagation is the same as the speed of light.  Next you'll tell me that Newton was correct concerning 'instantaneous action at a distance'.

- Behaviour of Galaxies that suggest the existence of a gravitational force 1/r and not 1/r^2.

Hmmmm...

*- And why in some locations a car with the motor turned off and without brakes climb up a hill?

Big, HMMMMM...  Cars 'climb up hill' because of an illusion.  The hill appears to be uphill due to surrounding references.  In reality the hill has a downward slope.  It has been evidenced.

You sound like someone who will believe anything.  I have some swamp land in Florida for sale - if you buy now I'll throw in a bridge! ;)  Will you be discussing the evil suppression of 'Cold-fusion' next?

Look, science is a self-correcting, self-regulating system.  The idea is that someone structures a hypothesis to explain some unknown phenomenon (in total or in part).  The someone or someone else constructs at least one experiment to validate the hypothesis.  If the experiment fails, it doesn't mean that the hypothesis is incorrect - may be a badly constructed experiment.  But, if or when it does succeed that is when things get interesting.  This is the self-correcting part.  Anyone should have access to the experimental data and experimental setup and procedure for review and verification of results.  This is why 'cold-fusion' is bunk.  Every other scientist who tried to verify the results of the original experiment had no success.  And the hypothesis was on shaky ground to begin with.  Out the window it went despite the cries of foul from the original scientists.

To err is human.  We are not perfect and neither is the scientific method (no formal system is perfect, by the way).  Miliken almost pulled a theory out of a poorly constructed experiment.  That is why there are measures that allow others to examine every part of a hypothesis and its experimental counterpart.  The scientific method is built with human error in mind.

Unfortunately for you, Einstein's Mythological theories have been tested, tested again, retested, tested over and over and over.  And they have withstood over 100 years of battering.  That means that they have adequately achieved THEORY status.  Your intention is to say that the hundreds of thousands of Physicists and Engineers since then who have used his theories are either all idiots, fools, or delusional.  And then you mention things like antigravity and that the speed of light can be faster or that gravity propagates faster - even though these have already been measured (billions and billions of times in the case of light).

For instance, you mention super-conductors.  Um, electricity (electrons) moves at LESS THAN the 'c' (speed of light - EM propagation) in solids despite their high conductivity.  Super-conductors just increase that speed a bit - but it is still LESS THAN 'c'.  If you are under the allusion that electricity travels at 'c' through circuit traces and wires and whatnot, you need to retake that course in Physics.

I'm all for new theories - but only those that have passed the gauntlet of the scientific method; not popular alternatives and potential hypotheses.  I don't call it String Theory.  In no way has any form of it ever been put to a test of its validity.  It is a hypothesis being constructed on the backwash of previous data.  And the continued refinement and changes to it speak of its 'not-quite-ready-for-theoryhood' situation.  It is String Hypothesis and that's where it remains - esp. with the need to cart in 11 dimensions.  The mantra remains, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."  Einstein delivered.  Planck delivered.

I don't call it String Theory.  In no way has any form of it ever been put to a test of its validity.  It is a hypothesis... <<

I could not agree with this more. Preying on the public's poor grasp of truth test in science, too many "popularizers", not to mention actual supposed scientists, clap the word "theory" on a hypothesis, thus cheapening the term 'Theory", which i am sure most in this thread know should only be applied to that which has been very vigorously tested and attacked, with not only experiments repeated by others, but predictions that could not otherwise have been attained, the entire body of connected knowlege vetted by the rational community as a whole. Contrary to postmodern theory [sarcasm intended], there is such a thing as certainty, and the word "Theory" should ONLY be applied to knowlege that is certain.

While there are many foisting this error on our culture, I hold the smarmy Brian Green particularily in contempt.

Thanks for making that point k.

:: og ::

P.S. Have you noticed a consequence? As a result of the cheapening of "Theory", kids nowadays can easily dismiss hard fact (in favor of radical skepticism that no truth can ipso facto be 'hard') with the tossed-off phrase, "Well, evolution (or fill in the blank) is ONLY a theory."

www.victorianweb.org/science/faraday.html provides a nice example of how differing traditions in science can result in differing views of the same phenomena. (It isn't really discussed in the article, but the French found it very difficult to reproduce Faraday's experiments, in large part because they hadn't seen the finicky apparatus demonstrated, and they also tended to give up to early in trying to get it to work correctly.)

Quote - but the French found it very difficult to reproduce Faraday's experiments,

I don't know if you are reffering to Faraday's hokopolar generator or to Faraday's experiments.
Faraday was a pioner, but his homopolar generator is not a laboratory experiment, is something real and working device. if you wish you can purchase an industrial version. Usualy are used for soldering and also are used as the energy source of "star war" lasers.
Homopolar geneartors are not a mystery, any high school technician can understand how it work, the only problem is that contradict Relativity, but as it work and are useful Einstein is ignored.
Dogma is only applied by scientists and academics and not by technicians, industry and business.
If something works and is useful, we can ignore God, do it and make money....

Quote - Those damned conspiratory Physicists hid that from the rest of us! Darn them!  The Luminiferous Aesther hypothesis has been adequately dismissed in experimental tests in the past hundred and more years.  There is no measurable medium through which EM waves/particles propagate - they propagate through the space-time continuum itself as best determined.

Is not a question of the aether  the problem is absolute or relative motion. The aether is an abstraction of something mystic that is at absolute rest,
Einstein said that is impossible to know the absolute speed of something, science found long time ago the absolute speed of Earth, value that agree with the measured relative to the background radiation and backaground radiation was only discovered recently.

Quote - And the experiments that I've seen of so-called 'antigravity' involve other well-known factors or fraud.

Many experiments produced very insignificant values that can be attributed to measurement errors and other sources not taken into account, but recently were some some experiment that produced a significative loss of weight that cannot be explained, so it remains as explication antigravity, gravitation shielding or some new and unknown force.

Quote - The value of g (gravitational acceleration on the surface of Earth) varies for many reasons - density, distance from the center (which isn't exactly the same over the planet since it is an oblate sphere - like all planets).  g may vary, but there is no place where it is 2g or 0.5g (ON THE SURFACE OF THE PLANET mind you).

Experiments at the same place! If you measure the gravitaion constant measuring the force between two bodies you achieve one value, if you measure it by geological means you achieve a value slight different, it suggest that the gravitation constant has a different value for short and long range.

Quote - Current observations agree that the speed of gravity propagation is the same as the speed of light.  Next you'll tell me that Newton was correct concerning 'instantaneous action at a distance'.

General Realtivity tell that is the speed of light, but the absence of gravitation force aberration suggest that is infinite or very high. Laplace gave a value 10 millions time the speed of light, other authors gives other values anyway is bery big. The direction of the force of the Sun on the Earth points to the real loaction of the Sun and not to the direction that we see the Sun (delayed by 8 mitus that the light must travel from the Sun to Earth).

Quote - Big, HMMMMM...  Cars 'climb up hill' because of an illusion.  The hill appears to be uphill due to surrounding references.  In reality the hill has a downward slope.  It has been evidenced.

Some cases were proven that are an illusion, but most cases are real The explanation that are an illusion are the same as when someone see an UFO and then comes an astronomers and explain that it was planet VEnus, of course planet Venus flying in formation.
Much better, logical and rationa explanation is that the mountain has a very gig amount of iron or that have magnetic materials, but this is not enough to explain.

Quote - This is why 'cold-fusion' is bunk.

Cold fusion is not dead, still are doing experiments. many have failed and many had success, but nobody is able to explain until now.

Quote - For instance, you mention super-conductors.  Um, electricity (electrons) moves at LESS THAN the 'c' (speed of light - EM propagation) in solids despite their high conductivity.  Super-conductors just increase that speed a bit - but it is still LESS THAN 'c'.  If you are under the allusion that electricity travels at 'c' through circuit traces and wires and whatnot, you need to retake that course in Physics.

I said tlight and not the electron. The speed of light is defined by two constants and this constants are not fixed, but defined by the properties of the medium in which travels the light or electromagnetic wave and also depend on the frecuency of the wave (Maxwell is more complete than Einstein). THere are no rstrictions for the values that these constants can have, so it is always possible, at least in theory, to find a nedium in which an electromagnetic wave of some frecuency travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum.
Einstein stated that the maximun speed is the speed of light in vacuum, but never proved this statement neither gave proves why it must be, it is only a dogma, a question of faith....
Superconductors exclude magnetic field inside, so are perfectly diamagnetic with a permeability zero. By Maxwell light must travel at infinite speed inside a superconductor.
I asked this question because I never heard of such experiment, I am only curious of the results. It doesn't matter the result, in any case or Einstein or the supeconductor theory needs to be explained better.

Quote - > Quote - but the French found it very difficult to reproduce Faraday's experiments,

I don't know if you are reffering to Faraday's hokopolar generator or to Faraday's experiments.
Faraday was a pioner, but his homopolar generator is not a laboratory experiment, is something real and working device.

 
His experiments. Here are some replicas of his original instruments.physics.kenyon.edu/EarlyApparatus/Electric_Motors/Rotation_of_Magnetic%20Pole/Rotation_of_Magnetic_Pole.html

Quote - Unfortunately for you, Einstein's Mythological theories have been tested, tested again, retested, tested over and over and over.  And they have withstood over 100 years of battering.  That means that they have adequately achieved THEORY status.  Your intention is to say that the hundreds of thousands of Physicists and Engineers since then who have used his theories are either all idiots, fools, or delusional.

This is not true, the theory has been tested hunfreds of times. but it was not proved those hundreds of times, only the great number of tests when the theory failed were not made public and you don't know. There exist a great number of experiments with no conclusive results, other are dubvious and controversial and in others the result contradicts in an evident way.
With internet the situation changed, today we can find all those experiments that were never made public and kept in silence, some are very very old and some are very recent.
It doesn't mean that all experiments were valid, proved or disproved, errors were made in both cases and a qrong experiment that proved Einstein is not a prove, neither the contrary
Often you find in the news "Einteins was proved...", but the information is so vague, so dubviousand som scientificaly contradictory or incorrect  that makes you think that is an invented story.
The faxt is that Einstein theory was proven and disproven many times, so the only conclusion is that Eintein's theory can be applied in some cases and cannot be applied in othe cases, is not an absolute theory and only a "relative" theory for a case, well relativity again...
Einstein's theory is like the Newton's and Hughens theory of light, in some cases Newton must be applied, in other cases Huyghens must be appled. Qunatics pleased God and Lucifer and so, light is a particle and is a wave...
As for fake or dubvious proves of Eintein you have the atomic clock experiments, as you mentioned somewhere in the posts.
This proves were never made. invented, faked or cheated and is easy to prove this by pure logic and Einstein himself:
Einstein predicts the time dilation with speed and gravity, so the experiment you read is that someone put an atomic clock in a plane or satellite and proved that Einstein's was right, so you believe that Einstein was proved one more time.
This is false and faulty.
1- Special Relativity which was used to prove Einstein in this case only can be appled to bodies that are moving at constant and unfiform speed and in vacuum, no accelerations, no gravitation.
2- Planes and satellites are subjected to acceleration and are linked to the Earth that is rotating around itself and around the Sun and also has gravitation ans the Sun and Moon too.
3- Special Relativity never can be applied to those experiments made in planes and satellites, so even gave a positive result the theory was applied in a wrong way and out of context.
4- The only theory that can be applied to these experiments is the General Relativity that deals with accelerations and gravitation.
5- Generl Relativity cannot be appled and is not appled because is too much complicated even in a linearised form for weak fields. I shall explain this better.
Bewton theory is very simple, can be appled and explained Kepler's laws, but the story ends when you have more than two bodies
With three pr more bodies Newton's theory has no exact mathematical solution and the story get complicated.
A satellite or any space flight is a very complicated scenario, you have the satellite that is rotating around the Earth, you have the Earth that is rotating and moving around the Sun, you have the Moon that is rotating around the Earth and influenced by the Sun and worst, the movement of the Earth is not something so simple as rotation and translation, it has other movements and is not an sphere with uniform density and shape, don't forget water that is moving too!
This is so complicated scenarion that eben the easy Newton cannot be applied. Whay is done?
What is done is to start with Newton in a simplified model when it can be applied, then added approximated more complicated Newton's model and the result corrected by empirical data, tables and equations adquired by decades of measurements.
Imagine now General Relativity that turns Newton into something for kids.

This is wht the atomic clock experiments are giving so different and controversial result even Einstein's theory is 100% correct.

There are three univeres, in one unviverse where all is possible or impossible we have scientists, academics and philosophers that create theories and introduce ideas and concepts.
The second universe is of people that take the ideas and theories from the first universe and apply making something useful and we can use it every day for our needs.
The third unviverse is of people that have no theories, they have only an idea or insight and invemt something useful, they have no idea how the Hell it works, if is possible or imposible, if is against some theory or not, it only works and is useful.
If they are exoerts they become rich and known inventor, if not they remain unknown and someone else becomes very rich.
People of these three universes are needed.

I belong to the second universe, for people of the first universe it is very amazing to spend ten  years of their life make a beautiful theory about how many wings an angel has and then discuss wit other academics his theory and discredit the theory of other academic.
For me that belong to the second universe, for what do I want to know the number of wings of an angel?, it will make any difference if has 4. 6 or 21 wings? And what is the use knowing it?
Some theories belong to the first universe and will remain there, for me is only a curiosity.
What is the importance if Bang Bang exist or not, what the practical use to know if a black hole radiates or not energy?, what is the use of dark matter?
But if the gravity doesn't behave as Einstein's tell instead of inventing dark matter to agree the theory, I discover a new form of gravity laws and this new form can be applied to something here, I can leave the black holes and galaxies where iy are and make a flying saucer here and sell it, of course!
What's the use to know that the speed of light is the maximum limit?, I prefer to research lobgitudinal or scalar waves and make a commucation device that communicates at higher speed than light. Maybe I never find it, maybe is really impossible, but if my starting point is that is impossible I shall never research, I shall never try and now yes you can be sure that I never shall make such thing.
For me a good theory is something that can have some practical application, if not is only a curiosity. It doesn't mean that a theory must have an inmediate application, many times you have no materials that are needed or are two expensive. Many theories have waited 50 or 100 years for the technology needed was abailable to make something using this theory.
The other requirement that a theory must have is to be simple enough to make possibel apply it.
I prefer a simple, that everyone can use and apply even imoerfect and with small errors that can be used than a pretty, perfect full of mathematical formalism that makes academics amazed, but so complicated with very few people in the world that are able to undestand it and of course almost impossible to be applied on something due the complications that has.
Einstein's General Relativity belongs to the complicated case, so is useless in practical application.
For example the case of Mercury, Newton's theory that is simple was unable to explain. Einstein's theory that is very complicated was able to explain, but exist many other theories that also explained the case of Mercury and these theories are as simple as Newton.
I prefer the other theories, if both theories give the same result I use the simplest one and it doesn't matter which is right and which is wrong if both gives the same result for what I want.
In other case is possible that this theory cannot be applied, so I shall need to use Einstein, but also is possible that can be used and Einstein's theory cannot be used.
Life must be simple and not complicated and a head ache!

I think the term 'paradigms' should be inserted instead of 'universes' here - you're not talking about discrete levels of existence, but simply different ways of viewing the world and Creation around us.

JonTheCelt

Jonthecelt: "I think the term 'paradigms' should be inserted instead of 'universes' here - you're not talking about discrete levels of existence, but simply different ways of viewing the world and Creation around us."

I see what you mean but I will counter with some irony that I enjoyed the mis-use of "universe" in this context because it helped degrade the power of that usage. I am always in favor of anything that makes people flinch at the phrase "well this is only one universe out of many possible universes" usually with the implied or stated codicil: 'and the laws we think are certain here do not operate there.' 

Down with that nonsense.

::::: Opera :::::

of course you all realise, by reversing the Polarity of the Neutron flow, all of Enstein's Theories can be applied using a simple magnetic interlock of the Dilithum Crystals over a Nth Dimension model as proved by B. Banzai and his team while working with Dr Brown and Professor Hardiagan, from the notes left by Dr. H West?

Quote - of course you all realise, by reversing the Polarity of the Neutron flow, all of Enstein's Theories can be applied using a simple magnetic interlock of the Dilithum Crystals over a Nth Dimension model as proved by B. Banzai and his team while working with Dr Brown and Professor Hardiagan, from the notes left by Dr. H West?

And here's me thinking all you needed was a Finite Improbability Generator and a really hot cup of tea.

Quote - > Quote - of course you all realise, by reversing the Polarity of the Neutron flow, all of Enstein's Theories can be applied using a simple magnetic interlock of the Dilithum Crystals over a Nth Dimension model as proved by B. Banzai and his team while working with Dr Brown and Professor Hardiagan, from the notes left by Dr. H West?

 

And here's me thinking all you needed was a Finite Improbability Generator and a really hot cup of tea.

that was superceeded by the use of bistromatics a few months ago...

well, I'm confused now. situation normal :lol:
no, wait a bit! I got that last reference - herbert west: re-animator
sorry for the interruption!

Ooh!  A bistromathics reference!

Arguing whether Einstein is valid is much more interesting (and harder to follow) than arguing whether Darwin or Freud is valid.  :unsure:

Basically, Cage has nothing intelligent to add to the discussion.  Sorry.  :lol: 

Darwin is valid.  Most consider Evolutionary Theory to be one of the most well-supported in history - despite the oft attempted discredit heaped on by creationists.  Basically, no biological-related science could function at the levels seen today without the knowledge that evolution is a fact and that Evolutionary Theory is the best model of those facts.  Darwin's own theory (Natural Selection) wasn't perfect and, at the time, the proposed mechanism of how evolution occured in a species was not known.  Of course, we all now know about DNA and its associated structures (messenger RNA and so forth) as the carrier of genetic information.  The creationists usually attack Darwin's original theory - which has since 'evolved' (hehe) into a rather resilient one - and things unrelated like abiogenesis.

Freud is fried fraud, right up there with Rorschach inkblot tests.  He started off on the right foot - he was examining the brain at the neural levels.  Then he got bored and decided to go out on a limb and ended up with 'dream analysis' and other rather tenuous correlations (mostly sexual based).  No doubt the brain functions at several levels (conscious, subconscious, automatic) but then the ideas of id, ego, and super-ego are unfounded or at best ill-defined.  Examining people's general behavior and attempting to extract hypotheses of how the mind/brain works doesn't lead to meaningful ones or ones of the level Freud attempted.  Studies of behavior in controlled environments have shown much more interesting and substantial finds.

I'll say no more on Physics without a Physicist present. ;P

Quote - Freud is fried fraud

You don't like Freud because your mother......

Quote - > Quote - Freud is fried fraud

You don't like Freud because your mother......

:lol:

Whilst I don't agre with all - in fact, most - of what Freud said, to call him a fraud is a little unfair. Given the relative infancy of the field of psychology, perhaps it's better to compare him to the greek philosopher-scientists: beginning to give shape to a model of how our brains work, which could be updated and rewritten as more concrete details became known. If you compare Aristotle's theories to today's sciences, then they're a joke - far too simplistic and in some places, just plain wrong. Similarly with Pythagoras, who taught the transmigration of souls along with his mathematical discoveries. But if you accept that it was just the foundation for others to come along and build upon, improving with each generation, then Freud can be seen as something more than just 'fried fraud'.

I do like the alliteration there, though. :)

JonTheCelt

Quote - Whilst I don't agre with all - in fact, most - of what Freud said, to call him a fraud is a little unfair. Given the relative infancy of the field of psychology, perhaps it's better to compare him to the greek philosopher-scientists: beginning to give shape to a model of how our brains work, which could be updated and rewritten as more concrete details became known. If you compare Aristotle's theories to today's sciences, then they're a joke - far too simplistic and in some places, just plain wrong. Similarly with Pythagoras, who taught the transmigration of souls along with his mathematical discoveries. But if you accept that it was just the foundation for others to come along and build upon, improving with each generation, then Freud can be seen as something more than just 'fried fraud'.

I do like the alliteration there, though. :)

JonTheCelt

I agree with you for the most part.  What I don't like is the doctrinaire approach to psychology and psychiatric medicine that most doctors in that part of medicine seem to have.  Rather than use the whole range of theories and approaches they tend to stick with one with an almost relilgious zeal.  At least, that's been my experience.

Freud interests me because he makes the effort to delve into the subjective depths of the human psyche.  It seems to me that more scientifically acceptable schools of psychology kind of neglect (perhaps necessarily?) depth, in order to arrive at some quantifiable system of metrics.  But there's more to humans than surface behavior.  I prefer Jung, myself, but recognize that such things can't be taken too seriously.

Freud, Darwin, and Einstein were sort of the pillars of modernism, in some sense, I've been led to think.  I sometimes wonder if the efforts to reject any or all of them is actually an effort to reject the modern era, grasping back toward some romanticized pre-modern world.  That kind of thing frightens me, really.

I do kind of wonder, today, if a debate of the merits of Lamarck vs. Darwin could be as interesting as this Einstein discussion....  I think I read of a study or two, not too long ago, which allegedly validated some aspect of Lamarckian evolution....

Sorry if this is OT babbling.  Cage is not as smart as the others in the thread, nor as well-informed, but he's definitely fascinated.... 

I said that Freud is a 'fried fraud'.  Sometimes a fraud isn't a fraud.

Subjectivity isn't something that should be used in any form of scientific endeavor.  It's good for personal observations that may assist in developing hypotheses, but after that objectivity is the only way to do science - especially practice it.  Freud can receive credit at least for moving psychology/psychiatry/psychoanalysis away from previous forms of mental health diagnosis and treatments (labotomies, electric shock therapy, straight jackets, and so on).  And don't think that such unorthodoxy doesn't exist today.  Just do a search of Gary Schwartz (Ph.D. at the Univ. of Arizona).

Yes, there is much more to humans than surface behavior - it is not a good indicator of what's happening in the brain.  Thus, simply doing subjective analysis will not provide certainty with respect to the true underlying causes.  What would Sigmund have made of the 'Guy in an ape suit' video or left-right brain disconnection (for epilsy control), and other interesting developments in brain function that have shattered notions of brain-mind separation or that a person is a perfect recorder of witnessed events.  Studying the behavioral world-view changes of children as they mature is intriguing - young children don't see the world in the same way as older children/adults.  What mentalist Derren Brown does freaks me out! ;P

I don't think we will ever go back to pre-Modern era, but please let us not return to 'Post-Modernism', please!  In Max Planck's day, it was all done.  In an exclamation similar to Bill Gate's "Noone will ever need more than 64KB of memory", some Physicists were proclaiming that all physical phenomena had been explained by the then current theories of Physics.  Nothing left to see here, you can go now.  Then the nagging black-body radiation problem arose (among others) which couldn't be squeezed into the current mathematical models.  Planck just worked the other way round and found the mathematical model that fit the data - thus creating Quantum Physics.  This is what we now call "Theoretical Physics" - the land of String 'Theory' and Hawking for instance - build mathematical models on experimental data and see if the model has predictive power in the real world.
We may find a better paradigm than the scientific method, but it won't be a return to subjectivity one hopes.  One good thing about science is that no theory is set in stone.  Scientific progression isn't about status quo.

I guess there's psychology as the effort to increase scientific knowledge and then psychology in the service of therapy.  Without divulging too much about Cage's personal issues (hopefully), I have to say I've had trouble with professionals in the field of psychology who limit things to surface behavior or neuro-chemistry.  Therapy doesn't really help if it's just medicating, or a tendency to bully or manipulate the subject of the therapy.  So the scientific studies definitely need objectivity, but I wonder how much that really helps someone who is receiving therapy....

But I suspect I really do veer off-topic.  :-P

Is a certain subjective aspect necessary to science, an insertion of creative ideas or intuition?

What does Derrin Brown do?  I guess I should Google, eh?  :D  I'll butt out, now.  Dang, you folks are brainy.  :D

I don't think that practicing psychiatrists should be doing scientific studies on their patience - at least not without full disclosure and a signed agreement.  But, just like medicine, what is done in practice should be based upon scientific discoveries (clinical studies, for instance) and experienced practices that actually work.  Too much banding about of alternative medicine as a practical alternative to established methodologies.  Subjectively, they superficially appear to have positive results - but none has shown repeated objective results (actually cure the malady or provide prolonged relief).

I'll admit that A) I'm no student of psychology and B) that the entire enterprise covers a larger terrain than simple brain function (social interactions, illness, health, environment, etc.).  Since the so-called 'mind' is so complex as are the contributing factors aforementioned, a bit of subjectivity (let's call it experiential subjectivity) may be called for in practice.  It may be a long time before more accurate diagnoses can be applied to mental health followed by better prognoses.

I'm not sure I even WANT to understand Relativity. :) But I DO understand Gravity, in a practical way - if I drop a 10 lb lump of lead..well, I'm going to get a sore foot :)

Quote - I'm not sure I even WANT to understand Relativity. :) But I DO understand Gravity, in a practical way - if I drop a 10 lb lump of lead..well, I'm going to get a sore foot :)

The Special Theory isn't all that difficult to understand, even the math requires only basic calculus. You can even use the Special Theory to analyze the Twin Paradox. (The solution isn't because the moving twin undergoes acceleration, it is because the moving twin changes reference frames.)

Actually, the basic train-lightning gedanken-experiment (simultaneity of event observations) can be shown with Trigonometry (as long as you 'believe' that the speed of light 'c' isn't infinite or doesn't change with the motion of the observer. As noted, kawecki isn't buying the latter premise). :)

But, yes, Special Relativity is an exercise in variance of measurements between systems moving with respect to one another - that is all.  Einstein starts off with clocks (important since time is based on events and recognition of events is based upon observation - usually via some form of energy transmission (sound or light, e.g.)) and moves onto distance (as they are tied together in a system where light doesn't act instantaneously at a distance).  In normal, everyday life, the train isn't moving at 0.8c compared to the observer on the platform so that the disparity becomes evident.  In other words, the effect of Relativity is a curvilinear one that ramps up the closer one gets to 'c' relative motion and the effect is negligible at small percentages of 'c'.

I'll admit that the one place Relativity fails is with subatomic particles themselves, of which light particles (photons) are involved.  This is why it has been impossible to combine Relativity and Quantum Physics.  Relativity is using the subatomic particles/waves grossly as part of the phenomenal study while Quantum Physics is studying them directly (as it were).  Relativity in no way explains why subatomic particles are always moving so fast, can't move faster, are apparently massless. and why they aren't affected by their own Relativistic speeds (when observed) even when slowed a bit by a medium.  Neither theory is particularly satisfying as a unifying model of the fabric of the universe (space-time and the subatomic realm).  There has been some headway into explaining macroscopic interactions with the subatomic processes via Quantum Physics but we're not there yet.  I don't want to hear anything about having finally arrived at the end of all understanding within Physics.  There are still tons of mysteries out there, large and small, to be solved and possibly relevant to changing paradigms.

A friend of mine did an engineering postgrad, and his doctoral thesis, based on materials, was a two part examination of the facts that, according to known laws of physics and engineering,  a) the Clifton Suspension Bridge should have collapsed the minute the first coaches began to cross it, and b) the drive shaft of the Austin Allegro should have sheared immediately upon reaching 30mph. Now, whilst I'm no physicist or engineer, and couldn't follow his arguments, the fat that he got his doctorate suggests that there are definitely some things which current scientific understanding cannot explain!

(I know there are well-known mysteries like the bumble bee and all, but I like these two better, because they have more personal resonance!)

JonTheCelt

Quote - A friend of mine did an engineering postgrad, and his doctoral thesis, based on materials, was a two part examination of the facts that, according to known laws of physics and engineering,  a) the Clifton Suspension Bridge should have collapsed the minute the first coaches began to cross it, and b) the drive shaft of the Austin Allegro should have sheared immediately upon reaching 30mph. Now, whilst I'm no physicist or engineer, and couldn't follow his arguments, the fat that he got his doctorate suggests that there are definitely some things which current scientific understanding cannot explain!

(I know there are well-known mysteries like the bumble bee and all, but I like these two better, because they have more personal resonance!)

JonTheCelt

Well, if the Austin Allegro drive shaft had snapped, it would have saved a lot of people the heartbreak of actually owning one.  Bloody awful cars.

Quote - A friend of mine did an engineering postgrad, and his doctoral thesis, based on materials, was a two part examination of the facts that, according to known laws of physics and engineering,  a) the Clifton Suspension Bridge should have collapsed the minute the first coaches began to cross it, and b) the drive shaft of the Austin Allegro should have sheared immediately upon reaching 30mph. Now, whilst I'm no physicist or engineer, and couldn't follow his arguments, the fat that he got his doctorate suggests that there are definitely some things which current scientific understanding cannot explain!

This is how actual scence works, it remembers me Aristotle and his fly with four legs, he should have been reproved.
What is important is how nice and how correctly is applied the theory and not if the predictions match the observed reality, in worst case the reality is changed to match the theory and never the theory analised to find what is wrong.

One might say that practical application is another form of prediction.

I was going to expound on Chaos Theory and uncertainty in Quantum Physics but lost the dissertation.  Basically, Einstein said, "God does not play dice."  And I said, "God is a gamblin' addict."  Between these two theories, we have a very unpredictable universe at hand - unlike those nice stable laws and theories of centuries past.  This is one reason that I see theories becoming more difficult to obtain from hypotheses - theories require predictable results whether from designed experiments or practical application.

Every good theory changes reality.  When Galileo showed that objects fall at the same rate - accelerating at a particular one nonetheless, he changed an entire Aristotlean world-view that was completely wrong.  What was the show called?  "The Day the Universe Changed" with James Burke.  Sums it up nicely.  A theory that doesn't change the universe is a minor one indeed. :tongue2:

Another point of view of Relativity.
As I posted before Qunatics observes (it means measure) things so small that is no known way to not disturv what we are observerning, so Qunatics introduced the effect of the observer to achieve some useful result or in other words the observed data is corrected by the effects of the perturbations done by the observer.
With Relativity that deals with something big can happen the same and the observer is disturbing again what is observed.
In normaç siuations the speeds involved are very small, so the effects of Relativity are insignificant.
Speeds near the speed light are nothing common and only happens in some particular experiments involving particle accelerators and always is involved Electromagnetism in all parts of the process and Electromagnetism propagates at speed of light.
To make more clear, what will happen if we try to measure the speed of a particle using light or electromagnetism that propagates with the speed of light?
As the speed of the particle increases the finite speed light will introduce errors in the speed measured, when the speed get near the speed of light the errors become very significative, so to achieve something relaible we must correct the results by the effects of the measuring process.
What happens if the particle has a pseed higher than light?, the light is unable to follow the particle and the particle becomes invisible, it don't exist, not because the particle become invisible or vanishes, but because our measurument equipment is unable to see it, if we try to correct our measures by the same corrective equations the rsult will be imaginary as in the case of geometry where a circle never intersect a line.
Is not diificult to analyze a procress that measures the speed of something using light and find the equation that are needed to correct the result by the effect of propagation delays of the light used for measuring. The resulting eqautios that we find are the same as Relativity!!!
So Relativity can be interpreted as the corrections of what we observe using light, this is why the speed of light has such importance in Relativity.
If we have some means that propagates faster than light (superlight) and use this something to measure the speed of other something we shall be able to see and measure something faster than light and not more need to use Relativity to correct the measured results.
Galielo will return until the speed of the particle becomes nearer to the speed of this superlight, now all repeats agains and we shall need to use Relativity again, but this time with the speed of superlight instead of speed of light.

I know it was only a typo, but I like the new word 'qunatics'... an interesting concatenation of one who obsessively follows the laws of quantum physics, perhaps? ;)

JonTheCelt

You know, the funny thing is, when someone actually does prove the united field theory that subsumes Classic Model, Relativity and Quantum Phyiscs, none of these will be proven wrong. All will remain standing.

The only important paradigm ever to be overthrown in physics was the 4-Element/EarthCentric metaphor.

I recommend two books by Alan Cromer, "Uncommon Sense" and "Connected Knowledge". In the first of those he gives a 'history of objectivity' from which my favorite line is: "Objective reality was revealed for the first time, and not everyone was happy with what they saw." In the second, he gives a tremendous analysis of the fact that while Quantum Physics is a true theory, it does not justify claims of non-causeality or the death of certainty.

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - You know, the funny thing is, when someone actually does prove the united field theory that subsumes Classic Model, Relativity and Quantum Phyiscs, none of these will be proven wrong. All will remain standing.

They are preserving their job for the rest of their lifes and for their kids too"

"Quanatics" is an empirical theory that works. nobody has an idea of what is an electron or how the Hell an electron does to pass through two holes at the same time, the only known thing is the probability for an electron pass through those holes.

Quote - > Quote - You know, the funny thing is, when someone actually does prove the united field theory that subsumes Classic Model, Relativity and Quantum Phyiscs, none of these will be proven wrong. All will remain standing.

They are preserving their job for the rest of their lifes and for their kids too"

Sounds rather like the philosophers who consulted with Deep Thought in H2G2.

*rubs eyes and curls up in the corner, sucking a thumb

Mommy!*

On a more serious note - as entertaining as it is to read through all of this.. wow I think I was totally LOST after the first three posts. This stuff makes my brain go boom!! :D It's fascinating, but I totally just do NOT get ANY of it to understand, either! LMAO!

~ Seliah

Wow four pages. :)

Anyone mention this one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rQiF2cRKdc

I'm familiar with the experiments but not that video.  Cool link, Anton.