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The Universe: Cosmology, Nature etc.

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Apr 16, 2016
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Re:

rhubroma said:
To poetry: you mean teologia poetarum.

Jebus, what are you trying to do to me? Yes, Theological myth, or metaphysics. Tell me a good story. Of course the theory of the big bang was put forth by a Roman Catholic priest and is just a reinvention of the Monad but sssshhh.
 
Jul 5, 2009
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Starstruck said:
ScienceIsCool said:
Starstruck said:

That's great. I wonder what controversies will arise. Will Unzicker be satisfied, I have no idea. It seems to me the critics aren't against science at all but they're certainly skeptical of all this esoteric speculation and the possibly dubious proofs. We're only human after all and if you want to pronounce truth about the universe or the very small it all gets very murky. Cheerleading is great fun but what does it mean? I'm certainly not qualified to comment and I doubt you are either. There've always been true believers and skeptics and it seems to me the truth is more like poetry.

I don't think it's esoteric speculation at all. CERN went looking for a particle and CERN found a particle. The main thrust of skepticism and criticism should revolve around whether this particle has *all* the predicted properties with no surprises such as one time in a million the particle exhibits charge or decays in some impossible way or something. Another thing would be finding another particle at a different energy but still with all the same properties as a Higgs boson though I think there are theories that cover that scenario.

John Swanson

...and apparently the mass was far larger than predicted but that was written off as a failure of primitive technology. I don't know and I really don't care. I read about this stuff from time to time but it's really just a mindfuck. Even reading your initial response to this thread, the most honest statement in your whole contribution was: (kind of).

Well, no. The Higgs was in the predicted neighbourhood, which is why they found it so quickly. The problem is that in reconciling the Higgs with gravity would require a much, much, much heavier particle. I don't know much about it, but apparently Axions are a possible good fit to the observations. Here's a decent primer on the subject: http://www.wired.com/2015/06/new-theory-explain-higgs-mass/

My thought is that we don't have enough data yet. Let the LHC bust up some atoms at the new energy range and see if anything new pops up. SUSY is pretty much dead, but it'd be super fun if a squark or two showed up at energies we didn't expect!

John Swanson
 
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Well, no. The Higgs was in the predicted neighbourhood, which is why they found it so quickly. The problem is that in reconciling the Higgs with gravity would require a much, much, much heavier particle. I don't know much about it, but apparently Axions are a possible good fit to the observations. Here's a decent primer on the subject: http://www.wired.com/2015/06/new-theory-explain-higgs-mass/

My thought is that we don't have enough data yet. Let the LHC bust up some atoms at the new energy range and see if anything new pops up. SUSY is pretty much dead, but it'd be super fun if a squark or two showed up at energies we didn't expect!

John Swanson

Any thoughts on Unzicker and his critique? Apparently he's talked to CERN scientists that privately admit...who knows...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNg4cCe6A74
 
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Apr 16, 2016
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Re: Re:

ScienceIsCool said:
Starstruck said:
Any thoughts on Unzicker and his critique? Apparently he's talked to CERN scientists that privately admit...who knows...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNg4cCe6A74

Well, here's one take on him: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6156

I hadn't even heard of Unzicker until this thread, but looking at his writings he certainly looks like a crank. http://cern-offline.org/?author=1

John Swanson

So, ad hominems and hubris only validate his critique (along with others)...got anything else?
 
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Re: Re:

Starstruck said:
ScienceIsCool said:
Starstruck said:
Any thoughts on Unzicker and his critique? Apparently he's talked to CERN scientists that privately admit...who knows...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNg4cCe6A74

Well, here's one take on him: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6156

I hadn't even heard of Unzicker until this thread, but looking at his writings he certainly looks like a crank. http://cern-offline.org/?author=1

John Swanson

So, ad hominems and hubris only validate his critique (along with others)...got anything else?

Well, the things he's written don't make any sense? I'll go with that one.

John Swanson
 
Apr 16, 2016
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Re: Re:

ScienceIsCool said:
Starstruck said:
ScienceIsCool said:
Starstruck said:
Any thoughts on Unzicker and his critique? Apparently he's talked to CERN scientists that privately admit...who knows...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNg4cCe6A74

Well, here's one take on him: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6156

I hadn't even heard of Unzicker until this thread, but looking at his writings he certainly looks like a crank. http://cern-offline.org/?author=1

John Swanson

So, ad hominems and hubris only validate his critique (along with others)...got anything else?

Well, the things he's written don't make any sense? I'll go with that one.

John Swanson

Well, not much of it makes any sense to me but then I'm stupid. Apparently many physicists can't make sense of it either though so what the hell.
"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." Richard Feynman

I do believe that you believe though...so have fun.
 
Jul 5, 2009
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Starstruck said:
Well, not much of it makes any sense to me but then I'm stupid. Apparently many physicists can't make sense of it either though so what the hell.
"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." Richard Feynman

I do believe that you believe though...so have fun.

Okee dokee. Will do. BTW, those physicists in the field do understand particle physics and/or quantum physics just fine. The problem is that there's still a lot left unexplained. But they're chipping away at it and eventually our view of how the universe works will be even larger.

John Swanson
 
Aug 4, 2011
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ScienceIsCool said:
ray j willings said:
Starstruck said:

Their was no "scientific method" to the Higgs Boson. It was only suspected because it fits the theory's of what we know and yet now we know it exists as we evolve our ability with technology to produce real results.
You just cannot dismiss ideas because you don't agree with the process of that idea.

Finding the Higgs was so full of "scientific method", it was leaking science all over the place. Science overflow. Seriously. Grab a mop - there's science all over the floors. One of the easiest ways to explain certain things in particle physics (some particles have mass, short range of the Weak force, etc) is if there exists a boson with zero spin, even parity, no charge, no colour, arises from a scalar field, etc. Higgs was first to describe this HIggs field and the particle it would create. So people went looking for it. It's hard to create and quick to decay, so it's difficult to find.

After many years the correct tool for the job was finally built and very soon afterwards, a particle was found right in the neighbourhood (of energies) that people thought it would be. Lots of work is being done to get more data and verify all the properties of the particle to make sure there's nothing to surprise us such as mixture of particles with the nearly the same properties or other cool things that would wreck our current understanding.

This has scientific method written all over it. Lots of observations were made by smashing atoms and after a lot of years and studying the data, nothing made sense unless this other thing was also true. That hypothesis was put to the test and it came back as correct! Yay, science.

But there were a whole bunch of people secretly hoping that the hypothesis was wrong because it would have opened up the door to some truly crazy new hypotheses to test out. But nope. the door is shut.

John Swanson

That's my point . It was found using theory. It was not until Cern that they could confirm its existence.
In theory I could say there is a time traveling chocolate biscuit and all the science around that suggests its true but until we find the time traveling biscuit its still a theory or a very educated guess based upon what we know.
I mean the sense of relief when they found the Higgs was huge among scientists.
You get my point about the scientific method , one of the criteria for the scientific method ongoing is observation, Higgs was not observed until Cern.
 
Jul 5, 2009
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ray j willings said:
That's my point . It was found using theory. It was not until Cern that they could confirm its existence.
In theory I could say there is a time traveling chocolate biscuit and all the science around that suggests its true but until we find the time traveling biscuit its still a theory or a very educated guess based upon what we know.
I mean the sense of relief when they found the Higgs was huge among scientists.
You get my point about the scientific method , one of the criteria for the scientific method ongoing is observation, Higgs was not observed until Cern.

Actually, it's called a hypothesis. This is one of the pillars of the scientific method. The way it works is that observations are made; data is collected. That data is then evaluated - most often using the language of math. Sometimes new math is created to give us the language we need. For example, it was necessary to create calculus (Leibniz and Newton) to describe certain types of motion. This leads to things like writing F = ma which it turns out has far ranging consequences in all branches of physics.

That math, the simple statement F = ma, implies things beyond simple mechanics. These implications result in new hypotheses. The math suggests it's true, so you test it. These tests involve gathering data, which closes the loop.

Observations --> Data --> Math --> Hypothesis --> Test --> Back to Observations

The cool thing is that the data not confirming the hypothesis often leads to more interesting new math and hypotheses than simply confirming what the math says. You also have to be careful because it's easy to screw up each and every one of those steps. That's why peer review is critical.

John Swanson
 
Re:

Starstruck said:
We Don't See Sentient Extraterrestrials Because They Don't Exist**... or they're very rare
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2013/11/we-dont-see-sentient-extraterrestrials-because-they-dont-exist.html
The Great Filter:
http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf

Fun to think about:
The Great Filter, in the context of the Fermi paradox, is whatever prevents "dead matter" from giving rise, in time, to "expanding lasting life".[1][2] The concept originates in Robin Hanson's argument that the failure to find any extraterrestrial civilizations in the observable universe implies the possibility something is wrong with one or more of the arguments from various scientific disciplines that the appearance of advanced intelligent life is probable; this observation is conceptualized in terms of a "Great Filter" which acts to reduce the great number of sites where intelligent life might arise to the tiny number of intelligent species with advanced civilizations actually observed (currently just one: human).[3] This probability threshold, which could lie behind us (in our past) or in front of us (in our future), might work as a barrier to the evolution of intelligent life, or as a high probability of self-destruction.[1][4] The main counter-intuitive conclusion of this observation is that the easier it was for life to evolve to our stage, the bleaker our future chances probably are.
 
...If aliens are so that advanced that they can land on the White House lawn, then we are like ants to them, we have nothing to offer them, so the reason that they don’t announce their existence to us is that we’re boring, they’ve seen it all. We have nothing to offer a civilization that advanced and that’s why I think they don’t visit us. We are arrogant to think that we are so interesting, extraterrestrial beings would travel thousands of light years just to visit us. So that’s why they don’t visit us, we’re just not that interesting....
-- Michio Kaku
 
Jul 5, 2009
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There's also the "dark forest" idea (a good work of sci-fi on that topic by Cixin Liu) which says that like a small animal in the forest, making your presence known could be very dangerous. There might be a very short window of detection of an intelligent life as it rapidly progresses from blasting out radiation (microwaves, radio signals, radar, etc) to low power systems (fiber optics, etc) that don't give you away. Societies might also advance to the point that they formulate their own Fermi's paradox and come to the conclusion that it would be wise to be as invisible as possible for fear of predators.

John Swanson
 
Re:

ScienceIsCool said:
There's also the "dark forest" idea (a good work of sci-fi on that topic by Cixin Liu) which says that like a small animal in the forest, making your presence known could be very dangerous....

Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking both have said that we probably want to avoid alerting aliens to our presence as much as possible, because the aliens probably won't be content with just taking a few snaps.

From the twisted genius of Rod Serling, To Serve Man


The good news is that for all the star systems within about 667 quadrillion kms of earth, they already have received the transmission of the inaugural season of Pinwright's Progress, and so naturally will have concluded that there is no intelligent life on earth (but if the Beeb get wind of this, they still will have them charged on licence evasion).
 
Apr 16, 2016
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Re: Re:

ScienceIsCool said:
Starstruck said:
Well, not much of it makes any sense to me but then I'm stupid. Apparently many physicists can't make sense of it either though so what the hell.
"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." Richard Feynman

I do believe that you believe though...so have fun.

Okee dokee. Will do. BTW, those physicists in the field do understand particle physics and/or quantum physics just fine. The problem is that there's still a lot left unexplained. But they're chipping away at it and eventually our view of how the universe works will be even larger.

John Swanson

Theory:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=formal+gardens&view=detailv2&&id=6225E1CA1164C17E3966B0469A1141967CFA44CC&selectedIndex=96&ccid=euBTIcyA&simid=607996894257677841&thid=OIP.M7ae05321cc801a7d257ce7ceb40bdb7co0&ajaxhist=0

Nature:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=wild+forest&view=detailv2&qpvt=wild+forest&id=8B04E4F0BB5BB22CE5F609C7FF570B048269675D&selectedIndex=2&ccid=zqe%2bNUkv&simid=608056083198970300&thid=OIP.Mcea7be35492fe843872a9f975062e553o0&ajaxhist=0

ps. before they can understand it they have to figure out where most of it (the universe) went but maybe that was just a figuring in after all.
 
Apr 16, 2016
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Alex Simmons/RST said:
ray j willings said:
check this from 1.17 its so good at around 1.44 it looks really real. I still cant work out how it was done or is it real ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCt2Frq2iW8
Why don't you start a "X-files" thread and keep this nonsense out of the cosmology thread.

lol, meanwhile everything emerged from nothing. What order of nonsense do
you wish to discuss? We may as well discuss Benben, Ptah and/or the primordial mound.
 
Jul 5, 2009
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Starstruck said:
Alex Simmons/RST said:
ray j willings said:
check this from 1.17 its so good at around 1.44 it looks really real. I still cant work out how it was done or is it real ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCt2Frq2iW8
Why don't you start a "X-files" thread and keep this nonsense out of the cosmology thread.

lol, meanwhile everything emerged from nothing. What order of nonsense do
you wish to discuss? We may as well discuss Benben, Ptah and/or the primordial mound.

Well there are perfectly reasonable theories such as in string theory where the big bang occurred as a collision of branes in a multidimensional already existing universe. Not that I understand it very well. But it's not a matter of something from nothing.

John Swanson
 
Aug 4, 2011
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ScienceIsCool said:
Starstruck said:
Alex Simmons/RST said:
ray j willings said:
check this from 1.17 its so good at around 1.44 it looks really real. I still cant work out how it was done or is it real ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCt2Frq2iW8
Why don't you start a "X-files" thread and keep this nonsense out of the cosmology thread.

lol, meanwhile everything emerged from nothing. What order of nonsense do
you wish to discuss? We may as well discuss Benben, Ptah and/or the primordial mound.

Well there are perfectly reasonable theories such as in string theory where the big bang occurred as a collision of branes in a multidimensional already existing universe. Not that I understand it very well. But it's not a matter of something from nothing.

John Swanson

Like I said before , we do not have a example of nothing.
Nothing does not exist
 
Aug 4, 2011
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Alex Simmons/RST said:
ray j willings said:
check this from 1.17 its so good at around 1.44 it looks really real. I still cant work out how it was done or is it real ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCt2Frq2iW8
Why don't you start a "X-files" thread and keep this nonsense out of the cosmology thread.

Your a very angry person. alien life is relevant to this thread , look at the title.
I found that film very interesting , I could not work out if it's fake how they made that Alien look so real.
So instead of getting angry, look at the film and tell me how they faked it . Its better than any Hollywood alien I have ever seen.
I am asking for opinions. Now if you think its fake tell me how they did it? Its not any CGI I have ever seen and if you look at the head and neck there is no way its a fake head .
How did they do it or is it real . What do you think?
 
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Well there are perfectly reasonable theories such as in string theory where the big bang occurred as a collision of branes in a multidimensional already existing universe. Not that I understand it very well. But it's not a matter of something from nothing.

John Swanson

And the journey into scientific fantasy is complete. I thought physics was supposed to be about explaining the physical universe we inhabit? How is string theory tied to physical in any way? Multiverses and wormholes may be fun to imagine, they may even be more fun to experience with the aid of LSD but I don't think string theory adds much when far simpler phenomenon defy understanding.

Every culture needs it's creation myths though. Humans seem to have an inherent need for religiosity. We abhor uncertainty, so tell me a good story. It's interesting how frequently the blank piece of paper (nothing) upon which a point is created (God) and by extension of itself (a line -the holy spirit) terminates in a circle (matter, the universe and the son) occurs. So many variations on a theme.

Space, the sun, light, the earth - that must be how the universe was created.
 
Aug 4, 2011
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Starstruck said:
Well there are perfectly reasonable theories such as in string theory where the big bang occurred as a collision of branes in a multidimensional already existing universe. Not that I understand it very well. But it's not a matter of something from nothing.

John Swanson

And the journey into scientific fantasy is complete. I thought physics was supposed to be about explaining the physical universe we inhabit? How is string theory tied to physical in any way? Multiverses and wormholes may be fun to imagine, they may even be more fun to experience with the aid of LSD but I don't think string theory adds much when far simpler phenomenon defy understanding.

Every culture needs it's creation myths though. Humans seem to have an inherent need for religiosity. We abhor uncertainty, so tell me a good story. It's interesting how frequently the blank piece of paper (nothing) upon which a point is created (God) and by extension of itself (a line -the holy spirit) terminates in a circle (matter, the universe and the son) occurs. So many variations on a theme.

Space, the sun, light, the earth - that must be how the universe was created.

String theory. worm holes etc are based on scientific knowledge and scientific possibilities
Believing in god has no scientific basis whatsoever , its just man made nonsense.
 

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