Weird Science

Just ask the right question and apply simple logic. Oh, and of course one can read a lot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ununoctium

Yup Greenlantern101 , I'm a sceptic too (converted from a hippy believer!)

Ununoctium is extremely unstable with a half-life of less than a millisecond (0.89ms) thus decaying into something else (Livermorium). Its chemical properties and therefore its use are still unknown.

Sounds like our good old friend Bob Lazar, who claims to have worked at NASA and Area 51. The problem with using such interesting elements for propulsion is that it requires an input of energy to create the stuff but it won't last long enough to contain, let alone use. I'm crap at chemistry but even I know that much.

The folding space-time stuff sounds great. I've read a lot of Sci-fi and Sci-fact over the years and I'm still waiting for someone to come up with a reasonable explanation of how the folding process can be initiated. Even Prof. Michio Kaku hasn't adequately enlightened us on how he would power the transition. It's fine talking about creating a black hole to do the honours but just how much energy is going into those particle accelerators just to give us a glimpse of a black hole that apparently decays to nothingness in a gnats' eye blink?
 
The LHC uses a couple of hundred megawatts, or approximately twice as much as nearby Geneva I think. But this isn't 'just to get a glimpse of a black hole', there's so many different phenomena that are being searched for.

Dark energy (the unknown force responsible for the acceleration in expansion of the universe) could be thought of as anti-gravity in a sense. That with dark matter make up 96% of the observable universe and we don't even understand the remaining 4% fully yet!!!

Edit: In relativistic quantum mechanics you do end up with solutions that give negative energy (equivalently negative mass). These are interpreted as normal particles travelling backwards in time or anti-particles travelling forward in time. Make of that what you will. I guess I'm just saying that once you get down to that level anything goes, yoj can even have things created out of nothing, provided they are very short lived.
 
Fenderman said:
Interesting mystical facts: Ley Lines connect every F1 race circuit on the planet. If you draw a straight line around the Earth so that it exactly passes through two opposing corners of the great pyramid 'Cheops' you will disect the planet precisely into two equal halves.

Indeed, Edward Leedskalnin did spend over twent-five years constructing his Coral Castle. However, he did it at night and largely unobserved. His claim that he used no modern construction equipment (modern for the 1920's and 30's that is) was supported by his explanation that he knew the secrets of the Egyptians and how they built their pyramids. Of course, how the Egyptian pyramids were built is no longer a secret and only those in absolute denial continue to dispute theevidence and facts.

Don't take it from me, here's a nice way of putting it (if a little unkind to some 'believers'):

"There is one detail that virtually all agree on: since the reclusive Leedskalnin spent nearly thirty years working mostly at night and away from prying eyes, no one actually saw him move the coral. Since no one saw the blocks actually being moved, no one can state for certain that the task was accomplished by Leedskalnin alone. The claim that Leedskalnin didn't use modern (post-1920s) tools is obviously true, but the mistake is in assuming that modern tools are required to move the large blocks of coral. ​
​
Ultimately—and ironically—the solution may lie in Leedskalnin's own simple explanation: that he did it using principles of weight and leverage. "I have discovered the secrets of the pyramids," he said, employing the same methods used by ancient Egyptians. If Leedskalnin was being truthful, then the mystery is solved, for the methods by which the Egyptian pyramids could be constructed are well understood (see, for example, Mark Lehner's 1997 book The Complete Pyramids). ​
​
Photos exist of large tripods, pulleys, and winches at the Coral Castle site, and several sources (e.g., Wallace Wallington's Web site http://www.theforgottentechnology.com) demonstrate how massive weights can be moved by one or two people using simple physics. (The comparisons to Egypt's pyramids are a red herring; there are vast differences in weight, material, and complexity between the castle's coral slabs and the huge stone pyramids at Giza. Because coral is porous, large blocks appear heavier than they actually are.)​
​
Many mystery mongers arrogantly assume that those living in earlier times (such as Leedskalnin, or the ancient Egyptians) were not clever or resourceful enough to possibly have created impressive engineering feats without extraterrestial aid or mysterious powers. This view betrays an ignorance of history and sadly underestimates human ingenuity. It seems likely that if scientists haven't explained the Coral Castle specifically, it's because there's little to "explain." The Coral Castle mystery seems to be simply a matter of poorly-informed people who reject a mundane reality in favor of a fanciful myth."​
​
From: http://www.livescience.com/680-mysterious-coral-castle-fanciful-myth.html
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Like you said to me, don't believe everything you read in the internet.:)
Love the ignorance part and how we sadly underestimate human ingenuity? Was i doing that? No the guy who you are qouting did. Saying: " Oh, they just used some leverage that's all" is underestimating human ingenuity.

To come back on the Coral castle and the Pyramids. You said there it isn't a secret anymore how they build the pyramids. Well they still don't know how they carried stones from miles away to the pyramids, carried those stones up and how they placed them down every few seconds in the most precise way.

Same goes for Leedskalnin, u are saying he just used leverage to carry those stones. Then how did he balanced some stones so perfectly? How did he create a gate that even a child could push open with ease?
When he carried his castle 10 miles down the road he asked a guy with a truck to help them move them. He didn't want that the truck driver was present when he placed his stones on the truck. So the truck driver left, came back after 30min. and there were stones of a few tons perfectly placed in the back of the truck. Just leverage? Have you ever seen how they place things on a truck that have a weight of a few tons?

For me the Egyptians and Leedskalnin both knew something about magnetism, well Leedskalnin was know for his unusual theories about magnetism.

Brings us to our next part:
The guy says that is gives to illusion of anti gravity, But if it counters earth's gravitation pull it becomes anti gravity, right?
 
Greenlantern101 said:
Fenderman Yeh this is the chap.

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Like man
Bushi said:
Like you said to me, don't believe everything you read in the internet.:)
Love the ignorance part and how we sadly underestimate human ingenuity? Was i doing that? No the guy who you are qouting did. Saying: " Oh, they just used some leverage that's all" is underestimating human ingenuity.
Most of the early intelligence is all destroyed by some humans biggest friend...religion.

To come back on the Coral castle and the Pyramids. You said there it isn't a secret anymore how they build the pyramids. Well they still don't know how they carried stones from miles away to the pyramids, carried those stones up and how they placed them down every few seconds in the most precise way.

Same goes for Leedskalnin, u are saying he just used leverage to carry those stones. Then how did he balanced some stones so perfectly? How did he create a gate that even a child could push open with ease?
When he carried his castle 10 miles down the road he asked a guy with a truck to help them move them. He didn't want that the truck driver was present when he placed his stones on the truck. So the truck driver left, came back after 30min. and there were stones of a few tons perfectly placed in the back of the truck. Just leverage? Have you ever seen how they place things on a truck that have a weight of a few tons?

For me the Egyptians and Leedskalnin both knew something about magnetism, well Leedskalnin was know for his unusual theories about magnetism.

Brings us to our next part:
The guy says that is gives to illusion of anti gravity, But if it counters earth's gravitation pull it becomes anti gravity, right?
Click to expand
 
Eloquent repost Bushi :) .

Edit: For the record the references to ignorance of history etc. are not mine - those are contained n the passages I quoted from livescience.com and I don't believe the writer had Bushi in mind! Indeed, I noted in my lead up that the writer was perhaps unkind to believers.

Indeed there are many means to create lift using such things as magnetic fields to create a cushion (e.g. magnetic levitation as used in Maglev train systems, etc.) or by changing the properties of a material using other materials or substances (as Michio's experiment and as Michio points out it is an illusion of anti-gravity). The holy grail of anti-gravity is the idea that the property of anti-gravity can be conferred on a material or object so that it defies gravity without the input of energy and that insodoing anti-gravity itself can be somehow tapped as a power source.

My comment about not believing everything one reads or sees on the internet (or anywhere else for that matter) stands. My apologies if some folk's took that as some kind of personal slight upon them as that was not my intention. Nor did I intend to imply that the internet has no useful sources. To say that would be ridiculous since it is the absolute gold mine of information, made accessible to more people across the planet than ever before in human history. With regard to the passages I inserted from livescience.com, I chose that one out of quite a few other sources I could have used because it's a pretty fair representation on that particular subject.

So, having said all that, back to gravity. In the Wiki, which as we all know has its faults, is nevertheless a reasonable description of the concept of anti-gravity. Their description is in line with current thinking in mainstream science that can be found in publications such as Scientific American, New Scientist, Nature, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-gravity

Anti-gravity is the idea of creating a place or object that is free from the force of gravity. It does not refer to the lack of weight under gravity experienced in free fall or orbit, or to balancing the force of gravity with some other force, such as electromagnetism or aerodynamic lift. Anti-gravity is a recurring concept in science fiction, particularly in the context of spacecraft propulsion. An early example is the gravity blocking substance "Cavorite" in H. G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon.​
In Newton's law of universal gravitation, gravity was an external force transmitted by unknown means. In the 20th century, Newton's model was replaced by general relativity where gravity is not a force but the result of the geometry of spacetime. Under general relativity, anti-gravity is impossible except under contrived circumstances.[1][2][3] Quantum physicists have postulated the existence of gravitons, a set of massless elementary particles that transmit the force, and the possibility of creating or destroying these is unclear.​
"Anti-gravity" is often used colloquially to refer to devices that look as if they reverse gravity even though they operate through other means, such as lifters, which fly in the air by using electromagnetic fields.[4][5]​

I'm sure that if anyone wishes to take the time there are plenty of references in there to get started in further study, which at the end of the day is all I would as of anyone and would expect to be asked of me.
 
sushifiesta said:
The LHC uses a couple of hundred megawatts, or approximately twice as much as nearby Geneva I think. But this isn't 'just to get a glimpse of a black hole', there's so many different phenomena that are being searched for.
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Yup, I know that, Sushi', I was being flippant. Don't you know me by now :o? Thanks for giving us the figures on the energy input, by the way. Saved me from having to look that up.:thumbsup:
 
Talking of the Higgs Boson sushifiesta. I posted this bit below for comedic efect in another thread but of course it's relevant to your post above. What tickled me is the second article where the boffins want a new, bigger collider, because ...

It now transpires that after all of the intriguing science that went on in the lead up to, and gone on since, its [the Higgs-Boson-like particle] "discovery" in July that the results, disturbingly, have not unleashed the new science that the boffins were hoping would take them away from "the standard model"...

... which means that they now want a bigger, better research tool ...
Ah, the search for very tiny, little, eentsy, weetsy things .. Bob Lazar must be loving this.:)
 
Yeah, the results from the LHC so far could be considered to be 'boring' since virtually all the results so far are in good agreement with the Standard Model. The Standard Model has issues so one of the aims of the LHC is to find evidence for what might replace/extend it. One of the most popular candidates, supersymmetry, is already looking less and less likely due to the LHC results.

As for plans beyond the LHC it's inevitable that they have to be being made in parallel as these are massive projects that take a couple of decades to design and build (I think people started seriously thinking about the LHC in the early 90s). One of the future concepts is called CLIC, the compact linear collider. It would be 50km long.
 
Back in 1967, I was joking with a pal at school about scientists creating ever stronger microscopes. We had been poring over an old issue of "Creepy Tales" (I think it was). In it was a cartoon strip about a scientist who has done just that and focusing his mega-powerful microscope he zooms in on the surface of an atom. The penultimate picture in the strip is of the scientist recoiling in horror, screaming "NOOOOOOOOO!!" The last frame is "microscope view" of a dead world plastered in oil derricks.

I tell you this story because here we are 45 years later. It fascinates me that so much effort is being spent on iinvestigating ever smaller things to illuminate the secrets of the universe and yet:
  • We haven't gone back to the moon nor do we have a moonbase,
  • We have a Heath Robinson bolt-on space station built with the help of a flying bus that was obsolete before it's first flight,
  • The satellites that enabled US meteorologists to predict the track and consequences of Hurricane Sandy have reached their sell by date and are overdue for replacement and, at the current rate of failure, such prediction may well be impossible as early next year.
  • Earth is currently undergoing a period of mass extinction as species numbers and diversity are crashing all over the place due to over-exploitation of resources and climate variation and/or change (whether or not it's a natural cycle or man-made - you chose).
  • and a whole lot of other stuff tht just maybe we should be spending a shed load more time and money on.
As you can see, I'm a skeptic with regard to super-duper-faster-further-than-what-we've-got-already-colliders. I just have great dificulty in seeing the point since the particles that are being discovered are so small and in the range of the ludicrously short lived that, yes, we will know a lot more stuff about stuff and the Cosmos, but where's the practical application? At least when the atom was understood well enough it could be used to blow things up - like a couple of cities to end a war (maybe) and generate some juice (whether we like unclear ;) energy or not).

I'm hoping sushifiesta can reassure me that it's not actually a great waste of time and energy. Methinks Sushi's article will have to be a competition winning one! :D
 
There are so many arguments and counter arguments, and I'm going to have to try and summarise them on my phone! Chances are you've heard them already.

1) The money spent on these projects is completely insignificant compared to what we would save by deciding to stop fighting each other as ar race and get rid of military budgets. Basically I would argue that more money should be spent on R&D and that should be distributed appropriately across all sectors.

2) Projects like the LHC are highly unlilely to have obvious, short-term, 'practical' applications. However, they might lead to the sort of unexpected eureka moment which completely revolutionises human life. The internet is the go to example in this category, but it can equally apply to things like research in to electricity in the past. If we only focused on the issues of the present chances are we'd still be travelling around in horse and carts and lighting our homes with candles.

3) It would be bad news for the development of the human race if we stop pushing the limits of our understanding. The two key places you can do that, in my opinion, are in particle physics accelerators and in space. Space programmes have shifted focus from manned missions to telescopes, satellites and probes. You can learn as much or more from those without the complication of sending a big, heavy, delicate person in to space.

4) I've said there's no obvious short term benefits from the LHC, but that probably isn't fair. There are massive challenges involved both in the likes of engineering and international collaboration. This obviously isn't an 'off the shelf' machine, new techniques, designs and equipment have to be developed to achieve the goals. Things like the magnets that are used are amongst the most powerful on the planet. I can't give specific examples but it is clear that there are components in the LHC that are widely used elsewhere and the nature of science means that much of what is learnt is freely available in the public domain.

5) Also regarding short term applications but perhaps not directly linked to the LHC are the other applications of particle accelerators in general - they aren't only used for 'pure' science research. Particle accelerators have wide uses in cancer treatment and diagnosis, in measuring the fine structure of materials (e.g. individual proteins, which can be used in developing effective medicines) and security scanners, for example. These accelerators are vastly different in scale and energies, admittedly.

6) Science needs big projects like the LHC to generate headlines and get people, specifically children, interested in science.

I'm sure I could think of many more but my thumbs are sore! I hope there aren't too many mistakes...
 
Not bad going sushifiesta. :) I knew you would not disappoint. Agree on the warfare stuff. Agree on the space stuff but still think we could have had people doing some good stuff on the Moon prepping for human exploration of our solar system.

As for short term practical application, I'm skeptical about any useful application short or long term, period. Scientists delving into the miniscule seem, to me, to be forgetting or ignoring a universal constant - granted it's best known to Joe/Jane public as something to do with fiscal economics - and that is the "law of diminishing returns". The evidence that this "law" is not just a theory can be seen in everything from the development, life and decay of ecosystems to the continual input of resources into perfecting an F1 car resulting in ever smaller gains in performance. The mere fact that they are having to build ever bigger machines, using ever greater amounts of energy to create a few particles and that decay almost faster than they can be observed is a wonderful illustration of the problem. We seem to be getting to the point where the particles are produced, given a quirky, almost comedic name and then, :oops: , the standard model hasn't been busted yet, :bored: damn!.

At some stage someone has to say, enough. In business, when the returns have gotten that small the business restructures, closes or is sold off to someone else to asset strip and dispose of.
 
Fenderman said:
using ever greater amounts of energy to create a few particles that decay almost faster than they can be observed
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In fact pretty much all of the particles you are interested in finding evidence for either decay faster than they can be observed or simply can't be detected at all, but this has been the case in particle physics virtually since it began. What you do is measure what you can and look at the rates at which various decays etc. occur to determine whether something is happening that you don't expect. Neutrinos are perhaps the best example of this - they will happily travel through the Earth without blinking an eye, but they will be produced in abundance in the collisions so how do you know they're there? You can't easily determine the total number of neutrinos that have been produced but what you can do is enforce conservation of energy and momentum in the collision. What you find is you have 'missing' energy and momentum in what you measure (less energy coming out than went in), and this must be carried away by the neutrinos, revealing their presence. Possible evidence for theories beyond the Standard model would be heavy neutrinos, in which case you would expect much larger missing energy/momentum than normal. The fact that these haven't been seen so far suggests that, if they exist, their masses are larger than any of the currently known fundamental particles, and the more data you collect and the higher energies you reach without observing them makes the lowest limit of there possible mass higher and higher, until eventually you decide that actually they're just not there at all.

Now I've probably confused you, but as for your general point of having to pump in more resources 'per unit understanding' if I can put it that way I'd refer you to points 2 and 3. To use the F1 analogy, I'd prefer to aspire to be Ferrari and extract everything we can rather than being content with having an HRT in the garage...
 
No confusion here, sushifiesta, I've been interested in all things science and engineering since I was a kid - from science fiction to science fact. I may be crap at the math but I have no trouble exploring concepts, theories, philosophical questions, new ideas and implications. Humankind searching for answers to the mysteries of the Cosmos is one of humanity's fundamental purposes in life - whether that search is done through physical experimentation, philosophical discussion, deep thought or meditation.
 
Nice bumper stickers.
dma-71.jpg
 
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