I am still a scientist!

I have a couple... Have scientists ever been wrong? Have they ever had to change what was once thought to be FACT?

You say "about how the government's technology is years/decades/centuries/millennia beyond normal technology (it's not)." So what level of clearance do you have within all the governments of the world to make such a claim?

I have to be honest, you sound like a know it all 'professional' when in reality even knowledgeable scientists have the capacity to be wrong! I think people like you would never admit it! And people like you would actually hold back progression because you know best and everyone else is a moron!

Hey buddy, we're all trying to make sense out of this world, no-one has all the answers! That includes you.

you can make me all the scientific questions ...the answer are only a google search away

for the rest whom are asking him questions yet unanswered by the scientific community and pretend them to be answered here...im sorry for you

reply to post by Moduli


I have to say that, as a peer , I was rather disappointed by your answer in the simulation thread. Thought-experiment simulations on ideal computers using imaginary numbers is very much possible.

If you're a current researcher in string theory (or M-theory, as you didn't specify in the OP), you should be well acquainted with complex numbers and their serviceability.

All right. You are a specialist in string theory, and hopefully know something about quantum physics. My specialty is psychology, especially a quantum theory of mind that uses string theory. Have you heard anything about this?

What's your opinion regarding the 'Strange Computer Code Discovered Concealed In Superstring Equations'?

Originally posted by Arekoteya
reply to post by Moduli

 

You said in your previous thread you specialize in High Energy Particles and String theory. But apparently in this thread "Energy Particles" are nonsense, therefore you sir, are nonsense.

Is this an obscure reference to xkcd.com... or do you not realize that the proper way to parse this is high-energy particles, and not high energy-particles?

Originally posted by EasyPleaseMe
Can you explain the source / cause of inertia?

Depends on what you mean. The modern (as in, not 1700s-era) definition of inertia is the 'm' in F=ma (this is what the 'resistance' in 'resistance to changes in motion' comes from). So the simple answer is that the source is that things have mass.

This can be explained in a more complicated way with general relativity, but the meaning is basically the same, you just use a more general version of F=ma.

Originally posted by rom12345
Why is the cosmic speed limit is the speed of light ?
We all know the Einstein said it is the case, but why is this presumed true ?
I think an answer that a layman may understand is in order.

This is a good question, and there are a number of answers at varying levels of mathematical sophistication that can be given. If you want a real understanding, you should get a textbook book on special relativity (Wheeler has a very nice one I used in high school, so it is quite simple to understand and IIRC uses no more than basic algebra for most of it).

The right way to ask this question, one that leads to better ways to think about it, is not to ask why the speed of light is the limit, but why there is a limit on speed at all (and then later to ask why, coincidentally, the speed of light happens to be equal to this limit).

I won't give you the full answer (since it's too technical to give, but is in the book I mentioned) but I will give an outline of a simple version of the reason.

In ordinary geometry (the kind you learn in high school) all of the geometric properties (angles, lengths, etc) are preserved under (only) two operations: rotations, and translations. For example, the length of a line, as given in terms of its x and y coordinates is:
L^2 = x^2 + y^2.
When you rotate it, its length doesn't change, even though the x and y values change. But they change in a way that is guaranteed to always cancel out.

In relativity, there is an analogous equation in four dimensions. When you use this equation to describe a particle with mass m, you discover, by relating "length" to "distance traveled", and this to speed = distance traveled / time, that this enforces that there is *some* velocity that no one can exceed.

You can then plug in the equations that describe light, and simplify them, and observe that this speed is equal to the speed of light. This implies nothing can go faster than light.

Doing this for a general particle that has a mass 'm', you find that any particle with m=0 travels at this maximum speed, and all particles with a non-zero mass travel less than this speed.

Thus, the speed of light cannot be exceeded because of the geometry of space.

It is important to realize that this is not something that is assumed, but something that is proven, as a consequence of geometry.

Originally posted by mee30
I have a couple... Have scientists ever been wrong? Have they ever had to change what was once thought to be FACT?

This question doesn't mean much, and any answer I give has the danger of being very misleading. It's like asking if maps have ever been wrong. Well, yes, even good maps contain errors; the shape of a shoreline may not be quite correct, or they may not include things that have not been discovered. But this doesn't mean that "maps are wrong" or that maps aren't extremely useful to have, it just means you have to understand a little about maps to use them properly.

Generally, in properly done modern science, something that's considered a "fact" is something which has been measured, or derived mathematically, to be true, and has additionally been shown to be statistically unlikely to be a random measurement error, and has been argued carefully to not be a systematic error.

Because (modern) individual scientific "facts" are not facts in isolation, but facts with this information attached, one could say that no, they are not wrong. (In other words, the individual facts say "I measured myself to be 6 feet tall, with a margin of error of 1 inch, with a one in a million probability of a random measurement error", and this fact is true--because you did measure that--even if you find out later you're seven feet tall.)

Theories (in the modern scientific use of the word), built out of individual facts, are designed so that they combine facts in a way (using mathematical logic and consistency in addition to measurements) so that they do not suffer from the problem that the entire measured fact, with this baggage attached, may not be the fact you wanted to understand.

This guarantees that theories, once properly established, cannot be wrong (in the same sense that once you understand arithmetic and get one apple, then one more apple, then count them, see you have two apples, that you know 1+1=2, 10+10=20, 100+100=200, etc).

This, however, does not mean a theory is complete. For example, the above addition example does not tell you what 2*2 is, or what 1-1 is.

This is why, for example, when you read what Einstein said about relativity, he insisted that it does not show Newton was wrong, and did not replace Newton's theory. It only added to it. It is still the case that Newton's physics was correct, and makes correct predictions. What Einstein did was to allow us to make more predictions by telling us where Newton did not give us enough information.

This is like having a good map that lists all the mountains and hills and ravines and coastlines, but does not tell you where individual trees are, or does not include this information for a neighboring state.

You say "about how the government's technology is years/decades/centuries/millennia beyond normal technology (it's not)." So what level of clearance do you have within all the governments of the world to make such a claim?

I can make this claim because I understand how technology progresses and how discoveries are made.

reply to post by Moduli

This question doesn't mean much,

and then you spend 10 mins or so of your scientific life answering back ..haha

and you seem to ignore my posts which is scientifically proven to be very rude...but i can assure you i will be here till the end of this non sense because till you present any evidence to me you are just making this up..

here is my challenge...

I AM NO SCIENTIST..ASK ME A QUESTION..and i will answer

Well that sure was a lot of fluff right there... Yes to a degree I agree with you, maps are useful but that is not denying that at one time maps depicted the earth to be flat! Which of course we now know is way way wrong! But in the day people like you would have fought against the idea that the world is round.

You say you know how technology progresses, but you do not have any kind of clearance within any government, do you? So to state facts about something you have no insight into is rather closed minded, isn't it?

There is another problem with science as I see it, there are always scientists that disagree with each other! But they can not all be right, can they? Also scientists have been known to lie! Or skew results to fit whatever they were trying to prove! After all scientists are only human.

Here is a nice example... How do you know that in a hundred years or so that most if not all our so called scientific facts won't be thrown out?

Early in the 20th century, Einstein realized that his theory of gravity indicated the universe must be either expanding or contracting. At the time, physicists thought the universe was static, so Einstein added a term known as the “cosmological constant” to his equations to accommodate the conventional wisdom. In the late 1920s, however, Edwin Hubble proved that the universe is, in fact, expanding. Einstein withdrew his constant with no small amount of embarrassment.

By the way, I don't totally discount science, I think it is useful for us to help understand the world etc. What I hate is arrogance that believes there can not possibly be any other explanation! Or scientists such as yourself who belittle other people for throwing ideas out there! Science can and has been wrong! What I find incredible is that you won't even admit that!

Originally posted by mee30
Well that sure was a lot of fluff right there... Yes to a degree I agree with you, maps are useful but that is not denying that at one time maps depicted the earth to be flat! Which of course we now know is way way wrong! But in the day people like you would have fought against the idea that the world is round.

Actually, the Earth has been known to be round since at least the ancient Greeks, who calculated its diameter. There is evidence that is has been known to be round since some of the earliest recorded history.

Maps are flat because paper is flat.

You say you know how technology progresses, but you do not have any kind of clearance within any government, do you? So to state facts about something you have no insight into is rather closed minded, isn't it?

As opposed to you, who has no clearance, is not a scientist, does not know science, and does not understand how science and technology progress.

There is another problem with science as I see it, there are always scientists that disagree with each other! But they can not all be right, can they?

The disagreement you're thinking of is either the fabricated disagreement that occurs when people who don't understand science discuss science (including, and especially, the media), or the exaggerated popular science book disagreements used to caricaturize scientific discussions to make them nontechnical.

Regarding facts, and established theories, there really is no such disagreement any more than mathematicians disagree about established math. The whole point of science is that it works this way.

Originally posted by mee30
Here is a nice example... How do you know that in a hundred years or so that most if not all our so called scientific facts won't be thrown out?

Because of the whole point of science... as I have explained...

Early in the 20th century, Einstein realized that his theory of gravity indicated the universe must be either expanding or contracting. At the time, physicists thought the universe was static, so Einstein added a term known as the “cosmological constant” to his equations to accommodate the conventional wisdom.

This was not a fact, or a measurement, it was a hypothesis. He hypothesized that it may be static, and investigated what terms in his theory could accommodate this. This is useful to understand the structure of the theory regardless of if the universe happened to have a cosmological constant or not.

It's no less useful or correct than learning that 'y' can sometimes be a vowel, but never happening to come across a word where it is. There is simply the statement that sometimes 'y' could be a vowel because it could conceivably be read as an 'e' sound.

This is distinct from the statement "this word uses the letter 'y' as a vowel."

What I hate is arrogance that believes there can not possibly be any other explanation!

What I hate is the arrogance that believes a total lack of understanding of math and science, combined with huge fundamental misunderstanding of math and science, can make valid contributions to science. And that it can be done with no or little effort, instead of with decades of hard work, and that it should be treated just as respectfully as people who have done that.

I mean, it would be like if you wake up during surgery and start asking the doctor "well how do you REALLY know you're supposed to cut there? How do you REALLY know that? I think you should try this instead, just to be safe!" What the doctor is going to do is turn up the gas so you go back to sleep and he can get back to work, not entertain your uneducated fantasies.

Or scientists such as yourself who belittle other people for throwing ideas out there!

I belittle people for not bothering to do any actual learning themselves, and who insist on making statements rather than asking questions and who refuse to understand the distinction.

Originally posted by Moduli
I am still a scientist!, .

And I am still Thygor, Slayer of Scarloc, Dweller of the North Star.... Keeper of the Horned Goat...


and other cool stuff

dear OP,


we are going to expose you again...and we hope this time you get what you deserve

no we dont believe a theoretical physics, specializing in string theory professor make himself available in a a conspiracy forum ...considering himself to be the fountain of knowledge

how do you expect people intelligent enough to post interesting scientific questions to even for a second imagine they can find there much awaited answers here..in your thread..


WE WILL EXPOSE YOU

and seriously...

your active membership IMO is a disgrace for ATS because liars for sure are not welcomed here

reply to post by Moduli


Hi there .If i dig a hole right through the Earth and jump in it, will i fall all the way through to the other side or just stop when i reach the centre?.Obviously with the appropriate safety and protective clothing on. Thanks

reply to post by 12voltz




You would just spin at the center of the Earth.


But as you are falling your life will flash in front of your eyes.



This is my thread now.

reply to post by Moduli


I have a question...

Do you think it is possible to shatter any solid matter with resonance frequencies (sound)....even metals? And is it possible to seperate different liquids with the use of frequencies?

reply to post by Moduli


We are Rigel4...............
I once watched a Twilight Zone episode about an egocentric demon who granted
told an unfortunate victim he would be spared if he could ask the demon anything that
the demon couldn't accomplish.

The man thought for a few minutes............ He then asked the demon various things
what he could do, He asked the demon if could travel through space.

The demon replied , that he could go to Alpha Centauri and back to Earth in an Instant.

The man thought some more, You can traverse space, the oceans, the sky........... you get the picture here, the demon could do anything.

The man smiled because he had won..... He said to the demon , you will Honor our agreement, The demon
grinned "Oh yes, so very confidently.

The man turned to the demon and simply said to him "GET LOST"

With that the demon began to look very angry,

The Demon then shriveled up and burst, unable to carry out the mans Instructions.

I leave you to add the moral of the story..............

Originally posted by zatara
reply to post by Moduli

 

I have a question...

Do you think it is possible to shatter any solid matter with resonance frequencies (sound)....even metals? And is it possible to seperate different liquids with the use of frequencies?

i have a question for you..

how do you expect him to know?

you fell in his trap ? you just cant resist showing your interest in science to others?