exchemist

4 minutes ago, Aetherwizard said:

Are papers allowable as starting points for discussion on this forum?

I experience tremendous bias in science forums favoring peer-reviewed concepts and a lack of open-mindedness toward fresh ideas. I recently wrote a paper and published it on ResearchGate to explain my mathematically supported physics insights. As part of my research, I even developed a new system of units based on the concept of distributed charge and the concept that there are two quantifiable types of charges: electrostatic and magnetic. Through these enhanced physics tools, I have demonstrated how the Relativity equations are easily expressed as fluid Aether equations. 

More importantly, my work demonstrates that the so-called "anomalous" quantum Hall effect is better explained in terms of magnetic charge than electrostatic charge, which validates my theory. My theory similarly explains numerous other physics observations better than the Standard Model.

The problem I encounter is the instant hostility that arises from such a claim, rather than a measured scientific approach that would begin by reading the paper and checking out the simple equations. Is it safe to post the paper and expect a proper scientific critique rather than an unresearched, knee-jerk reaction?

I’m not a physicist but I suspect the reception you will get will depend on:

(1) what predictions your model makes that enable its validity to be tested and

(2) whether it is compatible with the rest of physics.  

We get a lot of people who just dream stuff up with no attention to how their ideas could be validated experimentally, and a lot more who think their ideas can exist in a vacuum, when they are incompatible with everything else. Obviously no one is going to tear down the whole of physics, just because of a claim to account for a handful of phenomena in a different way.

Good luck.

8 hours ago, MSC said:

Wow! I didn't realise Tyson and Pigliucci had beef. Definitely diminishes my respect for Tyson a little bit, but I'm a also little biased because I've spoken to Massimo personally on a number of occasions... I should really send him an apology, kind of chewed him out last we spoke and was marginally unfair. Crazy story though; I had beef with a philosophy community, Massimo vouched for me because he felt somewhat responsible for what happened there, was this whole AMA event he'd been invited to and I'd been invited to ask him questions out of a handful of people on that particular forum, then found myself uninvited because I added to the question after they'd greenlighted my first draft and instead of changing it back, I cited the forums rules about how moderators aren't allowed to edit user content and also cited some stoic works about integrity; while negotiating with one mod, another banned me altogether permanently. So I contacted Massimo myself and he tried to get me back in and was pissed they were losing their heads, breaking their own rules just because he had agreed to come onto the forum. They didn't listen, the ban stood and I lost about 3 good friends who I've never been able to get back in touch with and access to a lot of good conversations about philosophy etc that were in my messages on that forum. Man I was pissed! This was like a year before I came here.

@MigLShould I try and chew out Tyson next or am I bit much? Lol

As a rank amateur in these matters, I must say Pigliucci and Peter Woit are 2 people I value highly as thoughtful but clear and well grounded,  with functioning bullshit detectors. Degrasse Tyson and Krauss are slightly  too glib for my taste.

3 hours ago, Paola said:

What is meant by the dashed arrows a and b?

1 hour ago, LaraKnowles said:

https://globalnews.ca/news/8851556/apple-lawsuit-amber-alert-hearing-damage/

https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/44560022/Gordoa_et_al_v_Apple,_Inc_et_al

I did some Googling, and the maximum output physically possible for Airpods is 100-105 decibels when in the ear. So if they're playing a sound at maximum volume, the maximum decibels their eardrums could be exposed to is 100-105 decibels. Apparently, the family waited two years before filing the lawsuit, but I can't find a source for this as of now, it was a comment made on Reddit.

Is 100-105 decibels enough to instantly rupture a person's eardrum and immediately cause permanent hearing damage as the family claims?

No. 

38 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

What do you think of this guy? How does he compare to Carl Sagan in your opinion?

Personally I like him. He did an awesome job in Cosmos: A Spacetime Oddysey. I am yet to watch Cosmos: Possible Worlds as it didn't air in my country. 

Although he's sometimes wrong when he talks about stuff that isn't space related. His remarks after a school shooting on the US were quite insensitive too.

Any thoughts?

My opinion of him went down considerably when I learned he has tried to rubbish philosophy: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2014/05/20/pigliucci-pwns-neil-degrasse-tyson-smbc-teases-pigliucci/

He doesn't seem to understand that science is both rooted in philosophy and poses philosophical questions. So I suspect he's a bit shallow. I'm sure he knows his science but I would take anything he says about other matters with a pinch of salt.

24 minutes ago, pzkpfw said:

Is the OP simply a mix-up of Neutron and Neutrino?

Don't think the qualifier "standalone" would suggest the OP had neutrinos in mind.

8 minutes ago, GeeKay said:

It's often mentioned that cosmic rays include non-charged subatomic particles like neutrons as part of their mix. This seems to contradict the two facts that an isolated neutron spontaneously decays within just 15 minutes and that the universe is awfully big. The only solution that springs to this mind is that extreme time dilation (due to near-lightspeed motion) hugely extends a neutron's normal existence, relatively speaking. Is this true? Or is this a classic instance of not seeing the elephant in the room? 🤥

 

Are you sure this is right? My understanding was neutrons are some of the secondary products produced when cosmic rays interact with atoms in the atmosphere. 

17 minutes ago, Kapnal Loga said:

I realize it's about fast motion, but then why doesn't a flying bullet squeal like crazy? That's fast motion too, what's the difference? The sudden movement of the tape, I read somewhere that the wave along the tape can move at supersonic speeds, but how does this all relate and cause this sound specifically?

 A bullet most definitely does make a noise as it flies through the air. Whether you hear it as a whizz or as a crack depends on whether it is sub- or supersonic as it passes. But in the case of paper and tape, you also have something else: a resonator. The surface of the paper or the tape will be made to move when the breaks take place and this will make a larger volume of air move.  

40 minutes ago, julius2 said:

Speculation:

So one thing I observe is that everything is so "fresh and new". We are not hampered by anything from the past. This makes sense as according to modern theory everything came from an "infinite point" and evolved over billions of years. So in effect this is a new "time". The question is were there any previous "times".

According to Roger Penrose (scientist), this universe is born from the collapse of a previous one. In effect there is an eternal cycle of expansion and contraction. The question is were there were any "earth worlds" previously in time? And if so were they more connected to that of previous times? For us we are not connected to previous time at all. We obviously inherit the previous history of this world through ancient monuments and written history and cave drawings. But we have no link per se to time previous to the formation of this world. And hence the search and theorizing about what did actually happen. Eg there were quarks and other subatomic particles per se.

The theory is that this universe is a "rehash" of the "smashup" of previous times. Essentially like a "recycle garbage bin" in time. Yet we see ourselves as completely new. Wonderous, exciting etc. The theory is that previous times are reflected very well in this world. Through our stories, creativity, art etc.  The theory is that there is no such thing as "creativity". Our minds are drawing upon a "mashup" of the past !!!

If you think being 13.8 billion years old is "fresh and new", you have a curious conception of these terms. 

1 hour ago, Kapnal Loga said:

Hello, I had a hiccup in explaining how sound is produced when materials break down. For example,

A) we are tearing paper,

B) we're unwinding duct tape. There is a break in the adhesion bonds.

The breakage results in a sudden release of energy, which is converted to kinetic energy in some way, creating sound. How does sound occur? What's vibrating in there to cause it? I'm interested in physical part of production of sound in these processes.

Any sudden movement will disturb the adjacent air. In both the cases you mention there is a stretching action followed a break in quick succession. When the break occurs, the stored energy in the stretch is released suddenly, causing a very tiny but rapid movement of a portion of the paper or tape. This will create a sound wave. There does not have to be - and in this case there won't be - a vibration, just a single motion. This is shown in fact by the absence of any discernible pitch or tone to the sound. It's more or less white noise. If there were vibration, that would cause a sound at a particular pitch, or pitches.   

8 hours ago, swansont said:

The inherent linewidth is indeed from Delta E * delta t > hbar, and electric dipole transitions do vary as frequency cubed

 

I think I have read that spontaneous emission processes can be modelled as a special case of normal stimulated emission, but due to interaction with the virtual photons of vacuum fluctuations. We did not go any of that at university, as QED was out of scope for chemists (and my physicist girlfriend at the time preferred to talk about other things). Is it the case? 

17 minutes ago, swansont said:

One should note that these are an effect for an ensemble of atoms or molecules; an individual atom must have its energy match up with the photon, though that energy will have a different value if the atom is moving (Doppler shift) vs an atom at rest. An unperturbed atom still has a finite transition width. 

The bigger picture is that there are a lot of moving parts. Any simple or basic explanation is omitting details. It might seem ad hoc to hear a more complete explanation, but that’s mostly a function of learning things piecemeal. 

Indeed, QM interactions are inherently probablistic rather than exact no/no go processes. So the probability of interaction goes up progressively as the match gets more exact. I think uncertainty  broadening is also still present for a single atom, if the excited state has a significant spontaneous emission probability, which for electronic transitions it will do, if I recall correctly that it depends on the cube of frequency. But I’m rusty on this and away from my books.

8 minutes ago, avicenna said:

Thanks. OK. The world of knowledge is vast as the universe itself. 

Probably, but you can still tackle it in manageable chunks by learning selectively those bits that interest you.

For me spectroscopy was one of them, after a hairy first term at university reading and having stiff tutorials based on Gerhard Herzberg's little green book, which did me a lot of good.😀  

Keeping asking questions: they are not daft.   

50 minutes ago, avicenna said:

It is commonly stated in QM that a bound electron may only absorb a photon if only there is a matching energy gap difference that matches the photon energy. This seems ridiculous.

Say a photon emitted by a hydrogen atom with the typical red emission frequency of the Blamer series. If this photon meets a piece of copper, it is unlikely that a copper atom has an exact matching two energy levels matching that of the Balmer spectrum of hydrogen. The photon would just cruise through copper without being absorbed. Well, if a statement is flawed, we then decide to "patch up" our theory and say there are other means that a photon may be absorbed by matter.

So the scientific method nowadays would be a series of ad hoc "patching ups".      
 

No, spectral lines have finite width for a variety of perfectly good reasons. (Finite line width means there is a range of absorbing or emitting frequencies of course.) These include the Doppler effect, from motion of the emitters relative to absorbers, and uncertainty broadening, due to finite lifetime of the excited state leading to uncertainty in its energy, by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Relations. In gases, this can be a function of pressure, cf. "pressure broadening", since collisions may shorten lifetimes of excited states and also alter their energy, due to transient proximity of second atoms, thereby disturbing the potential experienced by the electrons. And for matter in condensed states, atomic lines tend to get broadened into bands anyway, due to the overlay of vibrational and/or rotational fine structure.

If you read up a bit about spectroscopy, there is quite a bit to it besides simple line emission and absorption. 

31 minutes ago, Externet said:

Greetings.

Soil, warmth and water usually does trigger to sprout.   What if instead of water, some fluid nutrient 'tea' is used, for the event of the soil being less than ideal ?

Read about using corn starch 'tea' but seems to be more oriented to suspend the seeds than supplying nutrients.  Do you know of what has been tried ?  Any guess on preparing such 'tea' ?  Will not be  cocacola, or orange juice, or milk, or vinegar, right ?   Besides; if such has a radicle promoter added, better ¿?

If the soil is poor I should think a solution providing missing important elements might be appropriate. Fertilisers normally focus on N, P and K, in various ratios. There are commercial liquid fertilisers available. Anything that alters the pH is very risky, which rules out most of the things you have listed. Bear in mind plants make their own carbohydrate by photosynthesis, so it’s pointless adding starch or sugars to the soil.

2 hours ago, geordief said:

"The Jewish Cemetery at Newport "

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1852)

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44634/the-jewish-cemetery-at-newport

https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/3327/page/5254/display?use_mmn=1

I didn’t know this. Rather good. The reference to “Judenstrasse”, though fairly innocent in his time, has an eerie prescience. (I’ve just watched “Downfall”.) But he was wrong to say that dead nations don’t rise again, as it turned out.

I’m reading, or rather re-reading, Martin Brasier’s “Darwin’s Lost World”, about Ediacaran and other Precambrian life. I’m enjoying it more second time round. Now that I have a son at St. Andrew’s, in the university mountaineering club, I feel I want to go to Loch Torridan with a geologist’s hammer and climb Quinaig.

39 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Great stuff.  Bach innovated in so many ways, counterpoint, modulation, four part harmony, use of dissonant chords, even in stepping back to Dorian mode and others.  Always a fan.  And provider of Bach jokes....

Why did Bach have 20 children?

Because there were no stops in his organ.

 

 

Arf arf. 

To be fair I think all these techniques were already in existence by Bach's time, but he was the apotheosis of them all in combination. So much so that everyone wanted to go back to a simpler texture after he died and almost nobody played him for a century. There were even people of my grandparents' generation who referred to JSB as "Bach's father". I believe we have principally Mendelssohn to thank for bringing him back to the concert hall. 

When we were rehearsing the B Minor Mass, our director spent some time in one number on getting the tenors and altos to be aware of the interplay between their parts, so he got the accompanist to play just those two lines on the piano, for us to listen. We were mesmerised. I remember thinking people would pay good money to hear that played in a piano recital. And it was just 2 parts - and the inner parts at that! So the full 4 part harmony was pretty rich, dense stuff.  One can see why people wanted a change.

But Bach is an inexhaustible pleasure to sing. There's always something you hadn't spotted. He seems to write from the bass up, so the bass parts are always terrific and somehow very virile - provided you can do octave jumps easily and have three lungs. (Unlike Handel, he takes no prisoners where voices are concerned and you have to follow a line that could have been written for a string instrument or the keyboard.)    

11 hours ago, Moontanman said:

Thank you, exactly what I was wondering but I didn't realize the station was necessary. 

 

It's simply that velocity always has to be stated relative to something in order to have any meaning. 2 cars in adjoining lanes on a motorway may be travelling at 5mph relative to each other but at 75 and 80mph relative to a policeman by the side of a road with a speed camera, and at 20 and 25mph relative to a truck which it itself travelling at 55mph relative to said policeman. The problem is we unthinkingly assume "the ground" is our reference frame in daily speech, treating it a bit as if it were an absolute frame of reference, when in reality there is no such thing.  (This should however be a bit more obvious in space.)

So you can't say you have a spacecraft "travelling at 0.999% of c" without saying with respect to what. Hence I proposed a space station to provide a reference, so that these speeds have a meaning. 

8 hours ago, joigus said:

Fantastic indeed. Thank you. The Suite muffled by the voices was great for setting the mood. 

I've long felt that all music gravitates towards Bach... or emanates from it. Or something like that.

I feel that music before Bach is a preamble to Bach.

And music after Bach is a corollary to Bach.

Even atonal music seems like an attempt to break the shackles of Bach while still doing music. Like 'how little Bach can one get without making just noise?'

I'm very partial about Bach, you see. I'm very Bach-centred.

So thank you.

Yes Bach seems to be a great inflexion point in the evolution of Western music. All the pros play Bach, even rock musicians. I remember once talking to a Thai pianist, playing jazzy hotel stuff in a hotel bar in Bangkok. My colleague asked him what music he played for pleasure at home and he replied "Bach". I tried to persuade him to play some for me, as he was taking requests, but he said the hotel management wouldn't like it (!) and I could not convince him.

I also recall once listening to an organ performance of the Art of Fugue in my room in Oxford, when a fellow chemist came in who was a jazz clarinettist (He had been a member of the Kent Youth Orchestra before coming up). One of the weirder fugues was playing and he couldn't make it what it was. He thought it sounded so edgy it must be some c.20th composer - Messiaen or something. He was amazed when I told him.

But if you liked what I posted, this  (opening chorus, 1st 7 mins) is another of my all time favourites as a choral singer, from Part V of the Christmas Oratorio (apologies if I've posted this one before at some point): 

You have to click the "watch on YouTube" link to see it.

This is also in 3/4. My impression is Bach does not often use that time signature and when he does, he often thinks it's time for some gaiety. In the video you can actually see the musicians enjoying it. They are making eye contact with each other and smiling.

Just come across this Flashmob video from Lausanne, in the course of revising the bass line in my favourite chorus from Bach's St. John Passion:

The cellist plays part of one of Bach's Cello Suites and ends on a (baroque pitch) G, from which the basses can get the C they need to start the fugue. The conductor pretends to be a waiter delivering beer to the next table, until the moment arrives. 

They sing it very well, especially given the acoustics of a busy restaurant. Pretty cool, I thought. 

This chorus is in 3/4, with real JSB swing, syncopation and drive. Fantastic music.

37 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Evidently I am too slow to get this one. I understand the two space craft would be approaching the space station at .9999 c but what would they measure each others speed at?

 

No, you've got it, that's the point. You obviously don't add the velocities, as you would in classical dynamics. 

Just now, Moontanman said:

Would the space station influence the speed the two space craft measure on each other? 

OK I give up. 

5 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

So there would be no combined speed effect at all? 

You can only define a speed relative to some other object. So far the only objects you have mentioned are the two spacecraft. Is 99.999% of c measured relative to the other spacecraft or to something else? If the former, you have already stated the answer. If the latter you need to say what that something is.

You could for example say each space craft approaches the same space station, from diametrically opposite directions, at 99.999% of c relative to the space station.   

3 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

If two space craft were approaching each other at 99.999% of the speed of light, what would the speed of each appear to be to the other since the speeds would not add up like two trains traveling at 100 mph toward each other. 

99.999% of c relative to what, though? 

8 hours ago, Leila Choudhry said:

I can't believe I did that !

[link deleted]

This looks like a ridiculous gimmick to me, designed to get silly people to waste their money while feeling somehow vaguely "green" as they do so. I'm tempted to suggest the "Y" in the brand name is a misprint. There's just no way having a thing like this bubbling away in a corner is going to give you measurably more oxygen, which in any case you don't need. As for the nebulous claim about capturing "pollutants", what pollutants are they talking about and what evidence is there that these algae will capture them?