Bender

1 hour ago, Dylan T. said:

I don't follow

 

You'll have to be more specific.

3 hours ago, swansont said:

Sorry. The quote function mashes the whole response together, and I mistook it as being part of what was directed at me.

No problem.

4 hours ago, swansont said:

Not "must" (you can interrogate a state with other interactions, i.e. strong or weak nuclear) and not because of the EM energy.

I guess, but that would again expand beyond the original cat in a box, where such would be highly unlikely.

4 hours ago, swansont said:

I was arguing the former, not the latter. What you brought up was irrelevant to the formulation of the Schrödinger's cat argument, and the bet that was described.

Velocity_Boy argued the latter. You are among the "others" between parentheses.

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

Then you are seeing blurred in that section.

Which is a passive effect i.e. I'm not actively blurring my vision. But as I already said, I can actively blur my vision for close objects. I can also focus on something close, which passively blurs objects in the distance. What I cannot do is actively blur objects in the distance (ie without "cheating" by focussing on a nearby object).

8 hours ago, swansont said:

Yes. The question is about Schrödinger's cat. Not why it doesn't work.

The interaction with photons already is not part of the original thought experiment. Infrared radiation inside the box definitely isn't. The question becomes how far you are going to expand on the original.

If the box is inside a perfect vacuum at 0 K, as the experiment suggests, it must be photons who break the superposition.

I hope we can agree that the human observer is irrelevant?

8 hours ago, Velocity_Boy said:

And I'd say you're wrong.

You can argue that my response is not relevant to you (as others have), but to assert that I'm wrong requires more argumentation.  

8 minutes ago, Gees said:

Bender;

 

 

So you hold a position similar to Dr. Frankenstein's, that the source of life is electricity. Interesting.

Could you show me how to install a sensor, timer, and circuits in my toaster? It occurs to me that if I do it right, I could possibly have little baby toasters scooting around my counter in a few months, and if they grow fast enough, I can give them away as Christmas presents. This would save me a lot of aggravation and shopping.

Of course, if they multiply too quickly (like rabbits) I would have to find a way to limit that. Maybe I could just shorten the cords on some of them so they can't reach the electrical outlets. Brilliant.

Thanks for the laugh. I needed it. 

Gee

 

Nice that you had a laugh, but I was dead serious.

We are not talking about "alive" or "fertile"; we are talking about "aware" (or "conscious", since you seem to conflate those).

My claim is that if bacteria are aware/conscious; so is my toaster.

30 minutes ago, swansont said:

Where did Schrödinger propose all of this?

Is that relevant? 

I would say you both lost the bet.

The illumination of the box is irrelevant. The poison interacts with the air molecules, which interact with the atoms comprising the box, which interact with everything around. Decoherence* of the cat's state happens long before the cat is even dead.

The act of opening the box is of no importance. The only way opening the box could hypothetically matter,  is when the box is entirely isolated, which means not a single particle, photon or other, interacts with the rest of the universe for the complete duration of the experiment. Even in that unlikely scenario, it is unknown whether the cat is simultaneously dead and alive, because we don't know whether there is a limit to the size/complexity of a system to still possibly have superimposed states.

*Decoherence could be wave function "collapse", or the observer and the rest of the universe "joining" the superimposed states (in which case you simultaneously see a living cat and a dead cat ). The distinction is not really relevant for this discussion. 

46 minutes ago, Gees said:

How?

By putting a temperature sensor and a timer in, together with the required circuits to interpret and use their output.

Just like how bacteria perceive stimuli and react to them.

1 hour ago, Gees said:

We can not imbue it with the awareness that it needs to make itself continue -- consciousness.

I can imbue a toaster with the awareness it needs.

2 hours ago, jajrussel said:

It kinda requires a central point initially to remain simple. Two different observers measure at the same time. The only difference in measure is direction L/R, up or down.

Another thread sparked the thought. I was trying to think of an event where two different people could take a measure at the same time that was of the same event where the only difference in measure is direction regardless the distance between the event being observed. One is the mirror image of the other.

 

If you use a medium, such as a long rod, to do the force measurements at a distance  (is that what you are getting at?), a pressure wave carries the information and is bound by the speed of sound in the medium.

Our skin is thick enough. Many insects and pathogens cannot pierce our skin. Thicker skin would reduce our agility and sense of touch, while it wouldn't help against predators who could easily pierce the thicker skin anyway.

Ok , I had to put two winter tires back on, because the one that was mostly deflated had again lost some pressure. When checking the pressure of the winter tires, it was about 0,2 bar too high, fitting nicely with a 20K temperature difference between now and when I installed them in november. It certainly overshadowed any air loss due to diffusion.

Interesting. I had never paid attention to this effect before.

2 hours ago, Raider5678 said:

It's not mental gymnastics

It might be. The time dimension is not as straightforward as we perceive it. General relativity takes quite some mental gymnastics; who knows how difficult the physics active 13,7 billion years ago is to imagine. Quantum gravity theories are our best guess at the moment, and after a century of trying to figure it out, the best physicists haven't managed to get their head around it. Quite possibly, what we perceive as time dimension might have "condensed" out of some hyperdimensional who-knows-what at some point, making the question "what came before" irrelevant, as there was no before.

5 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Put something close up to your eye when you do that... is it sharp?

Of course not.

5 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

My guess is that it is useful to defocus visually when you want to focus mentally on the periphery of your vision, possibly in one area of the periphery or possibly for the appearance of something, say when hunting or even fighting). I really have nothing to back that up other than to say I feel it works for me (not that I hunt or fight, but in a number of similar ways). It is a related technique to "glancing around" but I (feel again) it has advantages in some circumstances, and sometimes switching back and forth between the two techniques. I'm not sure everyone doesn't do this whether they realize it or not.

When I focus on my peripheral vision, eg in pattern finding games, there is no blurring. Wouldn't that also blur the periphery? 

I can only do it when looking at a nearby object. When I look in the distance, I can't blur my vision. 

8 minutes ago, ScienceNostalgia101 said:

So I was recently watching this video:

 

 

1. Why molten salt in particular?

 

2. How do they decide the size of the mirrors involved? On a related note, would it be significantly more expensive, less efficient, or both, to use one giant concave mirror than several flat ones? Or is there a risk a giant concave mirror would break?

1) remains liquid at higher temperature 

2) How would you make a giant concave mirror? Even in comparatively much smaller telescopes, mirrors are sometimes in several pieces.

I didn't watch the video, but are you sure the mirrors are flat? They could be, because that would be much, much cheaper and the target is pretty big, but usually they are slightly concave.

3 hours ago, Gees said:

So the basic steps are that life becomes aware of need, then surroundings, then knowledge, then emotion. Religion is the Discipline that studies emotion; "God" is what we call it.

God is emotion? That doesn't really correspond with the view of most people who assign the specific property "creator of everything" to their God. What is the point of such a definition if it doesn't correspond to how people use the word?

9 hours ago, Gees said:

This is a good start, but I limit my understanding of consciousness to life forms. I know that there are other theories, but I can not study everything.

That seems rather restrictive. How can you make claims about the consciousness of bacteria without considering the consciousness of household appliences, such as toasters or hair dryers, which meet the requirements of your first level?

Luckily not. One of them was halfway deflated  (have to check that again tomorrow), and I lost quite some sweat on that one. 

55 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Edit: Manual pump for installing 4 tires? I wouldn't want to mess with you!

I keep my extra tires on an extra set of naves, so they are still almost at the right pressure. It would be pretty hard (if not impossible) to inflate a tubeless car tire manually from 0 gauge (which needs a starting pressure before it is sealed). It also avoids all the equipment necessary to actually get them on their nave or to balance them afterwards.

58 minutes ago, Frank said:

Well, nitrogen or other gases will also change pressure with temperature, but the water vapour claim I'm still unclear on.  Why would it increase with increasing pressure?

I understand that the upper bound of vapour pressure in a tire is already in the 1% region, but now I wonder what the effect of compressing the air to 8 bar for example, and letting it cool to standard temperature would be.  I know from experience that water will condense, so even less moisture/water vapour will get into the tire.  I haven't found the formula to calculate this effect.

You have found the curves, but it can also be calculated. The vapour pressure is (mostly) independent of the total pressure. That means that in the same volume (and temperature) of saturated air, you'll have the same mass of water.

However, since there is more air at a higher pressure, the ratio of water to air decreases.

Eg: if you half the volume of saturated air (isothermically: at constant temperatuur), the amount of water vapour it can contain also halves,  but the amount of "free air" remains constant. The percentage of water vapour halves.

The curves in the link are also in "free m3" which is not the actual volume of the air, but the volume the air would have in standard temperature and pressure.

For vapour pressure in function of temperature, you always need curves or tables, since it is highly nonlinear.

10 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Right so 2 bar gauge is 3 bar. Should the drop not then be closer to .45 bar? (22.5%)

Correct. I completely forgot to take the difference between absolute pressure and overpressure into account.

Which brings us to an additional effect: ambient pressure. When in a low barometric pressure region, the ambient pressure can be 0,1 bar lower than in a region with high barometric pressure, resulting in a tire pressure which is 0,1 bar higher. The problem gets worse when driving to high altitudes.

I just installed my summer tires and inflated them with a manual pump while it is quite rainy outside. I guess some water vapour got in. It occured to me that if water vapour is slower to escape from the tire, it could accumulate over the years. Given how small the effect is, I'm not really worried, though. 

6 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

If I am taking this correctly that is about a 30 percent drop in gauge pressure with just 2 percent attributed to change in state of water for the 45 degree drop.

Typical tire pressure is 2 bar, so 15% and 1% respectively.

Some rulers are in inch, others in mm. Bq is the SI unit and defined as 1 decay/s. Ci is an older unit based on the activity of 1g of radium and corresponds to 37 billion decays/s or 37 billion Bq.

I would be surprised if these dosimeters don't have a setting to display one or the other.   

2 hours ago, Lasse said:

Because the claimed scientific clarity and consistency between theory and observation is failing at some points and can be explained just by believes and faith.

Yes. Which is why scientists don't claim to explain them.