YaDinghus

17 hours ago, Phi for All said:

The distinction I make between faith and hope/wishful thinking is in the willingness to change one's life for the belief. I can hope there is something for my consciousness to continue into after the death of my body without doing anything different in my life. Faith, however, often requires great sacrifices and strictures on lifestyle based only on the strength of the belief.

A very good distinction, thanks my personal faith is pretty laid back, not really many rules to follow. Keeps things simple

19 hours ago, Moontanman said:

nearly all of Earth's surface has been "magically erased" at some point much of it many times. 

19 hours ago, Moontanman said:

And what ,if anything, does that have to do with the price of eggs in china?

19 hours ago, YaDinghus said:

"older than oceanic lithosphere—up to 4 billion years versus 180 million years."

I don't know about stinking eggs, but your claim that the surface of the earth has been magically erased multiple times is just not true. And that is what you hinge your hypothesis, that there could have been a prehuman civilization which we couldn't ever know was there, on.

15 hours ago, swansont said:

How much of the earth's surface do these oldest rocks represent? Put another way, how easy is it to find rocks that are > 4 billion years old

I guess it's not easy, or else someone else than scientists would be doing it

2 hours ago, Sensei said:

This is how coast line of Sunda shelf looked like in Upper Paleolithic:

Extend it to the entire world coast line, e.g. 20k years ago, till now.. and you will have answer for Flood Myth.

If increase of temperature, because of global warming, will continue melting ice, you will have Flooding v2.0.

 

Nice graphics, plus an apt and absolutely correct dire warning of what's to come. But would that erase all evidence of our civilization or an unknown prior industrial civilization worldwide? I think not.

Ultimately, it's not up to me to prove the hypothesis of a prehuman industrial civilization false, but to those who support it to prove it right. I just wanted to illustrate how unlikely I thought this endeavor would be successful

12 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

nearly all of Earth's surface has been "magically erased" at some point much of it many times. 

Nope. No magic eraser here. 

Meanwhile, here some light reading on the record holder for being the oldest evidence of life on Earth. Also, something on Wikipedia about the oldest rocks found on Earth, and here about the most stabile parts of the lithosphere, Cratons, which are "older than oceanic lithosphere—up to 4 billion years versus 180 million years."

9 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

Not all humans with Neanderthal DNA carry the same genes. It is believed at least 20% of the Neanderthal genome exists today. While 1-3% is the common today Otzi the ice man (5,000 old) had double that amount. Go back 10,000 years and the percentage must have been even greater still. Neanderthals are part of the modern human story. Because of this I can't see any rational reason why Neanderthals would be considered separate. They were interbred with us (homo sapiens) and would surely do so today if around. Same goes for Denisovans.

Well I didn't know the exact number but I figured as much. 

2 minutes ago, MarkE said:

10 minutes ago, YaDinghus said:

That is pure conjecture, and it defies pretty much every law of Physics known to us

Have you read this whole thread from the beginning? Multiple observations and laws of physics support it (which I won't repeat here). Keep in mind that there is no established science on dark matter yet. This doesn't mean that this explanation therefore has to be right, but I'd like to hear from you what observation and/or law of physics irrefutably prohibits it. Could you provide me that?

Yeah I've read it from the beginning. This wasn't about a nothing without content having an attractive force. Unless you were misleading us the entire time. 

4 minutes ago, MarkE said:

In short: that "nothing" can cause attraction. A black hole could be an actual hole in space, with negative attraction to particles (and we call this attraction "mass").

That is pure conjecture, and it defies pretty much every law of Physics known to us

37 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Don't forget that in the meantime we had a couple of other systems aimed at racial segregation (e.g. Jim Crow and apartheid) as well as less formal arrangements. While not as murderous, the underlying idea was codified by law until far more recently

Thanks for reminding me how horrible the world still is for too many people...

Edit: @CharonY I mean seriously thanks, I'd upvote but I already used up all my reactions for today

13 minutes ago, MarkE said:

33 minutes ago, YaDinghus said:

We don't know if dark matter is covered by the standard model, but we know it's matter. 

If it's not covered by the Standard Model, it's not a particle. 

1st of all, what do any of us know confidently about anything outside the standard model? 2nd of all, what are you trying to say with this?

34 minutes ago, Ten oz said:

Do you consider Neanderthals to be extinct? As OldChemE posted they are 2.6% neanderthal. Here in the U.S. recently as the 1980's such a percentage of African American would have bee enough for one to legally be classified as African American in Southern States. Linked below is an article covering an actual 1984 court proceeding.

I see where you're going with the court proceeding; that is quite extreme and I am so happy to live in Europe. I do consider Neanderthals to be extinct in the sense that their specific genome from 40,000 years ago doesn't exist in a complete set in a single living human individual, and even that wouldn't be enough, as there are practically extinct species on our planet of which small groups still live, but the groups aren't large enough to be considered stabile and diverse. The other question is: if Neanderthals lived today, would they even be considered a species seperate from H. Sapien, or just another race (from a geneticist's POV)

40 minutes ago, MarkE said:

Mass/attraction isn't necessarily inherently connected with matter. On the list of unsolved problems in physics can be read: Dark matter: What is the identity of dark matter?[17] Is it a particle?

Ok, tell me about something that isn't matter but attracts. And don't say Black Hole because we haven't established that they aren't made of matter.

Even if the content of a Black Hole isn't covered by SM, why should that mean it isn't matter? We don't know if dark matter is covered by the standard model, but we know it's matter. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charged_black_hole

Black Holes aren't expected to carry a significant amount of net charge, but it is one of the three observable properties of Black Holes. 

37 minutes ago, MarkE said:

Would this particle be a particle on the SM, or a different/new kind of particle that doesn't exist today

Well since Black Holes exist today anything inside a Black Hole 'exists' today, even if it weren't described by SM. I, personally, do think that matter undergoes a dramatic change at the subatomic level when it enters a Black Hole. It might however still be a Quark-Gluon Plasma inside the Black Hole, and that's covered by SM. 

@MarkE I'm not saying Black Holes can't consist exclusively of 'stuff' that isn't in SM, but that we can't say that they MUST be exclusively non-SM 'stuff'

22 hours ago, Silvestru said:

I am not sure how intelligent a Neanderthal would be in our modern day society but they would absolutely be discriminated I think. They could not leave as equals  realistically speaking.

It's hard to be sure of the intelligence of any member of an extinct species - heck it's hard enough to know how intelligent other animals are that live with us today. The size of the Neanderthal brain cavity suggests they'd be of comparable intelligence to H. Sapien, and they also have the same FOXP2 (Wikipedia) variation as H. Sapien, so they should have been able to speak as we do. 

20 hours ago, Ten oz said:

Not sure what you mean. Currently, to my knowledge, there are not any ethical dilemma's any where based on Neanderthal genes. The point of my initial post was that Neanderthals were human and that all ethical standards attributed to humans should apply. 

Racial Bigots aren't usually very knowlegdeable in the field of molecular biology. If they were, they'd know that racism isn't supported by science. Also I totally agree

20 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed they should, but all ethical standards depend on politics, not ethics...

If we didn't afford them the same rights as we have, it would be unethical to bring them back to life in the first place. And no, not all ethics are based on politics. Ethics isn't even about being good or evil, it's at its core about consistent codes of conduct, usually in regard to a set of values to be maximized or minimized. So, which values are we attempting to maximise/minimize, and where do Neanderthals fit into this if we de-extincted them?

Crap, that's like a whole order of magnitude too much energy to even be theoretically useful...

On 5/12/2018 at 3:59 PM, Endy0816 said:

Thinking in terms of launching vs smuggling.

A nuclear missile is launched at a city in Ukraine from beneath the South China Sea. Nobody claims responsibility. Who did it?

Ok you would harldy hit anything in the Ukraine by water from the South China sea. But that aside, 'smuggling' might actually be the way to go if you want to launch a nuclear warhead undetected. I could imagine a nuclear guided torpedo being a serious threat for any coastal City. The question is: how much fuel/battery power do you need to calculate for a nuclear torpedo that can autonomously cross the pacific with a nuclear warhead, and how big would that make the torpedo?

So, obviously producing antimatter in an accelerator and using this to annihilate with regular matter is beyond uneconomical if you want to produce energy. What I was thinking of was producing positron-decayers, since every electron-positron annihilation would yield two gamma-rays with 511 keV, and the positron itself coming from the nucleus has kinetic energy, too. The question is, since positron-decay happens in atoms with 'too many' protons like Oxygen-15 and Nitrogen-13, how much energy does it take to knock a neutron out of the core, and how reliable is the process? If the reliability and the energy input per atom is below 1MeV plus whatever the positron's kinetic energy is, it should be feasible to devise a power plant from this. I couldn't however find any data on the energy requirements to transform Oxygen-16 into Oxygen-15 or Nitrogen-14 into Nitrogen-13, nor how reliable the processes were. Does anyone here have an idea what those values are, or point me in the right direction?

@Timo this is actually the best explanation of the Higgs Mechanism I've read so far. The Higgs Mechanism has eluded me, and I usually understand everything

38 minutes ago, studiot said:

YaDinghus, welcome, I think you will be an asset to the forum.

Thanks. I aim to be useful in life. I don't always miss that mark ;-)

17 hours ago, MIL said:

vast plot/logic holes in the currently accepted theory of quantum mechanics

We're very well aware of many of the limitations of QM. And we're really racking our brains about them. Also, not a scientific argument.

17 hours ago, MIL said:

As I'd said, I don't expect 99% of people to  grasp how this solution resolves things, and I'm not intending to spend a lot of time trying to convince those who are unable to,  of the merits of it. 

We're not 99%. I don't mean to be arrogant, but I expect most people here, especially professional physicists, to be among the 1% of the smartest people in the world, some maybe even in the .1%, which would mean they have an IQ around 140-150. So, if you want to use real physics arguments, I'm sure we'll understand you. But you also have to recognize that if they say there's a serious problem, or an array of serious problems, with your theory, that pouting and whining won't promote your theory.

17 hours ago, MIL said:

once you look past the dogma

What dogma?

17 hours ago, MIL said:

Even sitting here at my desk I can take my finger and can see the visual proof myself of electromagnetic lensing of light over the edge of it, so don't try and tell me that's not a real thing.

Regarding your finger and its light-bending abilities, check out this mind-bending video on youtube. 

17 hours ago, MIL said:

YaDinghus' - In regards to the diameter or cross-section of photons, what we are essentially talking about there is their electromagnetic field in regards to how they react with other matter and fields. And the intensity of this field decreases as per the inverse-square law. Accordingly, you can't exactly say it has a specific length any more than you can say that gravity has a specific length. I'd suggest there is still some manner of a photon particle at the center of that electromagnetic field, but its size would be exceedingly small, and it would not tend to interact with other particles through direct particle-to-particle contact any more than the nuclei of atoms do - being that atoms are mostly empty space as well. 

You may be talking about it in the way you describe. I am certainly not. Since Photons don't carry a charge, their movement doesn't create a magnetic field, either, and the only way they could interact with other photons in a classical mechanical manner would be collision, and thereby impulse transfer. I haven't ever heard (or read, for that matter) of any such observation of this manner of photon-photon interaction. Photon-electron and photon-nucleotide, yes, but not photon-photon. If photons could exchange momentum with eachother as described by newtonian mechanics, even if the probability were ever so slight, by the abundance of photons bathing our reality we would have noticed. And for reasons already explaned, a Photon is NOT A ROTATING DIPOLE

On 4/16/2018 at 5:13 PM, sci-man said:

6. how would a 'god' exist/ be made?

 

Through Apotheosis - making yourself a god. It's really easy. Do a lot of things people couldn't imagine a human doing, and your legend will spread. Depending on what you pulled off, you will be handled as a protector (e.g Thor), punisher (e.g. Anansi) or trickster (e.g. Sheogorath). There are more god roles than those three, but I would consider those three the main templates. 

On 4/16/2018 at 5:13 PM, sci-man said:

1. what is a 'god

According to my argument above, it's a person blown out of proportion by their legend that is propagated by society.

On 4/16/2018 at 5:13 PM, sci-man said:

4. how do you know the bible or some other religious book wasn't just some storybook for kids to behave way back when

Legends that have been displaced by more prominent legends become fairy tales. They still hold this educational value.

On 4/16/2018 at 5:13 PM, sci-man said:

5. when you now look at the evidence is the possibility of a 'god' real or not?

This is not an evidence-based issue. 

On 4/16/2018 at 5:13 PM, sci-man said:

3. what proof is there of a 'god'

The Legend is 'proof' that someone did something unbelievably awesome in times untold.

Everyone please get a salt shaker, a grain may not be enough here

Faith imho is pretty much the same as hope. It's not a matter of because, but of in spite. To try in spite of the odds, to carry on in spite of the hardship. This can be inspired in the best cases, and deluded in the worst. To the oppressed, it's the source of their defiance, to the oppressors, the source of their authority (here hope not so much)

On 5/21/2018 at 1:02 AM, PaulP said:

Some pathetic attempt

That got you a downvote from me. We're really trying to be civil here. Be glad that we're just poking holes and not smashing it, as we very well could.

*deep breath*

On 5/21/2018 at 1:02 AM, PaulP said:

And no, the argument isn't refuted by the anthropic principle. The anthropic principle is a philisophical consideration and nothing more, and it requires numerous prerequisites to use.

If you're going to cite principals, at least know what they are.

Ok, just saying the anthropic principle doesn't refute this when it's a very valid argument doesn't count. You actually have to outline your reasoning.

Also, the Principal isn't a 'what'. That's demeaning. The principal is a 'who'.

*chuckle*

On 5/21/2018 at 1:02 AM, PaulP said:

Anyway, there is no sense in debating this. You won't be receptive or open to the possibility of a higher power because it contradicts your inner-model of reality. And quite frankly, I work and have other obligations that call my attention to the real world. I'll be stopping notifications for this thread. Have a nice day.

So you're admitting that you violated community rules by trying to convert us to your religion, instead of just discussing the nature of religion. I'm guessing most everyone here has obligations in the real world, too, and would leave as well if they considered it a waste of their time. Well, it's your own fault. This is a pretty tough croud for missionaries, we'd rather watch transformers than be transformed

Ok I'm trying to look at this from a non-moral point of view here.

Physically, there are only benefits from mixing genes from beings of the same species with different heritage. The offspring are typically more robust as genetic defects that prevail in either group are usually suppressed up to the point of not beig expressed at all. On the other hand, immunological data is combined and the offspring are therefore resistant to more diseases and therefore have a higher quality of life.

Culturally, mixed unions are advantageous to the offspring as they are raised with more diverse ideas and more options to choose from later in life. They are more open (conjecture based on personal life experience) and more intelligent (also conjecture based on personal life experience). Of course, they are often targets for hate speech from bigots and haters, and sometimes even more likely to be victims of violence from these people. That I also know from personal experience.

Now to the moral point of view: just, don't. The Third Reich ended over 70 years ago, and I'll be damned if there's a Fourth Reich in my lifetime. Not on my watch!

Money is useful to regulate the dispensation of scarce resources. Basically, it's a rationing system. What we call economy is an emergent system from this rationing function and human psychology, and in this system, money is a basic resource, and value an essential property. I guess you could compare it to a Field in QM, where Money is the exchange boson for the force (value) exchange 

It was the first thing that popped into my head when I got here. 

On 5/20/2018 at 5:58 PM, dimreepr said:

We all have one...

What's that smell?

I quit smoking 14 years ago after nearly dying of a pulmonary embolism.

The hardest part about quitting and keeping away from cigarettes was that they're practically ubiquitous. There's always someone with smokes, and it's not easy to say no because smokers are often so damned polite, offering a cigaret if you don't have any. And when smoking was banned by law in pubs and bars people would interrupt an interesting conversation to go outside and smoke, and if you're anything like me you don't want to interrupt a stimulating conversation, so naturally you follow them outside. Being buzzed or even drunk in that situation makes it even more difficult to say no to a cigaret. So for a while after 'quitting' I regularly caved and smoked a cigaret here or there. Good thing I was really poor and couldn't afford to buy cigarets so at most I would smoke 3 or 4 or maybe 5 in an evening out with friends, but that got less time by time and by 2006 I was completely nicotene free.