Edtharan

"Why" is only desired when you don't understand the "How".

Humans are a Story telling species. We like to have things in nice little stories (as an example the "Closure" that many therapists talk about is an example of the desire for little stories).

For example: Do you want to know "Why" alight switch works? Well if you know "How" it works you can see that the "Why" is meaningless.

Why a light switch works is because I flip the switch. But that really doesn't tell you much, other than there is a little story constructed by people around that event.

How a light switch works is governed by mechanics, electricity and electromagnetic waves. These tell you nothing about "Why" the light switch works, only how. But they do offer much more in the way of useful information.

Once you know how a light switch works, the "Why" you flicked the switch says absolutely nothing about the system of the light switch (it is external to it).

Newton knew this. That was what he was writing about. "It is enough that gravity does really exist and acts according to the laws I have explained, and that it abundantly serves to account for all the motions of celestial bodies."

It is enough to know that they exist and that they follow the laws that Newton laid out. In other words, it is enough to know "How" the motions of the planets operate and that the "Why" is irrelevant to the fact that they do work.

Not only that, in the very first sentence he is saying that he is yet to discover the cause of gravity. that is "how" it operates, not why...

The reason it won't work is that the energy given be the magnets repelling have to also overcome the effects of the magnets repelling.

To bring a magnet close enough to another magnet so that it can repel it, you have to bring that magnet close to the other. This requires effort, and the force needed to do this will come from the magnet before being repelled.

Imagine it being like a hill. If you are at the top of a hill, you can roll down and increase your speed. But, if you want to roll down the hill, you need to get up the hill first. Going up hill takes effort (energy).

So if you are going to use a succession of magnetic repulsions to push this wheel around, each time you try to being a magnet close to another so that they can repel you need expend energy (effort) to do so. You essentially have to go "Up hill" for each "down hill" you have and the problem is that due to friction, you loose a little bit of the energy you got from the last down hill. And, if you are trying to extract energy to do useful work (say to turn into electricity to light a light bulb) then that enregy is also lost from the system.

This means that you loose a lot of energy, and won't have enough to get over the next "hill". You would have to keep putting energy into the system to keep it turning which means that it is not a "perpetual" motion machine.

skeptics who say you cannot get more energy output that you put in: what is resonance? if you walk into a small room and sing a note at the resonant frequency of the room, you can see for yourself that the sound is amplified. louder means more energy! sure the surplus energy comes from somewhere, but resonant systems like the phonograph or the tesla coil simply exploit this phenomenon. just because you've studied established physics doesn't mean nothing else will ever be possible!!

A Swing is a good example of a resonant system. If you push the swing at it resonant frequency, you only need little pushes and it will build up to a massive amplitude.

However, with a swing, there is very little friction between the ropes and the cross bar, and air resistance is not all that great at that speed. So very little energy is lost from the system (bit it still is). As long as the amount of energy put into the system is greater than the energy lost from the system, then you can build up a large amplitude on the swing.

Now, try this experiment (even if just done as a thought experiment).

If you have two identical swings and with one you push with your hands at a normal effort, but on the other you only tap the swing with a feather. You do this both at the resonant frequency of the swing.

Will both swings have larger and larger amplitude? Or will only the swing you push with your hands get higher?

The thing is, just tapping a swing with a feather will cause it to move, but it won't give it a lot of energy. This smaller amount of energy will easily be lost to friction and air resistance. So even if you were to push this swing at the resonant frequency, it won't build up to a high swing.

You need at least enough energy to just over come the amount of energy lost between the resonant pushes. If you don't, then by the time the swing comes back to you for the next push, it has lost all the energy you initially put into it and you have to start again at 0 energy.

When you have these kinds of machines that claim to be able to make energy from resonant effects, they are making the big mistake that assumes that if you put energy into a resonant system you get more energy out of it.

This might seem true, but that is only because most people only think about the amount of energy they last put into the system (the last push of the swing so to speak). They forget that they had to put in all those other pushes to get the swing to that height, and that some of this energy is lost to the inefficiencies of the system (friction, etc).

Even with 0 friction (or 0 electrical resistance as in a super conductor), you can only get out with you put in. Super conductors do not make more energy that is put in to them, just as a swing does not flip 360 degrees at the touch of a feather.

You could say the placebo effect is a miracle but in effect it's a scientific process we don't fully understand.

The really big difference between the Placebo effect and Miracles is that Miracles (by the definition of miracles) break the laws of the universe. If it can occur through the normal laws of the universe, even if very unlikely, it can not be a miracle.

What you are doing is called "Equivocation". Because one thing is like something else in one aspect you are equating them as the same.

It is a bit like saying Whales are Mice because they have tails. As you can see, in the Whale/Mouse case it is clearly ridiculous. But you are using the same faulty logic to say that the Placebo effect is the same as a Miracle.

The Placebo Effect is caused by the the fact that many functions of our bodies are governed by our nervous systems. They are not necessarily under voluntary control, but the central nervous system can exert some measure of control over them.

For instance, in your neck, just above the shoulders, lies a small grouping of nerves (I can't remember the name of this part, so if someone does know could you let us know. Thanks) that regulate pain.

There are 3 parts to this. The first part is the Nerves coming form the peripheral nervous system (specifically the ones that activate when an injury takes place) into this ganglion. Then there are the Nerves going from this ganglion into the brain, and then there are the nerves going from the brain into this ganglion.

What is interesting is that there is nerves going from the brain into this region. What these nerves do is to regulate and stimulate the nerves going from this region into the brain. This means we can block signals from the injury receptors and reduce the amount of pain we perceive (this is currently being used in pain management - I am currently being treated for pain management and this is part of my treatment), but they can also stimulate the nerves going into the brain and even cause pain where there is no injury at all (neuropathic chronic pain).

As the central nervous system controls this "gate", it can reduce or prevent pain, or crate pain depending on what the central nervous system "expects". As your brain is the main part of your central nervous system, then it is possible to control pain via "placebo" effects by having the patient believe that they are receiving treatment. It is also possible to do the opposite effect (the "Noicebo effect") and cause the patient pain.

There are such locations for most of the places where the Peripheral nervous system connects to the ventral nervous system, and so through such brain structures you are able to control many autonomic functions in the body, including systems that respond to injury, infection and diseases.

So if you are convinced that a disease (which might be caused through the noicebo effect in the first place) can be cured, then the placebo effect, by damping down both the input into the central nervous system and also damping down the response to the problem can act to suppress the condition.

The general mechanism of both the Placebo and Noicebo effects are well understood, but the details are still being discovered.

The main point being is that we do understand the Placebo effect. The Placebo effect has nothing to do with a supernatural cause (it all follows the laws of physics). But, Miracles and other "Magic" by their very definition of what constitutes one, has to break the laws of physics. Because of this, you can not equivocate them.

Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

What he is saying is that to someone who does not understand complex engineering, then it appears as magic. But to the person who does understand the engineering ti is not magic.

Take for example the simple act of turning on your bedroom light. You know that you flick the switch, which connects an electric circuit with electricity supplied by the power station. This flow of electricity causes the filament in your light to heat up and glow -> Thus giving you light.

But think of what someone 1,000 years ago would ahve thought. They would ahve seen you doing magic. But did you do magic? Where you performing a "Miracle"? No. The reason being is that you didn't break the laws of physics.

Technology and Engineering are not Magic. No matter how advanced. That was what he was saying.

No. IIRC it was "occasioned" by the fall of an apple.

This does not mean that it hit him on the head, nor does it mean that it was at the exact same time.

What it means is that he could have seen the apple fall, which got him thinking about why, when the apple was not connected to anything it still fell towards the ground.

So the idea that there does not have to be a physical connection between the apple and the ground could ahve been spurred by seeing an apple fall, bit it in no way means that the theory came to him fully formed light a lightning bolt at the same time he saw that apple fall.

In fact, there is a lot of work that he did before and after that point where he worked long and hard to work out the strength of gravity. But the idea that there doesn't need to be a direct connection could ahve occurred "occasioned" by the fall of an apple.

can someone please explain to me the theory that black holes can distort time? because to me i doesnt make any sense

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

i just realised this is probably in the wrong section but oh well

Basically it is about rotation.

In Relativity "Time" is a dimension, and it has a special relationship with space.

For the moment, forget about Time.

Imagine a big block of Rubber. This block has 3 dimensions: Length, Width and Height. Imagine that it is about 10 metres by 10 metres by 10 metres (I said a big block of rubber ).

Now imagine that you ahve a heavy metal disc (about 20 cm in diameter) and about 20 kg.

If you place that disc onto the rubber block, you will see that it sinks down a bit into the block. But look at what occurs to the rubber block.

Before you put the disk on, the block was flat. But once you put the disk onto it, it became distorted.

What was once in the "Width" dimension of the block became partly in the "Height" dimension of the block.

You would say that the "Width" dimension was rotated into the "Height" dimension.

Now, getting back to Time.

As I said, under relativity, Time is a dimension. And it is combined with space (width, height and length) into a Space-Time (Width, Height, Length and Time).

When you ahve a mass, like a planet, star, black hole or yes even a feather, it acts like the metal disk from the Rubber Block demonstration. It causes Space-Time to be distorted, and like the Rubber Block demonstration one dimension is rotated into another dimension.

What occurs is one of the space dimension is rotated into the Time dimension, and the Time dimension is rotated into the space dimension. This rotation distorts how we see time flowing there and it appears to slow down.

If you are within that rotated space-time, you would not see time nearby slowed down, because all time near you would be rotated the same amount so processes would occur at the same rate nearby. However, looking out to non rotated space-time you would see time running faster because you are slowed down relative to it.

Direct experiments have been made of this. By placing two identical atomic clocks, one at the bottom of a tower and the other at the top, they have been able to directly measure the difference in rate of Time between them (and on Earth that difference is not all that much so this is a pretty amazing feat to achieve).

If you think about it, your head is further from the ground that your feet. This means that your head experiences time faster than your feet do. Your Head is older than your feet (although by such a minuscule amount that it makes no real perceivable difference eve over the course of your entire life - but it would be an interesting science class experiment to work out what that difference would be).

something is zapping me and it is a physical jolt and painful.

Not necessarily.

I suffer from chronic pain, and so are being treated for it. Part of this treatment is learning about pain and how it works.

One of the first things you learn is that Pain and the Stimulus that causes it are two very different things.

In people who have had a limb amputated, they can feel pain in the limb that is missing. There is no limb there to feel pain, so it can not be from any stimulus. This shows that Pain is not necessarily caused by an actual external stimulus.

This experiment, called the "Rubber Hand Illusion" is part of what I am talking about:

If you do this, you can actually cause pain in the subject by doing something to the rubber hand (but not the real one) that would normally cause pain (like bending a finger back).

There is no way that doing something nasty to the rubber hand could cause any form of pain signal to the person. There is no way an external stimulus is causing the pain they feel.

This means that pain can not be the same as an noxious stimulus (injury).

There are also case where people have been very seriously hurt (even being shot with a bullet) and they experience no pain. This is further evidence that the two phenomena (injury and pain) are not the same thing.

So, just because you experience pain does not mean that there has to be some external cause for that pain.

Not only that, just because you are felling this pain does not mean that the cause you THINK is the source is REALLY the source of the pain.

Getting zapped by static charge built on you and being earthed to a nearby piece of metal (like door handles or metallic bead posts) completely explains all these "symptoms" you have described. You even said that you have a wool blanket, and wool is a good source of static electricity.

There is no reason to propose some sci fi government conspiracy to get at you (for no rational reason) as the explanation of this effect.

Apply Occam's razor: The simplest explanation that explains all the evidence is likely to be the correct one.

Static electricity is the simplest explanation that explains all the facts. Therefore it is most likely the correct one.

another thing.....there are lasers out there used for games....and weardo's out there using infred stuff....all given freely to law and fire officials....

so do not make me out to be a nut......there are gadgets out there without any regulation..

 

heres one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OVT6...eature=channel

this one......is upsetting to see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWEfM...eature=channel

There are regulation of such devices (ie if you are caught with them you can be fined and or jailed).

The "Lasers" you see for games like the "Laser Zone" games aren't really lasers at all, they are typically infra-red LEDs (like the ones found in the your typical TV remote) and not real lasers at all.

Actually, most digital cameras can see these kinds of infra-red light, so as an experiment use a digital camera and see if you can see the Infra-red lights form your TV remote. If you can, then use it to look at you when you feel the "Zap" (say record you as you go to sleep).

Ok, lets look at this form trying to eliminate things:

If there is no infra-red light visible, then you can rule out any infra-red laser zapping you.

As electricity needs to have a conductor, and air is a poor conductor (as well as glass and curtain material), then you can already rule out being zapped by a lightning gun (or some other directed electricity weapon).

Ok, so we can have eliminated "lasers" (drawing you blinds would be a way to stop any lasers as well, if they still had enough power to "zap" you with them, then they would also "Zap" the blinds and leave a tell-tale hole), and we can eliminate other forms of "attack" in the same way. This leaves only you as the source of the effect.

If you are the source, then it is a practical certainty that it would be either a psychosomatic effect, pinched nerve or static electricity.

A pinched Nerve can be eliminated by checking if it only occurs when you are in certain positions (say stretching out for a door handle). SO if you get this, then see a doctor about it.

Static Electricity can be checked by using something to act as a conductive point (car keys are good for this) as charge builds up on points, and so you can accumulate enough charge there yo see a visible arc as you touch something metallic with the convictive point.

This leaves psychosomatic/neurological. Some people, when going off to sleep can feel like they are "jolted" out of sleep. You might be convincing yourself that such occasional (or not so occasional) occurrences are due to some outside cause, even though it is not. If you have eliminated all else, and this is still going on, then it might be worth a trip to the doctor to see if you have any sleep problems.

I accept that the studies show that indeed there is no Magic in prayer. That is to say, that congregations, cannot, by uttering words to themselves affect the health of a stranger. There is no mechanism through which this can be accomplished. If there were, then prayer would not have failed the test. My argument is based around looking for a mechanism by which prayer indeed might affect reality.

Here is the simple logic of this Tar: There is no evidence that Prayer effects reality. Therefore, if you go looking for a mechanism by which it might effect reality, all you will ever get is that there is no mechanism as it does not effect reality.

Think of it this way. If I show that Invisible Pink Unicorns can not exist, would it be sensible for me to go looking for them? No.

This is what you are trying to do. You agreed that Prayer can not effect reality, but then you state that you are going to look for how it cna effect reality.

If it doesn't exist, you can not find it.

It is as simple as that.

More than likely it would be impossible to form and/or would destroy itself. Because to be so attractive to opposite charge, it must likewise be that repulsive to itself. Alternately, via the same mechanism for Hawking radiation, it might "radiate" charged particles to reduce its charge.

Good point. It should blast itself apart because to generate a charge on something, you need to ahve charged particles. But, because they are the same charge, if you have a field powerful enough to have and escape velocity that exceeds light speed, then it must also repel itself with that same force. The charged particles that go into forming the field will be accelerated out with that force.

As further speculation, what if you could ahve this force exceed that of the attractive force between a pair of virtual particles (say an electron/positron virtual pair)?

The effect I am think one would see in this situation would be a "tunnelling" of charge between the poles.

The point I am getting to is, what if you could generate this force, not with a charge directly, but with a magnetic field. As the virtual particle pair will ahve some velocity, as they move through a magnetic field they will experience a force in opposite directions.

If you could then some how cause these virtual particles to interact with normal matter (ie: the virtual positron annihilating with a real electron to satisfy the conservation of energy), could you see a tunnelling effect that builds up charge between two powerful magnets (there would be capture plates between the magnets to collect the tunnelling particles).

This is of course, speculation, but as this thread is about free energy buy capturing virtual particles, I though this would be one way to do so.

The term "mind control" sounds simple, yet it is very far reaching. If these super-advanced ETI can mind control their members, everyone must follow orders, like some giant ant hill.

Actually Mind Control is not so far reaching. Scientists ahve already inserted "chips" into the brains of rats that allow them to control them to a certain degree (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_rat).

This does not directly control the rat, but gives it stimulation that it has been trained to respond to by moving in certain directions, but the Rat still has a form of "free will" in that it can chose not to act in that way (so they can't make it jump off a cliff or such).

Think 100 years into the future and a civilisation that needs to control a large populous. Such devices could be conceivably inserted into brains that could control the population.

That's a good point Arch. A One-Million-Years-Beyond-Us (OMYBU) ETI would have a hard time controlling their own countless numbers who are so far apart that their colonies declare independence.

You don't need to expand technology 1,000,000 years. In around 30 to 40 years, if computing technology continues to advance at the same rate it is now (and indications are that it will), then we should ahve the technology to simulate an entire person.

If we could simulate an entire population of people (and we should have that in less than 100 years - Moore's law state a doubling of computer power every 18 to 24 months and as 100 years equals 50 doublings as 24 months or 1,125,899,906,842,624 times the computing power now), then an ETI could have converted themselves into machines. At this point, Biological reproduction no longer applies. They can make direct copies of themselves (back ups), but the need to reproduce would be a matter of more memory space and processor power.

Raw materials and energy would be of prime importance to these computer "habitats" and although solar energy is readily available, fusion would be better for travel at distances from stars (even in out own solar system, once you get past Mars, solar panels are not all that efficient and we use nuclear power to provide energy to our probes). In the outer solar system there is a lot of water ices and as water contains hydrogen for fusion, there would be little need for such habitats to enter the inner solar systems.

These ETIs could be parked in the Oort cloud or Kupier belt (or even be the Oort clouds or Kuiper belts), and be too small for us to detect at that distance. The best bet for detecting them would be to look for reaction emissions from them.

Also, would a civilisation that uses fusion reactors be communicating, not through EM radiation (radio and such) but through varying the cycles of their fusion reactors? So should SETI be looking for signals in Neutrinos rather than in radio signals?

If Hawking radiation exists, then virtual particles can be used to convert a black hole into pure energy (the black hole sucks one of the pair in, losing energy in the process). However the calculations I did showed that it would be nearly impossible and/or dangerous.

Just as a wild speculation: What if you could create a situation where an Electric field was powerful enough that the "escape velocity" of an oppositely charged particle would exceed the speed of light. A sort of Electrical "Black Hole". The Electromagnetic force is 10^36 times as strong as the Gravitational force.

Would such a situation be possible?

It sounds to me just like a typical Neon Light.

you all speak out gravity and electromagnetism as if they are two seperate things...

 

For you to have gravity on a planet you have to have an electromagneticly charged atmosphere.

Absolutely wrong. The Moon does not ahve an electromagnetically charged atmosphere, and yet it has gravity. Asteroids have gravity, but it is far too weak to hold onto gasses and so can't ahve an atmosphere at all, and they they still have gravity.

So no. An "electromagnetically charged atmosphere" is not needed to produce gravity.

For you to have electromagnetism you have to have motion and gravity.

No. Electromagnetism is created by charged particles. If you have a charged particle, then you have an electric field. If you then move that electric field you get a magnetic field, and if you have a moving magnetic field you can cause charged particles to move around.

The faster a planet spins the more energy is created, the higher the static charge is on the surface, the greater the static charge, the greater the gravitational pull is on the planet, as more oxygen is produced, the greater the preasure is within the atmosphere.

Venus has a thicker atmosphere at a higher pressure, it rotates slower than Earth, has very little oxygen in its atmosphere and has a higher incidence of electromagnetic activity in its atmosphere (lightning) but its gravity is less than Earth. This is in direct violation of the prediction you made in your post.

As reality gives a different result than what your "theory" predicts, then your "theory" must be wrong.

Reality trumps any theory. If it doesn't exist in reality, then no matter how good the theory, or how attractive it might seem, or no matter who came up with it, if it doesn't reflect reality, then the theory is wrong.

As your "theory" can't be right (Venus completely disproves it), then any conclusions you reach because of it (like free energy must exist) is therfore also wrong.

Looking at Doctor Who, the Doctor fits the trope of a Merlin figure. This makes the "Sonic Screwdriver" a magic wand (and it is used as such to do pretty much what the writers want it to do.

Because of this, it will never be possible to make a real one. But it is certainly possible to make a convincing prop (they pretty muhc do that for the show anyway).

Sound can do some pretty amazing things though (check out Sonoluminescence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence ).

In addition, I think it is worth noting that most planets of other star systems are gas giants very near the star. This is in contrast to our solar system where the gas giants are much further out, which does make me suspect our solar system might be somewhat "different".

 

However, the observation that most extrasolar planetary systems have large gas giants near the star is because these types of planetary systems are easiest to find. It will be some time before we will have an accurate survey of other planetary systems.

This could actually be a bit of selective reporting.

The way we have been detecting extra solar planets is by their gravitational effect on their parent star. The effect they look for is a wobbling of the star due to the planet orbiting it.

Needles to say, a planet that is far away form its star will not cause a large wobble tot ehir parent star, also when they are far out the rate of wobble will be much slower.

The way the measure the wobble of a star is by looking at the red/blue shiftas it wobbles. If this change is slow, then the background noise (of the star, gas between us and the star, terrestrial sources of interference, heat in the detectors, etc) will swamp any signs of variation in the red/blue shift of these stars, thus making any such planets undetectable.

So, the main reason that the main exoplanets that have been are these Hot Jupiters is because these are the most easy to spot.

There are ways of spotting planets that are far out from their stars by looking at the dimming of the star's light that reaches us as the planet transits the star. There are two things that make such events very rare:

First: If a planet is far out, then the orbital period is long, so the times when the planet will be directly between us and its parent star doesn't occur very often (eg: For Jupiter this is around 12 years), and several observations are needed to confirm the existence of the planet.

The second reason is that the orbital alignment of the planet must be that the planet does pass between us and its parent star. As there is no reason that a planet must be aligned this way, then this makes any such alignment purely accidental so even if there were planets around many stars, it might be that only a very few could be detected like this (and yet some have - which indicates that planets around stars are quite common).

Finally, the solar system is not as stable as one might think. Over cosmic time (hundreds of millions of years) planets within the solar system move around. 4.5 billions years (or so) ago, a planet the size of Mars was moving around the solar system so much that it hit Earth (and the debris from this formed the Moon). We are in a "fairly" stable period of the solar system, but that can (and is likely to) change. Some models predict that Mercury or Venus will eventually be flung out of the solar system entirely (into interstellar space), or collide with Earth in around 7 billion years (give or take a few billion years).

As planets, even in our own solar system, are known to move about, these Hot Jupiters could ahve formed further out and then moved in towards their star.

I can’t see why there is so much excitement about this.

 

It is clear from slit experiments and the pinhole camera that an “aperture” excludes wavelengths longer than the “aperture”

 

In “space” the “black body” temperature is obtained from the average wavelength of photons in the volume. The presence of two plates in close proximity would exclude wavelengths longer than the distance between the plates, constraining these to the shorter wavelengths, and therefore reducing the “black body” temperature.

Since E = kT, there is an energy gradient between the outside and inside of the plates.

However exploiting this is another matter

 

“Occam”

You can even see this with boats. When there is waves on the surface of water, some of them will have long wavelengths, and others will have short wavelengths. If two boats are near each other they will exclude the long wavelength waves from between them.

This means there is less energy imparted to the boats from the waves in between them as compared to outside of them. This causes a force on the boats that pushes them together (this also works with boats next to a dock as well).

So, although in the Casimir effect, the source of these waves are cause by the uncertainty principal, the effect caused by the exclusion of wavelengths can be seen in classical physics as well.

May I ask why dont are planets fall out of our solar system.

 

They are trapped in the suns field of electromagnetism, pulsed in and out through the flux of the suns field outside the solar system.

The planets don't fall "out" of the solar system because the sun has mass and this mass creates gravity.

The planets don't fall into the sun because they are moving laterally fast enough not to hit it.

Gravity is not electromagnetism. It is a completely different fundamental force.

There is no need to invoke "suns field of electromagnetism, pulsed in and out through the flux of the suns field outside the solar system". Besides, Jupiter's magnetic field is far larger than the Sun's electromagnetic field, so if the electromagnetic field is responsible for gravity, why isn't Jupiter the centre of the solar system?

This might be of interest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect

Although the Casimir effect does cause the plates to move, it takes more energy than you can get from harnessing that movement to separate them again. Sadly, although you could generate electricity from such an effect, you could not generate more energy that you took to make it.

I am not sure what mooeypoo is talking about. The most complex, intricate and well thought out design on this planet is the human being. I do not wish to enter into the argument of what we were as that is far from clear. However, what we are is a miracle even by the standards of science today.

There are several mistakes of reasoning you are making here.

Firstly: You are assuming that the Human being is a "miracle" by the standards of science. Miracles has a very specific meaning, especially when used in terms of Intelligent design. What miracles means is "beyond science".

As evolution is sufficient to explain the development of humans (whether or not there was a designer), biochemistry is sufficient to explain the biological processes of humans and neurobiology is able to explain how the brain works, there is nothing that is "beyond science" about humans.

What you are doing here is using the word "miracle" to stand for "unlikely" or "I don't understand therefore it can't occur". As the biology and development of Humans can be explained without reference to an Intelligent Designer (even if there was one), then there is nothing at all "miraculous" about humans.

Secondly: You are assuming that Humans are well thought out. It might seem to you that they are, when you don't understand the processes that go on in humans (biology and such). If you know even a small amount of human biology you know that we are not well designer or thought out.

For instance. The pelvic bones of women are too small for the size of babies heads. This cases trauma to both infants and mothers and can result in the deaths of one or both. It is only though "well thought out" medical interventions that we don't have massive mortality during childbirth.

Before these medical technologies were developed, infant mortality and death of the mother during child birth was very common.

Historically maternal mortality during child birth was around 1% and peeked in the 1800s at around 40%. Compare that to today (because of medical intervention) we have a mortality rate of around 0.00011%.

[sarcasm] We are so well designed that even our feeble medical science can not improve on it at all. 0.00011% mortality rate as compared to 1% is no improvement on the "natural" design... [/sarcasm]

But hey, lets just look at other "designs" that exist. Eagles have a visual acuity far in excess of humans, it would be an improvement on humans to ahve the visual acuity of an egal. We4 are hunters so such an advantage would certainly be an improvement.

Also, canines (dogs, wolves, etc) have far greater acuity in their smell and hearing. These too would be an improvement to the basic human "design" as a hunter.

So even if we just stuck to what already exists as structures that we could improve humans from, then we can be said to be poorly designed.

There is so much evidence against the claim that Humans are well designed that it is a perfectly valid argument to state that if we were design, then we were designed very badly.

One simple example, which mooeypoo hasn't heard of judging by his/her unscientific comment, would be proprioception. Humans can pin point locations in 3 dimensional space with extreme precision. To do this via any manmade process even with our best scientific tools is impossible.

Actually, lots of robots can position themselves in 3D space faster and more accurately than any human. Some can do so down to distances of less than the diameter of an atom.

Also Human nerve impulses are extremely slow compared to many other animals, so even looking at what already exists in nature and not human made objects, we can still disprove your claim.

So this claim by you is absolutely false.

Was this a random event in the existence of mankind? The example given by mooeypoo is not really valid because there coud be many reasons for having the same "pipe" delivering various biological fluids. The "birth fluid" and the "waste fluid" passing through that same pipe certainly does not harm the human, and if mooeypoo wants to know what the purpose is, he/she should make some effort and speak to a urologist.

Would you think it was a good idea putting a "Recreational Park" or a "Maternity Hospital" in the middle of a sewage works? Well this is what exists in humans. because of this we can get many life threatening infections and diseases.

Evolution has an explanation, but I can not see any reason that a competent designer would do this. There is no real need to do so and there are many organisms that separate their reproductive anatomy from their waste management anatomies. There is no biological need for it, but evolution does have a reason (it wasn't bad enough to cause a severe enough hazard - even though it does cause some).

If there is no need to put reproductive anatomy connected to waste processing anatomy, then why do it? An "intelligent" designer would understand that and so would avoid it if there were making a "intricate and well thought out design" as you stated humans are.

Either we are not a "intricate and well thought out design" or we weren't designed and instead evolved. But, as the main argument behind Intelligent design is that we are an "intricate and well thought out design" that it is proof that we were designed. If we are no longer "well thought out", then the core of their argument falls down and evolution becomes the more likely explanation.

Next, I would like to ask a question. If we were to see an unidentified mechanical object lying on the road, would we at any point in time consider this to be randomly evolved without any specific designer? If the answer to this question is no, then it would be very ridiculous to answer yes for a far more complex biological object.

This just shows your lack of understanding of evolution and why it explains how and why we are.

There is a major difference between living organisms (like humans) and mechanical objects:

- Living organisms are seen to reproduce and mechanical object have not been seen to reproduce

If I had seen this mechanical object reproducing itself then I would conclude that it could have evolved. As an example have a look at this YouTube video:

In summary, what is happening in current science is that theories that have circulated for long enough are now being considered to be fact and it is these theoretical facts (an oxymoron) that are being used to support the new theories that have been discussed in this forum.

Evolution is not a Theory: It is an Algorithm.

An algorithm is a essentially a set of rules for solving problems.

The algorithm that is evolution is:

1) Make lots of copies of an object and each copy has a slight variation in it

2) Remove the objects that lest fit a set of given criteria.

3) Repeat steps 1 and 2

That is evolution in a nutshell, and it is also an algorithm. the important thing about an algorithm is that if you have the structures to implement the algorithm it doesn't matter what those structures are made from. It could be silicon (like in computer chips), or it could be on paper (with pens or pencils), or it could in DNA (like in biology).

We know the Algorithm of Evolution works (that is really trivial to test), so if the algorithm works in Silicon and the same algorithm can be implemented by living organisms, then why do you find it so hard to accept that living organisms can evolve?

or there may be a sock one-half particle (the socktrino) that is ejected while the rest of the sock is carried off as Lintons, some of which may be captured in the lint tray. High energy Lintons would escape and disintegrate into Dustyons in the surrounding region. Clearly there is some more theoretical and experimental work to be done here to confirm the existence of the socktrino; some holes in the theory must be darned and most facilities are not up to the task of detecting this signal amidst the large background lint and dust signals.

There is definitely an increase in dust bunnies, which can be measured by count and weight of said dust bunnies. This increase in mass and number must be accounted for (as according to thermodynamics matter can't simply be created). This Socktrino to Dustions would explain this dust bunny phenomena.

The Socktrinos might decay, when the collide with an existing dust bunny, into dustions and integrated into the dust bunnies. A sufficiently high energy collision could conceivably break the weak binding of the dustions within the dust bunny splitting it into two.

So the Sockion -> Dustion conversion explains not only the loss of socks, but the accumulation of dust bunnies as well.

I propose an experiment whereby we generate dustions from paired socks in a dryer to see is we can directly detect the increase in Dust bunny activity to confirm this hypothesis.

This would be an Interferometer telescope. These sum the light from multiple individual telescopes linked together in a very precise manner to act as if it is a telescope of a much larger size.

Here is the Wikipedia article about interferometers to get you started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry#Astronomical_interferometry

No, no, no. Socks are fermions.

Only if you use too much starch...

Possibly. I don't know where they go when they tunnel, other than "outside the dryer"

I think this might actually be proof of higher dimensions. These are said to be rolled up, and you roll up socks, the sock have mass and this causes space to curve, so rolling your socks up causes an increasing curvature of the space around them, eventually causing them to be rolled up into these higher dimensions.

well, make some observations or your sock population and record them here and we'll analyse the data and see if we can figure out whats really happening once and for all.

Unfortunately, if sock disappearance is caused by a quantum effect, just by observing it you change the outcome. This phenomena is also seen in macroscopic objects as we all know that a watched pot never boils (probably something to do with observation effecting the motion of fast moving atoms due to heat).

Once...yrs ago I got zapped on the nj parkway....with kids in the car....out of no where zap....

It is likely static electricity. Sudden zaps like that are typical of static electricity.

What occurs with Static electricity is that when you rub certain materials together, one of them will rub off electrons from the other. This builds up a charge and is this is large enough you can get quite a zap (approx 4,000 to 30,000 volts per centimetre).

Fortunately voltage is not too damaging (however a large current is really bad). I have been hit with static discharges of around 10cm in length to the head (that is 40,000 to 300,000 volt discharge) from a Van de Graph generator and I am still around to tell the tale with nothing to show for it (no injury, even at the time it occurred, but it sure as hell hurt).

Wool is a good material to use for generating static electricity. It is a common school room experiment to rub wool onto a plastic rod to generate static electricity (I have got a spark several centimetres from it myself).

You mentioned a wool blanket, so this is likely a source of static electricity. Also, cars can generate quite a lot of static electricity, as the wheels roll on the road, they rub off electrons, and these can build up on the car. Also as the car moves through the air, it can also generate static electricity. Because the only contact with the road is through the rubber wheels, and rubber being an insulator, the charge that builds up on the car does not drain away quickly. I have personally got many large (>1cm) sparks off of the family car, so this is likely the source of your zaps from the car.

Also, getting zapped of a doorknob (again, this is something you said happened to you) is a typical place to get a static zap from (walking over carpet can build up a charge on you and this gets discharged to the doorknob). I typically get one or two such zaps a day like this.

If you were getting zapped from an electrical outlet, it would be very different feeling than static electricity. The voltage from static zaps is what causes the pain of the zap. I have had low voltage (and fortunately fairly low amperage too), non static "zaps" and they didn't feel like a zap.

If the cause of your problem was from an electrical outlet (but still get them checked by a licensed electrician to be sure), you probably would not be here to talk about it. Also the sensation would be quite different, you would be describing it more of a pulsing feeling, with muscles tightening.

Why people get thrown across a room by these kinds of shocks, is because the electricity causes their muscles to contract with a lot of force, it is the muscle contraction that causes them to be thrown (they throw themselves, but because they didn't consciously do it it feels like it is an outside cause).

This can be very dangerous if you touch something that might have a live current in it as your hand can contract around the object and you can't let go. This means that you remain attached and the current keeps flowing through your body and doing damage (it is the current, not voltage that does the damage).

As your descriptions of these effects is nothing like these kinds of shocks, and the description is more like a static zap (that weapon you linked to would induce a similar effect to an electrical outlet, and not like a static zap and that is nothing like what you are describing).

The other thing it could be is some kind of pinched nerve, which is aggravated when you lie down. But as you have felt this at other times, it makes this a much less likely scenario.

Based on your descriptions of the sensation, the places where it occurs and the materials you come into contact with, it is very likely just a simple case of static electricity.

I wonder if there's any way to check.

I thin it would be very hard to get definitive proof (unless there was some kind of pyramid fashion magazine ), but there would probably be some circumstantial proof.

I would expect that you could track fashions (we know that certain gods went in and out of favour) and see if the change in pyramid building followed such trends. Though come to think of it, there were changes in how pyramids were constructed over the periods that they were built, there were even times they went out of favour some what. So it is certainly possible that fashions changed about pyramids.

What I would look for is any documentation around that time that mentioned the expectations of building pyramids, how much they are mentions in various writings, etc to try and determine the attitudes and importance of the pyramids.

I'm no archaeologist, but I do have an interest in it (but not a great interest in Egyptian archaeology - but I do find it somewhat interesting).

I've heard this idea before. How does the fact that the grandsons pyramid (Menkaure) is the smallest of the Giza pyramids fit in?

 

As far as we know there wasn't any major social disruption at that point of the 4th dynasty. There would seem to be no logical reason for Menkaure to make his smaller than the other two.

It doesn't need disruption, all it needs is a change in what that society considers representative of power.

In more recent (than the pyramids) western culture, having formal gardens laid out in geometrical patterns was considered representative of power, but a guy called "Capability" Brown came along and created a formal garden that was quite different, then all of a sudden these crafted landscapes became fashionable and formal gardens were no longer a representation of power and this radically changed the English landscape (with whole lakes and hills being created for these gardens).

Today, this extreme Landscape gardening has gone out of fashion, but we still do it to some degree.

Maybe it wasn't the size of the pyramid that was important, perhaps it was something else associated with it (location, coating, it's contents, or anything).