padren

I think the statements on sensory perception are quite good. My own refridgerator can "sense" when its getting too warm and kick in the compressor, but that could never count towards being alive - its just a mechanical tripwire.

I think Bascule makes an interesting point, in which we'd question, is the internet a possible environment where digital life could occur?

If the internet is alive, its the single most symbiotically dependant lifeform ever to exist.

I find it interesting, normally you say "Does [object] qualify as [definition]" and people debate the properties of [object] but in this case, we are pretty much in agreement about the object - its the [definition] that is getting kicked all around.

Perhaps we should ask, if we are asking if the internet is alive, why we are asking about that specific thing, and not something else? What attributes make us even want to consider the internet may be alive?

Its very complex, and due to a very symbiotic* relationship its gaining nodes...etc, but the complexity factor is more an indication it could be "alive with our knowledge" than a factor for being determined to be alive. As vague as the definition of life is, most of the factor requirements are vague as well. Can reproduction/growth be dependant by a symbiotic relationship with another lifeform and still count as life?

*We don't need the internet to surivive, and if alive it needs us to, but by symbiotic, I mean it improves human life enough that we choose to keep it intact, so it couldn't be considered parasitical in nature.

It is tough that this discussion is limited to Marxist communism. I have learned a bit about Marx's Theory of Value' date=' but I don't know what his explicit incentive system was.

 

However there are two socialists' ideas that show a good incentive for innovation/improvement. Its actually the same idea, just two different groups. The first being the Inca empire, and the second being Lenin's N.E.P. (though I'm sure other peoples have also implemeted this idea). Basically that people produce to a quota for the state, and then everything above that amount is theirs to do what they will. That allows for the safety net of socialism with the incentive of capitalism. To be honest, I really can't see why this isn't implemented more often.[/quote']

 

There is the issue of corruption. Also, the more you produce over quota, the more those in power may deem their quotas are too low. What reasons could excuse an individual from not meeting their quota? I really think socialism of that nature requires a large degree of trying to "engineer" an entire economy and society, making the emergent properties of change due to mass populations liabilities to control and supress, instead of a driving force of innovation.

If your planners are steeped in a strong industrial economic model, then they'd be fighting its errosion during the emergence of the "information age" and hamper new innovations.

 

I don't know the word for it, terms like entropy or attrition come to mind, but don't fit. Basically, if you tell a million people what to do, you'll gain some level of compliance but you will be fighting a large statistical mass where innovation is going to lead to disruptions in the system. However, if you can get a million people to think they want to do what you want them to do - maybe by having them to compete for the most desirable jobs - the same statistical mass will lead to innovations that exceed the system's aims more than it will lead to disruption.

 

As for me, my ideal government would be post-Singularity anarchosyndicalism using a Markov process to guide collective decision making, and thus the "smart" people would get more of a "vote" than the "stupid" people.

 

I've always held the contention that those that support such a model would inevitably be powerless within it.

 

But joking aside, could you go into more detail?

That's an intriguing point - how can gravitons escape the event horizon?

 

So there is no theory of quantumn gravity yet' date=' although it's believe there will be one that incorporates gravitons into it.

 

It will be intersting to see how that theory works out, as I still believe the concept of a gravity force carrier particle to be inherently flawed.[/quote']

 

If it wasn't for a whole lot of Really Smart People I'd think relativity was inherently flawed, since it makes my brain hurt so much.

 

I know what you mean though. Sometimes I long for the days of Newtonian thought where stuff made sense, instead of just the math.

 

 

One thought on gravitons escaping a black hole - if you have a light source, the photons will never interact with each other right? They are a steady stream in all directions, but they would never cross each other's paths.

 

Likewise, a radiant source of gravitons would be emmiting gravitons, which would be sorrounded by but never collide with each other - even if the type of particle is affected by gravity.

 

Now the next question: if other sources of gravity can bend light, would it also bend the path taken by gravitons? Or was it, gravity bends space, but not light? I forget the right answer to that one, since I've heard both.

 

 

Edit:

I also had the thought just now, that while on earth, we refer to any work done by an object falling, as the release of potential energy that was moving the object up to a place where it could fall in the first place.

 

If the big bang is the source of all matter in the known universe, then all mass was "lifted" from that point during the event, and all work done by gravity subsequently will be that potential energy being used up to come to relative rest, which if the universe doesn't experience a big crunch, will not happen. Still, it means there is a maximum potential amount of work that can be done by the gravity of all matter in the universe is equal to the energy that went into flinging everything out in the first place.

 

Maybe I'm overapplying newtonian physics or misreading it entirely.

 

Also, could the particle raditation of gravitons be associated with atomic decay in any way? Somehow the idea that a mass can emmit something - anything, without loosing something itelf just doesn't sit well with me.

I've been wondering about hybrid weapon systems that fire a shell that would be made of a composite of materials that could effectively generate and pull a ball of plasma with it.

Part of the concept is seperating the explosive fuel source from the round itself, and rapidly charging the projectile from a capacitor while in the barrel at the time its fired.

The right shape of projectile would have a vacuum behind it, which could aid in maintaining a plasma blast.

I've read around on the internet that you can make plasma in your microwave by ignoring the advice of various friendly warning labels on the thing...I'm in between medical insurance right now and haven't tried.

You are proceding from a false observation. One can e.g. place certain items in a magnetic or electric field and not have it affect the field strength. You are making assumptions about how a graviton must behave that are leading to incorrect conclusions. Since we can see how nature behaves' date=' one must conclude that your assumptions about the behavior of gravitons are incorrect.

[/quote']

The conclusion I came to was that my assumptions were incorrect, which is why I am trying to understand it better.

 

I am curious how gravitons are described to behave, since they are described as radiative in nature. I'll look into quantum electrodynamics and classical electromagnetism so I have a better basis of how to make sense of the simularities and differences that appear in gravity.

 

The "rubber sheet" analogy is a description of GR' date=' which is not a quantum theory. That's why it doesn't involve gravitons.[/quote']

 

Can you recommend any good books for someone who graduated highschool with high marks in the advanced physics classes, but hasn't done anything since? I'd like to get back into physics and get a better working knowledge of many of these theories.

Hi' date='

 

There is nothing known as a gravitational shadow and neither can it exist.

In terms of Newtonian Physics, gravity is a force, in terms of general relativity it is a result of the matter all throught the Universe. Gravity is no entity. It is only a result of curvature of space-time and the spreading of matter all throughout the Universe.

How could a force have a shadow? In terms of relativity, how could something with no colour, shape,size anything or even frequency have a shadow? I think you have misunderstood something somewhere.

 

gagsrcool[/quote']

 

My questioning is along the lines of "if there is such a thing as a graviton...." since gravitons are often mentioned, as the conveyor of the force of gravity.

 

Therefore, if there is a graviton, then it must follow some properties in common with other radiative things, yet, things that radiate out from a source, generally leave shadows on the far side of that which they collide with, and only affect what they collide with by being altered in some way (loosing energy, gaining energy, deflecting, being absorbed, changing wavelength, etc).

 

From what I hear, it really behaves a lot more like a topographical disturbance, the whole "if you had a rubber sheet and put tennis balls and bowling balls on it" analogy....but that doesn't describe anything involving gravitons radiating from sources nor is it consistant with it from my understanding.

 

I'll be the first to admit I "don't got something right" since I don't understand it.

You are talking about something a gravitational shadow. As light (electromagnetic carrier particle) casts a shadow when it is blocked by an object' date=' why dose gravity not do the same?

 

Is that what you are asking?[/quote']

 

Yep.

 

With light its only going to hit one thing before its deflected/absorbed etc, meaning the source has a maximum effect potential based on the total number of photons it is spitting out in every direction in any given second.

 

However, if I understand gravity correctly, there is no maximum effect potential for gravity or any shadow - no matter how many objects are stacked around a source of gravitons (a massive object) every new object will feel the gravitational pull regardless of how many other objects are "blocking/interacting with" the gravitons.

 

I am curious how this is explained.

Lottery Predictions would be very easy if the system is

either mechanised or computerised successfully. This is due to the long and

repetitive procedures involved per QUESTION targeted.

e.g. for a lottery machine that draws 5 nummbers out of 90

The QUESTIONS=5*90=450 that is:

is the first number 1' date='2,3,...90?

is the second No 1,2,3,....90? ,etc

for 3rd No,4th No & 5th No.

[/quote']

 

Hey, I'll tell you a way faster means to use binary to find "truth" in big ol numbers, if you promise to post the winning lotto numbers in advance of a drawing.

 

if you can ask "is the first number 1, is it 2, etc" then you can ask "is x greater than the winning number" as well.

 

lets say you want to solve 6 digits, with a top of 999,999.

 

you say, "is it greater than 500,000" and if you don't have to ask about the ones ruled out. If you get a yes, then you ask if its over "750,000", if no check "250,000". You'll whittle down large numbers faster that way. Its how databases use indexes to search sorted data.

 

In this case though, you'd want it to be out of 90^5 (5,904,900,000) and then convert it back from decimal to 5 digits in base 90 notation. For a number this size you should be able to solve it in under 33 iterations

 

Personally I would have asked "will people think I am nuts if I post this thread" first...

New Orleans is somewhat unique in that they have a levy system (I don't think Florida needs one to my knowledge) that is overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers, and as long as it is their responsibility, its a federal responsibility to ensure they perform as expected.

Their requests and pleas for a budget that could cope with the threat were turned down for years, in which funding for the war in Iraq was specifically cited as a more important spending priority - and thats where Bush gets flak.

Still, even in peacetime, I can't say Democrats would be really that much more likely to properly fund such a project, since its money for a "worst case" scenario people never expect to happen. No disaster prevention or evacation is ever carried out to the degree it would be if people knew for absolute certain the worst case was actually going to hit - thats just human nature.

I do agree with you about the news having a bias, but you have to just accept that everything in the media has a conservative tilt these days, but it'll pass and things will get back to normal sooner or later.

Why do you say this? Gravity is exceptionally weak.

 

If gravity were stronger than the electromagnetic force then matter would not exist. The structure of all matter depends on the electromagnetic force being greater (much' date=' much greater) than the force of gravity. Otherwise electrons would be pulled into the atomic nucleus and the structure of all matter would collapse.

 

Look at how easy it is for you to overcome the force of gravity. You can stand up. You can pick objects up.

 

Gravity is weak.[/quote']

 

I know the degree to which gravity acts on that which it encounters (from light to matter to space), I am not contending otherwise.

 

What I am saying is, don't other forms of transmitted effect, themselves be altered by that which they act on?

 

Refer to my example with photons. A photon can hit something and push it - it will act on that which it collides with. But whatever is behind the source of photons will not be bombarded with photons. Gravitons however, if they immet from a source, will act not only on the first object it runs into, but every object behind it too, decreasing in force at an exact rate regardless of how many or how few objects it applies force to.

 

Therefore, one suggestion I proposed (though its just an idea and not one I hold as very likely) is that perhaps gravity does have a lot of energy, but barely touches that which it passes through and thus barely applies any force at all during that contact. More like how a high powered X ray can pass through your foot and while the X ray is affected, the effect it may have on any given cell in your foot would be effectively near identical to the effect on the cell before it.

Only instead of doing what an xray does, it would convey the attractive force of gravity.

 

But that is just an odd suggestion - what I am curious about is if there are gravitons, how is it they would equally impart an attractive force on a nearby object as well as one directly behind it without decreasing the attractive potential of the source object on the second?

 

If you have a black hole, a sun will fall towards it at a fixed rate of acceleration. If there is another star on the other side of the black hole, then it will also attract the first sun (and visa versa) and increase that acceleration...no? Its not like the black hole will have "gobbled up" the attractive potential of the second star (as far as I know) so how would this be explained?

There is something I don't quite get, which may be due to my rather paltry lack of education.

The concept of a particle transmitting a force requires a balance of energy, such as you shine a light on a solar sail, and it pushes the sail. However, if you put another solar sail in the shadow of the first, no photon particles will hit it as they are fully obscured when colliding with the first.

With gravity, if you put two small masses near a large mass, they will both fall towards the larger mass at a speed dictated most largely by the large mass, even if one is behind the other.

If there is a graviton particle, either it has a huge amount of force but only a small amount of that is used as it flies through any mass, allowing it to work on many objects without being absorbed or impacted, or it radiates in some manner not consistent with 3 dimensional space, like a light source raised an inch over a flat 2D paper will shine on all objects drawn on the paper, even those behind the light source's 2D location.

How does modern physics explain these characteristics, and if these characteristics are outside normal particle transmission behavior, is it safe to assume speed is consistent with other means of transmission? Personally I think it travels at c for the reasons swansont mentioned, but I don't have any first hand understanding of the force so my view is purely based on what others have observed.

Just to play devil's advocate here, if the conveyor moved at say, 4mph, and the engine was off, and you held the plane in place with a rope tied to the nose while standing and holding it on the other end beyond the front end of the conveyor, due to friction, x pounds of force would be felt on the rope.

As you speed up the conveyor, more force is felt on the rope, and at some point, the speed of the conveyor will get high enough that the force on the rope is equal to the force of thrust generated by a piper cub's engine.

Since the original post asked us to assume that the conveyor automatically adjusted its speed to nullify the forward speed of the plane (that is effectively what he was asking, even if it was worded ambiguously) then wouldn't via friction force this still be possible if the conveyor moved at cartoonishly high speeds?

Those that said, "A conveyor will not prevent the plane from pulling through the air, so it will move forward regardless of the ground and take off" are correct because the conveyor is generally a flawed way of forcing a plane to not move forward.

But, if you take the conditions set by the opening post (in which the flawed method is assumed to actually stop the plane from moving forward) then the plane could not take off.

At this point its somewhat silly, since we all are on the same page and agree about the flaws in the system and the conditions of airspeed required for take off.

According to the original post the conveyer will match the planes speed' date=' not the other way around and he says that the plane can move in one direction...which means it isn't tied down.

 

Since the propeller of an airplane screws thru the air and has no relation to the ground, it will move the plane forward until 80mph airspeed is reached in which then it will take off.

 

Bettina[/quote']

 

In that case yes. I thought the point of his post was that the conveyor would match the speed needed to nullify the forward effects of the propulsion, which is why I said it would not take off. But the plane would be pulling against air, and the conveyor would add very marginal resistance due to friction within the wheels even if the conveyor moved quite fast.

Personally freeloaders on my dime don't bother me. I'd rather know some people are getting help they don't deserve at my expense, than know some people who do deserve help aren't getting it because I made a big stink over a few freeloaders.

Edit:

PS: The people who I would suspect of getting handouts in this case are corporations getting way overpaid by the government for the services rendered. And they aren't even hard up for cash.

I'm a little confused about the question' date=' because I have to assume an airplane, say a piper cub, has an engine running. If it does, and it is traveling at 80mph airspeed, it will get airborne even if the conveyer belt is moving at 80mph in the opposite direction.

 

Airspeed is not the same as groundspeed.

 

If we are talking about just groundspeed, then it won't. Thats my guess.

 

Bettina[/quote']

 

The propeller is a propulsion aid to move the plane forward through air. If the conveyer underneath results in the plane not moving relative to the air and ground, it will not take off.

 

The only air moving over the wings would be from the propeller itself and be minimal, and the result would be as if you tied a plane to a pole and hit the throttle up to what you need to hit 80mph, but no real lift would be generated.

Hi Bettina

Long thread, but worth the read. I think this thread deserves to be in this section because the discussion is an attempt to explore a condition in a scientifically grounded way, and when people post "New Age" concepts they tend to be sidelined in favor of seeking more grounded advice.

I have a limited experience with empathy, more so than most but less than I would characterize yourself or others I know. I was almost angry at the person who told me to see Titanic because of my rather strong and draining reaction, and only a few times have I every imo "lost it" and been unable to recover quickly. At this point, I can intentionally "flip" a switch and decide how much I want to feel, when I choose to flip it on I am sometimes unprepared for the resulting wash.

In reading the thread, my thinking has been fairly consistent with Spiths, but I have some ideas and suggestions, though I may ask a few questions.

One, I personally think of emotional reading and instinct this way: over the evolution of humans, instincts arose from making subconscious observations about our surroundings, and generating a "feeling" in our gut, etc, that when acted on leads to increased chances of survival. For instance, you may feel in your gut someone is dishonest - you may not know consciously, that you are reacting to his shifty eyes, tension in his tone of voice, or tons of other factors, but you can pick up on body language and react.

The yawn, is thought to spread, because humans would do it when stressed (like how a deer flicks its tail when its worried) and since we are genetically wired to repeat the act (just as a deer flicks its tail involuntarily when it sees another deer doing such) it conveys a need to pay attention because something is amiss throughout a group.

How we feel emotionally, is quite heavily communicated by body language, and being able to turn those cues into an emotion one can feel helps us understand what the other feels, is something that is a survival advantage in a social group, and grow by natural selection.

With those elements, in your case you really strongly empathize and have a rare ability to really immerse yourself in those emotions. I can't help but to wonder that, even if you consciously would rather not be bothered by such things, if you deep down wish to understand the source of why people feel such pain. Even if you know in your mind a murder is a senseless act, that emotionally you want to understand why something so horrible had to happen a defenseless child or animal.

I say that because for me, I am most lost in emotional pain, when emotionally I want to "burn through" what I feel until I can reduce it like a logical equation (which doesn't work so well). I can be mentally ready to move on, but unless I am emotionally, I am not free of it. I know this is different than your case, because my experiences are not so vivid, but I wonder if the need to understand drives it at all.

A couple questions:

1) Do you see other people in general, how "head strong" they are, do you feel like others have stronger convictions and more "forward" personalities than yourself?

2) Do you have strong convictions on how the world should be and how you want to enact change, or have a strong feeling of what you want to do with your life, a firm sense of purpose?

If you feel "yes" to 1, and "no" or "kind of but less than most others" to 2, you may have a sort of "pure observer" sense of self, which is more prone to being emotionally overwhelmed. Please don't be offended if I am way off or feel like I am trying to size you up with some insta-assumptions, I'm taking stabs in the dark in hopes something rings.

3) When you visually loose yourself in a scene, do you hear yourself thinking you'd like to stop this, or are your thoughts consumed by the event?

As for ideas that could help, I'd like to recommend some possibly. Without going all new age on you, I'd like to recommend some meditation type stuff, not because I think it will have metaphysical effects, but because it can be a useful part of emotional management skills.

If you are being overwhelmed by immersive emotional and sensory feelings, practicing meditations that take volitional control of these sorts of things can help.

For instance, practice visualizing a scene, maybe a natural scene, and add a butterfly, then add another, and try to visually keep track of much vivid detail as you can.

For emotions, try practicing feeling emotions of your choice. I've found if I focus on feeling my body right around the center of my ribcage on my chest, I can spontaneously (takes a few moments sometimes) invoke a feeling of joy without much effort, and taking conscious control of my emotions have helped me deal with a number of things in life.

The last intellectual exercise I can recommend of this nature (may only help if overall you are an optimist), is try think about the world as a whole. At any moment, there is a lot of death and suffering, but also a lot of joy, a lot of people holding their new children and such, at any given moment, the worst of the worst is mushed in with the best of the best. Personally, I get an overall good feeling about the world as it is at any given second, so the sense that the worst thing I can observe close up is still a small part of something that I can't help but to overall feel good about. Just like we try to keep logical perspective of things (when a plane crashes, we comfort ourselves by saying its statistically rare) it sort of helps keep emotional perspective by being able to know that feeling well and being able to summon it at any moment.

I hope that is helpful, I don't know if it will be, and I am sure you've had to separate a lot of chaff in your search for wheat, and I wish you well and hope you find what you need.

Airspeed, specifically over the airfoils is what dictates lift. You can have a plane on the ground completely stationary, and a strong wind (100+mph or whatever is equal to liftoff speed) will cause it to lift - though, it will soon start to move backwards due to air resistance, and its relative airspeed will slow until it stalls and crashes.