Science and technology - the Q & A thread

[12bass]

This is why I belong to the "shut up and calculate" school. If quantum mechanics can't be pleasant, then it might as well be useful. In my view, one problem with making QM intuitive, is that we don't even know what "intuitive" should look like. And I think the remarkable progress made in the past century may owe itself to setting that question aside.

One prospective definition of 'intuitive' is something which makes sense to us without much or any thought, as in the pieces just fit together. Quantum mechanics does not fit such a definition. That a square peg won't fit in a round hole seems fairly intuitive. That matter operates in a fundamentally probabilistic manner at the quantum level clashes with our notion that matter is either there or it is not, which is exactly what we observe in our everyday experience at the human scale. I'd venture that what we find intuitive is related somehow to the challenges our forbears faced in their evolutionary environment, noting that our ancestors did not face tests of their abilities to comprehend quantum mechanics in their struggle to survive and reproduce.

Coming from the perspective of a philosopher, I'm not sure how to wrap my head around many aspects of the atomic and subatomic realm. If empty space is not actually empty, then it prompts questions about basic logic regarding the difference between something and nothing.

 

[Tom Bomb]

something and nothing.

​

 

[jmlee]

The one subject that I never studied in school was gravitation, so I'm now working my way through a textbook on the subject. I've gotten to the point where I can finally measure the distance between two things that are very close together in spacetime. Another 1200 pages to go.

Drawing two of these discussions together, Newton's ideas on gravitation were ridiculed in his own day as defying common sense (read "non-intuitive"). Presented for your consideration William Hogarth's "The Weighing House" showing the fine line between gravity and levity.

 

[fdeck]

One prospective definition of 'intuitive' is something which makes sense to us without much or any thought, as in the pieces just fit together. Quantum mechanics does not fit such a definition. That a square peg won't fit in a round hole seems fairly intuitive. That matter operates in a fundamentally probabilistic manner at the quantum level clashes with our notion that matter is either there or it is not, which is exactly what we observe in our everyday experience at the human scale. I'd venture that what we find intuitive is related somehow to the challenges our forbears faced in their evolutionary environment, noting that our ancestors did not face tests of their abilities to comprehend quantum mechanics in their struggle to survive and reproduce.

Coming from the perspective of a philosopher, I'm not sure how to wrap my head around many aspects of the atomic and subatomic realm. If empty space is not actually empty, then it prompts questions about basic logic regarding the difference between something and nothing.

I wonder if the problems with empty space don't even require quantum mechanics. What got me started learning about general relativity was that I'm also reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Einstein. Among his motives for developing GR, he wanted to get rid of "ghostly action at a distance" where a particle sitting in empty space, minding its own business, feels an influence from far away. So instead, we say that the particle is influenced only by the structure of spacetime in its vicinity, but now spacetime has structure. Maybe we have to accept that "empty space" is not a good ground plane for developing a logic of what is and isn't.

 

[fdeck]

View attachment 1082770

Drawing two of these discussions together, Newton's ideas on gravitation were ridiculed in his own day as defying common sense (read "non-intuitive"). Presented for your consideration William Hogarth's "The Weighing House" showing the fine line between gravity and levity.

That's cool. And I also learned that there were relativity denialists in the 1920s, who actually wrote newspaper articles and held rallies.

Do you teach physics? I'm looking for a good general relativity textbook, graduate level is fine. Is Meisner, Thorne, and Wheeler still the standard?

 

[12bass]

Never knew Randy Meisner was an expert in GR....

 

[Funky Ghost]

Please tread carefully on the topic of environmentalism. It's inherently about science and technology, but adding politics into the mix is strictly forbidden on this forum.

Thank you.

I agree. My last query was a probe, of sorts, to see where the depths of the belief ( and ultimately - passion ) go. Having no desire to upset folks that I genuinely like ( Catcauphonic, to name one ) I didn't ( and don't ) feel a need to pursue it any further. I think we all seem to agree on the basic information - but the variance come at the acceptance and trust of the information that has followed this topic. If I had a supporting membership I would love to delve deeper as it is obvious it would be fascinating. I especially appreciate the civility that has thus far been apparent. That is a welcome ( and rare ) situation to be sure. So thumbs up @12bass and @catcauphonic, you guys rock

 

[jmlee]

That's cool. And I also learned that there were relativity denialists in the 1920s, who actually wrote newspaper articles and held rallies.

Do you teach physics? I'm looking for a good general relativity textbook, graduate level is fine. Is Meisner, Thorne, and Wheeler still the standard?

I'm a PhD physicist but I work in biomedical engineering. I was on a career path to astrophysics when I discovered quantitative biomedicine and kind of never looked back. My wife's a physicist who actually teaches physics but a long way from GR. I know who to ask, though. Stay tuned.

 

[fdeck]

I'm a PhD physicist but I work in biomedical engineering. I was on a career path to astrophysics when I discovered quantitative biomedicine and kind of never looked back. My wife's a physicist who actually teaches physics but a long way from GR. I know who to ask, though. Stay tuned.

Cool, thanks. My PhD was in experimental atomic physics, but I work in scientific instrumentation. While I'm still deeply interested in physics, I learned that my aptitudes lean towards the development of instruments and measurement techniques rather than in basic science research.

 

[hbarcat]

Is drinking water messing up resources? We are tool users and everything we create comes from a resource. It's a quaint notion to think we would be better off not using the resources of "mother earth" but really, I have zero desire to live in a non tech, or worse, anti tech world. To have tech ( and this include not just quality of life but life giving technologies ) resources are needed.

I live in the Great Lakes watershed and the conservation of drinking water is an extremely important issue for us. The fact is, we will always have enough clean fresh water for our own use, but our seemingly inexhaustible supply has been in real danger from pillage by states in the southwest as they look for other sources to keep up with their huge demand for irrigation farming in what would naturally be deserts unsuitable for agriculture. They've already drained their aquifers and tapped most of their rivers dry and have been planning to develop massive operations to take as much water from the Great Lakes as they can pump into tanker trucks.

Federal regulations now prohibit this, but this can change at the stroke of a pen. Something to think about.

 

[hbarcat]

I wonder if the problems with empty space don't even require quantum mechanics. What got me started learning about general relativity was that I'm also reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Einstein. Among his motives for developing GR, he wanted to get rid of "ghostly action at a distance" where a particle sitting in empty space, minding its own business, feels an influence from far away. So instead, we say that the particle is influenced only by the structure of spacetime in its vicinity, but now spacetime has structure. Maybe we have to accept that "empty space" is not a good ground plane for developing a logic of what is and isn't.

I was fortunate as a teen (mid 80's) to be able to take numerous science classes at Fermilab (I live near Batavia, Illinois) taught by the scientists and engineers who work there. Leon Lederman lectured on both special and general relativity and I even attended a lecture from guest Steven Hawking before he lost his voice. He was proposing a conjecture regarding the CPT theorem where time might be symmetric under certain conditions. At the time, I had no idea what they guy was talking about and the equations he put on the chalkboard were incomprehensible to me but there were plenty of scientists in the room who seemed to be pretty exited about the idea. I later learned this was an historic lecture and his proposal was the subject of much discussion among cosmologists and physicists for some time.

The Fermilab experience was incredibly valuable to me and one of the things I learned was how evidence to support a theory can be something completely invisible to our human senses but but also completely irrefutable. We got to participate in some of the actual particle acceleration experiments so we could see how data is collected from subatomic interactions near the speed of light and how it's processed into useful information. From the data it can be demonstrated that protons gain mass as they get close to the speed of light exactly as predicted by relativity theory.

There is a new miniseries about Einstein coming out very soon called "Genius". I saw a clip from it this morning in which Einstein is teaching a class and he challenges his students to imagine what it would be like to travel on a beam of light. He explains that this perspective is necessary to understand relativity and the nature of time. Directed by Ron Howard. Can't wait to see it.

 

[fdeck]

Federal regulations now prohibit this, but this can change at the stroke of a pen. Something to think about.

Fortunately for now, those regulations are based on a treaty with Canada.

 

[12bass]

I was fortunate as a teen (mid 80's) to be able to take numerous science classes at Fermilab (I live near Batavia, Illinois) taught by the scientists and engineers who work there. Leon Lederman lectured on both special and general relativity and I even attended a lecture from guest Steven Hawking before he lost his voice.

I'm envious. Sounds like a great learning environment! The Einstein series sounds like a must watch too....

 

[Tom Bomb]

Invalid Link Removed

 

[RadioactiveGuy4]

Does this cat possibly have worms, or does the mat, or do both, for all that?

A dog, displaying this behavior, often would, if I'm not mistaken.

There is a good chance the cat had worms, however, as far as the mat goes I would say no.

 

[Tom Bomb]

There is a good chance the cat had worms, however, as far as the mat goes I would say no.

Poor thing. Cheers!

 

[12bass]

Speaking of intuition, the probabilistic aspect of quantum mechanics did not sit well with Einstein... nor did "spooky" quantum entanglement; although I'm no Einstein, I share his intuition about QM. I also suspect that much of what seemed intuitive, or perhaps plainly obvious, to Einstein would be barely conceivable for most of us. Just suggesting that what is seen as intuitive likely varies from individual to individual.

 

[mapadofu]

Who said anything bout polluting Using and polluting are two different things. Drinking water is consuming a resource. I just put that to see how far use is allowed to go. Some folks can get rather extreme. I addressed 12bass in a reply. I wonder, if you have thought about a single volcanic eruption and it's environmental effect on the environment. It surpasses mans ability and indeed mans capacity to pollute. The ecosystems adapt. I'm not condoning the action of misuse, I'm just pointing out that mans effect often times seems to be over stated especially to forward a talking point. As in most things of this nature ( heh ) the truth lies somewhere between.

Volcanoes (in total) release less CO2 than humans do on a year to year basis.
Remember thate Icelandic volcano that disrupted transatlantic air service?
Some estimates indicate that resulted in a net decrease in CO2 emssisions; the
fact that we weren't burning so much jet fuel offset the CO2 emitted by the volcano itself.
(I'm being a bit weasely here since I know that these things are hard to measure; what this does show
is that in terms of CO2 emissions, this eruption was not much much (orders of magnitude) larger than
the CO2 emssions of the disrupted air traffic).

Mt. St. Helens affected an area about 15x20 miles, a about 192,000 acres;
We Link Removed.

Volcanoes expand islands like Iceland and Hawaii, and even construct new islands. But so do humans. So again, not hugely different in terms of impact.

I can't think of a single environmental impact produced by volcanoes where humans aren't at least in the ball park or completely out pacing the natural impacts.

 

[mapadofu]

I often play the role of devils advocate. And I truly am not wanting to offend or raise anyone ire here...... But whenever I hear this. I cannot help but point out. Climate has been changing since time immemortal. Only 10,000 years ago (a blip geologically) most of North America was covered by a glacier...... Mother Nature in her infinite wisdom has been melting them for the last 10,000 years..... Man impacts all we touch. But believing we can affect Mother Nature is a bit obtuse of us isnt it?

I think it's a bit obtuse to blithely hide behind the idea that the world is too big for us to affect without looking in detail at what we are actually doing, and how the scale of those activities relate to natural phenomena.

North Atlantic cod were once thought inexhaustible; but we've managed to [Invalid or Expired Link Removed].

 

[mapadofu]

I would think debating Anthropogenic Global Warming and Climate Science would be appropriate in a science thread.

It's really just H0 vs H1. Even the SA link above doesn't explain why temperature change precedes changes in atmospheric CO2 levels. It merely reduces the number of years CO2 lags behind temperature changes to 200 years.

Note that Potholer54 does a good job of providing references for the information in his videos.