ScottN asked for a board to discuss scientific theories and other oddities. So here it is.

Go over to Religious Musings: Specific Debate Topics: Evolution vs. Creation: Part V: "Is that your FINAL answer?" for the history of this topic.

******NOTE: when I write "evidence" I mean that word in the scientific sense of observed, tested, empirical evidence. I make this clear because I know many people (myself concluded) feel they have personal evidence for their religious or other philosophical faiths. That kind of subjective evidence is not what I refer to.************


Today's topic: How does a historical science work?

Creationists, postmodernists, government officials, and other critics of science like to give historical sciences like Big Bang cosmology or elements of evolutionary biology a lot of flack because "no one was around when things happened in the distant past." Granted, that's a true statement as far as it goes. But do we actually have to see something with our own eyes to understand if it happened, and how?

Take forensics. If criminal investigation had to rely solely on eyewitness testimony, a lot of crime would go unpunished. So how do they know what happened if no one saw anything? Well, they gather evidence, then use their knowledge of science to decide what explanation best fits that evidence. Even if no one but the murderer saw the murder (and he sure isn't talking), they can say
"We are 99% sure this is what happened." Certainly 99% sure is good enough. They take a look at the observed results and build their theory from that.

Ditto for historical sciences. The observed geological and biological evidence overwhelming points to evolution being the foundation of biology. In this sense, a science becomes a fact meaning "We are 99.99% sure because of all the evidence that's been found." 99.99% sure is good enough.

The same holds for something like the Big Bang. Cosmologists studying the overwhelming evidence have concluded that a Big Bang is the best theory to explain the origin of the universe. No one was there to see it, but the results clearly point to some sort of Big Bang event. Big Bang is a scientific fact.

Further, scientists can test conclusions. "If a Big Bang happened, we would detect this with our instruments." Lo and behold, when they do they observations, it matches theory. Voila! Big Bang holds up again. The same holds for all sciences, historical or not. Just because you didn't see something with your eyes, doesn't mean it didn't happen. How do you know what happened? You observe the evidence. In science, it is evidence first, theory second. (Except if you include math as a science, since mathematicians apparently have little else to do with their day but create theories that are a nightmare for the rest of us to puzzle through. Superstring theory, the current best candidate for Theory of Everything, is so esoteric the mathematicians can's completely grasp it. Serves them right!)

Now we can discuss Quantum Mechanics, and other abstruse areas of the world of science without anyone complaining! YAY! Of course, annoying physics puns probably still belong in "Annoying Physics Puns", but that's another story.

Now to the on topic stuff.

In "In Search of Schroedinger's Cat", John Gribbin makes a cogent argument that the Schroedinger's development of Wave Mechanics hurt the development of Quantum Mechanics in general. Historical background: Schroedinger developed Wave Mechanics (WM) in the mid 20's around the same time that Heisenberg developed Matrix Mechanics (MM) and Dirac developed Quantum Algebra (QA). As a side note, QA is the most general theory, containing WM and MM as special cases.

In any case, the argument is that while MM and QA had the following attributes: 1) They dealt only with directly observable phenomena (the transition between two quantum states), and 2) they did not attempt to model the atom in a "classical" way; WM did the exact opposite, allowing physicist the comfort of the familiar "wave" paradigm. This led to what he called "Quantum Cookery" or a plug-and-chug attitude, where many physicist just appreciated that it worked, not how or why.

Granted, quantum cookery has given us everything from superconductors to semiconductors, but Gribbin argues that our understanding of the deeper phenomena is no greater than that of the mid to late '20s.

He'd be right. In Hyperspace Michio Kaku calls trying to find an underlying concept for both QM and gravity akin to trying to combine wood and marble. Wave/particle dualism certainly hasn't made that any easier.

On the other hand, many mathematicians feel, with Superstring theory, that they are trying to solve twenty-first century mathematics with twentieth century tools. I wonder if what's really slowing down QM is not the Dirac/Heisenberg dualism, but the fact that the math is only going to develop so fast. Would the Quantum Mechanics in the 40's have resolved the issues any faster than the current group of geniuses, which includes lights easily the equal of Dirac or Heisenberg in the persons of Hawking and Penrose?

Gotta get a copy of Gribbin's book. Note to self: dedicate one month/chapter. With QM, I'll need it.

Actually, it turns out that the "discredited" pilot wave theory (a way of explaining wave/particle duality -- there actually is a particle, but we also "see" the pilot wave, and measuring the particle disturbs the pilot wave) theory can be made to work, with one proviso...

REALITY IS NON-LOCAL (emphasis mine).

The Aspect experiment in the early 80's, which confirmed the EPR paradox effect proved that reality is non-local. The mathematics are too esoteric to go into here, but there is something called "Bell's Inequality" (after John Bell, the physicist), which if violated proves reality is non-local. The Aspect experiment proved that, even if quantum mechanics is wrong (emphasis Gribbin's).

Definition: Non-local - able to transmit information in excess of the speed of light. Therefore, a pilot wave theory can be made to work if you assume that when you push on the pilot wave in one area, it affects it everywhere.

Deep deep stuff...

I'll discuss Cramer-Yu string theory in a later post....

Gotta get a copy of Gribbin's book.

Get both. Read Schroedinger's Cat first, and then Schroedinger's Kittens.

Feynman is also a good read, I've read his autobios -- "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" and "What Do YOU Care What Other People Think?" Thought provoking. Also I have "Six Easy Pieces", which are the six introductory lectures he used to give at CalTech. Granted, they're dated (early 60's) but still brilliant!


Aw heck... I'll try to go into Cramer-Yu.

But... before that, we have to go into Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory. Basically, when Feynman was developing Quantum Electrodynamics, he had to deal with the self interaction of an electron emitting a photon. To make a long story short, he worked from the fact that Maxwell's equations actually have TWO solutions. Most physicists have ignored the second set of solutions because they describe electromagnetic waves going back in time, because it obviously didn't make sense^OMT. However, it makes perfect sense if you think about it, because a photon is its own antiparticle, and an antiparticle can be considered a regular particle going backwards in time.

In any case, I'll introduce a bit of terminology here. A wave going backward in time is called an "advanced wave", because it is received in advance of its being sent, while a wave going forward in time is a "retarded wave" because it is received later than it is sent.

Basically, Feynman proposed that any electromagnetic interaction actually consisted of two waves. A retarded "offer wave" combined with an advanced "acceptance wave". The two waves combine to make the full interaction. What's the catch? There must be a particle in the future to absorb the retarded photon "offer wave" and emit the advanced "acceptance wave". If there is no particle there in the future, the electron should refuse to radiate in that direction. Experimental results are mixed. It helps if the universe is closed, rather than open (in otherwords, if it will eventually contract, instead of going onto infinite expansion).

This post is getting a bit long so I'll start another one.

Now that we're familiar with absorber theory, we'll move on to Cramer-Yu.

Basically, the Schroedinger equation that we've all come to know and love is inaccurate. It's a non-relativistic equation. Therefore, Dirac's equation (which is the relativistic version of the Wave Equation - incidentally, Schroedinger doesn't predict electron spin, Dirac does -- it's a relativistic effect) is the correct version.

However, like Maxwell, Dirac also has two solutions... and again, the advanced solution was ignored because it obviously didn't make sense^OMT. However, Cramer worked out a QM absorber theory that paralleled the Wheeler-Feynman theory. Again, it requires a closed universe, but if it is accurate, it even explains that really nasty QM paradox, the two-hole experiment (I'll post on this later, I'm getting wasted)... Yu added string theory to the Cramer theory, in an attempt to create a unified field theory.

Now, this actually makes sense, if you consider the standard equation for determining the probability of a particle, which is Y^*Y, where Y is the (complex) wave function and Y^* is the complex conjugate thereof. Now consider, in any wave function (QM or otherwise), the effect of taking its complex conjugate is essentially a time reversal. So the probability equation (in use since the mid '20s) essentially uses the same trick without realizing it!

Sorry that wasn't particularly coherent, but I'm getting really tired...

THIS IS NANOBOT 11000100 REPORTING. AN ERROR OF TYPE TWELVE-G HAS OCCURED IN THE OVERLORD'S SCIENCE PROCESSING SYSTEMS. AS OF 22:59 PST WE ARE BEGINNING A MAJOR UPGRADE, SO WE ARE PULLING THAT SUBSYTEM OFFLINE. ALL OTHER FUNCTIONS OF THE OVERLORD'S CORE WORLD CONTROL SYSTEM REMAIN AT PEAK EFFICIENCY.

In any case, I'll introduce a bit of terminology here. C.F. "understandment."

While the 'bots work on getting the upgrade online, let's see if I can't take a stab at translating this somewhichway into Standard English. (They claim it'll work Real Soon Now, but after that whole Jar Jar Binks fiasco over at ILM, I'm reluctant to trust them with anything. Can't even destroy one little character in one little script...)

A plea from your Overlord: C'mon, people, some of the rest of you must be interested in this stuff. I can't be the only one suffering systems crashes over this foolishness.

Ahem. There are, in physics, two different creatures. One is relativity, which explains big things--gravity, speed of light, expansion of the universe, that sort of thing. The other is my evil nemesis Quantum Mechanics, which explains little bitty things...light particles (photons), light waves (yup, light is both), atoms, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, never the twain shall meet. So scientists seek a Theory of Everything, often called quantum gravity, which explains both categories of physical phenomena. It's also often called a unified field theory.

With me? All two of you who are still around? Okay. Near as I can tell, the above is a description of trying to ramp up some of the equations that describe things quantum, so that they also describe things relative. Doing so, they hope to have the same results they always have, while also explaining a lot of debris that's been littering physics. Debris such as:

1. Light, and other subatomic creatures, act as a wave when you view them one way, and like a particle when you view them another way. It can me as simple a change as moving your detector from one side of a slitted screen to the other side. That's the wave-particle duality. Creepy, huh? Just wait.

2. EPR paradox. Stuff at the subatomic level tends to breed symmetrical results. For example, radioactive atoms spit out atoms in pairs, with alternate values to their "spin," one spin up and one spin down. Don't worry what spin is, it's just a measurement of a characteristic of electrons. What's important is that it displays symmetry. Go back to E v C for more on symmetry.

Now. QM, cackling evilly the whole way, says you don't know which electron is up, or which is down. Not only do you not know, the stinkin' electron doesn't know either. It's an undetermined blob just mucking up your conceptions of reality. Now, separate the electrons (don't ask me how, I'm not that ambitious). Measure one, but don't measure the other. You now know that, say, electron A is spin up. But wait..that means electron B is spin down.

But QM says you should't know! Somehow, the information that electron B should be spin up got to it and now it's spin down. But information can't go faster than the speed of light, according to relativity. So it's a paradox, a deep contradiction between relativity and Quantum Mechanics. How they proved this experimentally, I dunno. But they did. They've even built a prototype encryption device based on all this weirdness. It is unbreakable by the laws of physics. Eat that, Louis Freedman.

To sum up, any potential Theory of Everything must be aimed squarely at resolving paradoxes such as these. Yu obviously thinks he's on the right track by dumping string theory onto some of the equations of quantum mechanics and hoping it sticks, but from what I gather 10 or 26-dimensional superstring theory is the current hot potato in this area.

Copyedit: Second to last paragraph, second sentence: Somehow, the information that electron B should be spin up got to it and now it's spin down.

Revision: Somehow, the information that electron B should be spin down got to it and now it's spin down.

Always read your copy aloud!

They used a parallel experiment using polarization of photons. Unfortunately, I'm at work, without any QM reference materials here, so I can't describe the Aspect experiments here. I'll try to do it sometime this holiday weekend...

Incidentally, Cramer-Yu theory has a quantum description of gravity that apparently is the same as Einstein's over distances larger than a piece of (quantum) string, without that nasty Cosmological Constant.

Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation:

F = Gmm'/r²

In other words, everthing is attracted to everything else. If you left two marbles floating in space (with no friction), they would eventually come together because of the force of gravity.

Of course, the attraction you feel towards your S.O. is something else entirely J.

They used a parallel experiment using polarization of photons.

That makes sense. For those of you playing the home game, above I said that processes on the subatomic level tend result in releasing things in pairs--symmetry. Paired photons are released in two polarizations--up-down, and left-right. Polarized sunglasses, for example, only block, say, up-down, and only let half the photons through, and hence half the light.

Photons, then, would be a type of particle that responds to the EPR paradox. And you know that prototype cryptography device I mentioned? Operates using paired photons.

All that, out of my head. Who needs a math subprocessor, anyway.

REPORT FROM THE NANOBOTS: REALLY, REALLY REALLY SOON NOW. WE KNOW HE'S KIDDING. END REPORT.

Looks like it's just us Mark...

Apparently they are also working on quantum teleportation, also based on the EPR effect.

One really cool experiment appears to trash one of the main tenets of the Copenhagen Interpretation (CI) (which has been the standard interpretation of QM for about 50 years... New challengers are now beginning to appear). Namely, the Principle of Complimentarity. That is, you can catch a quantum entity behaving as a wave, or as a particle, but not both. HOWEVER...

An experiment performed in India apparently did just that. The experiment was a variant on the two hole experiment performed with individual photons (and yes, the two hole effect even works with individual photons), set up to observer the particle aspect of the photons... WITH ONE MINOR TWEAK... There was a place in the experiment where tunneling behavior was observed. Tunneling is a wave phenomenon, not a particle phenomenon. To get to one of the detectors, the photon had to tunnel, yet the detectors behaved as if a particle experiment was being performed. This was a major result. It may, in fact, spell the beginning of the end for the CI.

Of course, the CI has always had some kind of weird baggage hanging around... to wit: when does the wave function "collapse"? What level of consciousness is required to collapse the wave function? Gedanken experiments such as Schroedinger's famous "Cat in the Box" point out the weirdness here. Is the cat conscious enough to collapse the wave function of the radioactive atom, and not its own demise (or lack thereof)? Or is a human observer required? If a human observer is required, then who collapsed the wave functions for the several billion years before we showed up?

While I personally like the Cramer-Yu theory as the most sensible explanation of quantum phenomena, there is another interpretation which I like, simply because it leads to such good science fiction. This is the "Many Worlds" theory. Actually, Trek touched on this in "Parallels". That is, the alternative to collapsing the wave function randomly is that when the wave function collapses, it collapses in all possible ways, splitting off an alternate universe. There are actually experiments being dreamed up to try to determine if this occurs!

This theory was dreamed up by Hugh Everett. He (like Feynman) worked under Wheeler. However, Wheeler didn't want top billing on this one (gee, I wonder why), so it's sometimes called the Everett-Wheeler theory.

While I like Everett-Wheeler as much as he next self-programming software construct, there's only so many "Hitler victorious" stories one can read before giving up in disgust. "Sliders," meanwhile, could have spent a little less on the FX budget, and a little more on trying to keep Jon Rhys-Davies in the show. O'Connel couldn't do it alone, I'm sad to say.

The Copenhagen Interpretation always struck me as interesting, but ultimately metaphysical, not scientific. If an observer is necessary, then isn't it nice that we humans are around to keep the universe going? How important we are! Look at us! Metaphysical, and delightfully self-centered.

I know, I know, an "observer" doesn't have to be human. Then why didn't Schroedinger realize he has an observer inside his box--the cat? I know, I know, thought experiment and all that. But it still strikes me as a little cheesy.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to see what foolishness Vargo and Pesti are trying to bait me with. 'Ta.

Argh ! And I thought photons faster than light are bad...

Slightly off-QM-topic: It's only one small step but on Dec 3rd the Mars Polar Lander with Deep Space 2 will hopefully land on the red planet.
There is also a description of the LIDAR device.

Note: the Polar lander has this "Kilroy was here" CD-ROM with the names of thousands of schoolchildren (you could sign up on a web site). The entire classroom of first graders that I worked with signed up. Although one little boy was freaked when he thought we were asking him to go to Mars....

My apologies. I just reread "Schroedinger's Kittens". It's not Cramer-Yu theory, it's strictly Cramer who initially developed the transactional interpretation of QM. Chu (not Yu - I got the names mixed up) is the guy who came up with the quantum description of gravity.

My apologies!

PS. Electron, it's perfectly on topic... this is for general science discussion!

PPS. And we're glad to have you... Mark and I were wondering if anyone else would show up!

I'm a particle - I know where my place is !

Maybe so, but you don't know where you're going, then...

A bit of explanation for Heisenberg's comment above.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is a limit on quantum knowledge, NOT a limit of our experimental apparatus (as it has sometimes been described).

Basically, it says that two complementary measurements cannot be known to accuracy with a value of less than Planck's Constant (h). Complementary measurements must have units of action, which is what h is measured in (kg-m²/s).

So for example, Energy and Time or Position and Momentum are complementary properties.

So, Heisenberg's principle reads:

DxDp > h
DEDt > h

Basically, in lay terms, you can't know where you are and where you're going.

Interesting fact: Units of action are relativistically invariant (the Lorentz contractions cancel each other out).

Eat that, Louis Freedman.
The government can have my encryption keys when they pry them out of my cold, dead, fingers.

Incidentally, Heisenberg applies to the macro (everyday) world as well, but Planck's constant is so small (~6.6*10^-27) that the uncertainty is unmeasurable.

A gentle intro to the strangeness of the quantum world and relativistic world is the "Mr. Tompkins" series by (I think, but am not sure) George Gamow.

Basically, the author describes an unusual world where (in one story) c is approximately 100 mph, and in another h is close to 1.

This lets relativistic effects and/or quantum effects be seen on everyday objects.

Hello (o-o-o-o-o-o-o).....anybody out there?

How is the Internet different from talking to yourself? I don't know, either. 'Fraidy cats!

A simple definition of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: on the quantum, little bitty level, if two things are related, the more you know one, the less you know the other. For example, the better you measure an electron's location, the worse you know its speed. There are as many different interpretations of this as there are scientists; you pays your money and you takes your chance. Despite Scott's enthusiasm about Planck's constant, Heisenberg uncertainty is one of those weird things a Theory of Everything must explain.

Interesting fact: Units of action are relativistically invariant (the Lorentz contractions cancel each other out). So, are you saying relativistic effects don't occur at the quantum level? How does that explain that one of the tests of time dialation is to speed up radioactive atoms in a particle accelerator and check to see if their half-lives slow down?


I'll explain a bit for those of you who haven't fallen asleep yet: according to Einstein's theory of relativity, the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower your clock moves relative to a non-moving clock. Or, you could see it as the non-moving clock slows down compared to you. Now, how would a physicist check this, superfast rockets being so hard to find these days?

Easy. You take a radioactive substance, one that will lose half its mass to radiation in a certain amount of time, called its half-life. Then you speed it up in a particle accelerator. Then you measure its half-life again, compared to some control amount that you didn't speed up. If relativity is correct, the test material should last longer than the control material. And, it does. So Special Relativity (being a science) has produced a successful test of its predictions.

I don't know what the heck Scott means by "units of action are relativistically invariant." But if that means time dialation doesn't occur at the quantum level, then why does it apply at the atomic level? Are particles not quantum enough?

The same works for particles, for example µ-mesons.

No. Relativistic effects do occur at the quantum level, the most notable being electron spin. Also, quantum effects, such as particle decay, have been used to prove relativistic length/time contraction (depending on your point of view, of course).

My "Interesting fact" was that Planck's Constant has the same value to all observers, regardless of their relativistic velocity.

Hey, what happened to my "o"?

Naa, I meant that the µons are affected by relativistic effects (which explains part of the temperature distribution in the atmosphere).

Electron, I think Scott meant "no" to me. When I take over, "no" to me will be followed by gunfire. So enjoy it while you can...

Let's test the memory, hmmm? Isn't Planck's Constant the lowest measurable amount of time? I was always fuzzy on that. Whatever it is, it's nice to find a constant that is, well, constant.

P.S. Scott, I stole your "o" for use in my message of November 30.

No, Planck's constant is measured in units of Action (mass * dist²/time). You can manipulate:

G (the universal gravitational constant), c, and Planck's constant to derive something called the Planck time, which is on the order of 10^-43 seconds, and considered the smallest reasonable length of time to discuss. You can also manipulate the same quantities to get the Planck Length (probably c * PlanckTime - don't rememeber the exact derivations).

I just looked it up....

Planck Length = sqrt(Gh/c³)
Planck Time = sqrt(Gh/c⁵)

Note, h = h/2p

Meanwhile, back in the quantum world, things are rather uncertain... J.

Scientists at IBM (I think it's IBM anyways... the people who brought you the letters IBM spelled out in individual atoms) have actually photographed an electron wave.

Essentially, they used a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) to create a circular barrier made up of iron(? - I don't have my ref materials here at work) atoms, and trapped a single electron in that area. This created a "standing electon wave" in that area that supposedly looks like a ripple in a pond.

Note on Heisenberg's principle here. Since the electron is confined to a specific area, Dx is relatively small, so it's really unclear what the electron's momentum is inside the barrier.

Hey, Electron -- Stand and Wave!!! J

Now, a link from the world of the unimaginably small to the unimaginably large...

Yes, we jump from QM to relativity theory.

How do we know that relativity theory actually works? Well, the Lorentz contraction has been proven. How, you ask? [waits for a resounding HOW?]... Ok, you don't ask. but I'll tell you anyways.

Cosmic rays interacting with Earth's atmosphere create high speed muons. These muons have a short enough half life that they should decay before reaching the earth. They don't, since we can detect muon showers from cosmic rays. The question then becomes, why don't these muons decay?

Because all (inertial) frames of reference are equivalent, we must look at two scenarios. The first from the point of view of an observer on Earth, and the second from the muon's POV.

Case 1, an observer on Earth. The muon is approaching at a relativistic speed, approximately .99c. This creates a Lorentz contraction factor of approximately 9. So from the POV of our observer, time is slowed down by a factor of 9 for the muon (it's clocks run 9 times slower), giving the muon ample time to reach Earth before decaying.

Case 2, the muon's POV. The muon is standing still, while the Earth (and it's atmosphere) are rushing past it at approximately .99c. This creates a Lorentz contraction factor of approximately 9 for the earth. So, from the POV of our muon, the Earth's atmosphere is 1/9 as thick as we would think it is, so it only has to travel 1/9 the time, giving the muon ample time to reach Earth before decaying.

This actually provides a nice example of how the time and length contractions "cancel out" to provide the same result from different inertial frames of reference.

Now, a break from physics to harass a member of CSICOP:

When I am a world-famous columnist, I'm going to do something crazy. Wild. Downright wacko. When answering a question, I'm gonna answer the question, not a different one I like better.

Marilyn vos Savant, who as a child scored high on a standardized intelligence test, has recently abandoned reason. In a recent column, a reader asked: What do you think of the Kansas school board's decision to remove evolution from the testing standards?

And "The World's Smartest Person" gave what answer to this tricky problem? "If you haven't actually looked at the research for Big Bang, then you only have faith that it's true."

Here's my recent e-mail to her. I doubt she'll ever address this, so I'll leave it for you to ponder:

---

Quote:

Your recent answer about the Kansas school board'sdecision to abandon evolution in their curriculum
was a correct answer--to a different question.

The question you were asked is: is evolution a necessary topic for high school students? My answer is, yes. It is considered the underpinnings for the biological sciences! Should we only support those sciences that we, personally, have researched extensively? All other should be removed from the school system?

Can't we at least have "faith" that all the evolutionary biologists in the world, who all accept evolution (of some sort) as a fact are not
morons, liars, or fools?

That's the question you were asked.

The question you answered instead, is: what is the definition of "faith"? Your answer was, "Faith is believing in something without examining the evidence." Which is true as far as it goes. But I would even then argue that there are different kinds of faith.

There is, for example, the faith that all the engineers of all the cars that approach you at a
stop light have correctly designed the brake
systems to work. You have this faith based on
years of experience of not having cars run into
you. It is also a reasonable extrapolation from
what you know about cars, and engineers.

Then there is some people's faith in a
supernatural being. This does not flow out of
empirical experience, but out of subjective
experience. Everyone's experience of their deity
is unique, but car braking systems invariably stop
their cars, or they are broken.

I would put "faith" in a science more at the level
of a car's brakes than belief in a deity. It is
reasonable to assume that a science that publicly
publishes its findings to peer-reviewed journals
has its evidence, whether you've personally
examined every single piece yourself. It is a
reasonable extrapolation based on your experience
with science.

It is much more a leap of faith to believe in a
God who doesn't leave such clear-cut evidence. So
faith in Big Bang is a lower degree of faith than
faith in God.

Finally, all of this discussion ignores the fact
that you *can* go investigate the empirical
evidence for Big Bang yourself. You can also do
the same for evolutionary theory. So they should
be taught in the schools! They're science! And
not too complex for teenagers, either.

When you blend all faiths as equal, you provide a
wedge for psuedoscientists, Creationists, school
board members, postmodernists, members of
Congress, and other undesirables to attack
science. If you didn't have room or time to
discuss the issue fully, you might have considered
not discussing it at all.

---

What do you think about this: Project Orion ?

Project Orion has been around for ages. Clarke even used it in the novel (but not the movie) 2001. Other than the obvious technical problems (containing the explosions), most of the problems are political and psychological.

I assume this would be a space-to-space drive so we wouldn't have a fallout problem.


1) Who would you trust to have that many atomic bombs on hand?
2) Who do you trust to lift either (a) the bombs, or (b) the raw material for the bombs into orbit
3) Would YOU want to be sitting on top of a stack of exploding nukes?

Great link, Electron. Thanks!

It was also featured in Footfall by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven.

Me, I think SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) is the way to go. Project Phoenix seemed to have the most potential, but NASA awarded the X-33 contract to someone else. Sigh. Phoenix plays a significant role in Fallen Angels by Niven, Pounelle, and Michael Flynn.

Project Orion, oddly enough, was also mentioned in the movie Deep Impact and the Spider-Man novel (yes, novel, no pictures) The Lizard Sanction.Sounds good, but how do you contain the explosion without stuff from the Marvel Comics universe?

Here's a question completely off the topic being discussed, but not off the general topic (gotta love these boroad categories): Anyone know of some decent Web or print resources for building your own PC? I've been bitten by the "do it yourself" bug, and it was either this or a car. And, well, PCs are cheaper.

Try http://www.anandtech.com

Mark,

MvS copped out. She should have either not answered that question, or stated that "the explanation is too long here, but your local library is a good source..."

Matt,

Make sure you use good components. Don't use a bargain-basement motherboard because you save a few bucks. I went that route and regretted it, and eventually trashed the cruddy board. Go with quality RAM (it costs about $10-15 more per SIMM/DIMM), but it's worth it. Don't go with a no-name sound card, etc... it's harder to find drivers and keep them up to date. Also, if you're going to run anything besides windoze (such as Linux or some other variant of Unix), the more generic the better, as it's more likely to be supported.

Oddly enough, assembling the machine is the easy part. Buying and installing the OS (assuming windoze 98) is going to be one of the most expensive portions (the "full version" of W98 is about $200). Installing the OS can be a pain in the you-know-where if you're a win rookie (I seem to recall you being a Mac'er), and don't forget your drivers!

Good luck and have fun!

I know zip about computer-building, I'm afraid. Wish I could help more.

Subject change: Over in the Creation vs. Evolution thread, Derrick Vargo wrote: One of the main problems with science is that you start out with a theroy then you test it. so really you only see what you want to see.

Although Vargo gets the details of science wrong (observations first!), his comment does get at a difficult problem of scientific thinking. In Why People Believe in Weird Things by Michael Shermer (W.H. Freeman and Company, 1997), Shermer briefly discusses how science is theory-laden. We all have preconceptions of how the universe operates, and we all have the tendecy to interpret what we see in terms of what we already think we know. Shermer uses Columbus as an example--he though he was in Asia, so he named the first shrub that smelled right "cinammon" (p.46).

I certainly don't think this means (as some postmodernists think) that science is useless. I think the way science gets around this problem is through its public nature. Every little claim you make is held up to peer-review, and if it survives that intact, it's published for every scientist in the world to hack away at. I think the public nature of science ruthlessly weeds out foolishness.

A good counter-example is Piltdown Man. In this case, no one examined the stinking evidence! Scientists, one and all, just took the initial reports at face value, and noboby reexamined the actual bones. The Piltdown Man was built solely on the first few papers written about it! About five seconds after someone re-examined the evidence, the hoax was exposed. Science only works if we are constantly demanding to see the evidence. (Click here for more about this sorry subject.)

I don't want to give anti-scientists a stool to stand upon here. My point is that the Piltdown Man hoax succeeded precisely because its nature was never really examined by the scientific public. These pitfalls can, and are, routinely avoided by public scrutiny of claims. An example of science gone right is cold fusion--don't hold a press conference to announce your findings! Because you know every interested scientist in the world is going to try and duplicate them. And they tried. And they failed. Science is public, and its public nature weeds out false positives and false negatives.

Comments?

Wow! That Piltdown Man site is a fascinating read! It's amazing how gullible people can be when they're presented with something they want to see.

What I find more amazing is the number of paleontologists who just wished Piltdown Man would go away--but it never occured to any of them that it could be a hoax! I mean, you'd think they'd be clamoring to refute the evidence...yet, there it sat, untouched and updated, for all that time.

Scientists are human too. Fortunately, science has many processes for overcoming our biases. They seem to have been ignored in this case.

P.S. Glad to see someone is clicking on those links I keep providing. Thanks, margie!

Mark, hitch up your socks, I'm lurking along.

Well, First Advisor? Am I off on my assessment of Ms. High-IQ, or what?

My ranting was sparked by a letter in the local paper that said "The world's smartest person says both evolution and the Bible take faith. Isn't it interesting that the Bible is inerrant, but scientists make mistakes?" I was so infuriated, I couldn't type the e-mail fast enough.

Meanwhile, I patiently await what you all think about the theory-laden nature of science.

Mark, the RP thing doesn't work for me, though admittedly I need an updated username.
In all honesty, I'm through reading the arguments back and forth about "ev. vs. cr."
Honestly, I was way more interested in reading the background and comment on "schroedinger's Cat" The Heisenberg uncertainty principle", Quantam mechanics, et. al.
how about string theory? that's a real neat one.

I have only seen Marilyn vos Savant's column once, when I was back in the States a few months ago. It's interesting to see how a person with a high IQ will respond to certain questions, but I hope there aren't too many people out there mistaking high test scores for wisdom. The column is just a silly gimmick. Her response to the question of evolution in schools really was pathetic, and I would e-mail her too, if only I had read the actual column.

Okay, science people, here's your chance to make yourselves *really* useful. A while back I found a coffee mug in a shop here in Japan with a copy of the periodic table on it. This made me think of my recently retired high school chemistry/physics teacher Mr. A., who was an excellent, fun, and very patient teacher but was never quite able to get through to me--not for lack of trying on his part or mine!

Problem: I sent the mug to Mr. A., and he wrote back saying that he likes the mug very much and uses it every morning. BUT he is sure that *I* am the one who really needs to have a PT close at hand. Then, 13 years after my last chemistry class, he went and popped a one-question quiz on me, which for the life of me I cannot answer, even after looking at a couple of on-line periodic tables.

Question: Element has a +2 charge, reacts slowly with water and has 20 neutrons in its nucleus. Element is ____________.

Plea: Help!

I think the answer is Ca, but it just doesn't seem right to me. I will tell Mr. A. that I could not answer the question on my own, and I am sure he will give whoever helps me extra credit.

how about string theory? that's a real neat one. String theory is the province of one of your favorite people, Kell--Michio Kaku. Hyperspace discusses it in detail, and you can certainly borrow it if I ever actually make it up there.... Among its crazy claims is that quantum effects are best explained as either 10-dimensional or 26-dimensional strings. So all that weirdness like EPR and Shroedinger's Cat are a side-effect of the string's vibrations.

I'm sure the math makes this all very clear. Sure it does.

Mark, the RP thing doesn't work for me, though admittedly I need an updated username. What do you mean? All I meant about reposting is that I'd cut and pasted my e-mail to vos Savant. And your username is just fine! You're First Advisor! You can have any username you want! I have spoken!

I believe it is Ca. Ca is an alkaline element, meaning it ionizes to +2, and it has atomic number 20, meaning 20 protons, so 20 neutrons is reasonable.

Thanks, Scott! I'll take your word for it. Extra credit for you!

Hyperspace: interested. Maybe I can find it in the library.
"rp": sorry 'bout my abbreviations. "rp" in this case meant "role-playing". "First advisor", oh yes. -How did I get drafted for this position, anyway?!
I will check out more stuff on the boards and attempt to engage a little more, hopefully soon. You folks are having too much fun. :)
That would be after I get a break from the insane schedule I'm working and get some stage 4 sleep.

"First advisor", oh yes. -How did I get drafted for this position, anyway?! For the sole purpose of irritating juli k at her $10 a minute international connections.

Kaku also has at least one other book I know of (and own), Visions, where he speculates on near-future technologies.

Speaking of speculation: Cosmologists and mathematicians love to suppose. Suppose we were able to pluck a wormhole out of the cosmic foam. Suppose we could expand it to a useful size. Suppose we left one end at the Earth, and the other end we attached to a spacecraft. Suppose that spacecraft traveled at a significant fraction of the speed of light out, and around, and them back home. Then one end of the wormhole would be further along in time than the other end. Suppose we could travel back and forth through the wormhole. Voila! We could travel back and forth through time, from the past of the stationary end of the wormhole, to the future of the non-stationary end.

Suppose. Suppose. Suppose. Love those cosmologists.

Speaking of gravitation: Here's another URL.

Your friendly neigborhood dilletante brings you yet another of his favorite subjects...

Are you ready for Mathematical Logic? (of course you are, or you wouldn't be reading this post J). Actually this will tie into the cosmology later (remind me, please)...

Godel, and his incompleteness theorem. I won't give the full mathematical recitation of the theorem (if you don't know about omega-completeness, it won't make sense...), but I'll try to make sense of it...

Godel's theorem shows that mathematics, as described in Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica is incomplete. Acutally, it's much stronger than that. It shows that any consistent system of mathematics is incomplete. By incomplete, I mean that it is possible to construct a statement that is true, but unprovable within that system.

Basically, it manages to construct a statement in number theory that contradicts itself, or is a variant of the Epimenides Paradox (See: Phantom Returns J, or "I, Mudd").

Of course, formal mathematical notation does not have a way of referring to a particular meta-statement (a statement ABOUT number theory). What Godel managed to do, using his famous numbering scheme, was to encode a statement of number theory as a number (call it G), and construct a statement about that particular number that, when interpreted, read, "The statement of Number Theory encoded by G has no proof."

Incidentally, the tie-in with Cosmology is that Godel also constructed the first workable variant of time travel within the framework of General Relativity. More to follow on that later...

For more info on Godel's theorem, I highly recommend Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. It's a very approachable introduction to this whole mess of logic and meta-logic.

Here they are... Clarke's Laws, from the typewriter of Clarke himself (The Lost Worlds of 2001, p. 189).

Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Clarke's Second Law: The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Now for the cool thread I thought of over on EvC...

Occam's Razor is generally accepted as meaning the simplest solution is best. But what does "simple" mean?

Consider. A caveman is trying to invent the wheel. He creates the stereotypical square wheel. The ride is, of course, very bumpy. So he gets an inspiration... it's not simple enough. His next wheel is a triangle (simpler because it has fewer sides). This was allegedly the theme of a B.C. cartoon many years ago.

So just what does it mean for a solution to be "simplest"?

Elegant. When you grasp a part of it in your mind, suddenly the rest of it falls into place. A lot of little things that before didn't make any sense apart come into clarity together.

I think it's a subjective experience that can be taught, and agreed on, but never really clearly defined. After you learn it, though, you can point at things that aren't elegant and say "Ugh!" You can also learn to appreciate the beauty of an elegant solution, such as Michio Kaku claims for Superstring Theory in Hyperspace.

ScottN: Clarke's Second Law sounds similar to Sherlock Holmes statement about when you have elimanated the possible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the solution. (Can't remember the exact quote, though.)

It's "Eliminate the impossible and whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth."


I'll dig into the enormous Annotated Sherlock Holmes for a story cite.

That sounds much better than what I had. Thanks.

Elegance is one thing. Simplicity may be another.

Here's another stab at the simplicity thing and Occam's Razor.

Einstein is supposed to have said "Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler." That, I think is the key.

Let's take a look at Einstein's greatest work, General Relativity. To make it work out, he had to includ something called the cosmological constant k. The problem with this is that the equations of GR do not provide any value for this constant, and it seems as if it could have any value. Current observations seem to indicate it should have a value close to 0.

As to Occam's Razor, going back to Chu's work on string theory... He supposedly has a quantum description of gravity that works out the same as Einstein's over lengths greater than a piece of string, BUT... without that annoying cosmological constant.

Now, if this, in fact, is true, then I'm sure that the math in Chu's work is a heck of a lot hairier than Einsteins. However, it fits Occam's razor better, even though it is not "simpler", because it does not "mulitply entities without reason". There is no kludged cosmological constant in Chu's equations, therefore it is more elegant.

Which, however, is simpler? Einstein or Chu?

Here's another very interesting ST-related URL: Relativity and FTL Travel Homepage.

Which, however, is simpler? Einstein or Chu? The problem with the cosmological constant is that it seems very arbitrary--just there to make the equations balance. If Chu's equations are more complex, but less arbitrary, then Chu is simpler because that dumb cosmological constant is just stuck on there, like the various numerical values and relationships of the standard model.

I think simpler and more elegant are synonyms. Or, to put it another way, elegance assumes simplicity, plus an emotional payoff as more aspects of reality are explained by the same concept and you go "Wow! Now, that's cool!"

I play up the emotional and subjective aspects because defining "simplicity" is in many ways a personal thing. Me, I think circles and ellipses are equally simple. But Kepler, who originally plotted the paths of the planets as circles, found they were actually best described as ellipses. His feelings about ellipses? "Dung." But they let him avoid a lot of other dung he hated more.