bascule

And yes, I'm obsessed with trying to express everything as self-organizing graph structures... especially when these graph structures are continuously transformed in a temporal context

Wow Martin, thank you very very much for all of that information. That's awesome.

Well, it's actually more like a little too much to drink than any innate courage Yeah, I agree 100% completely... needs more math. I'm currently mucking my way through An Elementary Primer for Gauge Theory. You're correct in my physics education. I approach it at a 99% conceptual level because, well, I kind of lost interest in complex mathematics so quantum physics is this world I try to peek inside but don't really know anything about the intricate details at all. Also, the picture isn't of me, it's of Bob Dylan... Well, I'm trying to get to where I might have some capacity of understanding the basics of any of these models (mainly the Standard Model) by trying to study gauge theory. I think that's a good way to get a start in trying to understand the level in the system I'm really wanting to understand... do you? I don't think this can be directly related to any observation. I think my best bet is to construct a model, and try to generate any kind of output which might correlate with existing models. If I could generate numbers anywhere close to anything any of the quantum gravity people are doing, especially if I could generate numbers which are similar to more than one of the quantum gravity models, I think it might be a good indicator I'm onto something. I mean, basically, I have a pretty good idea in my head of a system which gauge theory-based models of the universe might be reducible to, and obviously trying to explain this on a conceptual level is complete failure. So yeah, thanks for reading this anyone, and hopefully if I have any trouble with gauge theory someone here can steer me in the right direction. What forum should I be asking gauge theory questions about in, anyway?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/14/politics/14weapons.html

Yes, my metaphysical extrapolative hypotheis, but yes...

I'm going to try this. I've seen so many people try, and so many fail. It's hard, and what's more, it's hard to remain empirical enough while filling in all the details with fundamental assumptions which are always going to be hard for others to accept. So I'm going to try to remain empirical as possible and hopefully I won't run into the trap of discrediting myself with any kind of novice-level misunderstandings. And uhh, yeah, I hope if I actually stumble onto something the forum will be enough of a historical record to get me some credit but really I don't care, if I can actually put this together I'd rather just give it away... trying to be selfish about it is stupid. So, what is this? Well, this is my best guess as to the framework which the quantum gravity people should be trying to reduce their models to. I don't proport to know anything about the intricate details of Loop Quantum Gravity, String Theory, Supersymmetry, etc. but it seems like they're all trying to get to a common destination, a single type of mathematical expression which all their systems are presently approximating but that's the problem, they're all just approximations and are thus far more complicated than the relatively simple underlying system. So, let's start with the first law of thermodynamics and how that applies to the true "atoms" of the universe, whatever they may be. This specifies that there must be a 1:1 mapping of these objects for any given timeframe. These objects are interconnected in a web/ontological (in the computer science) configuration. Each of these objects has an internal state, and is also interconnected to every other one of these objects in the entire universe. They pass a fixed amount of state information between other at a fixed rate, a "universal timestep" if you will, and thus the entire system is synchronous. When a timestep begins, an object averages the state information it receives from all other objects. What is this state information? Well, it's an integer, vector, or matrix, but it's discrete and fixed size. I'm really not sure exactly how that needs to be structured. But let's look at it on a higher level for a second. What these objects are doing is passing waveforms to each other. Each object receives a fixed amount of waveform in each timestep, and it doles out what it gets to all the other objects in the universe. So yeah, the first law of thermodynamics... there's a fixed amount of this "waveform intensity" in the universe and the fundamental state constructs of the universe, which I have been describing as objects, are passing it between each other. But the objects don't just divide up the state information equally, they give it out in highly variadic amounts. The amounts of "waveform intensity" they give to other objects varies per timestep as well. Okay, let's step up another level. What ends up happening is that these objects quickly become highly selective about what other objects they pass their information to. They form into little resonance groups so that a large amount of state is passed between a small number of objects. That's what strings are made out of. Strings aren't the true "atoms" of the universe, it's really these resonance "clumps" of objects... but they pass off their state information in graduating amounts, and this is what gives the appearance of distance. When these clumps start resonating more and more with other nearby clumps, they are drawn together. I mean, bottom line, what you're trying to reduce gauge theory to is an ontology... a graph. It's all just one big structure, made of multiple "frames" of state transferrence of every object in the universe to every other, and all these frames together form spacetime. Wow, this is hard. I think I need a break, then I'll reread what I wrote later and see if anyone actually responded, then decide if I was crazy or if I was actually onto something. And uhh, cut me some slack please, I did better than some of the other "I have a theory of the entire universe!!!" people, didn't I? I hope...

Not only that, but his organization shut down the largest nuclear black market in history, one they were fighting alongside with the Bush administration until Bush and his cohorts decided Iraq was the bigger priority. So at the same time Bush is trying to lead the world on a wild goose chase and he has to counter the misinformation being spread by the administration. History has shown us who was right and who was wrong. Khan was an enormous worry and Saddam was not. I went ahead and looked up the Bronwen Maddox article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1815682,00.html So wait, he's trying to blame ElBaradei for the IAEA "missing the threat" of Saddam's nuclear program in the '80s, even though ElBaradei became directory general of the IAEA in 1997? Then he tries to spin the Khan incident against the IAEA... the US and IAEA were both aware of Khan's nuclear program and were both actively fighting it together. But then US gave up on trying to stop Khan in 2002 while the IAEA pursued it and succeeded in shutting down his network and forcing Khan into admitting his guilt and leaving his position in the Pakistani government in disgrace. Of course, that didn't stop Bush from taking credit for the shutting down of Khan's nuclear network during the first presidential debate: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/debatereferee/debate_0930.html#j I think the Washington Post Debate Referee had some good stuff to say on this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/debatereferee/0930j_text.html So, there you have it. It's ridiculous to try to write this off to some kind of bias against Bush. I would say ElBaradei is justified in his negative feelings towards Bush, because by abandoning pursuit of Khan and going off on some irrelevant tangent, and making ElBaradei not only pick up all the slack on the Khan investigation left by the United States, but forcing them to counter the administration's claims on Iraq's nuclear ambitions (and making them continue to do so after Joseph Wilson investigated and debunked their biggest claim, the Nigerian Yellowcake) Bush hurt the international fight against nuclear proliferation substantially.

Wow, I was really hoping one of the physics experts would chime in here, but... My gut instinct would be that stable wormholes can't exist because they'd allow for causality violations.

I've never seen a hippopotamus. Therefore they don't exist. That's some nice logic you have there.

Cigarettes from 100 years ago are likely to contain nitrosamine but not polonium-210. This began happening with the use of phosphate fertilizers. There are multiple carcinogens in cigarettes. But if we can fix the manufacturing process to eliminate the biggest offenders, wouldn't that dramatically reduce the incidence of cancer associated with smoking?

It's not, but that wasn't the point. The point was that arguing that all humans descended from an initial breeding pair created by God and not from the apes is not scientifically plausible.

The US has had two black Secretaries of State. Both were appointed under Bush. This is the highest position any black person has ever held in US government. Given that, how can anyone call Bush a racist?

There have been several population bottlenecks in human history. For example, the eruption of the Toba supervolcano sometime 70,000-75,000 years ago was correlated with the discovery of a genetic bottleneck in the human species which occured at rougly the same time: http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/evolution/

I just don't get it. "Intelligent Design" could be a scientifically plausible hypothesis if presented correctly, such as: Abiogenesis was sparked by God A natural-selection driven evolutionary model subsequently developed And maybe some of those natural selection events were actually divine selection, with God, say, influencing radiation and causing specific mutations, or choosing to wipe out certain members of a species to guide its development. (Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!) Eventually we ended up with monkeys/apes from which man descended. No Adam and Eve, sorry, that's scientifically implausible. But instead what you basically get is Creationism in not-so-spiffy new duds. Yes, the Emperor is still naked...

Okay, suppose we can create a stable wormhole with exotic matter. Wouldn't both ends of the wormhole remain in more or less the same reference frame? So if someone were to grab one end of the wormhole and start going 0.999cish for awhile, thousands of years could elapse on the planet he left from (where the other mouth of the wormhole lies) yet time relative to those on either side of the wormhole would appear to be going at more or less the same rate, correct? Yet because both ends of the wormhole remain are in the same reference frame, wouldn't it be possible for our traveller to send information about the future (as he observes it) back to his planet? Or if the wormhole were large enough, couldn't he simply travel back to the past through it? Do these kind of causality violations really crop up with wormholes?

In other news, today scientists reported that a multi-decadal study has confirmed the sky is blue.

He's saying that he can show that it is possible for all humans to have descended from a single male/female pair (i.e. Adam and Eve) and seems to support evolution insofar as it doesn't conflict with a literal interpretation of the Bible.

I'm under the impression that the combustion products present in cigarette smoke have been studied extensively. Do you have any source to corroborate this statement? I'm wondering if further discoveries somehow discredited Martell's work, as from his paper it seems pretty clear that your lungs get exposed to a considerable amount of radiation when smoking cigarettes indoors. I really wish someone authoritative would break down the known carcinogens and assess their potential risks statistically in some sort of manner.

As far as a gut feeling? Yes, but I often wonder if that feeling comes from working inside of computers all day, which operate on fully quantifiable (oops, misspelled that before) data in a completely deterministic manner. I could certainly see the possibility of the universe as being continuous with the possible positions, velocities, etc. of particles/strings/what have you as being non-discrete. Loop quantum gravity is trying to quantify everything discretely (at least, that's my understanding), and I hope they're onto something with that. I don't know about that. I think as soon as the LHC comes online we're going to see some pretty major advances in the area of quantum gravity. I hope anyway.

You should read some of the reviews on The Final Theory. There's a large number of people out there who have no knowledge of physics and look at quantum and go "Well, that's so complicated it must be wrong!" They want to know how the universe works in a "common sense" manner which is easy to comprehend. So naturally when someone comes along and tries to do that, however wrong they might be as long as their ideas have a certain degree of logical consistency (no matter how far off base they actually are) they appear to the layperson to be more correct than the complex and often incomprehensible ideas being put forth by modern science.

I have no doubt that when we arrive upon a background independent theory of the universe through mathematical analysis of existing data and further experimentation, it will be dramatically simpler than the theories which are presently attempting to do this (i.e. string theory, loop quantum gravity, etc.) However, this theory will come about from the good ideas in all of the various theories of quantum gravity being combined into one (for example, I've heard one of the leading proponents of loop quantum gravity is attempting to merge loop quantum gravity with string theory) It will NOT come about by throwing all these theories away and going in a totally different direction because "modern science has lost its way" as thefinaltheory.com contends. Anyone trying to find a "common sense" explanation for the universe which doesn't rely on data-driven analysis is simply barking up the wrong tree. They're trying to create something false which appeals to the common man because quantum physics is too complex for them to understand. It may feel more correct to you that there's a simple explanation for everything, but that's not reality. I don't think extrapolations on biological processes are really going to give you any insights into physics which classical physics experiments won't. If you really want to look at something that gets your brain going, have a look at the double slit experiment. That alone pretty well demonstrates that the universe is a lot more complicated than it appears at first glance.

I have no doubt sensory systems are synchronous and push their state onto the cortex in a synchronous manner. However, my guess would be from there it is passed around, revised, and replicated within the cortex in a fully asynchronous manner.

Much like arkain101's theory which he doesn't want to reveal because he's worried about getting credit... much like The Final Theory guy just wants to sell copies of his book.

Humanity always creates new problems when it solves old ones. That's the nature of the game. But we've noticed that the more problems we solve, the higher standard of living we attain. I have no problems trusting science to find solutions to the problems it creates; it's done a remarkably good job of this in the past and I see no reason why we shouldn't continue trusting it to do so in the future. And given how much disinformation I've heard repeated by those who refuse to trust science (especially in regards to global warming) I certainly don't trust the alarmists who have no research to substantiate their claims.

You're attempting to use the Bible to argue that the common ancestry of human beings and apes is a lie. That's not exactly going to get you anywhere in the scientific community. Why don't you follow in the footsteps of the Catholics and discard the creation myth in Genesis as apocryphal?