exchemist

😴ZZzzzzz........... This is too silly for me. I'm out.

What if the sky were made of concrete?

What a silly question. Do you have infinite time at your disposal?

Ah, but you are shifting your ground now. Your opening post was entirely about the philosophical impossibility of achieving total, complete, objectivity. You and I agree on that, evidently. But now you introduce the concept of "control", which I did not mention. All I said was that the evidence is that the degree of objectivity science has achieved has historically been good enough for science to have been enormously successful at accounting for what we observe in nature. (The quote @CharonY provides makes the same point.) But now you say I think objectivity in science "is (i.e. in the present day) under control", whereas you doubt that it is. This seems to be a quite different question, about the efficacy of the means we use today for checking, controlling bias and weeding out bad science. We can move on to discuss that if you like but it has nothing to do with philosophy.

As @MigL says, the idea of a multiverse is far from being "mainstream science". In fact it is not even science at all, but a highly questionable metaphysical idea, as it is completely untestable, having no observational consequences. I must admit I have never understood the Fermi Paradox. As Douglas Adams's character Slartibartfast observes, "In space travel, all the numbers are awful". Therefore if Einstein was right, interstellar travel is inevitably both very costly and utterly pointless. So why would intelligent aliens attempt it? One might even cite the Fermi Paradox as evidence that relativity is very likely correct!

The trouble with these philosophical debates is that they are so often couched in terms of logical absolutes, e.g. “true” vs. “false”, rather than the pragmatic shades of grey that all of us actually deal with in real life, e.g. “mostly true”, “probably false”, and so on. Sure, no human observation can be stated to be completely , 100%, objective, since for a start we apprehend the world as human beings and cannot do otherwise. Cultural and other assumptions can also on occasion colour the way raw data is construed. But the goal of reproducible scientific observation is to eliminate bias as far as possible and this remains a valid objective, even if it cannot be definitively attained. The scrutiny of research for bias is a process that takes up a fair amount of time in the practice of science. Good science is as objective as we can make it, and over the years that has been good enough. We know that because of the tremendous success of modern science since it took shape after the Renaissance.

What makes you "feel by reading" that Einstein had a bigger role in WW2 than history acknowledges? What have you read that gives you this idea?

I do not believe forums in general have changed their policy since 2022. However it is possible that they are started to get tired of you, specifically. You seem to post obsessively on one topic only, namely your perception of spying and persecution by Iranian authorities, regardless of the interests and purpose of the forum you post on. For example you are posted here, on a science forum, about stuff that has no science content, and apparently on a Canadian law forum about stuff that has nothing to do with Canadian law. Furthermore there are signs you may be mentally unbalanced, for instance this delusional nonsense you posted recently about "spy dust". The most likely explanation, therefore, for your perception of a change in policy on these forums is that they have come to recognise you and increasingly either ignore you or ban you. In my opinion you may be heading for the same fate here, though the decision is not up to me. P.S. I see that, today, you have decided to open yet another rambling thread on the subject of your obsession. At some point, people are going to get very tired of this.

This does not make sense. Your rocket is analogous to the muons. The clock in the rocket will only show time dilation to observers on the ground, not to those aboard the rocket. Observers on the rocket will see clocks ticking at the normal rate. So it makes no sense to say time aboard the rocket is "really" dilated. There is no greater "reality" for observers on the ground than for observers aboard the rocket. (Observers on the rocket will however see a shortening of the distance it has to travel, relative to objects at rest with respect to the Earth, just as with the muons.) I think you need to abandon this idea of one perspective being more "real" than another. It seems to me to be a fatal error to think in this way.

In the muon case there is no "real change". It is just a matter of different perspectives on the same physics. When you say "for us, and "in our world", the muons appear time-dilated, you are acknowledging that this is what an observer on the Earth will measure. An observer travelling with the muons would experience time passing at the normal rate. However he would see a shorter distance to travel to reach the ground, so more muons would survive. In other words the same result. Neither perspective is more "real" than the other. But they give the same answer.

No they are not "real changes", they are just views from different perspectives. In the muon case, the earth-based observer sees an extension of the half-life of the muons, but the muons experience a shortening of the distance they have to travel to reach the ground. Both lead to the same outcome: more muons survive than would be expected from muons not in motion relative to the Earth. That is the whole point of the muon example. It nicely shows how time dilation and length contraction are complementary, leading to consistent results without any physical change being implied.

Yes you may be right, now that I have read more about the description of Dunoon phyllite and seen pictures. The grey-blue, smoothly eroded rock in the picture occurs in places along the beach, but most of the rocks are much rougher, darker in colour and have a slatey cleavage. From its undulating smoothness, the rock in the picture appears to be eroded more readily, as if the waves have partially dissolved it. I’d love to know what it is. But I would probably need to speak to a geologist with local knowledge.

I reiterate: none of Einstein’s theories were “weaponised” to make a bomb. Nothing in them tells you anything about how to split the atom. What do you mean by saying Einstein “probably played a bigger part in WWII than history portrayed”? The facts of Einstein’s life are well known. There is no reason to think the accepted history is wrong. He did not get involved in “helping the Allies”, other than to allow his name to be put to the Szilard letter, suggesting the USA should start its own bomb project. The advice in that letter - which actually did not come from his own ideas - was his sole involvement. And , as it turned out, atomic weapons played no part in the defeat of Germany.

On the beach at Cove, Argyll, on the Rosneath peninsula, opposite the Knockderry House Hotel where I was staying. It’s some sort of metamorphic rock, heavily folded and then sculpted into smooth wavy shapes by the sea. Could be a Dunoon phyllite or something, I suppose, but I’m not a geologist so I’m guessing. It’s about 2km back from the Highland boundary fault, on the Highland side. There are a few limpets for scale. It has a rather pleasing blue-grey colour, I find, shading greenish in the foreground. In fact I was thinking I might blow it up as a print and frame it to hang on the wall as a piece of soothing abstract art. I used to play on these beaches as a small boy, so rocks like this bring back memories for me as well.

Observed on my recent trip to Scotland:

No it is the lack of any understanding of Einstein's work and life that does the damage, to my mind. It's full of of nonsense such as "exciting" matter to the speed of light (impossible and irrelevant), the notion that E=mc² is some sort of key to making an atom bomb (which it isn't) and so on. Einstein never worked on nuclear fission and his contributions to physics didn't enable anyone to build one. He had nothing to do with Germany's failure to produce an atom bomb. You may possibly be confusing him with Heisenberg, who did work on the German bomb project. Einstein's sole intervention regarding the atom bomb was to sign the letter to President Roosevelt warning of Germany's capacity to build a bomb. The letter was not drafted by Einstein but by Hungarian physicists: Leo Szilard, in conjunction with Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner. In fact they had to explain to Einstein that it was possible to make a fission bomb, as it had never occurred to him. They then persuaded Einstein to sign the letter, as they rightly believed that would ensure the President would read it, their previous attempts to warn the US government having been ignored. So what your story needs, first of all, is a bit of basic research into what Einstein did and the actual history of it. And, if you don't understand the science, don't make up preposterous stuff about phasing effects and atoms lining up. Steer clear of technical details: they add nothing to the storyline in any case and just make the story look silly.

Interesting article, thanks for posting. What slightly surprised me about it was the lack of any reference to the Ediacaran biota. I was expecting them to have suggested that some of those enigmatic fossils may have been the forerunners of the first ctenophores. I realise we do not really know yet whether any of these were animals, rather than plants or fungi, but I find myself wondering whether these researchers might be in a position to comment on whether the Ediacaran biota could fit into their scheme, or whether perhaps they can say that they do not, i.e. they are another branch entirely.

This is awful. I’m not surprised the instructor did not think much of it. It mangles Einstein’s science and the history of his life out of all recognition.

Thanks for digging out the paper. I happen to be in Scotland this week so it was interesting to read and to see the diagrams of the geology of the Highlands between the two great faults. They seem to have sampled not only the Garvellach islands but also Islay and a location in Donegal in N Ireland where the same formation outcrops. (It’s rather romantic that they call these rocks the Dalradian sequence, after the ancient Irish/Scottish kingdom of Dalriada which encompassed both N Ireland and W Scotland.) It seems the rocks in question are alternating layers of “diamictite”, a poorly sorted sedimentary conglomerate associated with glacial moraines, and sandstone, which of course is homogeneous and laid down in a marine environment. So it looks as if at wherever on the globe these rocks were laid down, it was by no means one solid era of glaciation at the (near equatorial?) latitude in question. interesting too for me to see how they get a fix on the earliest and latest date for the age of the sequence by radiometric dating of volcanic intrusions and volcanic ash deposits.

Quite: a minor classic here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-bacon-rally-wind-power-b2604316.html WTF???…..

This is a discussion forum.

You need to summarise this video and explain what it is you want to discuss.

On the contrary, there is increasing recognition that too much research on health matters, and consequently too much health provision, has failed to take into account sufficiently the differences between the sexes. Like many people, I detest identity politics, but health provision is an area in which there are obviously big differences between the sexes, so recognition of this is not playing politics.

Analysis of his electronics? Marvin, the Paranoid Android? What do they mean?

I think you need to see a doctor. This CIA stuff sounds as if it may be produced by a psychiatric condition. It makes no sense.