Bignose

log2(10^41) = 136.199 No, that number isn't all that 'familiar'. Two comments. First, why don't you quit acting coy and just explain something all the way out. Your reply really doesn't answer my question at all. Assume I know nothing and start from scratch. With citations. And in detail describe why 10^-25 and apparently 10^41 are both such sacrosanct numbers. I am sure that you think this coyness is dramatic and full of showmanship. But, if you want people to look over and evaluate your work, this piecemeal posting is rather annoying. Again, may i suggest you explain something all the way out. Secondly, how are you so sure that the age of the universe is 10^41 in your arbitrary units? Estimates of the age of the universe have changed quite a lot, even recently. Our current best estimate is 13-15 billion years. But, it wasn't that long ago our best estimate was around 10 billion. And I suspect that as we probe ever deeper that that estimate will change again. There is an awful lot of what we call 'state functions' that have worked incredibly admirably in a lot of fields, but in particular thermodynamics. A state function, such as the internal energy or enthalpy or entropy of a fluid is known to be a function only of the current properties of the state, such as temperature, pressure, or volume. These explicitly have no time dependence in them at all, because what it only important is the state of the system, NOT how it got there (which is also sometimes known as a path function). How do you remedy this?

No. It is NOT clear. I don't know if you intend this statement to sound incredibly haughty and arrogant, but that is how it comes across. Please show us why 10^-25 is "the minimum amount of time that it takes an interaction to happen". Your original post does not address this at all. You keep using phrases like "We have to go with what Nature tells us", so why don't you actually cite evidence for this number?

But, why limit yourself to approximations with integers, when you have the wealth of irrational numbers available? What about a perfect wheel (circle) with a radius of 1 m rolling at an edge speed of 1 m/s, how many seconds does it take to complete 1 complete revolution? And why 10^-25? Why is that so special, why not 10^-26? or 10^-24? And why does it have to be limited to integers?

Consider the chemical reaction CHCl3 + Cl2 --> CCl4 + HCl this reaction is known to have a rate constant that is half-order in the concentration of Cl2 If for a given amount of CHCl3 and Cl2, you find that is takes 1 minute to complete the reaction, if you keep all the conditions the same except for halving the amount of Cl2, how long does it take to complete the reaction? [math]\sqrt{2}[/math] minutes. [math]\sqrt{2}[/math] is irrational and cannot be expressed using just integers. Doesn't this invalidate your postulate #2?

If you never ever ever ever make any mistakes, then this may be fine. If you never ever ever ever made any mistakes, you will be literally the first human being to do so. On the other hand, building upon the shoulders of the giants who have came before you works pretty well too. It has gotten us pretty far to date, though you wouldn't really know how far since you don't seem interested to even look at it. Every other scientist has built on those before them, not really sure why you think you can do better. provide a wealth of evidence to support a contradicting theory. I feel I have been very clear on this point. Is there something I've been unclear on this point?

Ok. Ignorance is one thing. But deliberately choosing to remain ignorant is another thing all together. And well beyond that, declaring things that you admit, again, that you cannot make sense of completely wrong, is just a level of hubris that is unbelievable. Don't you think, maybe, just maybe, you should understand it better before deciding it is just wrong? Don't you think you should be devoting at least some significant portion of your time to understanding just why the current model is what it is? Don't you think there is at least a possibility that maybe you'll learn why the evidence supports the current model? The absolute worst case scenario from your point of view in doing so would be greater understanding of the current model. But, this would give you greater understanding of the differences between your model and the current one, this would give you greater knowledge of the evidence our there and how your model fits with it. In other words -- it isn't a loss to learn about the current model. It should only help in developing your alternative. So, I know I've asked this before, but why the reluctance to learn about the current model? Why aren't you striving to increase your knowledge as much as possible so that you can make sense of a greater amount of evidence?

Did you even read most of my post? I was strongly disagreeing with you. Your statement was that "the point of physics should be to make the universe as simple as possible for ordinary people to understand". I cannot disagree with this more. Also, the law of gravity can certainly be used to predict the heights of tides; it is just that the mathematics is cumbersome and time-consuming and requires care to be sure it was done right. But the law of gravity has proven itself correct many times; and the fluid mechanics part of it is pretty straightforward, too. Again, the point is accurate predictions, not to make the math easier. That doesn't mean that attempting to make the math easier isn't a worthy goal, but if in the attempt to make the math easier, you lose the accuracy of the prediction, then you lose the functionality of the prediction. The rest of the gobbledygook, uncool has responded to. It is unfortunate that you've resorted to just blatant falsehoods. blatant falsehood. You've already admitted (in a different thread) that you have almost no knowledge of the current theory of quarks and the evidence that supports it. Ignorance is one thing; but just making a blatant statement declaring all the evidence supports non-existence. Here: please demonstrate how the experimental results published in this paper http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v104/i1/e012001 supports the non-existence of quarks. (This was literally the first paper that came up in Google Scholar, there are thousands more). Since you declared 'all', this should be easy for you. If you can't or won't, please retract that statement, or at least publicly admit that you are little more than a troll intentionally attempting to spread ignorance.

well, one of [math] E_k = \frac{1}{2}mv^2 [/math] and [math] E_k = \left(mv\right)^2 [/math] is dimensionally sound, and the other one isn't. I know that I have no doubts that the one that isn't dimensionally sound isn't right.

Great. Nice story. How soon will some actual science be done based on this story?

and science was questioning your use of the word 'irrefutable'. What you've posted here is very refutable so far. You say 'many government reports' -- care to actually cite some of them? You know, so that the rest of us can look at these original sources you say have evidence? Also, science does dismiss. Science would dismiss the notion that a herd of invisible unicorns live in my backyard. Until I presented evidence of that, of course. As a default, science dismisses anything where insufficient evidence is presented. That is simply because science doesn't take anything on anybody's word alone. Does this make is very conservative? Absolutely. But, the onus is on people to provide solid, objective, compelling evidence in support of ideas. Lastly, I do agree that science doesn't know everything. Many, many open questions at this time. But, don't confuse the fact that science doesn't have all the answers with a default stance to just believe in things like remote viewing. If anything, as I wrote above, with sketchy evidence, the default is to not believe something. That doesn't mean it doesn't warrant further investigation -- it just means that without compelling evidence, disbelief is the default state.

And they have become mainstream because there is a veritable wealth of evidence supporting what is mainstream. I don't think that the mainstream has much to say about any of these, however. Why the railing against the mainstream when it doesn't say much about any of these topics? If researchers uncover good answers about any of them, and support the answers with solid evidence, then they will become mainstream. But, right now, all these are open questions. Now, if you want to try to answer these questions, evidence will need to be presented. On a science forum, we don't accept an idea about these subjects, or any subject for that matter, without having evidence presented in support of that idea. Since this is standard operating procedure for how science works today -- again I for one am very glad we aren't in the Dark Ages anymore -- is it any wonder that evidence will be asked of your ideas when you try to answer these hard questions?

Considering how many of those institutions receive many millions of dollars to perform research to explore alternatives, correct flaws in the current 'mainstream', and discover brand new things, I'd argue that this statement is flawed from the start. In addition to that, I suspect that a significant number of working scientists employed at these institutions would absolutely love to be the one who finds a way to turn the mainstream on its head -- because that would mean that they are responsible for a major discovery. The great thing about what is mainstream today is that one can look over the evidence that made it mainstream. One can read the papers, can look at the experimental results, and basically do the complete opposite of just 'accept[ing] without question'. You might have to actually read some papers, though; it won't just be handed to you on a silver platter. 2012 is no longer the Dark Ages where a church or other all-controlling power tells you what to believe. If you want to question what is mainstream today, go and actually do some research and read the papers for the beginning that show step-by-step all the wealth of evidence as to why something became mainstream. Questions about why something is mainstream have answers, you just have to actually go look for them. This is not a contradiction. It isn't well-worded, however. I hope this is clearer: One does not just get to declare that two choices are 'equally viable'. Viability, in terms of scientific ideas, are very easily measured: how close to the predictions that are based on the idea agree with experimental evidence? A theory that predicts results with 0.3% error is NOT equally viable with one that predicts results with 17.8% error. The first is clearly superior. Only if the errors are essentially the same are two ideas considered equally viable. [edited for spelling]

I disagree. The point of physics is to make predictions as accurately as possible to agree with measurements. While the "for ordinary people to understand" is a nice-to-have, it certainly isn't a must-have. If that is your bar, there are about a billion other things that also fail to get over that bar. Just a few off the top of my head: television, computers, cars, and light bulbs. The average ordinary person doesn't understand how these work -- should we be letting ordinary people use them? On the other hand, thanks to some fairly complex models, television, computers, cars, and even light bulbs are pretty amazing, ubiquitous, and easy to use. But don't for a second think that the models describing them are simple. But, the physics are pretty good, because we have such good televisions, computers, cars, and light bulbs. In the end, the model with the best agreement wins. Why is this so hard to accept? Science is not a beauty contest -- it was in the Dark Ages, and I for one am glad we're past that. What you consider a beautiful or simple or easy model, I may consider ugly or complex or difficult. This is why agreement with measurement is the ultimate objective measure of how good a model is. Ugly or beautiful in anyone's eyes, if a model has a 0.1% error in its prediction, it is considered better than the model that has 2.5% error in its prediction. It really is that simple. And the examples you cite, the models were rejected in no small part because other models can along and made better and more accurate predictions. I almost guarantee something else will come along and make even better and more accurate predictions than what we have today. Our knowledge today is at least incomplete. Whether that next model is simpler to you or not is almost completely irrelevant, it just have to make more accurate predictions. So, really, I don't understand why you waste all this time decrying how 'religious' science is, when really you should be trying to make your model make as many accurate predictions as possible. You want to overturn the current model? You hate the idea of quarks, and all the other bit of physics as it stands in 2012? Ok, fine, show us a model that makes all the same predictions that the current model does, at least as good as the current model, and you will get attention. You will get people interested in your model. But all this rending of your clothes, gnashing your teeth, and whining about how unfair science is just doesn't help you achieve your goal.

The periodicity in that example is of the form [math]T(0) = T(2\pi)[/math] where the input to that function is the theta of the cylindrical coordinate system. If there is a kink or break in the ring, that statement may not hold anymore.

... probably ought to back THIS up with an example. Considering how the rest of this thread has gone, I'm suspecting that there is a good chance you've misinterpreted something. I think you should give the rest of us a chance to try to correct it, rather than just let you bluntly put down all of quark theory -- a theory that you've admitted in this thread that you don't know or understand very well. In fact, now that I write the above. Considering that you've admitted that you don't understand quark theory very well, what kind of hubris is it where you think you can judge it well enough to make a statement that 'quark theory's predictions are [...] vague' ? You might as well also claim that it smells like strawberries.

Very good. You are also using a series. An optimized one for the language you've picked. You know how that series was found? Through a lot of ways similar to those presented in this thread. Or did you not know that behind 'ATN' is also a series calculator of some sort? The computer doesn't just know the answer. It calculates it in ways not unlike what this thread has presented. I really think you are a missing the point -- granted, the thread hasn't been terribly focused. But, the point isn't to just use a built-in optimized series. But to explore how the various series behave.

Ok, but that Ramanujan series converges much faster than this one. That's kind of the point of this thread.

Maybe it is just a semantics thing. The word 'perfect' to me meant that it will make perfect predictions of the outcomes, which again I contend is impossible. Really, in this case we need the word perfect to be defined. Actually, there are a lot of things the OP needs to define. And actually write about. I am not really sure what the point in starting the thread was, considering so little was actually written in the first post.

I very much doubt this. Even in chess, there is some luck. Luck of your opponent having a cold. And even the GMs make blunders once in a great while. Nothing can be truly perfectly predictive.

did you just seriously post this? Everything in your 'currently' list is well supported with the possible exception of the Higgs particle, for which very recent evidence is being presented that it too exists. To be fair, the Higgs experiment needs to be repeated numerous times to be sure. The rest have mountains of evidence, if you actually cared to look at it. and it certainly is easy to move the goal posts later isn't it? In this very thread, you said that the only time travel that matters is the time travel of H.G. Wells & Star Trek. That is clearly not what is being discussed by Feynman, so really has no bearing on your argument at all. The simple truth is that you are being deliberately obstinate in the face of evidence, and you don't even have the respect to learn about the evidence to give them anywhere near a fair critique. The really silly thing is that there are issues one can talk about each and every thing on your list up there -- very compelling questions about each of them are still open. But to be hung up on some of the basic questions and decry that their belief is just a 'religion' is just ignoring the thousands of papers if evidence presented for them. By its very definition, it is not a religion if there is evidence for belief. So. You've shown that you care about this topic. You've stuck around a lot longer than most, and I think that that shows you care, anyway. What I don't get is why don't you care to learn about what the actual practicing scientists have written on these subjects? Not just the pop-sci generalizations. Why don't you actually learn what the evidence really is?

Any physical law that depends upon its position in an arbitrary coordinate system is poorly formed or poorly formulated. Clifford Truesdell has written extensively on this subject. Physical law should be able to be expressed in a coordinate-independent manner. Clever choice of a coordinate system can make solving a problem significantly easier. To whit -- the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid mechanics do care in the least if you try to apply them in a Cartesian coordinate system, cylindrical coordinate system, spherical coordinate system, or any other. But, if you ask me to solve for the velocity distribution of laminar flow in a circular pipe, I'm going to choose the cylindrical coordinate system every time. The equations certainly can be solved for the velocity distribution in a circular pipe using a Cartesian coordinate system -- and you will get the same answer as the cylindrical system -- it just takes a lot more carefully detailed mathematics. So, 'for the record', I strongly disagree with your notion of the importance of the location of a coordinate system's origin and the position of a chosen control volume.

It is germane because I think that the use of 'control volume' was grossly misapplied, and I was trying to point out the errors. It is germane because if the OP has the wrong impression of the concept of control volume, and he thinks that that wrong impression helps answer his question, then more harm than good has been done here. I just want the terms to be used as they are commonly used so that if someone else should ever happen upon this thread, that they ALSO don't get a wrong impression.

Or anywhere else.... a control volume, pretty much by definition is arbitrary. The physical laws you apply to the control volume are valid everywhere -- that's the point. Because when you make a clever choice of a control volume for a problem, you can make the math much more straightforward. It really has very little to do with the origin of whatever arbitrary coordinate system you choose to apply. I wonder if you aren't thinking about a numerical technique like finite volumes that usually are split into techniques where the node is cell-centered or face-centered. But again, while those are the two common techniques, they aren't the only ones. The math works in the finite volume method with the node located anywhere in the volume (with possible slight degradation of the quality of the numerical solution).

No. This is the danger of piecemeal putting things together. A Control Volume is just a mathematical construct to make imagining the situation easier. It has nothing to do with what state of matter you imagine a volume around, and in fact is quite applicable to solids. It is often useful to imagine how the various stresses and shears a solid may experience changes the shape of an initial control volume. Mass is actually an integral part of the control volume concept -- because very often analysis involving a control volume is conditional upon the control volume containing a constant amount of mass.

I think you'll find that the time-like coordinate is usually multiplied by a velocity of some sort (typically speed of light makes an appearance).