layman77

So, I've heard proponents of the three hard sciences, physics, biology, and chemistry say, that it isn't scientific or scientific enough. If so, who should you go to if you are having an emotional or mental problem, rather than a psycologist of psychiatrist? Also, I'm not sure they qualify as scientists per se, just like a medical doctor just uses the medical techniques/methods they've been taught, they don't actually perform research.

I wasn't sure whether I should have posted this here, or one of the biology forums.

I've heard some call it a "soft science" or a "social science" and some even fans of the hard science say it is not a science at all. Why is this? And if it isn't what would be a more scientific alternative approach?

Well, maybe it could acceptable. We tell them other things we don't believe exist either, like Santa Claus. Of course, you still get presents after you learn he doesn't exist.

Atheists are fond of saying that atheism is no more a religion that baldness is a hair color. But, this isn't exactly true. Strictly speaking atheism is the absence of belief in deities, not the total absence of religion. While most atheists are secular, couldn't one be religious if they're religion doesn't have any deities?

I've heard about this in the form of the casimir effect and how/somehow it could be used to create a warp drive http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-spaceflight.html But, I'm wondering, how could negative energy be used in this way? What I mean is, what you do is contract the space in front of you, expand it behind you, so the ship isn't moving, the space around it is. But, what would be the appartus/setup that would make use of the casimir effect to do this? Positive energy is pretty straightforward, you burn coal for example- to heat steam, the turn the turbine to turn the a coil of wire between two poles of a magnet, what would you use to contract the space in front of you and expand it behind you?

I can understand them being able to actually arrange the pre-grown cells onto a scaffold for growing organ, but will the printers ever actually be able to print the cells themselves? What would be the difficulties trying to do this, seems like it would be like trying to print a water balloon for the most part, hard to do, hard to keep it together as you are doing it.

I bought a whiteboard for our refrigerator with 4 attachable magnets on the back. They are rectangular magnets that I attached the magnets to the adhesives on the back, but when try to it attach it to the refrigerator, it can't even hold on to it! The white board just slides down the fridge to the floor. I guess I could get some stronger magnets to attach to the back instead. But, is there anything I can do to strengthen the magnets already there? What if I attached 4 more rectangular magnets to the back to the magnets already there, so say the North Pole side of the magnet sticking to the fridge would be attached to the south pole of the magnets I attach to them, and then I could attach it to the fridge again?

I think basically the fluctuations are read, frequency and amplitude and some specific patterns in them represent sounds, etc. Like if we were to put a single word repeating on a frequency, what the pattern would be. That would be a good example to show, and certain patterns are decoded. Ok, so frequency means the frequency is varied, and amplitude means the amplitude is varied, and certain patterns mean certain things. The reason I thought that perhaps in FM, the frequency stays the same, but the amplitude varies (even though it is called FM) is because if you set your radio to 98.5FM, the frequency would be changing to make the patterns of someone's voice/sound, etc, so if the frequency is changing wouldn't that mean that for fractions of a second it WOULDN'T be 98.5Mhz, and the radio wouldn't pick it up?

Thanks, but that's quite a mouthful, Well that third paragraph in particular. I don't know most of those terms. Of course I know about wikipedia, but those articles like many on it are very complicated and you need to first know them to be able to understand the article. That's quite a gripe I have with wikipedia. My vocabulary is decent. I'd guess I've heard most English words, but there's no need to be overcomplicated when you don't need to be. That's one thing my Government teacher used to say, that why don't they just write it some everyone will understand it? True, you can't understand some things without first understanding pre-requistites. You need to learn Trigonometry and Algebra to understand Calculus because these maths are part of it, but not always. I hadn't really caught on about it, I hadn't realized that only the amplitude is changed in an FM broadcast, and the changes somehow code to sound (like you said, the second paragraph) that would be a lot simpler to say.

Ok, so here's where I've got most of my information on it. This is part where I start to have trouble http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/radio7.htm So, does 98.5, Mhz mean that the wave oscillates at 98.5 million waves per second? Meaning it goes up to a peak then back to zero many times per second? What I don't understand is how you can put information on the wave. If you trasmitted at 98.5, it would just be that frequency, but a sound wave is totally different, it's frequency and amplitude vary quite wildly, not exactly at 98.5, how could you put that on top of a radio wave? This seems to help me a little bit. http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/projects/vss/docs/communications/1-how-is-data-put-on-radio-waves.html Certain fluctuations in the wave correspond to 1's and 0's, but that digital isn't it? Radio's were analog when they first started out. And, would varying the frequency or amplitude make it audible? If you tuned to 98.5 but the frequency frequently changed to put the information on it, then you wouldn't be able to run to that frequency, it would "blank out" as soon as someone spoke, wouldn't it?

Well, yeah, say I could just put on a helmet, hooked up to a tv and say I want to look at June 1st 1990 from 8PM-9PM, and it displays what I saw. Is this possible?

Just like a video camera does. I was told once by a psychiatric nurse who worked at a hospital that everything is recorded on your brain, not just sight either, that everything you've ever experienced is there, from all 5 of your senses. But the reason we can't recall it all is because most of it resided in our subconscious. You can remember specific facts when you specifically look for them, like phone numbers, addresses, passwords, directions, how to drive a car, etc. That your conscious is somewhat like a computer's RAM which stores something the computer is currently working, while the hard drive has information on all the data on the computer. If you view this, scientists are starting to use fMRI machines to read specific thoughts. An experiment I'd like to try is have them focus on a few specific dates they can actually remember, and see what parts of the brain the machine reads. Of course, everyone's memory of a day is not unique to someone else's. Your 9/11 may not have been the same as mine, but I wonder if the day will ever come where you can focus on any date, basically take a video playback of any time in your life, that video cameras may even become obselete. And someone could give more than just testimony but a video of what actually happened.

Also, shouldn't be see a greater density of stars/planets/matter in one direction, which would be where the big bang originated, where it started?

Posted this here because I was thinking light is a quanta of energy, was wondering if I should've posted it in classical physics. I've heard that every spectra of the EM spectrum (radio waves/microwaves/visible light/infrared,etc) has a certain wavelength, but I'm just curious about the research that led to this. This has been experimentally verified correct? What is the experiment you do to show this? And, each of the spectra on the EM spectrum, all them is a form of electro-magnetic radiation, and electric and magnetic fields are at right angles to each other, is there an experiment to show this too?