Sorcerer

On my confusion over composite bosons and fermions. Is there a Ven diagram somewhere which would show all this interconnectedness? Can you explain to me, why the equation E=Mc2 wouldn't allow bosons to be interchangeable with fermions at the high energies which existed in the big bang? And since -E = -Mc2 (I don't trust my math when I've been drinking lol, wait I got it, thats a quadratic?), why can't the bosons (which are their own anitparticle) produce the anti particles in the fermion group? Wouldn't the Pauli exclusion principle prevent fermions being first? thanks ajb, in your opinion is the standard model going the way of Newtons theory of gravity with regards to Einsteins? What model would you pick for the next best thing? I'll look into electroweak symmetry breaking, but maybe once my heads stopping humming from the standard model.

I just got myself lost in The Standard Model. I started with trying to understand why baryon number must be conserved and why protons can't decay, then confused the hell out of myself as to why mesons can exist then, if solitary quarks cannot. Anyway since my heads spinning with this mess of a model, I want to ask the original question I was trying to answer. If we could reduce all particle types down to their minimum constituents, which particles would remain? If these particles were the only ones in existence at the moment of the big bang, would they be capable of forming the makeup of particles in the universe we see now? E= Mc^2 shows that matter and energy are interchangeable. (I'm guessing because I need the questions above answered first). But if it all came down to photons and bosons (I don't even know why mesons are in that group, something to do with spin, just messy, same applies for composite fermions, the grouping doesn't seem necessary), could all the matter we observe today be created in those high energies? It was also interesting to read about the Pauli exclusion principle. If two fermions cannot occupy the same space and fermions are constituents of baryons. Then in an infinitely dense singularity, wouldn't the only possible thing which could exist and occupy that space be bosons? Another question that arose from that speculation (still need the first two questions answered ) is that if baryon number must be conserved and baryons can't be present in a singularity due to the Pauli exclusion principle, then where do baryons exist in black holes? Doesn't that mean they must decay? Doesn't that mean the conservation of baryon number should be scrapped? Oh, I almost forgot, since everything has an antiparticle except photons and bosons, is there an inverse E=Mc^2 equation, which allows them to produce antimatter? Does that mean that photons and bosons are their own antiparticle?

I agree that leachate from livestock into waterways is a major problem, and there is probably a high loss of nutrients from the inefficient and overuse of fertiliser in agriculture, but all the same, adding to this by flushing more nutrients out to sea isn't helping anything. If we can reduce demand on fertilisers from other sources (ie manufactured and mined), by replacing it with fertiliser which is in direct cyclic connection (fertilser ----> food ----> waste --> fertiliser), surely we are increasing efficiency and sustainability. If you look at the omniprocessor, http://janickibioenergy.com/s200.html , you might find a middle ground, where effluent is used for generating power, water is recycled and the ash remaining can be used as fertiliser. I haven't looked into the question of green house gas emissions from burning effluent to generate power and how that compares to greenhouse gas emissions from oxidation ponds and/or burning of bio-gas reclaimed from sewerage. Perhaps if we are unable to move away from intensive livestock farming which pollutes waterways, we could use the omniprocessor in a similar fashion to clean up the water and remove stock effluent. Antibiotic resistance is already a major problem through their use in agriculture. I see the problem, if antibiotics are introduced to bacteria which are in direct contact with the food chain, instead of introduced to bacteria in the oceans. I guess it is simply a matter of processing the waste correctly and finding ways to minimise if not eliminate the problem. On a tangent, if we stopped using certain antibiotics for a century or, so, cycling through groups of antibiotics, there would be no selective pressure to retain resistance for the bacteria and those antibiotics would become effective again.

@Endy: Yes, we can produce our own fertiliser, but if we need to replace nitrogen when otherwise we wouldn't, we are fixing a problem we might not need to cause. I guess if it's cheap enough, then the economic question might not be significant, however what about the environmental one? @John Yes, and it is common practice to alternate crops, I mentioned that "Keeping the amount of carbon down and the amount of nitrogen up is important, traditionally fields are rotated with a legume crops being grown and dug in between harvests." But, all things equal, the roundup ready crop still suffers a loss during cultivation, it might not be significant, since when the C:N ratio is restored to be favourable the organic matter can break down, but there still is a difference in C:N ratios for a period of time. Carbon and nitrogen were used to highlight one way round up ready monocultures, which are even more uniform than conventional monocultures, might disrupt nutrient cycles by altering species diversity in soils and around the field. Ecosystems are complex and reduction in one area can cause imbalance in other areas, it may alter the microbiota in a way that the effieciency of various food webs which leave available nutrients for plants is disrupted. It just seems odd to me that we would want to add things back to a system when we could prevent the need to. Anyway, the major question was "I was wondering if there is any research into how round up ready monocultures influence soil communities and subsequently their effect on soil fertility?" I'll go back and highlight that.

Yes I mentioned that it is common practice in some developing countries. The rest of the world still continues to waste resources for no reason though.

Please elaborate, I understand it's probable we will be mining electronic waste dumps for rare earth elements among other things in the centuries to come.

I'm being lazy and don't want to do any research, but it occurred to me while thinking of possible long term consequences of Round up ready monocultures, that the type and ratios of organic matter, which would normally be left on a field after harvest and dug back in before replanting would vary significantly from the traditional farming practices, which use less efficient methods of removing weeds. Let's take Maize as an example, it obviously has its own nutrient profile, carbon and nitrogen ratios are very important when determining efficiency of composting and returning usable nutrients to the soil. Keeping the amount of carbon down and the amount of nitrogen up is important, traditionally fields are rotated with a legume crops being grown and dug in between harvests. If there is a lesser ammount of weeds in a feild, which I assume is the result of round up ready crops, then there is going to be a different nutrient profile and different ratios of carbon to nitrogen. Weeds tend to be herbacious, and thus higher in nitrogen than maize, weeds also include legumes which fix nitrogen. And that's just the carbon and the nitrogen, different plants have different efficiencies in the ability to uptake other nutrients, when they return to the soil, those nutrients are available in a different form, which may be easier for other crops to use. So a variety of plants while also competing for nutrients can also ironically then aid other plants in the ability to utilise them. Local fauna is dependant on types of flora available, how do these mono cultures impact the types and variety of animal species which via consumption, defecation and death, are part of the cycle which returns organic matter and nutrients to the soil? Assuming a reduction, or atleast an alteration in species diversity, how does that in turn effect the nutrient profile of the soil? (This would also be a pertinent question with regards to BT crops, which directly kill insects, perhaps, since they are an input to the system, with minimal loss via consumption, BT crops would actually have a positive effect on organic matter in this way. But I digress.) Soil fauna and microbiota is influenced by nutrient availability and organic matter content and also predation and other relationships by above fauna. These help to recycle nutrients and influence soil environment, which subsequently also effects nutrient availibility to crops. The nitrogen cycle being a prominent example. I was wondering if there is any research into how round up ready monocultures influence soil communities and subsequently their effect on soil fertility? Assuming there is a significant negative effect on soil fertility: From a simply economic viewpoint. How much are the benefits gained by profits from increased yeilds offset by costs in the requirement for applying additional fertilisers? From an environmental viewpoint. What would the increase in carbon dioxide emissions be with the need for added fertiliser? What could be some long term consequences for soil ecosystems, species diversity and how would it effect that ecosystems ability to return to its original state? In America, are these kind of long term and deep reaching effects required to be researched and indentified for cost benefit analysis before release of a GMO into the environment for commercial use? Thanks for reading, your time is appreciated, if you'd care to comment your input will be appreciated. http://www.google.com/url?url=http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/PA_NRCSConsumption/download%3Fcid%3Dnrcs142p2_052823%26ext%3Dpdf&rct=j&frm=1&q=&esrc=s&sa=U&ei=oX5YVd3iF5Tf8AWt9YGwAw&ved=0CBkQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNGNRSS1jF7RGoekDmm-0nGKA_WGhg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-to-nitrogen_ratio Finally overcame my laziness and googled it, looks like I've got some bed time reading, it will surely put me to sleep. http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/documents/cpu_roundup_ready_crops_glyphosate_and_micronutrients.pdf However this doesn't address the macronutrients, specifically the C:N ratio.

I was thinking of cycles in the environment and how argiculture and civilisation has caused imbalances with the natural cycles. Humanity in particular has outstripped the natural replenishment of nutrients in the soil. Intensive agriculture removes the organic matter locally and moves it as a food source to be consumed by people, who then flush what isn't digested down the toilet and out to sea. Pre-agriculture hunter gatherers would have removed far less from any particular spot, and subsequently redeposited the waste back onto the land. Modern agriculture compensates for this net loss of nutrients, by resupplying the land via synthesised, or mined and imported fertilisers. Our centralised sanitation infrastructure in most of the modern world, is designed to dispose of our effluent into waterways or the sea. The cycle by which those nutrients would again reach arable land is an extremely long process, I'm thinking in most cases, hundreds of millions of years. In some developed countries it is common practice to add waste water back onto fields. There are health risks associated, but systems to counter these could easily be devised. Waste for fertiliser should easily be cheaper than manufactured or mined fertilisers. The production and importation of fertilisers contributes to the input of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, (another cycle which we are vastly imbalancing), and the oxidation of effluent to minimise its health risks also contributes Carbon Dioxide and Methane. Where conversely the use of effluent as a source organic matter and nutrients to increase crop yields would absorb carbon from the atmostphere via an increased volume of plants photosynthesising. This is obviously a problem and not sustainable. It is ironic how santiation has allowed our population to grow, which in turn has increased our demand on agriculture, which has in turn increased our rate of removing nutrients from the soil and flushing them out to sea. This is a broken cycle, (or an extremely elongated one), these impacts we have on imbalancing cycles within the ecosystem leads to problems a prominent one being global warming. In future centuries, will we perhaps have a problem of nutrient defict in soils and kick ourselves and the stupidity of our ancestors for litterally flushing the land down the toilet. There are many ways of going about solving this problem, but there are many cultural obstacles in the way, our natural tendancy to experience the emotion of disgust at the thought of effluent is most notable among these. This "yuck factor" needs to be over come with education and rational thought. Decentralisation of sanitation is a possible solution, where people treat their waste locally and either export it back to farmers, or use it to fertilise their own locally produced crops. I think decentralisation of urban living can benefit us and the environment in many ways. Local production and self sustainability where possible, with minimum outside input, would reduce carbon footprints significantly. I think this perhaps will be humanities next big cultural shift. I have also see just the kind of technology needed to provide it. http://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Omniprocessor-From-Poop-to-Potable This combined with locally produced solar power, local storage (Tesla's Home Battery), local production of produce and local water collection, storage and reuse is a direction which can lead us to rebalancing our impact on the planet and minimising our interference in natural cycles which replenish our essential resources and maintain healthy ecosystems. So anyway, this was just the thoughts that I had recently, thought I'd share and I am wondering what yours are on the subject.

Is simple awareness of the fact of confirmation bias enough to reduce its impact on having an open mind and being able to consider all information critically and on it's own merit? I find myself overwhelmed by information these days, and I need to filter that which I should consider and that which I shouldn't. Often I select by what the source is, however I have sometimes seen the same article posted by two sepearte sources, one which I typically disregard and one which I would typically consider reading. I have a feeling some sources will be selective in their information for a particular agenda, or because of a particular ethos, some credible information maybe fit with their agenda and this is a facet of their confirmation bias. I also feel that some sources will liberally sprinkle rational articles in with a mutlitude of pseudoscience, so that it can be hard to tell the difference when glossing over the information, some appears true and thus disguises the lies via a herd effect. Finally, if confirmation bias isn't as important an effect as is currently thought, and someone points this out in their research, where it is overwhelmed by research which shows it is important, would paradoxically, confirmation bias, lead us to disregard the research which contradicts its effect?

Surely if there's a mechanism for a universe "just suddenly" appearing in the big bang, then also this mechanism could be expanded to a universe appearing in any form? Something similar to this perhaps? http://www.space.com/17217-big-bang-phase-change-theory.html

Sorry people another wiki page gave me this: "A few minutes into the expansion, when the temperature was about a billion (one thousand million; 109; SI prefix giga-) kelvin and the density was about that of air, neutrons combined with protons to form the universe's deuterium and helium nuclei in a process called Big Bang nucleosynthesis.[28] Most protons remained uncombined as hydrogen nuclei. As the universe cooled, the rest mass energy density of matter came to gravitationally dominate that of the photon radiation. After about 379,000 years the electrons and nuclei combined into atoms (mostly hydrogen); hence the radiation decoupled from matter and continued through space largely unimpeded. This relic radiation is known as the cosmic microwave background radiation.[29] The chemistry of life may have begun shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, during a habitable epoch when the universe was only 10–17 million years old.[30][31][32]" And this: " The theory of BBN gives a detailed mathematical description of the production of the light "elements" deuterium, helium-3, helium-4, and lithium-7. Specifically, the theory yields precise quantitative predictions for the mixture of these elements, that is, the primordial abundances at the end of the big-bang. In order to test these predictions, it is necessary to reconstruct the primordial abundances as faithfully as possible, for instance by observing astronomical objects in which very little stellar nucleosynthesis has taken place (such as certain dwarf galaxies) or by observing objects that are very far away, and thus can be seen in a very early stage of their evolution (such as distant quasars). As noted above, in the standard picture of BBN, all of the light element abundances depend on the amount of ordinary matter (baryons) relative to radiation (photons). Since the universe is presumed to be homogeneous, it has one unique value of the baryon-to-photon ratio. For a long time, this meant that to test BBN theory against observations one had to ask: can all of the light element observations be explained with a single value of the baryon-to-photon ratio? Or more precisely, allowing for the finite precision of both the predictions and the observations, one asks: is there some range of baryon-to-photon values which can account for all of the observations? More recently, the question has changed: Precision observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation[9][10] with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) give an independent value for the baryon-to-photon ratio. Using this value, are the BBN predictions for the abundances of light elements in agreement with the observations? The present measurement of helium-4 indicates good agreement, and yet better agreement for helium-3. But for lithium-7, there is a significant discrepancy between BBN and WMAP, and the abundance derived from Population II stars. The discrepancy is a factor of 2.4―4.3 below the theoretically predicted value and is considered a problem for the original models,[11] that have resulted in revised calculations of the standard BBN based on new nuclear data, and to various reevaluation proposals for primordial proton-proton nuclear reactions, especially the abundances of 7Be(n,p)7Li versus 7Be(d,p)8Be.[12]" Is the LHC able to test this? Do any hypotheses posit the universe could've began instanteously at the moment radiation "decoupled"? Why do we assume there was time before that if we can't observe anything?

I was just quickly looking and couldn't find the answer, wiki says the age of the universe is 13.8 billion years. WMAP took observations of the CMBR and wiki says this: "NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) project's nine-year data release in 2012 estimated the age of the universe to be (13.772±0.059)×109 years (13.772 billion years, with an uncertainty of plus or minus 59 million years).[2] However, this age is based on the assumption that the project's underlying model is correct; other methods of estimating the age of the universe could give different ages. Assuming an extra background of relativistic particles, for example, can enlarge the error bars of the WMAP constraint by one order of magnitude.[11] This measurement is made by using the location of the first acoustic peak in the microwave background power spectrum to determine the size of the decoupling surface (size of the universe at the time of recombination). The light travel time to this surface (depending on the geometry used) yields a reliable age for the universe. Assuming the validity of the models used to determine this age, the residual accuracy yields a margin of error near one percent.[12]" So when I talk about the age of the universe, what can I actually say for certain (ie the universe is atleast X years old), what is the length of time from now to the CMBR? I'm assuming there was time needed for the universe to cool down and light to permeate ofcourse. What other models have been propsed which give different ages for the universe?

Would that be a good thing or a bad thing. lol. Are superorganisms more resistant to extinction?

Well I'm trying to envisage a singularity in the past, singularities in the present (if they exist) follow these rules, observing something in space is the same as observing something in time. So if we look back towards a singularity at the beggining of our universe we would see an event horizon and we would see everything stretched towards it infinitely. Where did I go wrong?

Feel free to edit the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_horizon#Interacting_with_an_event_horizon

Isn't it the horizon of all events? What happens if we look the other way towards the future? (sorry completely offtopic)

I thought the obvious hypothesis would be that at some point in size of the universe's gravity over comes expansion and then it collapses into a singularity. However then if the accelerating expansion we observe today isn't uniform, how can we say we are a typical observer, the typical observer back then wouldn't have observed anything like this, it would have been infinitely accelerating. But yes what you linked is another solution/hypothesis that works. However how can the universe be infinitely old and the 2nd law of thermodynamics be true? Wouldn't we currently be experiencing "Heat Death". Ok, so I'm not an expert at all, but I've read if a distant observer viewed an object falling into a singularity, it would never acutally see it cross the event horizon. What if we took this idea as we looked back in time towards the initial singularity, the entire universe being the observer of the past would never actually see itself reach the origin? Does that make any sense?

When Hubble first observed the expansion of the universe, the obvious conclusion was that if we extrapolate backwards, there was a point in time where the size of space was 0. Now we have observed that space is expanding at an accelerating rate. If we visualise the graphs of these two, with time being the x axis and the 3 dimensions of space's size being the y axis. In the uniform expansion model the graph is linear with a 1:1 gradient and neatly crossing the origin. But, if we visualise this graph by extrapolating backwards from a universe with accelerating expansion, the line forms an asymptote with the x axis pushing the origin back to infinity. So how can there have been a singularity? Or how can the universe be finite in age?

Very good point. Ok, so I probably know as much if not less about this than you but, I am guessing the slight difference between the ratio of matter and antimatter is due to their CP symmetry. But that's just a guess. Perhaps it is only probability that a black hole can evaporate, it's just as likely that it will continue to grow. It's like a VP pair is a toss of a coin and since each "roll" is independant, over time it is possible for enough mass to escape for the BH to no longer form an event horizon. And my last guess would be, the mass/energy needed for the existence of the VP pair is borrowed from the black hole. Thus even if an antimatter particle escaped and a matter particle entered the BH, half of that borrowed mass/energy would still be lost. As the antimatter particle drifts off and annihilates ( or even if it doesn't ) with a matter particle away from the event horizon, the result is a net loss to the black hole. From the wiki "Physical insight into the process may be gained by imagining that particle-antiparticle radiation is emitted from just beyond the event horizon. This radiation does not come directly from the black hole itself, but rather is a result of virtual particles being "boosted" by the black hole's gravitation into becoming real particles.[11] As the particle-antiparticle pair was produced by the black hole's gravitational energy, the escape of one of the particles takes away some of the mass of the black hole.[12]" Which is the simple version and it alludes to the black holes gravitational energy and therefore mass being used to create the VP pair. So I guess my #3 was the most correct.

Is space smooth or made up of discrete points a planck length in diameter?

I've this idea, assuming the universe continues to go on expanding at an accelerating rate forever. It is possible for virtual particles(VP) to come into existence, they however need to borrow energy or mass, from another part of the universe, during accelerated expansion, there comes a time when every point in space expanding at a rate (faster than the speed of light) which means every point is seperated from every other by an event horizon. VPs, which are particle/antiparticle pairs will be seperated by this event horizon and cannot annihilate to return the energy back. So the universe can lose energy, but gain mass, as follows the equation E=mc^2. Considering the energy which is inflation or dark energy (not necessarily the same, but I'm sure there's a strong link), which is energy that accelerates the universes expansion. If the VP stay in existence, it is possible for the energy to be removed from this expansion energy (dark energy). Given enough time, eventually all the energy which is accelerating the universes expansion can be converted into mass. (It could all occur simultaneously if there was a probability of that, but I was trying not to use infinities). Somwhere towards this point the expansive force (dark energy) would be outweighed by a larger contractive force, gravity, given by the mass of VPs. The universe would collapse under it's own gravity and something very much resmbling what we observe at the beginning of our universe/ a big bang would occur. Much like the rebound of a star collapsing under its own gravity, this big bang is like the last universes supernova. Perhaps this is what inflation is too, as the VP are able to come back into contact and annihilate again in the big bang or shortly thereafter, they give that energy back to the expansion of space. This triggers inflation and space accelerates to a point where it creates event horizons between VP pairs, energy again is removed and the expansion rapidly slows down. Over time some of the VPs again annihilate and this steadily accumulates to appear as the accelerated expansion we call dark energy. Thoughts? (Is there any reason why the dark energy and mass wouldn't find an equilibrium at some point instead of crossing the tipping point for the collapse. Could the universe just end up a steady state model?)

Why is it that the decay product of a normal Neutron is called anti matter, ie the electron anti neutrion, which the decay product of antimatter, the antineutron is normal matter, ie the neutrino. What makes a neutrino a normal particle and an electron anti neutrino an anti particle? Sorry, wikipedia is my only source. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antineutron Should the entry also include a decay where a antineutrino is produced for conservation of energy?

Thanks guys, so for my second question. Since a simple switch between negative and positve don't commute, ie A * B = AB and -A * -B = AB (as well, not -AB) Then what would be required to change the equations that have been developed around this, is it as simple as just inverting all the positive and negative signs or would the whole thing need to be re-written. What implications would this have for other equations based off Maxwells, such as Einsteins special relativity. How far does the knock on effect go. Or does it not even begin? I found John Cuthbers post interesting as when I asked my dad the same question he said the convention came about because of the elements used in the first batteries, one was higher on the periodic table so it was assumed that what was moving to it was negative (or something like that didn't really make sense to me).

Took me a sleep on it, but I realised that positive and negative don't commute. IE negative * negative = positive. Athough I don't see any reference to positive or negative values in the wiki of Maxwell's equations while only vaguely understanding it. So how would it effect things if we switched the signs? Would it just be alot of equations would have to be rewritten? Would this have any implications for all the theories derived from Maxwell's equations?

I don't know, that's why I was asking. Do psuedo vectors have postive and negative values and are these values based on anything objective or simply their opposite positions on a number line? Because if so, they could be inverted too. (without knowing what a pseudovector is or bothering to look it up)