Sorcerer

I was just reading this article http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news/newsid=41662.php I was only able to read the referenced papers abstract, what I want to know is how they know if/when an atom tunneled? What measure of change shows this happened? How can tunnelling be distinguished from movement of a more local atom, if the atoms are identical how can they be sure? I'm just beginning some reading on quantum tunnelling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling I'm wondering if anyone knows what the classically insurmountable barrier is here, there is no mention of it in the article. Is it the lasers which contain the lattice? My reading leads me to a question, is there a standard moment of time in quantum mechanics, if not surely there must be a gap between measurements and they cannot be continuous, why didn't any atoms tunnel then? It seems stupid I guess because it's indistinguishable from the simpler alternative, but why can't the atoms tunnel out and back between measurement and so appear not to move? Could it be interpreted that the atoms actually have tunneled and the measurement is a quantum shadow/ghost, an artefact of the experiment being observed simply because energy is being expended on retaining a measurement which is no longer current? Is the anything wrong with an interpretation where the atoms exist in a superposition of tunneled and not tunneled? And we are just biased by a prior measurement to assuming they're in the former state? Are any of these questions/ideas testable/falsifiable have any of them been the subject of experiment yet?

Some god isn't omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent then? An omnipresent god would still exist in hell. An omniscient god would have knowledge of Satan's repentance. An omnipotent god would be able to be there, hear and act.

Since when does religion follow reason lol. Simply because I can. Actually the view I gave is a very common explanation for the problem of evil, the anecdote goes something like: does dark exist? No dark is the absence of light. Similarly evil doesn't actually exist it is just the absence of good. http://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/justintaylor/2011/10/04/ten-foundational-verses-for-eternal-punishment-in-hell/ The Christian god is not omnibenevolent whoever says such is out of touch with their bible or believes that torture can be a good action. The god of the bible is only said to good for those who follow him.

The names are of secondary importance to the functions. Not much is really being taught or tested when a few percentage points of an exam is simply a diagram with pictures and labels. If a student described a ribosome and it's function but named every part a b c d etc the more important knowledge is still there. In some ways the appearance of knowledge can be faked by remembering names and the order they fit in a scheme but lacking the knowledge of their functions. Trust me I've bullshit my way through many exams in my life. If I had to define all the jargon I used, I would've been screwed. Anyway we're well off topic here.

That's all part of the job. Our codes so different because our roads our city layouts and our population is very different. I imagine traffic management on one of your main motorways is pretty similar to our traffic management on our motorways though. You probably have 100 times the volume of traffic, but once it reaches our kind of volumes safety is pretty much maxed out, bar just closing the road.

Those tripods wouldn't be compliant with our TTM. Stands must be collapsible and stand no more than 15cm, I think, when hit by a vehicle so they don't anchor it/make it swerve. There's also no room for supplementary signs and the stand looks too short, it must be 1.5m for lower traffic volume work and even bigger for higher level roads. https://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/code-temp-traffic-management/copttm.html There would've been a lot of money to be made in design and manufacture of TTM gear about 5 years ago before the earthquake hit. But the markets kind of flooded now. Plus once a company is using 1 type of gear mixing in new stuff becomes untidy. From New Zealand's code of practice for temporary traffic management : Sign stands and/or supports must be designed to ensure they: will not cause significant damage to a vehicle if struck by one are stable under all reasonably expected weather conditions and air turbulence from passing traffic, and will not present a hazard to vehicles, including bicycles, after being knocked or falling over, ie the signs support and stand must lie relatively flat with no part more than 150mm above the ground surface. Sandbagging is an effective method of securing signs. Signs must not be secured by hanging a weight from any part of the sign. Concrete and heavy steel (truck wheel rims, welded water pipe, etc) must not be used as a base for signs. Where ballast is used on a sign stand or base it must: be designed so that it cannot roll be constructed from hessian, rubber or plastic bags containing a soft granular material, and be no higher than 300mm above ground level. Sign bases must: be designed so they cannot roll be able to be placed/disassembled to a height equal to or less than 150mm be designed to break away from the rest of the sign support system on impact.

It's true what you say, but I consider rote learning to be risky in that it is essentially the same as dogma. Of course most schools teach correct, or atleast correct when simplified, facts by rote, the important information which should be taught is how things work and how those mechanisms are linked and interact between various field of study. It's fine knowing what an aeroplane is and being able to recall the various names of parts and the names of the forces. But the names are actually the least important part. If you forget a wing is called a wing and lift is called lift, but can describe how faster air is lower pressure than slower moving air and that creates a force that's more important. Or take cell biology, most final year highschool bio classes will have you memorise all the cell organelles and their normal positions and even briefly their functions. But linking together all those processes into a unit which provides self sustained metabolism isn't considered necessary. The names take first importance, when its the functions and interaction that are of primary importance.

In many ways yes, but we must remember our knowledge is almost always taught to us backwards thus without active questioning preventing any attempt to consider the opposing answer. For instance I was told young that smoking is bad for people's health. That was just stated as true, if it wasn't true I would've accepted it for years until I decided to question it. I was never posed the question, "is smoking bad for you?" I was never given a chance to begin with I don't know. I was never given any information about how it's bad for you until many years later. Any questions I asked were returned circularly "why is smoking bad for you?", "because it damages your health". Most likely because the topic of cancer and death was thought to be beyond me... IMO a ridiculous taboo, probably resulting from ones inherently internal fear of death. So like religious dogma I was doomed to accept blindly smoking is bad for you as true. I could have been told the opposite. Anyway I'm off to have a smoke because someone once told me being a rebel is cool. Pity they never posed it as a question.

Thanks this is helpful for the larger signs where we use multiple sandbags. The small ones however only use 1, sometimes 2 when 1 just isn't enough, that in the case of being on a hill or just in some crazy natural spot of a wind eddy. I can reasonably predict where the strong winds will come from, in summer the foehn wind is a North West that is the most gusty and in winter plus spring/autumn storms it's almost always a direct southerly or a South West wind. I normally do account for this by putting more bags on the up wind leg (I hope you meant upwind,you said down wind,but from the latter statement of distance from fulcrum I can see you meant up). Funny you should say, I've seen donut shaped sand bags designs for the small bases. They're not used often though, the cost is high in comparison to a regular sandbag with very little practical benefit and they are inefficient at using space when stored/transported. Any ideas on how effective an aero foil would be and what kind of design it would have? It'd be easy enough to have it free spinning so it'd self align with the wind.

I think he was alluding to the danger of having absolute certainty in knowledge, even that backed by good evidence, to the point where it delays or even prevents acceptance of an alternative. Fortunately however most rational scientists will eventually be swayed to accept the new view, which should only be seen as a better model/theory, more accurately describing reality, but not blindly accepted as a 100% perfect description that can never change, or even not contain a possibility of being 100% incorrect. The comparison on religion I don't think was made on the point of the existence of God, but rather the extra beliefs that are attached. For instance some religious people will hold on with fanaticism to the idea that God has condoned the use of murder for a "crime" as simple as a lack of belief in said god. While simultaneously agreeing god has commanded they shall not kill. And when confronted either stare in bewildered cognitive dissonance as the sound of a strong breeze passes between their ears or concoct some suitable 5 course word meal seasoned with enough logical fallacies to teach Sunday school. And that's if you're lucky, most likely they'll just torture and murder you. The best default is indeed that which holds no firm conviction but yet isn't closed to consider, create and investigate possibilities. It is however important to be able to discriminate between the many unknowns and lend your energy to those with merit. Waiting to be fed the answers by authority limits the ability to question for having lack of practice. It is not necessary to be theist to think vaccines cause autism or that global warming is a hoax or that smoking isn't bad for you. In these cases the default stance of no opinion shouldn't continue and normally isn't even known prior to the supposed answer being introduced and the question only coming later. People need to be able to decide between real things which can be seen when simplified as a dichotomy.

Thanks, could you clear something else up? Where is the fulcrum? Is it on the furthest leg in relation to the direction of the wind (ie SE corner leg when the wind is NW) or is it in the center of the base? Suppose the prevailing wind with intensity to knock over a sign is a North West wind, should I then place my sandbag on the leg of the base closest to the north west? Unfortunately the signs must be a single solid reflective piece, adding extra holes would stop them being compliant. Also they must be collapsible in case a car runs them over, so that prevents adding a brace to make a support against the wind. What about aero foils could you add something which creates down force to counter the sideways then tilting force of the wind?

The difference between a chemical reaction removing oxygen and a fusion reaction removing the reactive partner of oxygen, is that a chemical reaction can cycle with earth's geology, eventually, since the system (excepting radioactive decay and diffusion into space/input via comets/meteorites and space dust) is balanced, the original state of the system can return. Converting hydrogen, which would otherwise be bound to oxygen, into helium means that the chemical balance of the earth is altered. Without removal of the added helium and the addition of hydrogen from an exo planetary source the system will irrevocably be altered. I'm not saying it's not worth it, but I am wondering what effects this might possibly have. I agree, but fusion technically isn't renewable. And may be a long way off, or never achieved. Whereas there is a massive fusion reactor all ready to go about 1 AU away, it might not be completely renewable either, but it will last longer than the habitable future lifetime of earth.

Good point. Just to clarify it's an increase in oxygen, I realise you most likely made a typo there. Yes certainly it would afford us and other life time to adapt to the gradual increase but we would be knowingly and willingly influencing this environmental selective pressure. There are a myriad of possible scenarios which could result, could we be certain that we would be happy with every one? You also make an assumption that our energy use will remain at present levels, wouldn't it be, even with advances in efficiency, more likely to increase. Wouldn't the temptation to use more energy due to false a perception the consequences would be negligible encourage us to use as much as possible. If we increased the rate of water conversion to helium and oxygen to now match CO2 increase except over 250k years not 1 million. Could we reasonably assume life would easily adapt then?

You give your options with such certainty that you have considered every possibility. Correctly you do say in the religions where Satan exists, but since there need not be any justifications for the creation of a religion, you never considered the one I just made up now. What about : Satan is a necessary creation and God's plans include his existence. None of God's actions are evil and neither is Satan, Satan is simply a tool god uses to measure the worth of the souls he created. Satan is God's test and he rewards those who resist, those who do not he doesn't punish but the alternative to the reward is no reward and by default those souls end up with Satan. So we see the lack of reward as punishment, when no reward is just the default. Rather than a dichotomy where good is +1 and evil the opposite at -1, it is a dichotomy where good is +1 and lack of good 0. As humans with greed we can't see how our selfish desire for the reward creates the illusion of the lack of it being a punishment. Not wanting the reward at all is probably more virtuous, it can be obtained without attempt, rather nothing is needed, it requires actions which Satan desires to become excluded. With out those actions possible all other actions by default will be good. For MonDie : this is independence as it relates to probability, can you show that in an infinite number of independent trails with 2 possible results that both results must occur? Or conversely can you show that if after an infinite amount of trials if one of 2 possibilities doesn't occur then it's probability of occurring must be 0? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_(probability_theory) I assume you were viewing it as this, conditional, where you had an infinite set containing all choices and for there to be free will both choices must be in the set. After an infinite amount of trials, then it must occur that both choices are made. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_probability I will accept your argument if you can show that independent probabilities trialed an infinite number of times must result in the occurrence of all possibilities. Or if you can show that choice is always like conditional probability, where previous choices must always influence future ones. The argument is more easily and clearly made if you just consider god. If God is free to choose and he is capable of making all choices and he is eternal, then he must eventually choose a choice which isn'tgood. Therefore god is not omnibenevolent.

By that reasoning it would be equivalent after 1 million years, no? Assuming use of fusion for a billion years the problem would be 1000 times worse. Do we ignore the issue because the time scale for it to eventuate seems incomparably large in relation to our own lifetimes?

The argument is bound by a lot of hidden premises that are assumptions of the ecclesiastical god. I am uncertain that Christianity accepts the premise that given sufficient time all beings will be saved by God. I've never heard this belief before. If this can't be shown the argument isn't valid. An easy way out would also be to assume our view of good is simplistic when compared to God's omniscience. God doesn't deems it good to provide some who aren't deserving with salvation and deems it good and appropriate to punish them eternally. However I now wonder why I even bothered to comment because the whole arguments initial assumption of God's existence has no supporting evidence and all qualities this fictional god has are therefore fictional themselves. State your assumptions and list the premises ie the qualities of god/define the god you're referring to. Oh I get you now. Free will means he's free to reject god and each choice is independent of the last, there is no limit to how many times he can choose not to accept god, he can do so eternally and not violate free will. It is only necessary for there to be the option for him to accept not that he must eventually do so. To use an example a coin flip has a 50/50 chance of heads or tails, it is entirely possible although infinitesimally likely that given an infinite number of flips the coin will continually land on only one option. The other option is always a possibility at every flip but having the option doesn't dictate it must occur. It is the same for a dichotomous choice and free will. The choices options being heads or tails and the choice being the flip. There is no law which says both options must occur even once in an infinite number of flips. I think the problem here is that you're viewing choice as not being independent of prior choice at each moment. The premise that an available choice must eventually made given an infinite number of decisions or the option isn't really a possibility is false. Options aren't required to occur in a scenario for them to have existence since possibility is an abstract thing. If assumed true, your reasoning could be extended using god then as the subject. God has free will, he is eternal, at some point god must choose to be evil or that choice doesn't exist and he has no free will. What if, when Satan chooses to repent as his one good act in eternity, God then chooses to reject that as his one evil act in all eternity?

The conclusion, if we assume the effect comes from outside the observable universe would be that there are other entities which act in a way analogous to how gravity works, so it then becomes reasonable to assume that there are bodies with mass which are external to our observable universe. By definition the universe would then have to be expanded to included higher dimensional space or a greater 4d timespace and these entities. (Higher dimensional space or a greater 4d space is necessary because otherwise over what space is the gravity able to effect us?). To assume that these massive bodies have any other property such as ordered systems of matter which might resemble our universe however is completely conjecture. It is just as likely that they are inert, homogeneous and uniform. And to assume that this implies there are an infinite number of observationally separated spaces which resemble our own would be an assumption cut down by Occams's razor.

I work in temporary traffic management, we use stands and bases to support our signs which look like these http://www.trafficmanagementltd.co.nz/store/3/145/Sign-Stand-Base A problem we frequently encounter is that the wind blows over the sign, so to counteract this we place a sandbag on the feet of the base. My question is, where is the best place to put the sandbag to minimisee the chance of the sign blowing over? At first thought I chose the very end of a foot, because it is the maximum distance from the fulcrum and therefore provides maximum downward force countering the wind. But when thinking that through, the wind would conversely have the best leverage to lift the sandbag in that position. So does that mean the best spot is near the center of the base, where it would be hardest for the wind to lift it, like it is hard to move a door from a spot near the hinge?

I was reading about a "new" fusion reactor design called the stellarator http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature-bizarre-reactor-might-save-nuclear-fusion And I began to consider possible environmental impacts of using fusion as earth's primary power source. At first I wondered, since deuterium would need to be extracted from sea water if this reduction in water would effect us majorly. But research led me to find that fusion requires very little fuel, the ocean is roughly only 1/4000th deuterium, and that at 1995 levels of energy use it would take 160 billion years to use up. However I couldn't find the answer to the related questions: How much free oxygen would several hundred years of use add to the atmosphere? What would be the environmental effects of increased atmospheric oxygen? At what level/time frame would it become problematic? Would sequestering the oxygen be relatively simple? I recall it hypothesised that in the past there have been higher levels of oxygen and giant insects are evidence of this. Would increases in oxygen lead to increases in consumer metabolism and would this mean more carbon locked up in biomass? Would more oxygen increase forest fires? Would more oxygen mean metal goods would corrode faster? (I wasn't sure where to put this, it's physics because it's fusion, it's chemistry because it's atmospheric chemistry and it's biology and earth science too. Move it or leave it as you see fit. Thanks admin.)

artefact 2. something observed in a scientific investigation or experiment that is not naturally present but occurs as a result of the preparative or investigative procedure. The thought sequence is - "our cognition works via entropy's arrow of time and our senses and the machines we augment them with are dependant on observations of the EM field" So our brain processes information as if there was time, yet the reverse is true, time is the product of our brain processing information. So it biases our view of what is, because it appears to flow when we think, we don't tend to think of it as not flowing. Which goes to considering the universe to be a static block universe, it is simply the entirety of what exists and there isn't anything outside it, like a ball floating in nothing, it doesn't have something outside it, there is no before it, so its edge in the 4D direction we call the past is the end of time, with no time before it. Just as an edge of the universe in the future 4D direction would be an end of time, with no times after it. If there's no time, there's no way to act, if there's no action, there is no way to cause anything. In his discussion with Albert Einstein, Karl Popper argued against determinism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)#Determinism_and_indeterminism

Reading my OP I think I need to elaborate a bit. I wasn't very specific. So, lets assume that there is a higher dimensional space, in that space is a field of probability, this field is simply potential, all parts of the field balance equal to nothing. This is the like "The universe from nothing" - Lawrence Krauss https://www.youtube....h?v=sbsGYRArH_w In order to maintain the balance of the field when a universe is created it needs two parts which balance to 0. This is like "The Mirror Universe" - Sean Carrol http://www.pbs.org/w...runs-backwards/ The Chimera twin universe, like the mirror universe is also time symmetric. Each of these halves I refer to as twins (fraternal twins). The physical laws and the energy and mass of the polar universes need not be identical, they must just cancel each other out. (So the balance of the higher dimension is maintained.) When universes are created in this higher dimensional space, they can have different types of physical laws. The vast majority of universes laws are inconsistent with creating a stable universe with 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time. The vast majority of universes don't last very long, they pop into and out of existence, like virtual particles. Either we were extremely lucky or there was some kind of fine tuning involved which prevented our universe from returning to nothing. In the Chimera universe both twins laws aren't sufficient to extend the duration of their existence very long. However before the chimera universe can pop out of existence, there is a collision between the two twins. One of the twins laws made it collapse sooner, the result of this assymetry is that the matter energy and even physical laws of that universe were forced back into ours (to maintain the balance of the field), at this point the big bang as we know it occurs, which prevents the universe popping out of existence. All laws of physics need not be (but can be) time symmetrical. The laws of physics which would otherwise have caused collapse and non existence in one twin when moving in a forward direction of time are reversed when they interact with its sibling. Because it is a collapse back through the origin in time. The two sets of laws, combine to give us the universe we observe. The laws of the twin which collapsed back in time run forward (its backwards) in time through its sibling, a set of laws which cause collapse in reverse cause expansion, this is inflation. Good spotting on the typo, damn that's annoying lol. I expanded on my idea a bit, does my reasoning make any more sense now? I'm still considering the effects of the failed twin moving backwards in time through its sibling. Antimatter can be said to be matter moving backwards in time. I am thinking of ways this might account for the matter/antimatter asymmetry. I am also considering what this may mean for dark matter and energy, how the different twins laws may have created different intial conditions and different types of matter/energy. I am wondering if one twins laws may be dominant over the others.

Interesting, but where did the branes come from before that? Are the two branes currently overlapping or did they pass right through each other? How does time work with another dimension and branes that move and able to collide at some point, is the movement of the branes through the extra dimension relative to our spacetime? How long would it take for them to pass through each other? Does the universe exist at the intersection of two branes (I picture that like a ven diagram), or was that just where the orgin in 4d is? Are the branes thought to be identical? What does a brane consist of before the collision? Does the extra dimension contain more branes, why would only 2 exist if not, why not 1 or none? Is there a possibility of our universe colliding with another brane? What are the probabilites of a collison in extra dimensional space? I speculated on a type of mirror universe recently, where one side fails and collides with the other side. It's a similar idea, but I was explaining it as one moves back in time (it's time) towards the origin http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/91649-the-chimrea-twin-universe/#entry888566 What if the branes are produced as a pair, extra dimensional space contains a probability of producing a pair of branes, like our universes virtual particles, which exactly balance and so don't violate conservation of energy. The branes, which are opposite but equal, are able to move in this extra dimension and collide. Regarding a mirror universe. http://www.pbs.org/w...runs-backwards/

Yeah thanks, I understood the compliment. I'm also looking for criticism. I guess it doesn't really make sense for the failed universe to blow back through the origin, it should just collapse at the point in space time where it fails. But it leaves a good question open, does a mirror universe need necessarily be a perfect inverse of its twin. Also since the conservation of matter and energy is a law in this universe, in order for half the whole which sums to 0 to collapse backwards to 0 both sides would need to go. But what happens to that matter and energy if only 1 side fails? Also if backwards in time is forwards in time for the other twin, does changing the 4D direction actually violate the law of the universe we observe?

The filter is caused by the initial start up cost being so high that it is deleterious to life on the home world. So almost all advanced civilizations would take the rational path towards a sustainable and insular society, meaning interstellar travel and galactic mega structures are an extreme rarity. Those civilizations that try to expand almost always fail, leading to extinction or regression. And there would be very few if any who could/would visit us. Humans are notorious for being short sighted of the environmental impacts of our technology. We like to push the boundaries, it's probably a typical trait of intelligent life on the path to interstellar travel.

Any chimera is a mythological Greek animal with the body of a lion head of a goat and the tail of a snake. The term is used to denote things with hybrid characteristics, it's a term used in genetics too, describing an organism with 2 cell lineages/sets of dna. In this case the chimera refers to the dual sets of physical laws one from the more stable twin and time reversed laws from the failed twin. Maybe I could name this the hybrid twin universe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(mythology) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics) Where specifically does it fail as a scientific possibility? Unecessesarily complex? Impossible?