arc

ajb, Could you give me a little more detail of that difference between the mathematical research and the mathematics itself. I'm rather a lightweight in philosophy so I don't quite understand the separation on the discovery vs. ? aspect, thanks.

This thread brings to mind that cartoon of the little aliens that had heads shaped like an out stretched hand waiting to be shook. The caption said something like; "Then Fred grabbed their leader by the head and shook him vigorously - unwittingly dooming all of mankind to complete and utter annihilation."

What are the options regarding an explanation? I know that as information disseminates people start seeing things. The mass hysteria over Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast suggests people will take little provocation to believe, and more importantly imagine, the objects in the sky, real or not, are what they heard through the media were there. A navy blimp or even rigid airship in and around the east coast would not be uncommon in those days. 1952 was a time when people were suppressing a lot of pent up hysteria about the Russians and their acquisition of nuclear weapons. Very similar to the Oct. 31, 1939 broadcast of the War of the Worlds' timing with the rise of Nazi Germany and its invasion of Poland Sept. 1, 1939, and the subsequent expectations of another world war. These incidences seem to be a mass psychological phenomena. Don't underestimate the boarder line paranoia people would have in and around the capital, living within the primary target of a Russian nuclear bomb, people were building bomb shelters in their back yards. The timing to me seems to ideal to be ignored. I would next say it was the pentagon seeing how crazy people might act during an event of this scale and then use it to extrapolate out to larger scales for a war game simulation. And that's all I have short of going to the alien UFO stuff. I just think people are very susceptible to social pressures and even group hysteria, and that explanation works well enough for me.

If I told you I'd have to kill you. But first I'd have to get the OK from my counterpart in MI6. But, I don't think your wife will give me the thumbs up. . . . . until your done with the chores. These domestic sightings happened over areas common to the flights of secret aircraft, specific spy planes were not acknowledged or even known to anyone below military top secret status. There observation by regular military pilots would be as much avoided as that of civilian pilots. I would think if the spy plane pilot detected, or was informed, of other aircraft they would drop a rocket that would fall several thousand meters before igniting. Long before anyone could get close enough to the spy plane to even see it, or at the very least to describe it in any detail later. That bright green fire ball would probably make you forget any distant plane you observed shortly before.

So the wave is the "conservation of energy" doing the thing it does to the light or magnetic energy?

So, then I say to my neighbor; "This is a bad area, you should get a car alarm"

When magicians don't want you to see what they are really doing in one hand, they do spectacular distractions with the other. This could have been and probably was a simple distracting device by a high level intelligence gathering agency {fill in the blank]. Would it not be conceivable, and more likely than most other explanations, that when a most top secret aircraft, possibly involving spying, was encroached on or even in the vicinity of other military or civilian aircraft, a solid fuel rocket would be utilized. With phosphorus and a copper additive inside a lightweight casing that would oxidize away, maybe even using a drag chute or other devices to slow its flight.This would likely gather all eyes to its activity, leaving the top secret aircraft undetected. Meteors seem to have the same effect on spectators BTW. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fireballs Their report stated that the light was "definitely larger and more brilliant than a shooting star, meteor or flare." The light lasted only a few seconds, moving "almost flat and parallel to the earth". The light's "trajectory then dropped off rapidly" leaving "a trail of fragments reddish orange in color" which then fell towards the ground.

MigL, thank you for the simple explanation, it is greatly appreciated.

I think it would appear on numerous traffic control radar and would be accounted for or considered unidentified and tracked closely, post 911 style. Are there any runways anywhere that size that we don't know about or haven't already looked at with satellites since this developed? It would have to be a fairly large facility, yet not have any spectators that would comment about an unusually large plane for such a obscure airport.

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I think it was inevitable . . . . that eventually . . . . given enough time . . . . a mobile home park somewhere would end up looking like this after a tornado.

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Volcanoes are a good example of a "natural" devastation of the environment to put our own scale of influence on this planet into perspective, but I prefer a glacial period. You could call it cryogenic pollution. Before that last glacial started some 125,000 years ago, the Northern Hemisphere of the Ermian interglacial had vast forests reaching the Arctic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian The Eemian climate is believed to have been about as stable as that of the Holocene. . . . . although global annual mean temperatures were probably similar to those of the Holocene. The warmest peak of the Eemian was around 125,000 years ago, when forests reached as far north as North Cape, Norway (which is now tundra) well above the Arctic Circle at 71°10′21″N 25°47′40″E. Hardwood trees such as hazel and oak grew as far north as Oulu, Finland. And then it started snowing. Image by HannesGrobe/AWI who has no connection to me or this work. And then it became colder and stayed there. The snow didn't melt in the summer temperatures and just kept getting deeper and deeper, killing off vast forests and the ecosystems they contained. How many little valleys and hollows with unique flora and fauna were eliminated as the snow buried it and then crushed it under what would be a mile of glacial ice grinding and scouring the soil down to bedrock. This of coarse was concurrent with vast areas in Asia that dried out and became wind blown desert. It will repeat this cycle again in the near future, 120,000 +/- years of ice will come after the environments have reestablish again during maybe 20 +/- thousand years of warmer temperatures, like they have done so for the last 2.58 million years as this cycle was, and is, repeated. What blinds someone to the scale of what the natural world can produce in environmental change? Can we even say it is destructive if it naturally occurs. s1eep, you have been misled by our our popular culture to view mankind as a parasite on this planet, as something so detrimental you would erase mankind if it was within your powers. Ted Kaczynski shared this view as does vast numbers of environmentalist/anarchists. It is not a healthy position to subject yourself to, I have not seen anyone with this point of view that has any satisfaction in life, professional or private. It devours your happiness, it robs you of your outlook. It wants and needs others to share its misery.

I am not a physicist, but I think it would depend on whether you place the rotational movement in the ring when setting it in place. It would posses whatever rotational energy you give it, from 0 to ? I believe the spin seen in planets, solar systems and galaxies is due to gravitational forces and the angular momentum it produces in matter, it slowly builds up over time as the objects gain mass, its similar what you see as water spins down the drain.

Well, its very slow and very noisy which will be very nearly impossible to reduce to any level low enough to not announce its arrival ahead of its tactical window. I can imagine a group of solders having there own watch dog device that would auto detect and destroy at long range with little difficulty, a vehicle mounted mini gun or even their own higher altitude mini predator. That was just a toy in the video, the gunfire was coming from off camera, which shows how vulnerable it would be to the same weapon system. A good surprise attack at close range with a shotgun would put that out of service fast.

Back when I was young and impressionable, Carl Sagan in his Cosmos series said something that forever set in place my way of thinking on these matters. His comment was in regards to and something along the lines of; if for a few key discoveries at the right time in their history, the ancient Greeks could have put a man on the moon first. This observation by Mr Sagan put forth the idea to me that, as ajb expressed, "I discover mathematics rather than invent mathematics" This seems to be the correct view of how we have acquired our knowledge of mathematics. We find things, we stumble upon them or systematically search them out, but if we do not, someone else will in due time. These ideals or structures seem to date to the beginning of time. And I would guess are infinite and contain both abstract (to us) and real (to us) mathematical structures. We currently issue thousands of letters of patent every year to individuals who more realistically discovered their ideas rather than invented them out of nothing as ones ego might insist. And to strengthen this point, they no doubt worried that someone else might beat them to it first. And too, by using Mr Sagan's perspective, it could even have been the Greeks. We see in nature that working concepts, based in or simply defined by mathematics, are at the foundation of evolution. Nature has searched out the optimal wing for the specific time and application in numerous occasions. We have discovered these concepts, these principles of flight ourselves and refined them through time with our own systematic search of the mathematical realm. We continually discover a more "optimal" airfoil design that no doubt has a certain elegance in its maths, it rings true so to speak with nature and mathematics both, just as it has in the wings of a bird. One might even say with a certain harmony between the observable world and the unseen mathematical fabric of the universe.

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Yeah, but they will lie through their horse teeth to stay out of the dutch oven.

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Could the Internet become a conscious mind? Possibly not until it can stare dumbfounded for an hour at a myriad of choices in an isle of a store. To not know the answer may be more definitive of consciousness than an all knowing data based mind.

I have wondered, actually since the days when Johnny Carson was hosting the Tonight Show, if this perceived difference in ones own perception could be reduced or even erased by repeated viewing and hearing ones own recorded voice, as in the case of Mr Carson who likely watched his show later on a regular basis. Could this audio, and I think even just as important, visual, "therapy" blend or blur this personal bias?

Hi billiards, I shouldn't have said discredited, maybe "strongly challenged it's ability to perform its duties"

The development of our large brain supplanted most all external physical adaptations, and in contrast to them, allowed, sometimes in mere minutes, adaptation through problem solving, what would have taken smaller brained hominids untold generations to physically adapt to if ever. A large brain is what is needed to adapt survival strategies. It took a human size brain to create strategies and technologies to not only survive a short period, but to actually live and prosper in the arctic. We are now exploring the ocean and living in orbit around our planet. Could any hominid before us have done the same in such short time, through any other type of evolutionary adaptation? Your ideal environment is actually right between your ears, but it is up to you to direct it to your fullest adaptive potential?