Ask a physicist anything. (5)

[GrowingSmaller]

Is it possible that life (one's conscious experience between birth and death) is a part of a fractal or fractal like (i.e. self similar etc but finite) phenomena? What would corroborate this idea, or test it?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Whats, for you, the highest state you can generally achieve without sex, drink or drugs?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Whats, for you, the highest state you can generally achieve without sex, drink or drugs?

Flying in an aeroplane at 40,000 feet

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Is it possible that life (one's conscious experience between birth and death) is a part of a fractal or fractal like (i.e. self similar etc but finite) phenomena? What would corroborate this idea, or test it?

You'll have to be more specific. In what way would life be 'fractal'? Are you referring to the events that occur in a person's life, in a sort of New Agey sort of way? In how the brain's internal phenomena give rise to conciousness?

 

[Maxwell511]

Is it possible that life (one's conscious experience between birth and death) is a part of a fractal or fractal like (i.e. self similar etc but finite) phenomena? What would corroborate this idea, or test it?

Reality tends to corroborate that idea.

 

[1611AV]

Where did the thousands of compounds we find in the world come from

 

[chris4243]

How do you see the crisis at Japan's Nuclear Plants ending?

At worst they say **** it, just let it go into a nuclear meltdown, and let the containment take care of that. Any radiation released barely noticeable compared to the natural background radiation. And the 5th largest earthquake and several thousand dead Japanese and decimated cities mostly ignored by the media because there's something nu-cular.

 

[chris4243]

Is it possible that life (one's conscious experience between birth and death) is a part of a fractal or fractal like (i.e. self similar etc but finite) phenomena? What would corroborate this idea, or test it?

I'm not quite sure what you mean, but quite a bit of living stuff is like a fractal; tree shapes and I think our circulatory systems. I don't think our consciousness could be like that though; our consciousness would have to be like a loop otherwise it would just end.

 

[corvus_corax]

At worst they say **** it,

I remember back in my day as a Christian I wouldn't have cursed or even tried to purposefully gotten around the filters on a website (if websites had existed back then).
Ah, how things have changed with some christians.

And now back to the topic at hand...

 

[Maxwell511]

I remember back in my day as a Christian I wouldn't have cursed or even tried to purposefully gotten around the filters on a website (if websites had existed back then).
Ah, how things have changed with some christians.

And now back to the topic at hand...

Stop being so pretentious. If the guy is mad, let him get mad and express his feelings.

 

[TheReasoner]

I remember back in my day as a Christian I wouldn't have cursed or even tried to purposefully gotten around the filters on a website (if websites had existed back then).
Ah, how things have changed with some christians.

And now back to the topic at hand...

I never really understood the cultural taboo of swearing in the US. They're words. What's so terrible about a word? It's the context, the meaning behind it that matters, not the word itself. Using such words a lot are certainly indicative of either great anger or a rather lacking linguistic development. Which can be offensive, sure. Then again I think [willful][bless and do not curse]stupidity is offensive in itself, and you can draw what conclusions you want about what that says about my relationship with creationism, but this swearing taboo I don't get. It's not taking the Lord's name in vain, it's basically saying poopoo and peepee with different letters. And sure, that's rather stupid. But offensive?

At least that's my take on it, from my cultural background.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

You'll have to be more specific. In what way would life be 'fractal'? Are you referring to the events that occur in a person's life, in a sort of New Agey sort of way? In how the brain's internal phenomena give rise to conciousness?

A fractal of a larger conciousness, like Berkley's (the Irish idealist) God. I ask because I have had experiences where the world I see seems like a little "universe" before my eyes.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

What about knowledge as symmetry (e.g. a symmetry between percept ("chair") and external object ("chair")).
If that sounds plausible, then by analogy God could be the state of maximulm symmetry before the Big Bang. Isnt that a goodie for New Age meditation?

 

[AV1611VET]

If that sounds plausible, then by analogy God could be the state of maximulm symmetry before the Big Bang. Isnt that a goodie for New Age meditation?

The Big Bang is allegorical -- it shows that matter and energy cannot get along together in the same neighborhood.

By expanding outward, they then subjected themselves to entropy and died from heat death.

Moral of story: United we stand, divided we fall.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Where did the thousands of compounds we find in the world come from

A process known as nucleosynthesis: stars fuse light elements together into heavier ones. This is virtually always fusing Hydrogen into Helium, but as a star dies it runs out of Hydrogen, so it ends up fusing heavier and heavier elements. Eventually, the star explodes - scattering this plethora of elements outwards. This cloud of dust eventually recollapses and forms a new star, and perhaps planets. The Earth, being the result of one of these stellar explosions, contains various elements from the star that blew up.

In other words, the elements come from the furnaces of stars.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

A fractal of a larger conciousness, like Berkley's (the Irish idealist) God. I ask because I have had experiences where the world I see seems like a little "universe" before my eyes.

So, our conciousnesses are facets of a larger conciousness?

Well, that's certainly possible, but far beyond any testable ability. Thus, scientifically, I'd say it was wild conjecture. It sounds nice, because it has the word 'fractal' in it but we just don't know nearly enough about conciousness to begin to suport that idea.

 

[Steffenfield]

Is there any kind of cool weirdness or something unusual to keep my eye on today that being the moon is so close to the Earth?

I'm actually excited to see what the moon will look like later tonight but is there anything else that could possibly happen?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Is there any kind of cool weirdness or something unusual to keep my eye on today that being the moon is so close to the Earth?

I'm actually excited to see what the moon will look like later tonight but is there anything else that could possibly happen?

I saw it on my drive home, and it was near the horizon. The Moon looks far bigger when it's near the horizon, almost frighteningly so, but it's just an optical illusion - hold your thumb up to the Moon, and it seems to magically shrink to its normal size!

But aside from a particularily large and full Moon, there's nothing too interesting. If you have a clear night, though, look for the Moon's corona - a band of light at 22° around the Moon. If it's cloudy, but not too cloudy, the corona looks like a white disc surrounding the Moon:

It's basically light from the Moon hitting ice crystals in the sky and bouncing off at a particular angel, and only those at an angle of 22° from your eye to the Moon reflect that light into your eye - thus, you see a band of light at 22°. Cool things!

 

[Steffenfield]

What time would that be for me, Eastern Standard Time, for the moon being 22 degrees tonight here in the states?

Thank you!

 

[Wiccan_Child]

What time would that be for me, Eastern Standard Time, for the moon being 22 degrees tonight here in the states?

Thank you!

Ah, that's the thing, it doesn't matter where the Moon is. The band of light is 22° around the centre of the Moon, wherever it is.

Imagine a line from the Moon to your eye, and from your eye to a point in the sky some way to the left of the Moon. Now imagine that angle between those two lines. Move the second line around till that angle is 22°. That's what I mean when I say the band of light is 'at' 22°.

Basically, look at the Moon, and you should be able to see a band of coloured light in a perfect circle surrounding the Moon. It'll look like that picture - wherever the Moon is, that disc of light will surround it. Colder and clearer nights make it more obvious, but it's always there.