Ask a physicist anything. (7)

[mzungu]

Anyone know if POE was banned permanently from CF?

 

[Chalnoth]

But on the whole given punctuated evolution, the crowd would tend to be more adapted otherwise they would not reach that number (why would maladapts predmonate rather than breed less.

That's very true! However, selective pressures change all the time, and just because the species was well-adapted in the past doesn't necessarily mean that they won't be pushed in a new direction in the future.

How is this if the crowd are the majority force, and bacause of stabilising selection I suppose they would tend to be the ones having children. So going with the crowd actually as a rule increases fitness.

I don't think you can make that assumption. Remember that it's all about reproduction. No matter how much the crowd likes you, you're not going to pass on your genes if you don't make babies. I don't think that there is ever a simple, easy solution to how evolution works. Life is just too complicated.

You can come up with some simple descriptions for very specific situations, but when those situations change, that description may end up becoming completely wrong.

 

[Chalnoth]

Anyone know if POE was banned permanently from CF?

Sorry, no idea.

 

[Zippy the Wonderslug]

In a show on the original Star Trek, there was a gun called the Disintegrator or something similar.

Basically, when fired at you, it would piecemeal your body apart into less than blood beating bits of atoms.

You more or less would completely vaporize.

What might be some things, in theory, that could break all subatomic bondings in a human being, outside of massive explosions?

Cheers.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

In a show on the original Star Trek, there was a gun called the Disintegrator or something similar.

Basically, when fired at you, it would piecemeal your body apart into less than blood beating bits of atoms.

That sounds more like disruptor weaponry, but yes, the principle was that it would 'disrupt' the bonds that make up your body, breaking you down into your constituent molecules.

You more or less would completely vaporize.

What might be some things, in theory, that could break all subatomic bondings in a human being, outside of massive explosions?

A localised reversal of the electromagnetic force? Or would it...

 

[Zippy the Wonderslug]

So chucking a weird magnet at someone might do it?

 

[Chalnoth]

So chucking a weird magnet at someone might do it?

Haha!

Well, sure, if you could throw an object at a person which had an electromagnetic field just right to cancel the electromagnetic fields that hold the atoms in that person together, then you could do it!

The problem with this is that the electromagnetic field is defined by the charges that produce it. So to cancel out the field within your body, you'd need a bunch of charges that have a configuration every bit as complex as the charges (electrons and protons) in your body. In fact, what you'd really need is the exact same configuration, but with opposite charges: you'd need an anti-matter version of you! And what's more, that anti-matter version is going to have to not just hit you, but actually occupy the exact same space.

But I think we all know that if you're going to be struck by a noticeable quantity of anti-matter, you've got much bigger things to worry about than the electromagnetic field between your atoms being canceled

 

[Zippy the Wonderslug]

Okay.

Sounds like it's not possible then.

After all, how could one ever make a biological, antimatter version of someone and have it's mass, or antimass remain intact long enough to throw it at someone?

Nuts.

 

[Chalnoth]

Okay.

Sounds like it's not possible then.

After all, how could one ever make a biological, antimatter version of someone and have it's mass, or antimass remain intact long enough to throw it at someone?

Nuts.

Haha, well, even there the explosion from the proton/anti-proton annihilations will cause an obscene explosion long before you have to worry about the fields cancelling!

 

[acropolis]

In a show on the original Star Trek, there was a gun called the Disintegrator or something similar.

Basically, when fired at you, it would piecemeal your body apart into less than blood beating bits of atoms.

You more or less would completely vaporize.

What might be some things, in theory, that could break all subatomic bondings in a human being, outside of massive explosions?

Cheers.

Yes, this is possible, but it would take quite a lot of energy to overcome the bond energy of every single bond in the body.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

So I wondered "How do I get to the universe where I win the lottery and have 20 wives?" I thought "Things will have to change, but it seems like regularity is here to stay". So if I do unconventional things it does not mean I will get to an unconventional universe in the multiverse, but just get labelled odd. So really there is no way of travelling a wave funciton to paradise or whatever, I just have to live with what I get. Expecting things to change is like expecting the Sun to rise in the West?

ETA I have heard of transworld suicide but I am not prepared to go that far.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

So I wondered "How do I get to the universe where I win the lottery and have 20 wives?" I thought "Things will have to change, but it seems like regularity is here to stay". So if I do unconventional things it does not mean I will get to an unconventional universe in the multiverse, but just get labelled odd. So really there is no way of travelling a wave funciton to paradise or whatever, I just have to live with what I get. Expecting things to change is like expecting the Sun to rise in the West?

ETA I have heard of transworld suicide but I am not prepared to go that far.

Try quantum suicide: you try and kill yourself, only to find you can't. That's because you can only be concious and aware of your success or failure in the universe wherein you fail to die. The universe wherein you succeed is forever beyond your comprehensive abilities.

Of course, I will likely see you die trying, but you won't. Yay!

 

[GrowingSmaller]

:o
But why is this universe so uniform, if there are infinite better ones? Is it that ordinary worlds are more probable, so I am more likely to experience a normal one. Just like if I pick a number at random it is more likely to be non-prime than prime, even if both sets of numbers are infinite? Seriously, I need to pray to Teela Brown or something. All else is failing!

 

[Jazer]

So I wondered "How do I get to the universe where I win the lottery and have 20 wives?"

A lot of people can not even handle one wife and you think you can handle 20? Good luck with that.

 

[Chalnoth]

:o
But why is this universe so uniform, if there are infinite better ones? Is it that ordinary worlds are more probable, so I am more likely to experience a normal one. Just like if I pick a number at random it is more likely to be non-prime than prime, even if both sets of numbers are infinite? Seriously, I need to pray to Teela Brown or something. All else is failing!

Well, the current expectation is that inflation is the most likely explanation for why our universe was so extremely uniform to start with. Once inflation starts, it extremely rapidly produces a big, flat, uniform, expanding universe with a high temperature (high temperature meaning like higher than the temperatures reached when particles collide at the LHC).

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Is it possible, with the FTL neitrinos, that the LHC at CERN is a time machine?

 

[Chalnoth]

Is it possible, with the FTL neitrinos, that the LHC at CERN is a time machine?

Haha, no, not really Basically, the only way that FTL neutrinos remotely make sense is that they follow a slightly different light cone. Basic idea is speed of limit for most matter = c, speed limit for neutrinos = c*1.00001 (or somewhere thereabouts).

But the FTL result is highly highly unlikely. The problem here is that we already have a vastly more accurate estimate of neutrino velocity relative to light from observations of SN1987A, and according to that measurement neutrinos and light travel at the same speed to within our error in the measurement. And crucially the error is better than about one part in a hundred million, while the OPERA team are claiming the neutrino speed differs from that of light by a factor a thousand times greater.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Haha, no, not really Basically, the only way that FTL neutrinos remotely make sense is that they follow a slightly different light cone. Basic idea is speed of limit for most matter = c, speed limit for neutrinos = c*1.00001 (or somewhere thereabouts).

But the FTL result is highly highly unlikely. The problem here is that we already have a vastly more accurate estimate of neutrino velocity relative to light from observations of SN1987A, and according to that measurement neutrinos and light travel at the same speed to within our error in the measurement. And crucially the error is better than about one part in a hundred million, while the OPERA team are claiming the neutrino speed differs from that of light by a factor a thousand times greater.

People ask me this a lot in the real world ("Herp derp Einstein was wrong!"), and the supernova measurement quickly shuts them up

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Someone said the neutrinos may have different energy levels (in GEV "gigaelectron volts" sp?) at CERN and from the supernova, which might make the comparison inadequate.

 

[Zippy the Wonderslug]

What is the highest charge (amps/voltage) that a single capacitor can carry, and what might be the possible outcome of bombing a city with a thousand of these?

Cheers.