Ask a physicist anything. (7)

Thanks! The FAQ thing did mention parallel transporting on a sphere, but my brain just went "OK, so what?" :o

One thing that I never can seem to grasp for some reason, is the modern technology we have today.

If you dropped me off somewhere on land/just nature, all alone on this Earth, I don't think even given 10 million years of time, would I somehow ever be able to build and play an Xbox 360 game on a new HD TV.

In terms of the game Civilization, not sure if anyone has ever played this, but what where all of the needed discoveries/inventions, in order if possible, to finally achieve making the first man made CPU?

Also, what was the real break through that finally got us here today that is so different to where we were 100 years ago?

Cheers!

Zippy the Wonderslug said:

One thing that I never can seem to grasp for some reason, is the modern technology we have today.

If you dropped me off somewhere on land/just nature, all alone on this Earth, I don't think even given 10 million years of time, would I somehow ever be able to build and play an Xbox 360 game on a new HD TV.

Click to expand...

One of the interesting things is that no one person knows how to build these objects. Many people know a lot about them, but no single person has the expertise to build every component in the X-box.

The other interesting bit is that these days, our capabilities to build new devices are vastly expanded by our tools, especially computers. It is not possible for humans, working by hand, to sketch a correct design of a chip containing the billions of transistors seen in modern designs. We have to use computers to help design these behemoths.

Zippy the Wonderslug said:

In terms of the game Civilization, not sure if anyone has ever played this, but what where all of the needed discoveries/inventions, in order if possible, to finally achieve making the first man made CPU?

Click to expand...

I love the Civilization games

Well, for CPU's, there were two primary discoveries. The first discovery was the transistor. This relatively simple device acts as sort of a solid-state electronic switch. That is, you can use the voltage on one part of a transistor to determine whether or not voltage can flow through another part.

The second major discovery was the process of lithography, which allows for the production of large circuits with many transistors connected together in interesting ways.

Each of these discoveries builds upon many previous ones, including electromagnetism and quantum mechanics.

But beyond being able to simply build the base components, we also had to learn how to link those components together in useful ways to actually make a processor. And that builds on a long heritage of computer science that started even before the first computers were ever built.

Zippy the Wonderslug said:

Also, what was the real break through that finally got us here today that is so different to where we were 100 years ago?

Click to expand...

Well, it wasn't any one, single thing. There have been many contributing factors.

1. The advent of modern science has allowed us to learn new things at a breakneck pace, as opposed to the fits and starts we saw in previous centuries. This was largely enabled by a combination of public interest in science (including government funding) and rapid improvements in communication and transportation technology, allowing more scientists than ever before to collaborate faster than ever before.
2. The industrial revolution brought about an actually middle class society. The shift from an agrarian society to a middle-class one gave far more people access to the education to both do science and to apply science in the development of new technologies. With a larger fraction of the human population contributing, the increase in the speed of obtaining new technologies has been massive.
3. The population of the Earth is much greater, allowing us to draw on a larger talent pool. Combine this with better communication, and this also increases the speed of development.
4. Widespread education further expands the talent pool.

There are other contributing factors I am sure. But the point is that all of these things feed back in on themselves. Better understanding of science allows better quality of life and higher populations, which provides a broader talent pool to study more science and apply it better! Once this feedback effect really kicked off around the industrial revolution, well, there was no turning back.

There are 8 planets in the solar system right? Is that considered a purley physical feature or mathematical too because of the number 8? Or what?

GrowingSmaller said:

There are 8 planets in the solar system right. Is that considered a purley physical feature or mathematical too because of the number 8? Or what?

Click to expand...

It's a physical feature, because there are eight planets.

Wiccan_Child said:

It's a physical feature, because there are eight planets.

Click to expand...

But 8 is a number, and numbers are studied by mathematics not physics. Therefore (I argue) you are invoking mathematical properties, and so the description is not purely physical. Or are you saying the number is a physical feature of the planetary system? A s far as I know in the philosophy of maths numbers may be condsidered to be non physical.

GrowingSmaller said:

But 8 is a number, and numbers are studied by mathematics not physics. Therefore (I argue) you are invoking mathematical properties, and so the description is not purely physical. Or are you saying the number is a physical feature of the planetary system? A s far as I know in the philosophy of maths numbers may be condsidered to be non physical.

Click to expand...

Step away from the bong. Please.

Selmak said:

Step away from the bong. Please.

Click to expand...

Hey thats not fair I dont do drugs. The questoin the relation of math to physics is legitimate in the philosophy of science.

GrowingSmaller said:

Hey thats not fair I dont do drugs. The questoin the relation of math to physics is legitimate in the philosophy of science.

Click to expand...

8 is 8. Both in physics and mathematics.

Physics is expressed in the language of mathematics.

GrowingSmaller said:

But 8 is a number, and numbers are studied by mathematics not physics. Therefore (I argue) you are invoking mathematical properties, and so the description is not purely physical. Or are you saying the number is a physical feature of the planetary system? A s far as I know in the philosophy of maths numbers may be condsidered to be non physical.

Click to expand...

They're not. Numbers are abstractions of what it means to say "I have five/six/seven apples". We can generalise and idealise the concept of an apple, and we can generalise the concept of a number.

In this sense, numbers are properties of a physical system. To say they're non-physical implies they actually exist - they don't.

Is there such a thinkg as a FTL April fools joke, arriving a few days early? I tried to think of one, but my imagination is so dim my psychologist suspects a singularity.

Chalnoth re: Transistor (Didn't feel like quoting & editing the post )
I'd say the discovery of the PN Junction was more important than the Transistor, without that first you wouldn't have any form of chips, LEDs, transistors, ect.

pgp_protector said:

Chalnoth re: Transistor (Didn't feel like quoting & editing the post )
I'd say the discovery of the PN Junction was more important than the Transistor, without that first you wouldn't have any form of chips, LEDs, transistors, ect.

Click to expand...

Well, I suppose that's true. A transistor is, after all, just a combination of two PN junctions. So that is the more fundamental component.

This is more of a nerd question rather than a physics one, but I received this PM in my inbox earlier from a site I tend to visit....

"As you probably know, the free memberships on ********* are supported by the advertisers, who pay for the ads shown on our website. However, it appears that no ads (or only text ads) are being served for your account due to either an ad-blocking software on your computer, or some other software that prevents the ads from being displayed on our website. Which means that ********* ends up paying for the server resources and bandwidth used by your account, so unfortunately we are no longer able to provide you with a free membership."

Can a website actually see that I'm using a host file to avoid looking at all of their popups from Hell?

Cheers!

Zippy the Wonderslug said:

This is more of a nerd question rather than a physics one, but I received this PM in my inbox earlier from a site I tend to visit....

"As you probably know, the free memberships on ********* are supported by the advertisers, who pay for the ads shown on our website. However, it appears that no ads (or only text ads) are being served for your account due to either an ad-blocking software on your computer, or some other software that prevents the ads from being displayed on our website. Which means that ********* ends up paying for the server resources and bandwidth used by your account, so unfortunately we are no longer able to provide you with a free membership."

Can a website actually see that I'm using a host file to avoid looking at all of their popups from Hell?

Cheers!

Click to expand...

Yes, though it's not very common (it's like custom 404 messages; possible, but rare). Occasionally, I get a message saying "Yes, ads are annoying, but they fund my wonderful website, so please turn AdBlocker off!" - though I don't see why that would do anything, as I always thought money was paid on a per-click basis.

What website was it? Or is it *cough* adult *cough*...

Zippy the Wonderslug said:

This is more of a nerd question rather than a physics one, but I received this PM in my inbox earlier from a site I tend to visit....

"As you probably know, the free memberships on ********* are supported by the advertisers, who pay for the ads shown on our website. However, it appears that no ads (or only text ads) are being served for your account due to either an ad-blocking software on your computer, or some other software that prevents the ads from being displayed on our website. Which means that ********* ends up paying for the server resources and bandwidth used by your account, so unfortunately we are no longer able to provide you with a free membership."

Can a website actually see that I'm using a host file to avoid looking at all of their popups from Hell?

Cheers!

Click to expand...

I'd say yes.
VBulletin even has a AntiAdBlock Plugin
Vbulletin Anti ADblock Alert Box - vBulletin.org Forum

Wiccan_Child said:

Yes, though it's not very common (it's like custom 404 messages; possible, but rare). Occasionally, I get a message saying "Yes, ads are annoying, but they fund my wonderful website, so please turn AdBlocker off!" - though I don't see why that would do anything, as I always thought money was paid on a per-click basis.

What website was it? Or is it *cough* adult *cough*...

Click to expand...

It depends. Some ads are paid per-click, some are paid per-view. And if the ads are never loaded, the ad agency doesn't pay out.

So personally I do not run ad blockers unless I'm visiting a website that either has really annoying ads, or that I despise on moral grounds (e.g. the Huffington Post, which effectively uses slave labor).

Chalnoth said:

It depends. Some ads are paid per-click, some are paid per-view. And if the ads are never loaded, the ad agency doesn't pay out.

So personally I do not run ad blockers unless I'm visiting a website that either has really annoying ads, or that I despise on moral grounds (e.g. the Huffington Post, which effectively uses slave labor).

Click to expand...

Or better yet would be to allow certain websites to show ads.

Nabobalis said:

Or better yet would be to allow certain websites to show ads.

Click to expand...

Well, in general with adblock you can allow specific websites of your choosing through. My problem is that I want to let most websites I visit display ads. It's just a few that I don't visit often that I don't. So I'd really like to see an option for opt-in ad blocking, instead of the current opt-out user interface.

Chalnoth said:

Well, in general with adblock you can allow specific websites of your choosing through. My problem is that I want to let most websites I visit display ads. It's just a few that I don't visit often that I don't. So I'd really like to see an option for opt-in ad blocking, instead of the current opt-out user interface.

Click to expand...

My Chrome Version of AdBlocker has this setting
"Show ads everywhere except for these domains..."