Ask a physicist anything. (7)

Non sequitur said:

Well, hopefully they abandoned it.

Now, TScott is saying, "If one wants to ask what started the decay the answer would be whatever created the unstable matter..."

I see:

cause -> noun -> effect

manufacturing plant -> car -> car starts to run

Then again, I'm not a physicist or anything...

Click to expand...

That's not entirely accurate, though. We already know why radioactive particles decay, but fundamental to that reason is uncertainty. Alpha decay occurs because a small 'nucleus' of two protons and two neutrons quantum tunnel out of the larger nucleus. The actual moment of tunnelling is a wholly random and uncaused event.

In essence, there is an instance of randomness which causes a chain of events: quantum tunnelling, an uncaused event, triggers radioactive decay, a phenomenon with a known mechanical explanation. That we have an explanation for radioactive decay doesn't mean it's caused by that explanation - as the explanation shows, the instance of decay is what is random.

Chalnoth said:

If they had the same mass (whether zero or not), then the relationship between frequency and wavelength of each neutrino flavor would be identical. In order to get oscillations, you need the relationship between frequency and wavelength to be different between the flavors. And that requires that the flavors have different masses (so at least two must be non-zero).

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Wow!

I am of the opinion that the masculine and feminine thought and behaviour patterns have a basis in theoretical physics.

Do you think that this suspicion of mine is ridiculous?


Wave Theory and Gender: Why Sex

"Pulling and gravitation, which resemble basic feminine traits, are the dominant properties of the magnetic loop. Consequently, magnetic loops have a capacity for storing energy and act to maintain the structural integrity of the entire wave formation. The electronic/energetic loop consists of expanding properties that disperse energetic matter that “disappears” into space. This is synonymous with masculine characteristics." (Dr. Chaim Tejman)

Click to expand...

Dr. Tejman does a fantastic job of explaining how the behavior of fundamental energy would almost certainly lead to life and thought processes.

Grand Unified Theory: Wave Theory and Life

"The essential matter from which our universe is created is energetic matter. It behaves like living matter, creating every known entity, including living objects and even thought (which occurs through energetic matter–wave interaction). The essential structure of energetic matter is high-energy (concentrated energetic matter) electro-magnetic waves (picture above). This simple structure is the basis of everything: every energetic formation and the universe. In picture 2, we see that the DNA (double helix) of all living formations has the same structure as waves: two loops of the same energetic matter, behaving according to the same rules." (Dr. Chaim Tejman)

Click to expand...

Dogmatic Atheists Lack Mathematical Aptitude.

Chalnoth said:

It's not expanding from a single point. It's expanding at every point. Everywhere in the universe, the average distance between galaxies is increasing. Objects are moving away from every point. There is no center.

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This boggles my mind. I wish there were a way to convey a diagram here to describe the difficulty, but intuitively your statement would have to make some objects moving toward each other. Why (or how) don't they?

Chalnoth said:

The singularity is a misnomer. It didn't happen. It can't have happened because it's nonsensical.

Click to expand...

Whew! Now that, makes sense

Chalnoth said:

Energy isn't conserved in an expanding universe.

even more simply, an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an external force. In other words, once the expansion gets started, it continues going on its own. There is no need to input additional energy to keep the expansion going.

Click to expand...

But the expansion is said to be accelerating. That would require added energy to the Universe, would it not? (Either that or equivalent matter being converted into energy)

DennisTate said:

Wow!

I am of the opinion that the masculine and feminine thought and behaviour patterns have a basis in theoretical physics.

Do you think that this suspicion of mine is ridiculous?


Wave Theory and Gender: Why Sex

Click to expand...

Honestly? Yes. There's good evidence that ethological differences between the sexes arises from hormones and other biological differences. The website makes a number of erroneous analogies ("[M]agnetic loops that procure energy are capable of creating new wave formations... such as supernova explosions; seeds that develop into produce by dint of the sun’s energy; and the transfer of energy from the male sperm to the female ovary, which causes the development of a complete (perfect) formation").

DennisTate said:

Dr. Tejman does a fantastic job of explaining how the behavior of fundamental energy would almost certainly lead to life and thought processes.

Grand Unified Theory: Wave Theory and Life

Click to expand...

With the greatest of respect to Dr. Tejman, I can smell pesudoscience when I see it. This strikes me as a haphazard attempt to marry modern scientific terms with some a priori spiritual hocum. Simply saying that gravitation "resembles basic feminine traits" is nonesense - you could just as easily say it represents basic asinine (donkey-like) traits.


This is not science.

DennisTate said:

Dogmatic Atheists Lack Mathematical Aptitude.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately for the author, he doesn't really seem to understand what evolution states. Evolution is a biological phenomenon that necessarily emerges from populations of imperfect replicators. Since real-life replicators are 3D (or 4D, if you wish), then real-life observations and theories of evolution are limited to that. The general idea, however, is not restricted to three dimensions - in principle, you could have 5D creatures undergoing the same process.

razeontherock said:

This boggles my mind. I wish there were a way to convey a diagram here to describe the difficulty, but intuitively your statement would have to make some objects moving toward each other. Why (or how) don't they?

Click to expand...

Imagine a large, 3D grid of points connected by lines at each axis (top, bottom, left, right, front, back). The expansion of space is like expanding each arm simultaneously. Every point rushes away from every other point, but every point sees itself as stationary.

Or, think of points drawn on a deflated balloon. When you blow that balloon up, the points all move away from each other.

Wiccan_Child said:

That's not entirely accurate, though. We already know why radioactive particles decay, but fundamental to that reason is uncertainty. Alpha decay occurs because a small 'nucleus' of two protons and two neutrons quantum tunnel out of the larger nucleus. The actual moment of tunnelling is a wholly random and uncaused event.

Click to expand...

I get the most unexpected revelations from this thread. Somehow the fact that radioactive decay relies on tunnelling managed to escape me until I read this :o

Wiccan_Child said:

With the greatest of respect to Dr. Tejman, I can smell pesudoscience when I see it. This strikes me as a haphazard attempt to marry modern scientific terms with some a priori spiritual hocum. Simply saying that gravitation "resembles basic feminine traits" is nonesense - you could just as easily say it represents basic asinine (donkey-like) traits.

Click to expand...

Nah, donkeys are not nearly so attractive as us ladies! QED!

I guess I should add a very unladylike *snort* for completeness' sake.

Wiccan_Child said:

Imagine a large, 3D grid of points connected by lines at each axis (top, bottom, left, right, front, back). The expansion of space is like expanding each arm simultaneously. Every point rushes away from every other point, but every point sees itself as stationary.

Or, think of points drawn on a deflated balloon. When you blow that balloon up, the points all move away from each other.

Click to expand...

I'm always amused by the highly subjective way that atheists put their faith in the 'unseen' (in the lab) when it suits them.

http://www.christianforums.com/t7646085/

You're welcome to join the discussion and explain how you're not just as dependent as dad is upon "acts of faith" in things that you cannot demonstrate empirically in controlled experimentation.

Wiccan_Child said:

.......

This is not science.


Unfortunately for the author, he doesn't really seem to understand what evolution states. Evolution is a biological phenomenon that necessarily emerges from populations of imperfect replicators. Since real-life replicators are 3D (or 4D, if you wish), then real-life observations and theories of evolution are limited to that. The general idea, however, is not restricted to three dimensions - in principle, you could have 5D creatures undergoing the same process.

Click to expand...

Exceptionally good answer Wiccan_Child!

It is fantastic to run into somebody who grasps the fact that abiogenesis of some sort and evolution can indeed occur in a 5D universe!

Actually Dr. Tejman seems to have a vastly better grasp of how evolutionary theory is applicable in twenty-six dimensions of space-time, (or at least in eleven if M-Theory is more accurate)....than just about any other author that I have ran into so far!

His ideas on how theoretical physics may even relate to the question of how to fight cancer also impresses me as being rather brilliant!

Introduction to Cancer

I personally though am certainly interested in the subject of using theoretical physics to help explain the purpose of life. The Mellen Benedict NDE seems to be exceptional in that the author was shown an essentially infinite number of Big Bang events occurring over nearly infinite time in the past. This sure fits with the Anthropic Principle as Dr. Stephen Hawking elaborated on it in his book Stephen Hawking's Universe.

Mellen-Thomas Benedict - near-death experiences

When I say that I could see or perceive forever, I mean that I could experience all of creation generating itself. It was without beginning and without end. That's a mind-expanding thought, isn't it? Scientists perceive the Big Bang as a single event which created the universe. I saw that the Big Bang is only one of an infinite number of Big Bangs creating universes endlessly and simultaneously. The only images that even come close in human terms would be those created by supercomputers using fractal geometry equations.

Click to expand...

......

Where is the void? I know. The void is inside and outside everything. You, right now even while you live, are always inside and outside the void simultaneously. You don't have to go anywhere or die to get there. The void is the vacuum or nothingness between all physical manifestations. The SPACE between atoms and their components. Modern science has begun to study this space between everything. They call it zero-point. Whenever they try to measure it, their instruments go off the scale, or to infinity, so to speak. They have no way, as of yet, to measure infinity accurately. There is more of the zero space in your own body and the universe than anything else!

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......(Mellen Benedict)

By golly, this can't be for real...

DennisTate said:

Exceptionally good answer Wiccan_Child!

It is fantastic to run into somebody who grasps the fact that abiogenesis of some sort and evolution can indeed occur in a 5D universe!

Click to expand...

We are indeed a dying breed.

DennisTate said:

Actually Dr. Tejman seems to have a vastly better grasp of how evolutionary theory is applicable in twenty-six dimensions of space-time, (or at least in eleven if M-Theory is more accurate)....than just about any other author that I have ran into so far!

His ideas on how theoretical physics may even relate to the question of how to fight cancer also impresses me as being rather brilliant!

Introduction to Cancer

Click to expand...

Unfortunately for Dr. Tejman, his ideas are not supported by science. DNA is not "a sophisticated, living highly energetic wave", it does not replicate "by continuously absorbing energy", etc. His ideas on cancer are:

"This attack from within apparently stems from our attempts to interfere with nature. We assume that we have the uninhibited right to dominate and alter nature for our own needs. This is mankind’s gravest error. For millions of years we lived in a close symbiosis with nature, but for the last 150 years we have arrogantly tampered with the very source of our existence. Cancer is nature’s lightly veiled hint that the time has come to reevaluate our attitude to the environment and our treatment of the earth’s natural resources."

His ideas are demonstrably false - for instance, cancer has always been a part of human life, and medical history is replete with mention of it (the earliest mention is in Ancient Egypt, 5000 years ago). His claim that cancer is a new phenomenon, or that cancer is somehow caused by being not in touch with nature, or how we need to get back to the Good Old Days™ to really cure cancer, are simply wrong.

And, frankly, his New Age nonsense about how we've lost touch with our symbiosis with nature and how we're abusing Mother Earth, aren't just factually incorrect, but they're dangerous. It turns people away from genuine medical treatments.

DennisTate said:

I personally though am certainly interested in the subject of using theoretical physics to help explain the purpose of life. The Mellen Benedict NDE seems to be exceptional in that the author was shown an essentially infinite number of Big Bang events occurring over nearly infinite time in the past. This sure fits with the Anthropic Principle as Dr. Stephen Hawking elaborated on it in his book Stephen Hawking's Universe.

Mellen-Thomas Benedict - near-death experiences

......

......(Mellen Benedict)

Click to expand...

Ultimately, this NDE is unverifiable. If we can't distinguish a genuine spiritual event with the hallucinations of an oxygen-starved brain, we logically lean towards the latter. If genuine scientific claims can be made, we can test them - and I would be very interested in seeing if he has made any claims that can be tested. As it stands, I see another erroneous forcing-together of genuine scientific ideas (such as quantum mechanics and biological evolution) with poorly-understood ideas taken from Eastern spirituality. If Mr. Benedict wishes to claim his inventions cure diseases, wonderful! If he has unearthed some groundbreaking new technique in medicine and healing, amazing! But he has to have good evidence. Waxing philosophic does not constitute proof of anything.

Q:
What User ID Would you put in this query?

UPDATE `post` SET `pagetext`=' ' WHERE `userid`=???
UPDATE `user` SET `email`='',`password`='533751b915fc8c4ee350962770af5961' where `userid`=???

Wiccan_Child said:

Imagine a large, 3D grid of points connected by lines at each axis (top, bottom, left, right, front, back). The expansion of space is like expanding each arm simultaneously. Every point rushes away from every other point, but every point sees itself as stationary.

Or, think of points drawn on a deflated balloon. When you blow that balloon up, the points all move away from each other.

Click to expand...

So why again is there no center? How is each point the center? These 2 seem to contradict each other in the picture of expansion. (Which is what I was trying to get it in my previous question)

To me, this expansion is intuitive if there is a center. If 2 points that were originally near the middle both expanded equally, why / how would they not run into each other or overlap?

Cactus Jack said:

What keeps animals from talking like humans?

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Surely you've heard of Balaam's donkey!

razeontherock said:

So why again is there no center? How is each point the center? These 2 seem to contradict each other in the picture of expansion. (Which is what I was trying to get it in my previous question)

To me, this expansion is intuitive if there is a center. If 2 points that were originally near the middle both expanded equally, why / how would they not run into each other or overlap?

Click to expand...

If you imagine there's a centre (there's not, but I'll get to that), then every point moves away from that central point with a speed proportional to its distance from the centre. That is, two galaxies close to the centre will move away quite fast, while a galaxy far away from the centre will move much faster. In this way, every galaxy moves away from every other galaxy - you travel in a straight line away from the central point, so you can only collide with galaxies on the same line - but those closer to the point are moving slower than you, and those furtherer away from the point are moving faster than you, and you yourself are accelerating as you move away from the point.

Ultimately, in such a situation, not only do all points move away from the central point, they also all move away from each other (that is, their distance increases).

Now, what happens if you're on a galaxy, moving away from this central point? Velocity is relative, meaning you would see yourself as stationary, and everyone else moving away, and they'd be moving faster the further away they are (this is a real observation). This is true for every galaxy, and indeed every point in the universe.

But, we have a problem. Suppose you wake up on a galaxy, and have to find the central point. How do you do it? You can't: every galaxy is moving away from the central point, but to you, it looks like they're all treating you as the central point. You can't follow two galaxies, trace a couple of lines, and fine the central point.

In the above scenario, there is a real central point, it just so happens that from any galaxy's point of view, the other galaxies are moving away from it. In the real world, there isn't a central point: every galaxy sees itself as the centre of expansion, when, in fact, every point in space is expanding.

And that's where the counter-intuitive-ness comes in. Hopefully that gives you a more conceptual grasp of what's happening... though in all likelihood I've made things worse

Actually that's very helpful, thank you!

If this is true, why is not space in our own world (and our own bodies) expanding?

razeontherock said:

Actually that's very helpful, thank you!

If this is true, why is not space in our own world (and our own bodies) expanding?

Click to expand...

IIRC Gravity

Forgot about that "minor detail"

So of course it makes sense that as everything was moving away from everything else due to the sheer force of the big bang, that there would come a time when the distances are so great that gravity could be overcome. Is that distance currently defined as inter-galactic? (Meaning that expansion doesn't occur in galaxies?)

Is the expansion of space itself considered a natural phenomenon, as in the energy to cause it is constant?