Ask a physicist anything. (7)

[Zippy the Wonderslug]

Ok. That makes sense.

And no, I'm not doing anything funny on my computer right now, but thanks for not asking.

 

[Chalnoth]

Okay. This one kind of stumps me.

How is it even possible that the entire ROM contained in the cartridge of Burger Time for Nintendo is 28 kb but the actual picture of the game, right here,

is more than the game itself weighing in at 41 kb?

Also, notice all those parts of the game that are repeated over and over again? They store those once, then just tell the processor to draw them multiple times. The game also uses a tiny subset of the possible colors for a modern computer system (I believe the NES used a 4-bit color palette, where the game developer would select only 16 colors to draw the stuff in the game world, as opposed to our usual 24-bit color scheme which allows for nearly 17 million different colors).

 

[TemperateSeaIsland]

Well, pressure is basically an energy density. And it is generally expected that there is an upper limit to energy density near the Planck scale. Of course, we haven't been able to build experiments anywhere near the Planck scale (it's about 10^15, or around a quadrillion, times the energies the LHC can access).

If we were to accelerate a proton to these kind of energies what mass would it have?

 

[Chalnoth]

If we were to accelerate a proton to these kind of energies what mass would it have?

Roughly 1GeV. Mass doesn't change with velocity

(relativistic mass is an archaic way of doing the equations, and it led to too many mistakes, so it's generally not done any longer)

 

[Wiccan_Child]

If we were to accelerate a proton to these kind of energies what mass would it have?

Its rest mass would remain a paltry 1.67 x 10−27 kg, but I personally dislike thinking of mass as a function of velocity. At relativistic speeds, it acts as if it's much heavier, but that's more convention than any physical increase in mass.

 

[mzungu]

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[Orogeny]

An enormous bubble of rocks pushed out to their current position by the outward push of the solar wind, probably during the creation of the Solar System.

Do you mean during the T-Tauri stage of the Sun's formation? If yes, then should we be able to correlate the elemental composition of objects suspected to be from the Oort cloud with the elemental composition of the matter thought to have been swept off the planets' surfaces during T-Tauri time? By which I mean, should the Oort-derived objects be enriched in light elements such as hydrogen and helium?

 

[Chalnoth]

Do you mean during the T-Tauri stage of the Sun's formation? If yes, then should we be able to correlate the elemental composition of objects suspected to be from the Oort cloud with the elemental composition of the matter thought to have been swept off the planets' surfaces during T-Tauri time? By which I mean, should the Oort-derived objects be enriched in light elements such as hydrogen and helium?

I'm not sure it's quite that simple. Likely much of the matter was blown out of the solar system entirely. But yes, the Oort cloud should be heavier in light elements (relatively speaking) than the inner solar system. However, it looks like none of the Oort cloud objects have enough mass to hold onto gaseous hydrogen or helium, so it is likely that all of the helium has escaped, as has all of the hydrogen that wasn't bound into larger molecules (e.g. water).

 

[Orogeny]

I'm not sure it's quite that simple. Likely much of the matter was blown out of the solar system entirely. But yes, the Oort cloud should be heavier in light elements (relatively speaking) than the inner solar system. However, it looks like none of the Oort cloud objects have enough mass to hold onto gaseous hydrogen or helium, so it is likely that all of the helium has escaped, as has all of the hydrogen that wasn't bound into larger molecules (e.g. water).

Cool, thanks!

 

[mzungu]

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[Zippy the Wonderslug]

Could fire from the Sun ever make it to Earth and scorch part of the land?

What would it take for this to happen?

 

[Chalnoth]

Could fire from the Sun ever make it to Earth and scorch part of the land?

What would it take for this to happen?

Not to the ground, I don't think. The Earth's magnetic fields and the atmosphere prevent this. Basically, the hot plasma from the Sun may be hot, but by the time it gets to the Earth it's too spread out to heat up the atmosphere much.

But every eleven years or so, when the Sun is in its active cycle, satellites can suffer serious damage from solar flares.

 

[Zippy the Wonderslug]

Okay.

I was just asking due to this thread that I was reading.
Was there an atomic war roughly 10,000 years ago?, page 1

 

[Chalnoth]

Okay.

I was just asking due to this thread that I was reading.
Was there an atomic war roughly 10,000 years ago?, page 1

Well, if that is based on a real event, a more likely interpretation is a meteor impact. Could also have been a volcanic eruption.

 

[mzungu]

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[GrowingSmaller]

I have been reading about entropy and order, and that high infromation hetrogenous states (if I have it right) are less likely than low information homogenous states (or something similar).

I was wondering if this apples to social conformity? Is conformity to a group's norms like a gass with all the molecules behaving similarly, and non-conformity like a statistically improbable movement of the molecules to an unusual configuration? IOW is my behaviour expressing physical laws when I go along with the crowd, and is the crowd expressing them when impelling me to do thus?

 

[Chalnoth]

I have been reading about entropy and order, and that high infromation hetrogenous states (if I have it right) are less likely than low information homogenous states (or something similar).

I was wondering if this apples to social conformity? Is conformity to a group's norms like a gass with all the molecules behaving similarly, and non-conformity like a statistically improbable movement of the molecules to an unusual configuration? IOW is my behaviour expressing physical laws when I go along with the crowd, and is the crowd expressing them when impelling me to do thus?

I don't think so. If you want to talk about the ultimate causes for the behavior of biological organisms, you really have to look to evolution. Basically, there are no pre-defined rules for the behavior of organisms. Instead, the behavior of organisms is a complex combination of evolutionary history and environment.

So if you really want to understand, in a deep way, why humans act certain ways in certain situations, you have to look at how various human responses have evolved over time, how the current cultural norms impact behavior, how the specific environment impacts behavior, how behavior varies even given all of the same history and environment, etc. This is an extremely difficult problem and, from what I can tell looking at it from the outside, is something that we've only barely scratched the surface in understanding.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

Thanks!

So you cant infer that as a species, excluding chaotic fluctuations, we will tend wowards cultural uniformity just as a gass will spread evenly throughout a vessel.

I was just wondering why it is so difficult to do odd things, and there is so much resistance in the form of social pressure to conform. For instance if I were to copy Dali and wear a fried egg on my head there could well be a bit of a reaction - tending to "normalise" or undifferentiate my behavior and asking me to "fit in".

I would still say that nonconformity is by definition itself statistically improbable, and therefore possibly indicative of higher entropy or a Boltzmann fluctuation.

I also might add another speculation that culture is evolving (in non linear fashion) towards science and technology because they are lower energy ways of fulfilling the same objectives, which reminds me of the idea of the path of least resistance. Given objective Omega, path A will be selected over path B if it is more efficient. Thoughts?

 

[Chalnoth]

Thanks!

So you cant infer that as a species, excluding chaotic fluctuations, we will tend wowards cultural uniformity just as a gass will spread evenly throughout a vessel.

No, definitely not! It's basically going to depend upon the social structure: if the members of the species reproduce more effectively by conforming to the crowd, then over time the members that conform more will win out. If the members who go against the crowd end up having more children, then the species will move towards less conformity.

I was just wondering why it is so difficult to do odd things, and there is so much resistance in the form of social pressure to conform. For instance if I were to copy Dali and wear a fried egg on my head there could well be a bit of a reaction - tending to "normalise" or undifferentiate my behavior and asking me to "fit in".

Well, my impression is that in the right context, both conformity and standing out are beneficial for reproduction. Conformity helps because you need the support of other members of society to survive. Nonconformity helps because it helps you to find a mate and have children.

At least, that's what I (very naively) suspect. So it isn't a surprise to me at all that we seem to have these competing drives.

I also might add another speculation that culture is evolving (in non linear fashion) towards science and technology because they are lower energy ways of fulfilling the same objectives, which reminds me of the idea of the path of least resistance. Given objective Omega, path A will be selected over path B if it is more efficient. Thoughts?

I don't have a clear understanding of how this could be shown.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

No, definitely not! It's basically going to depend upon the social structure: if the members of the species reproduce more effectively by conforming to the crowd, then over time the members that conform more will win out. If the members who go against the crowd end up having more children, then the species will move towards less conformity.

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. Therefore 'the crowd is adapted' could be a heuristic.). In any case I was thinking of multiverses where I wore an egg on my head like Salvador DAli did. Maybe in some parallel it would pass without comment but I am tending to think that in most is is more likely for some reason in most possible worlds to provoke a regulatory resonse towards something more uniform.

Well, my impression is that in the right context, both conformity and standing out are beneficial for reproduction. Conformity helps because you need the support of other members of society to survive. Nonconformity helps because it helps you to find a mate and have children.

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 have a clear understanding of how this could be shown.

I would argue that behavior pattern that is reinforced earlier tends to survive better than one that is rewarded later, all else being equal. So taking the plane to another continent is more common than walking. This might be called the game theory of physics. The rational choice of the system to make is the laziest, most energy efficient.