Science Thread

[fruitvilla]

4 hours ago, blandy said:

I'm not sure that the GPS aspect is quite right. I'll jump to a TL:DR - whether the collective of the earth plus GPS satellites is travelling in a straight line out to the edge of an ever expanding universe, or is as a whole rotating around the sun is neither here nor there.

This is what I was trying to say ...

"GPS accounts for relativity by electronically adjusting the rates of the satellite clocks, and by building mathematical corrections into the computer chips which solve for the user's location. Without the proper application of relativity, GPS would fail in its navigational functions within about 2 minutes."

[fruitvilla]

12 hours ago, Brumerican said:

It's not MY model.

It's not MY Quantum Field Theory either.

I stand corrected ... but I was in practice referring to your interpretation of other people's models and similarly my interpretations of said models.

Energy and (mass, time and distance) by suitable manipulation are interchangeable ... eg E = mc² and E = ½mv²

While amperage is not defined in terms of mass and distance, but is related to time. We are able to think amps in terms of energy (power) by defining voltage as an inverse function of amps.

[Brumerican]

7 minutes ago, fruitvilla said:

I stand corrected ... but I was in practice referring to your interpretation of other people's models and similarly my interpretations of said models.

Energy and (mass, time and distance) by suitable manipulation are interchangeable ... eg E = mc² and E = ½mv²

While amperage is not defined in terms of mass and distance, but is related to time. We are able to think amps in terms of energy (power) by defining voltage as an inverse function of amps.

Cool .

Now tell me why charge doesn't fit into QFT again and what it was that you found to be gobbledegook . Only this time keep it simple (Like that Einstein quote you posted)

Explain to me like I'm a 5 year old who doesn't understand maths at all.   

[villakram]

Pretty nifty!

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Mars_Express/An_interactive_map_to_explore_Jezero_crater

"Explore the landing site of NASA’s Perseverance rover and travel to scenic panoramas with this new interactive tool based on ESA Mars Express and NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data. View on your mobile phone, and the rotation of the scene will follow the movements of your device!"

[blandy]

2 hours ago, villakram said:

Absent GR, we would not be able to get GPS to work as the satellite positions could not be predicted correctly with newtonian gravity alone. Well, they probably could with some crazy set of fudge fixes, but it would be much harder.

I believe the GPS/GNSS satellite position predictions are updated as part of the ephemerides - the orbit data and where they will be is, if not constantly tweaked, then certainly regularly updated. I have no idea as to the detailed science behind it, other than (presumably) the exact orbital path they take is not absolutely repetitive every orbit, for whatever reason, but must be predictable in the short term. I don't know anything at all about Quantum Mechanics. 

[fruitvilla]

1 hour ago, Brumerican said:

Now tell me why charge doesn't fit into QFT again

I never said it did not (I suspect it does) ... but if you want to play ... explain how it does.

My point, an electron has a rest mass and a negative charge. Convert that mass to energy ... no problem. There is a charge still left over. It is not that simple! I am simply pointing out an electron is believed to be a fundamental particle with mass and charge. Like mass/energy, charge is believed to be conserved.

Why do I think it is beginning to sound like gobbledygook? Have I got a Quantum Resonance Magnetic Analyzer for you.

 

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by fruitvilla

[mjmooney]

Enough of this quantum tomfoolery. I have a proper science question for you clever types: how does shaving gel work? Googling that question just gets stuff along the lines of "It provides a smooth glide for your razor". Well, duh. No. I want to know exactly how it turns from a small blob of blue gel to a faceful of white foam as soon as you start spreading it around. 

[blandy]

2 hours ago, fruitvilla said:

This is what I was trying to say ...

"GPS accounts for relativity by electronically adjusting the rates of the satellite clocks, and by building mathematical corrections into the computer chips which solve for the user's location. Without the proper application of relativity, GPS would fail in its navigational functions within about 2 minutes."

Seeing as we're doing all science n'that,  your link says 

Quote

Without the proper application of relativity, GPS would fail in its navigational functions within about 2 minutes.

So the next time your plane approaches an airport in bad weather, and you just happen to be wondering "what good is basic physics?", think about Einstein and the GPS tracker in the cockpit, helping the pilots guide you to a safe landing.

So I thought I'd mention that GPS (GNSS) has moved on a whole bunch quite quickly. When I first started working with it in the 90s, it was basically a fairly clever but simple triangulation system (though there was a precise, encrypted, signal available for the Military (the US was worried that enemies could also use their GPS so they wanted the ability to "meander" it (artificially introduce errors to the civil version, but keep an accurate non-meandered version the NATO military could use without the errors). Anyway, as GPS use came to dominate the world so widely, new techniques got introduced to make it more accurate (fewer/smaller errors) and DGPS was introduced, where a fixed (local) surveyed site that knows exactly where it is would receive GPS signals, work out the error it was seeing between where GPS said it was, and where it actually was, and then pass on the necessary corrective calculation to local traffic (e.g. aircraft landing) to allow them to eliminate the GPS error - they would be experiencing the same error as the surveyed location, as they were close to it.  Then this was taken a stage further and both Local and Wide Area Augmentation was introduced, allowing (suitably equipped) aircraft to benefit from broadcast (not point to point) error elimination and make air traffic safer.

[Brumerican]

6 minutes ago, fruitvilla said:

I never said it did not (I suspect it does) ... but if you want to play ... explain how it does.

My point, an electron has a rest mass and a negative charge. Convert that mass to energy ... no problem. There is a charge still left over. It is not that simple! I am simply pointing out an electron is believed to be a fundamental particle with mass and charge. Like mass/energy, charge is believed to be conserved.

Why do I think it is beginning to sound like gobbledygook? Have I got a Quantum Resonance Magnetic Analyzer for you.

 

 

I was more interested in why YOU think the idea that the Universe is made from vibrating energy is gobbledegook rather than a link to be honest . 

[fruitvilla]

5 minutes ago, Brumerican said:

I was more interested in why YOU think the idea that the Universe is made from vibrating energy is gobbledegook rather than a link to be honest . 

I said it sounds [beginning to] like gobbledygook and gave an example of that claiming that everything is vibrations.

They throw in famous science quotes for authenticity, and the quantum word.

15 hours ago, fruitvilla said:

15 hours ago, Brumerican said:

It's all energy but just at different levels and frequencies.

This is beginning to sound like gobbledygook now. 

 

[Brumerican]

Would it be less confusing to say that it is the fields themselves which are fundamental rather than the particles and forces that vibrate in them then ? 

Everything in the Universe is made from the same one thing. (An underlying field of energy that produces  different particles and forces when the field is vibrated at certain levels of frequency ?)

 

 

[blandy]

15 minutes ago, Brumerican said:

Would it be less confusing to say that it is the fields themselves which are fundamental rather than the particles and forces that vibrate in them then ? 

Everything in the Universe is made from the same one thing. (An underlying field of energy that produces  different particles and forces when the field is vibrated at certain levels of frequency ?)

That’s confusing. If the fields are fundamental, then the [thing] that vibrates the fields must also be fundamental, therefore the fields can’t be the one thing, can they?

[Brumerican]

Just now, blandy said:

That’s confusing. If the fields are fundamental, then the [thing] that vibrates the fields must also be fundamental, therefore the fields can’t be the one thing, can they?

 Now that's a proper question. 

I'll let you know when my research is done but it's tough to get funding and CERN won't let me borrow their gear for even a weekend.

[fruitvilla]

Can I recommend Lee Smolin's book?  Below is a short review I wrote a while back elsewhere.

The thing I took away from this book was the theories we currently have regarding quantum phenomena are not compatible with relativity. These are our two most successful theories ever. We look at our cosmos and we can see we are missing "elements" from our cosmology or our theories are incomplete.

I love the Ri lecture series ... I will look at it later, thanks. 

 

Einstein's Unfinished Revolution: The search what lies beyond the quantum by Lee Smolin.

I really liked this book. It catalogues a whole bunch of interpretations of quantum theory. Broadly he classifies them into realist and anti-realist. The latter being phenomena don't really exist until they are observed/measured. He points out that none of them are in accord with special relativity. And he suggests the basis for his and future theories. He seems to favour causal theories.

One that he immediately dismissed was a many worlds version, where the universe is made up of many fully deterministic worlds. But each world is affected the others slightly. Because we don't have access to the other world causes, we can only interpret the effects probabilistically. Apparently the Schrödinger equation can be derived from this interpretation as it can from many other interpretations. I could not help but inwardly smile as I read about this interpretation.

Smolin writes gently and kindly about others in his field and about the issues regarding advancement, technical and personal. I can't say I understood it all, but that was more my problem.

[Brumerican]

The gobbledegook answer would be that it is YOU the conscious being that sings the song.

(I am not saying that's what I believe btw)

Edited February 18, 2021 by Brumerican

[Brumerican]

Just over 90 minutes to go but they are in telephone fundraising mode.

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by Brumerican

[villakram]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

I believe the GPS/GNSS satellite position predictions are updated as part of the ephemerides - the orbit data and where they will be is, if not constantly tweaked, then certainly regularly updated. I have no idea as to the detailed science behind it, other than (presumably) the exact orbital path they take is not absolutely repetitive every orbit, for whatever reason, but must be predictable in the short term. I don't know anything at all about Quantum Mechanics. 

Yup, and the updates require GR to be easily calculated correctly. 

QM is generally not relevant on macroscopic scales, and so can be ignored. The atomic clock makers must treat it like their religion however!

[villakram]

2 hours ago, mjmooney said:

Enough of this quantum tomfoolery. I have a proper science question for you clever types: how does shaving gel work? Googling that question just gets stuff along the lines of "It provides a smooth glide for your razor". Well, duh. No. I want to know exactly how it turns from a small blob of blue gel to a faceful of white foam as soon as you start spreading it around. 

Start with Boyles law, take an appropriate equation of state and go from there.

[villarule123]

Landed!

[limpid]

1 hour ago, Brumerican said:

 Now that's a proper question. 

I'll let you know when my research is done but it's tough to get funding and CERN won't let me borrow their gear for even a weekend.

The vibration has no external cause it is a property of the field; like flavours are to quarks. But let us know how your research pans out

The thing that sounded like gobbledegook to me learning that the quantum equations describing the behaviour of electrons can be solved to show that there is only one electron. In the whole of spacetime.