A short 9-minute video that describes the “Many world’s theory” in a discussion about the multiverse. It is described in “Level Three Multiverse: Many Worlds” that begins at 5:48 into the video. Just before that, however, the anthropic principle is described. It states that an infinite number of universes exists and we just happen to live in the one where all the laws of physics and forces of nature just happen to allow life to exist. Lucky us.
But the “Many Worlds” theory does not even attempt to explain the fine-tuning of the universe as two of the other “Multiverse” theories attempt to do. The “Many Worlds” theory attempts to explain quantum mechanics. This theory says the world splits off into two different worlds, many times a second. That is you become two different people. That is you split off with the splitting of the world. And split again a tiny fraction of a second later, then split again, then again until billions of copies of yourself exist. Dr. Alan Guth says this theory “makes a lot of sense.”
Again, this “Many Worlds” theory starts at 5:48 into the video and lasts about one minute and twenty seconds. Please take one minute and twenty seconds out of your life and watch this video and tell me if you agree with Dr. Guth, and a lot of other physicists who say that this theory “makes a lot of sense”?
This theory says the world splits off into two different worlds, many times a second. That is you become two different people. That is you split off with the splitting of the world. And split again a tiny fraction of a second later, then split again, then again until billions of copies of yourself exist. Dr. Alan Guth says this theory “makes a lot of sense.”
Yeah riiight! So how come, that for every single split of the universe during my entire lifetime, I personally always seemed to get the short end of the stick?! I think someone out there, seems to have it in for me, here in this universe… 😉
Cheers!
Ron —
My understanding is that the word “multiverse” refers, in fact, to a bigger expanse than the one we now know, a new “totality-of-reality”, that our universe would be just a piece of a larger whole. For this expanded view, scientists have many ideas. In some, other “universes” have the same laws of physics and the same particles making up matter. So, except perhaps for some environmental differences, pretty much what we see here is what happens there. In other multiverse proposals, other universes could be radically different from what we know, the particles could be different — the laws of physics could be different!
That said, I have never studied ANY of these proposals in detail for two reasons: my main interests lie elsewhere, AND the math involved is mostly outside my area of expertise. In any case, one must respect people of Alan Guth’s stature. Perhaps this topic is too big for a Blog? 🙂
Doug, there were four versions of the multiverse given in that very short video. The one you describe was the very first one. That one is the theory that the universe may be many times, perhaps hundreds or even millions of times larger than our observable universe. That one does not even address the fine-tuning problem at all. I have absolutely no problem believing that this one is possible, or even probable. However, that is not the multiverse that almost all physicists believe in. They, almost all, believe in the second or fourth version described in this very short video.
Only the second and fourth one actually posits a real “multiverse”. That is, many, many universes popping into existence, universes by the trillions of trillions. Those two do address the fine-tuning problem. Those describe the multiverse that Rees, Guth, Krauss, Carroll and all the other physicist posit to counter the fine-tuning of the universe. That is if an almost infinite number of universes pop into existence, then surely one of those universes would have all the particles and forces would have the qualities that allowed stars, galaxies, planets, and life to evolve. Okay, forget about all the other three as I sense neither you nor anyone else cares to discuss them.
But it is the third one which really is not a multiverse theory at all. And it does not even address the fine-tuning problem. It was posited to address the quantum mechanics theory of an observer being necessary for the physical universe to exist. It, that is that part of the video lasted for one minute and twenty seconds. That was all I was asking for, that is for people to watch that one minute and twenty-second piece before commenting. And to comment on that segment only.
Apparently, no one has that much time to spare.
Downloading, Ron, and will check it out and try to comment later.
Incidentally, there was a Ron Patterson/POB spit from Darwinian/TOD, Circa 2013… How about another site-split that ‘cosmologically-shifts’ a little toward Doug, your, et al.’s (including my own) somewhat related interests in those regards? I know a bit about WordPress myself and might be motivated to work on and/or maintain it a little as well. Anyway, just a flight of fancy that I thought to throw out there. Unsure if my other splits are thinking along these same lines or have these two tunes too on their laptops…
“The real you
Is not a puppet
Which life pushes around
The real deep down you Is the whole universe
What you do is what
The whole universe is doing
At the place you call
The here and now”
Caelan, sure, I might be interested. I will have a definite shift in my life, and concentrate on other interest when I leave Mexico on September 26th. So keep me informed.
Ok, well best with your shift and I may consider Sept. 26th. as a kind of deadline to possibly look into a new site if that makes sense such as WRT your shift.
No guarantees but it might be intriguing to see if or what familiar and new faces drop in, what’s discussed and how/where it goes. In the mean time, if anyone wants to make suggestions (ex., site title?) or offer to lend a hand, please feel free.
Unfortunately Ron, string theory has captured academia at the moment, and any hiring to the contrary is not going to happen.
The rational have realized they are in a box canyon, and need to turn around.
Physics has not progressed much from the completion of the Standard Model in the 1970’s.
This changing of the guard is exciting but nerve-wracking. To put it bluntly, it must deliver. Physics is enjoying a period of enormous public support. But if there is no appreciable progress, it is hard to see anyone stumping up the cash to build an even bigger particle smasher or better space probes. We must hope the theories stand up to the test.
Hint: It hasn’t
Thanks for the link Hitrekker. From your link, bold mine:
The result is a cornucopia of awesome ideas: hidden dimensions, shadow particles and an infinity of parallel universes, to name but three.
And that one, an infinity of parallel universes, is the many worlds theory. That’s the one that Alan Guth says “I think makes a lot of sense”. That is the universe, splits off into another parallel universe, many times a second. and of course, those parallel universes also splits off into other parallel universes many times a second. So only after a few minutes, you would have more parallel universes than the number of atoms in the universe. And those universes would just keep splitting into an infinite number of universes forever. And you Hightrekker would just keep on splitting into more and more Hitrekkers until all the trillions of Hightrekkers died. No, goddammit, that does not make a lot of sense. That has to be stupidest goddamn theory ever dreamed up by man.
Nevertheless, Doug Leighton says: In any case, one must respect people of Alan Guth’s stature. Perhaps this topic is too big for a Blog? No, fuck no, that is not an idea too big for a fifth grader, much less this blog. And I am shocked that Doug would support it… if he even bothered to watch it.
That link again: Do we live in a multiverse? | The Economist And the many worlds theory starts at 5:48 minutes into the video and lasts for all of one minute and twenty seconds.
I watched the presentation Ron, and refrained from commenting because I have so little background in area, more like a 5th grader I suppose. And from that perspective my response is- ‘well perhaps, but does it matter since our reality is just here in this one universe that we find ourselves in at this moment?’
Yes, Hickory, it matters, it matters a lot. And you do not need a background in science to doubt that the universe is splitting into parallel universes millions of times a minute. That means you are splitting into millions of Hickorys millions of times a minute. And a million million more times in the next minute. All you need is just a wee bit of common sense.
Why it matters is science should just not be making up shit to explain something they have no explanation for. They should just say “we don’t know”.
Why? Our brains can only understand 4 dimensions and there might be 11 so it’s no surprise things are a bit difficult. Stacking up an infinite number of 2-D sheets of paper is still an infinitely thin volume in 3-D space. Why shouldn’t it be similar with multiplying 4-D universes into 5-D, 6-D etc. space? Science doesn’t just say “I don’t know” with its tacit suggestion of giving up, it works by proposing hypotheses and getting them shot down until they look just about OK. So far in the quantum realm we are way off that, but the only way forward is to keep suggesting new ideas.
George, that is all well and good. However, your reply has nothing to do with the many worlds theory. String theory, perhaps but that applies to the other multiverse theories, not the many worlds theory.
That theory says the universe splits up into many millions of other universes in just a minute or so and continues forever. It has nothing to do with trillions of other big bangs or trillions of miny bangs banging off from our original one big bang.
So far, I am a little shocked. No one has stated whether or not they are inclined to believe or disbelieve that they themselves are splitting off into other “themselves” millions of times a minute. Good gravy, do you guys really believe that shit?
I believe it is a valid hypothesis that has not been disproved. I also believe argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy with especially little bearing in the field of quantum mechanics.
And I’d like to believe that in one of those universes Jim Morrison and/or Ian Curtis are still alive and/or I am now the lead singer of the Doors (now on their third comeback tour) or New Order/Joy Division (now reformed after settling various “artisitic differences”).
I also believe argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy…
The argument from incredulity occurs when one denies a proposition on the basis of not being able to fathom the possibility of it.
In some cases, incredulity is a valid argument, in some cases, it is not. I cannot fathom the possibility that a cow jumped over the moon. Therefore I just don’t believe it. And like the cow jumping over the moon, some cases are just so goddamn stupid that I cannot fathom it being true. One such case is the many worlds theory. That is:
“The whole universe splits and becomes two universes every fraction of a second. And those two universes split and become four universes and those four universes become eight universes, and we only a tiny fraction of a second has elapsed since the first split. And in just a minute or two, there will be millions of copies of you in other universes. Soon, the number of universes would be one times ten to the millionth power. And the number of universes would keep doubling forever.”
If that is an argument from incredulity then just color me incredulous.
My understanding is that the multi-universe theory is much more than even that. Every particle can be be in certain states with some probability, therefore every combination of every state of every particle is valid and therefore exists as a separate universe, and every change in the probability function results in a new set of universes, and every new universe goes through the same process. Therefore the number of universes is an unimaginably large number to the power of another unimaginably large number, recursed an unimaginable number of times and cascaded through time an unimaginably large number of times (but still finite).
Of course my understanding is wrong, just like every other 7.x billion people at the moment (and mine is a good fe years out of date now). Some people have an inkling of why and what they don’t understand and how they might get some better understanding (and some of those built and operate the HLC). I am not one of them, but I wish they’d hurry up.
George, I must have watched at least 100 youtube Closer to Truth, Robert Kuhn videos on the multiverse but that is the first time I have heard that one.
Ron is right, the multiple universe idea isn’t math, it is one interpretation of the collapse of the wave function.
The more common alternative interpretation is called the Copenhagen Interpretation, which says the universe is fundamentally random. Einstein famously criticized it by saying “The old guy doesn’t play dice”. (Der Alter würfelt nicht)
There are other interpretations, but anyway, none of them are very satisfactory intuitively, and none of them are based on any real math or observations. The are just attempts to deal with the weirdness of the math.
I second that. The hunter gatherers that we are can probably never understand QM or perhaps the TOE when (if) if eventually appears. The number of people on earth who can follow advanced math are measured in the hundreds and advanced math is necessary to “grasp” abstract concepts. Why would it be otherwise?
Again, there is not one equation of math involved in the many worlds theory. Not one.
Wrong.
“The many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wave function and denies the actuality of wave function collapse.” Its all math.
Now just a cotton picking minute here Doug. A denial that something that is observed, actually happened, is not math.
The collapse of the wave function cannot be explained mathematically. There is no math that explains why a particle, travelling at near the speed of light, becomes a wave when unobserved but collapses back into a particle when observed.
The many worlds theory just says it collapses in one universe but not the universe that it just split off from.
There is no math that explains the collapse of the wave function and no math says new parallel universes are created, in planck time, to explain that it really didn’t happen.
Really, Doug, I have been studying the double slit theory for well over a year now. And no one denies that the wave function collapses. And no one has put forth any mathematical explanation for it.
One more point. Out of the hundreds of Youtube videos I have watched on that, the multiverse and other theories. No physicist denies that the universe is fine-tuned. At least 90% of them posit the multiverse theory as an explanation. But the many worlds theory is a different theory altogether. Only a tiny fraction of physicist believe it is even a possibility. The vast majority think it is a joke.
Edit: The multiverse theory is a kind of denial that the universe is fine-tuned. That is, if one times ten to the 500th power universes are created, one of them is bound to, just accidently, be so fine tuned that stars, galaxies, planets and life can exist.
I don’t remember the multiverse theory being propounded initially to explain fine tuning, more it just fell out of the statistics. Some discussions and philosophy around the anthropic principle might include it, but not all.
None, particularly. They are both unproven solutions to problems in our understanding of the universe. But they are solutions to quite different problems, and therefore quite unrelated.
String theory is an attempt to answer the question “what are particles?” Current physics explains an awful lot of the universe 17 particles – a neat 4×4 matrix of electrons, quarks, neutrinos, and bosons, plus the Higgs. But what are particles, why 17, and why do those 17 have the properties they do? Trying theory tries to provide an answer to such questions.
The multiverse is an attempt to answer the question of why the universe seems so well fitted for life. There are a number of numbers that characterize the universe – of which the 17 particles might be one. The speed of light, the gravitational constant, the number of spatial dimensions are some well-known ones, but there are others: of the order of twenty in all. If any of those numbers were much different, then life as we know it could not exist. In many, matter could not exist, or the universe would only exist for fractions of a second. How come we got so lucky that universe is suitable for us. One answer is God, but that just provokes the question how come we are so lucky that God wanted to create us. Physicists don’t like the answer “God”. Apart from anything else, you cannot research God – at least, not in the way physicists do research. So the alternative is that we didn’t get lucky. This universe is only one of a large number of possible universes, the multiverse, each with different values of those magic numbers. Or even with completely different numbers. At which point, the question changes from “why is the universe suitable for life” to “why do we find ourselves in one of the few universes in the multiverse suitable for life”. Which has the obvious answer that we can only exist in those universes, so our being in one is totally unsurprising.
However, there are six other answers here. No one can agree. It’s all just one big confusing theory.
“Why it matters is science should just not be making up shit to explain something they have no explanation for. They should just say “we don’t know”.
Yes, I agree with that. And so do most of the millions of other versions of me. Humans seem to have a lot of trouble saying “we don’t know”, and be OK with it. I’d like to think that I am OK with it.
I’m in awe of unknown, this week especially how mitochondria and chloroplasts precursors got a foothold (with gradual integration of the genetics and metabolism) in the bigger cells.
“They should just say “we don’t know”. Yup, all those folks sitting around campfires should have said “we just don’t know” and kept calling thunder gods talking to one another. Well, I for one am thankful for those rare inquiring minds who brought us math and ALL the modern sciences. Maybe you should spend time reading your Bible, a book that contains all the answers.
“Maybe you should spend time reading your Bible, a book that contains all the answers.”
And that is one of the funniest things I have seen in along time.
Doug L,
“We don’t know” is incomplete, in my opinion. I’ve been a proponent of “We don’t know yet” for decades upon decades.
Thanks, Ron. I agree with you and disagree with Dr Guth. Many Worlds makes no sense to me and seems the least likely explanation of the double-slit phenomena. Is the alternative to accept matter as deriving from consciousness?
I also agree that math doesn’t seem to feature in the Many Worlds view; it’s more of a metaphysical approach.
Is the alternative to accept matter as deriving from consciousness?
No, there are other options. As for consciousness, that is known as “the hard problem”. No one has yet figured out just what it is, though a few do claim to know a lot about it. Daniel Dennett says consciousness is an illusion. I disagree. Some claim there is nothing but consciousness. That’s a possibility but I am not ready to make such a claim myself.
I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.
Max Planck
In this universe, on this planet, 2017 was pretty warm.
Looking back 120 yrs, very warm.
Here is some data, if you are one to ‘believe’ data-
Yeah, but look on the bright side there are billions upon billions of other universes where we are experiencing an ice age 😉
Is experiencing an ice age looking on the bright side?
Of course! It’s the albedo… 😉
But realize, behind the albedo layer it is very, very dark.
If you feel your way to find the under-surface of that layer,
you will find it to be bumpy.
Strange, I thought it would be smooth.
And I was wondering, in a universe where there is the inverse of a vacuum between black holes, do the black holes become white……, hmmm. What is the opposite of a hole?
Global sea ice extent is second lowest behind last year but on a trajectory that could see new daily records by September.
I don’t like to wish bad on people, but maybe we’d be lucky in the long-run if there is a big heat wave during the Qatar World Cup in 2022, that is catastrophic in its manifestations. What else will be a wake up call to billions? Perhaps it will coincide with the next big el nino year.
B.C. WILDFIRE UPDATE MONDAY: MORE FIRES NOW BURNING THAN DURING RECORD 2017 SEASON
“A new wave of lightning strikes has sparked 145 new wildfires across B.C., bringing the current total to nearly 600 fires burning. Of those fires, 47 are considered wildfires of note, meaning these are wildfires which are highly visible or which pose a potential threat to public safety.”
More fires, (number), but of smaller size. Plus, not as much impact on populated centres this year. So far. Pray for freaking rain.
I have a Honda fire (high pressure) water pump ready to go with 300′ of hose. Where I live the rating is at ‘extreme’, and we have 25-35 kt winds forecast all week. By the end of the week it is supposed to hit 29 degrees. The closest fire to us is 60 miles away, but all it takes is one dragging muffler or a dumb-ass butt tossing smoker to set the valley on fire. It is very smoky today up and down the east coast of Vancouver Island. On the bright side it is cooler today as the smoke seems to be blocking the sun a fair amount, plus the wind is cool off the Strait. I have been in fire zones when it was 35C with 1/4 mile visibilty. Thank God it isn’t that bad here.
My buddy is flying on a fire nw of Vanderhoof. He flies a Bell 204. He says it is Armageddon, and they had to move the camp. Usually he stays in touch with email, but he is so busy I haven’t heard much beyond the basics. The forecats shows no rain for us for at least the next few weeks. This blocking high is re-establishing itself and is very very strong.
Paulo —
Have you thought about mounting one of those long reach farm sprinklers on your roof? Can’t do it myself because my well wouldn’t last long with sustained draw at that volume but a neighbor who lives beside a creek has done this. Works like a damn. Good luck man.
Would one of these be of help if slowly filled from the well as standby? I have 1000L on my roof for constant supply as the mains is intermittent and another 5,000L under my garage as reserve.
I am on a river so water is no problem, and I have thought about it for sure. My friend has all the fittings so I just might do it this week. Even though we are at extreme rating, it’s still pretty green. If the woods next door catch with a westerly It’ll be me on the deck with the fire hose. We do keep an eye out for sure. Man, that pump shoots a stream about 40′ and is absolutely soaking.
One thing I have done is volunteer as the local emergency comm guy in the event of a disaster. I set up a Ham base station and also have a portable. In September I am being trained on sending data packets by HF. The Regional District pays for the course work and are really working at getting comms set up in every remote area. We are 75 km from the city of Campbell River, and a fire would isolate us and would most likely take out our phone and hydro. For Ham radio I can simply use a battery bank for the 50 watt or use the portable. If we have a long outage I can use the genset to charge up everything.
Fire prep is number 1 and the subduction quake is overdue so we do train for those 2 specific emergencies.
I always thought emergency communications would simply be done by ‘someone’, like the RCMP, volunteer fire dept, etc. I was surprised to find out that in BC it is tasked to volunteers using the amateur band and that ‘they’ is really us…in my case where I live, me. There are some absolutely awesome people in the Ham radio world and I have enjoyed learningt and fitting in.
Paulo —
LOL “There are some absolutely awesome people in the Ham world.” Yeah, and my Dad was was one of them (VE7EI). He’d dispatch trains for the PGE when snow slides took out telegraph lines — back before you were born (probably?).
I’d memorized the Radio Amateur’s Handbook by age ten but never got a license, but which made EE courses duck soup when I got to Uni. Interesting world. BTW, VE7EI was the second HAM license issued here. Impressed?
Yeah, I am impressed. Actually, an old co-worker of mine….his first job was for CP as a telegrapher. He is around 72 years old. he was stationed somewhere in the boonies and relayed train progress info by morse.
Volkswagen’s Electrify America subsidiary has put out a commercial that aims to spread awareness of electric vehicles and how far the industry has progressed, Reuters reports. The ad is part of a $45 million public education initiative. “We’re trying to say with this campaign that electric vehicles are fun to drive, the range is great and charging is more widely available than people know,” Richard Steinberg, Electrify America’s senior director of green cities, marketing and communications, told Reuters.
The commercial uses two familiar cartoons to make a point about EVs over standard vehicles. In the ad, you see a man in an orange car stopped at a red light while the Flintstones theme song plays. Then a man in an orange Chevy Bolt drives up to the light while the Jetsons theme takes over. Once the light turns green, the man in the Chevy Bolt drives away, leaving the other man behind, while a speaker says, “With instant acceleration, electric cars are more fun to drive and more affordable than ever. Electric cars are here.” The message from the education campaign, dubbed Plug Into The Present, is “Say goodbye to the Stone Age.”
Though to be frank, I’m not at all impressed by the quality of the ad itself! I think a couple of high school kids with an I-phone on a shoestring budget could have done waaay better than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRgcJusf280
Plug into the Present with the “JetStones”
Now this is a much more sophisticated commercial for a Mercedes BEV
“The ad is part of a $45 million public education initiative. …”
They skipped the part where the ‘initiative’ is born of the Dieselgate settlement over lying about their diesel emissions.
Yes, I’m aware of that. To be fair I think VW is on the right track post dieselgate. However that particular ad still leaves an enormous amount to be desired!
Cheers!
Mining free – ENERGY BASED CRYPTO COIN – Gubber mints can’t “PRINT” Energy
“By creating a freely accessible marketplace for renewable energy trading, Solar Bankers is challenging the dominance of the large energy companies.” https://solarbankers.com/
BUY SELL OR HOLD?
Uggg Forget too complex to fix VW cars After seeing such a stupid Ad! Can’t watch TV – Drug and Car Ads.. 2-4 thousand of Advertising wasted $ in many cars. Hugh advantage for Tesla, not one cent to the Media jackoffs.
Tesla Time News – EV World coverage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=205Zj7sRISo&t=1079s
This is awesome, even if you think (significant) science discovery stopped in the 1970s (Yes I’m talking to you Hightrekker). 🙂
RESEARCHER ACCURATELY DETERMINES ENERGY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TWO QUANTUM STATES
“A kiwi physicist has discovered the energy difference between two quantum states in the helium atom with unprecedented accuracy, a ground-breaking discovery that contributes to our understanding of the universe and space-time and rivals the work of the world’s most expensive physics project, the Large Hadron Collider.”
“Growth
for the sake of growth
is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
— Edward Abbey, reminding us that “corporate-sponsored” environmental activities is a rather bad joke.
Nice saying, but not applicable. This is not growth, it’s replacement with collapse of a very degenerate and dangerous system.
Don’t you see that each and every step like this is actually de-growth, smaller and smaller footprint on the earth? Maybe I expect too much.
Replacement?
I just see it as another techno game, soon the be left in the dust, as our emergent reality continues on.
How about these animations and the calculations behind them, from the work that led to Frank Wilczek’s 2004 Nobel prize in physics. Why is any of this more plausible or comprehensible to the average layperson, than is the concept of multiverses?! The math behind this is way above my paygrade, but my point is if you can’t do the math you have no place criticizing any of the theories. You must be fluent in mathematics before you can ever hope to even begin to truly understand the universe and it’s mysteries for mathematics is the language of science.
“What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school… It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it. You see my physics students don’t understand it… That is because I don’t understand it. Nobody does.”
― Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
Fred —
“…but my point is if you can’t do the math you have no place criticizing any of the theories.”
I agree, totally, and would go further, because sometimes you can follow the math and still not (properly) understand the science. One might ask: Was Feynman right when he said, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics then you don’t understand quantum mechanics”? Well I can do the math but don’t pretend to understand QM and I refuse say it’s wrong — just because I don’t understand it.
Fred and Doug. There is no math that supports, or even hints at, the universe splitting into another universe, and those two universes splitting into four universes, and those four universes splitting into eight universes until after several minutes you have more universes than there are atoms in the universe. And more copies of yourself than there atoms in the universe. That is just goddamn down in the dirt stupid. And that should be obvious to anyone with any brains at all.
Saying the math is just above your head when there is no math involved whatsoever, is just a cop-out. There is math involved in quantum mechanics. Math that says Schrodinger’s cat is neither alive or dead until it is observed. Or more correctly both alive and dead at the same time until it is observed. But there is no math that explains why conscious observation collapses the wave function. That is just an observation that cannot be explained by mathematics.
But Schrodinger’s cat and the collapse of the wave function can be explained if the universe splits into parallel universes every fraction of a second. Schrodinger’s cat is alive in one universe but dead in the one that just split off. And the wave function collapses in one universe but not in the other.
The theory was just dreamed up as an out, as an explanation for the unexplainable.
The theory was just dreamed up as an out
Bingo!
For the record, I don’t believe in other universes, or other places in the universe with life.
Until I see proof of it.
Until then, this is quite enough.
This universe has Pizza, and girls who flirt,
and questions that go unanswered.
“The theory was just dreamed up as an out, as an explanation for the unexplainable.”
Actually, collapse of the wave function has been understood (mathematically) since the 1980s. In fact, there are several equivalent approaches to deriving collapse.
Not to mention that no less an authority than Steven Hawking wrote his last paper just before his death, titled:
A smooth exit from eternal inflation?
S.W. Hawking and Thomas Hertogb
Abstract: The usual theory of inflation breaks down in eternal inflation. We derive a
dual description of eternal inflation in terms of a deformed Euclidean CFT located at the
threshold of eternal inflation. The partition function gives the amplitude of different geometries
of the threshold surface in the no-boundary state. Its local and global behavior
in dual toy models shows that the amplitude is low for surfaces which are not nearly conformal
to the round three-sphere and essentially zero for surfaces with negative curvature.
Based on this we conjecture that the exit from eternal inflation does not produce an infinite
fractal-like multiverse, but is finite and reasonably smooth.
Dunno but looks there might be a teensy weensy bit of math in there somewhere…
To put it another way, the concept of multiverses is not some harebrained idea that theoretical physicists just pulled out of there asses.
Hawking’s final paper suggests a framework for understanding the universe that would render the multiverse finite, countable and subject to meaningfully engagement via the tools of science.
Dunno but looks there might be a teensy weensy bit of math in there somewhere…
Fred, Hawking is talking about the multiverse theory, not the many world’s theory. I thought everyone understood by now that they are two entirely different things.
Whatever you do, stay away from things that might melt your heart! 😉
You’ll have to listen to the entire talk to get that one. Hint, it has to do with phase transition from a Time Crystal to a Time Liquid and would require a defibrillator to reverse it! At least that’s my interpretation.
Cheers!
For anyone interested, certainly those who may find themselves in a smokey zone, there is a worldwide network of particulate monitors that you can access in real time. It doesn’t measure ozone, but I have been finding it very useful during this fire season out west.
Not all areas have monitors, for example there isn’t a single one in the county where the biggest Calif fire has been this month, but there are hundreds of others in this state, one in Tasmania, and two on the east side of the Andes where Brazil, Peru and Bolivia come together, for example.
You can get a monitor and add it to the network for about $200. Good for a public facility such a school, hospital, college or city hall in an area where they don’t have one already.
The map is scroll-able and zoom-able.
Purple air- https://www.purpleair.com/map?&zoom=3&lat=39.51596757727815&lng=-99.35539180755615&clustersize=45&orderby=L&latr=121.86969544900019&lngr=-132.01171875
It is really smokey in Bend Or this morning.
I might put off fly fishing.
Yep, I canceled a trip to the Sierras last week. Yosemite was closed for 3 weeks, limited reopening today.
Fished yesterday—-
Awfully smokey today.
Library, maybe a swim—-
It is getting late.
As I have said many times, those who still think of TESLA as an auto maker are way off the mark. They just don’t understand what TESLA really does or what its true strengths and assets are.
Tesla Earnings Bombshell Reminds Us That Tesla’s a Tech Company
Tesla isn’t a car company. It’s a tech company that makes cars.
Currently, Tesla Autopilot uses Nvidia’s (NVDA – Get Report) Drive platform, an autonomous driving platform used by a handful of other automakers. Put simply, Tesla’s new AI Chip will be around an order of magnitude more powerful than the current iteration of chips available from Nvidia.
The Tesla computer is able to handle more than 2,000 frames per second of video from the car’s onboard computers. It does that by bypassing the GPU or CPU that traditional AI hardware uses, instead running computations in the bare silicon itself. The neural networks that drive Tesla’s autonomous car capabilities essentially do a vast number of incredibly simple calculations on matrices; by moving those to bare metal, the speed increases are substantial.
That also gives Tesla a meaningful advantage over competitors.
The only reason Tesla is able to engineer its chips to run this way is because it has an in-depth understanding of its neural net architecture because that AI work is done in-house on a massive amount of training data generated by both a test fleet and customer cars on the road. (Some analysts have pinned the value of Tesla’s data alone in the billions.)
What did you think of those BlackFly 4 pound electric motors that gave 130 pounds of thrust each for a total max of 1040 pounds of thrust. (see upthread)
A Corvette maxed out gives about 750 pounds of thrust over the quarter mile.
ft/lbs or N/m = Torque
Torque times RPM = POWER
Hub Motors are UR – The Ultimate.
Hope my next Truck has 6 of them.
It’s the act of detection not the consciousness. Heisenberg said so. Determination of where the particle/wave is collapses the wave function. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yotBpxXiivA
With further references.
GF, you are right, it is not consciousness, not directly anyway. But it is not the detector that causes the wave function to collapse. First, that was proven by placing the detector after the slit and only on one slit. The wave function collapsed no matter which slit it passed through.
And it was never the detector that deflected the particle. It has been done with buckyballs, a sixty carbon atom molecule. Photons cannot deflect buckyballs.
However the argument was finally settled by the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment This is where consciousness comes in, though indirectly. Just the knowledge of which slit the particle passed through collapsed the wave function.
Wow! From the video you cited. “It only makes sense if the universe is a simulation and all parts are equidistant in space-time from the source of the simulation. Like in a video game or a dream.”
Really?
Wow! From the video you cited. “It only makes sense if the universe is a simulation and all parts are equidistant in space-time from the source of the simulation. Like in a video game or a dream.”
So? 😉
Your link does not in any way dispute what my linked video says. In fact, it reinforces it.
You and I live in different realities. Have a nice evening.
Gone Fishing, Ron,
Your discussion just brought to mind a memory: Long ago Isaac Asimov published an article with the title “The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline”. I remember it fondly.
Thiotimoline is a substance, soluble in water, that dissolves something like 1.4 seconds before the water hits it. Asimov had fun thinking out the uses it could be put to. You might enjoy it.
Thanks, I will look it up.
Psychosomatic substances? What next?
I remember reading my first text on extra-dimensionality back in 7th grade. Was a lot of fun to think about and play with the math but not very useful.
I don’t think much anymore about multi-dimensions/multi-universes/ diffraction-interference problems.
I do wonder about the difference in outcome if we mostly ignore global warming after 2025 compared to making large scale attempts to change society and the environment (in a positive way).
People sometimes talk about a WWII type effort needed to address climate change. I wonder if they understand the scale of that effort and the many governmental changes that forced such a re-tooling of industry. It would be on a larger scale now.
Here is a small glimpse into that effort.
Is Gravity Quantum?
The ongoing search for the graviton—the proposed fundamental particle carrying gravitational force—is a crucial step in physicists’ long journey toward a theory of everything
…For example, in 2017 two independent studies suggested that if gravity is quantum it could generate a link known as “entanglement” between particles, so that one particle instantaneously influences another no matter where either is located in the cosmos. A tabletop experiment using laser beams and microscopic diamonds might help search for such gravity-based entanglement. The crystals would be kept in a vacuum to avoid collisions with atoms, so they would interact with one another through gravity alone. Scientists would let these diamonds fall at the same time, and if gravity is quantum the gravitational pull each crystal exerts on the other could entangle them together.
Government under the control of a nation’s worst or least-qualified citizens.
Kakistocracy?! I Don’t think so. What we really have, is a blatant Kleptocracy!
I’m not sure they are that smart—–
DIVING ROBOTS FIND ANTARCTIC WINTER SEAS EXHALE SURPRISING AMOUNTS OF CARBON DIOXIDE
A new study uses data gathered by floating drones in the Southern Ocean over past winters to learn how much carbon dioxide is transferred by the surrounding seas. Results show that in winter the open water nearest the sea ice surrounding Antarctica releases significantly more carbon dioxide than previously believed.
Anything natural that produces water vapor exhales CO2, or flatulates it may be a better way of saying. A real study is needed to answer how much contributes to global warming above the baseline that has always existed, as this is one more issue for which we are missing objective conclusions.
Troll, troll, troll your bot,
Intently to blaspheme.
If you see a crocodile,
Don’t forget to scream!
Respecting some comments this interview may be of relevance? To my mind the last (quoted) sentence could contain the most pertinent question of all.
WHAT DO PHYSICISTS MEAN WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT NOTHING?
“Sciences try to answer questions, but every time we answer them, new ones come into focus – we’ll never have a complete picture. When I was starting research in the late 1960s, it was controversial whether there had been a Big Bang at all. Now that’s no longer controversial, and we can say with about 2% precision what the universe was like all the way back from the present 13.8 billion years to a nanosecond. That is huge progress. So it’s not absurdly optimistic to believe that in the next 50 years, the challenging issues about what happens at the quantum or “inflationary” eras will be understood. But of course this raises another question: how much of [future] science is going to be accessible to the human brain?”
That is huge progress. So it’s not absurdly optimistic to believe that in the next 50 years, the challenging issues about what happens at the quantum or “inflationary” eras will be understood. But of course this raises another question: how much of [future] science is going to be accessible to the human brain?”
Yeah, but! I think right there you have an almost perfect example of what Daniel Kahneman has called an inside-outside view of the planning fallacy.
…how much of [future] science is going to be accessible to the human brain?”
Given what we discuss on this site on an almost daily basis, i.e. the non zero chance possibility, that in fifty years we, (well, not me, because I’ll already be dead) may already be in the throes of societal collapse, so the question in my mind, is also whether or not there will even be enough resources left for a civilization to support the continuation of scientific research at the necessary levels.
So will there even be science that is going to be accessible to the human brain?!
I think we find ourselves at a very strange juncture in human history.
Cheers!
Don’t let it keep you up at night Doug. We are not smart enough to comprehend the universe, being just a notch above chimps. Face it, only a few percent or less are actually capable of true creative thought and action. The rest just use the tools provided and play around with them like super-squirrels after nuts.
The strange brained people are valued since they provide technology and weapons that are useful to the rest. Otherwise they would be mostly shunned as irritating and non-social.
One can imagine creatures that are as far above us mentally as we are above chimps. Humans would be looked upon as cute or annoying toddlers. That is probably the evolutionary leap needed to understand the universe. Even if some highly intelligent race explained the universe to us, we would not actually understand what we were told. Does a 3 year old or a chimp understand nuclear physics. People don’t even seem to understand the current level of our knowledge.
Most people would not care, nor would the chimps. Of course high intelligence appears to be anti-survival, which leads to the conclusion that humans are an evolutionary dead end.
As Jean Shepherd oft exclaimed “Excelsior, you fatheads!”
Or as Longfellow describes the fate of persisting ever upward and onward despite cries to stop due to the danger. A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!
A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell like a falling star,
Excelsior!
One can imagine creatures that are as far above us mentally as we are above chimps. Humans would be looked upon as cute or annoying toddlers. That is probably the evolutionary leap needed to understand the universe. Even if some highly intelligent race explained the universe to us, we would not actually understand what we were told. Does a 3 year old or a chimp understand nuclear physics. People don’t even seem to understand the current level of our knowledge.
Yep, but looking at it from a survival perspective the humans may turn out to be the stupid ones. All the other animals did not jump the tracks of natural selection and evolve to disrupt and destroy the very nature and world that keeps them alive! Maybe we should take that as a clue and stop patting ourselves on the back so much.
Maybe the truly smart ones stayed with the system and didn’t build fortresses to keep nature at bay. An intelligence that needs to wreck things to get a few advantages for a short time is probably not very smart.
Or as the saying goes “Too soon old, too late schmart”
To which I add “And most of them never get schmart”
But, but, but we made the Hubble Telescope! Which will soon cease to function, while we kill the live-giving life around us to build more things that kill more life.
Maybe the aliens would look on us as planetary vermin and rid the planet of us. That might be a perspective.
DougL,
Steven Weinberg once said, about the search for a Grand Unified Theory, that “We don’t know if there is such a thing as a Grand Unified Theory. We don’t know if we, as a species, are smart enough to find out. But we do know that if we don’t try, we never will!” (From memory)
Subversive thinking there, opens the door to endless physicists.
Synapsid –
I hear you man. My wife used to say, pick a problem in an area your good at (and interested in) and with luck you’ll discover a small piece that fits in a very large puzzle. And that’s enough, because the puzzle will probably never be completed owing to the fact we are constrained by an old hunter-gatherer’s brain.
Meanwhile, I play with neutron star physics and leave bigger problems to (much) bigger minds. And, helping my Grandson acquire a grounding in math and physics. He’s now also keen on learning violin and piano — which does my heart good.
Fred — no I haven’t finished listening to the the Frank Wilczek lecture yet but most certainly will, then get back to you. In the meantime, thanks.
What do you think of the new work on proton/neutron pairing in nuclei and how it may affect what you work on?
NAOM
notanoilman —
“What do you think of the new work on proton/neutron pairing in nuclei and how it may affect what you work on?”
Well, short answer, it introduces a potentially new complication which is the last bloody thing I need at the moment. Good avenue of research though, I admit.
Lucky DougL,
A bow of deepest respect to your wife and a pat on the back for yourself in recognition of having married such a gem.
Vix
16.59
+3.28(+24.64%)
Ok——-
Whose afraid of the big bad wolf?!
Looking at longer term it is still low and regularly fluctuates. Still way lower than the start of the year. No real signs yet but worth keeping an eye on. Check 1y and all in the following :-
We shall see– it is at a low point, for sure, and has been there for quite a while.
In Infinity, Once Defined, The Defined Becomes Undefinable Again
Hi Ron,
I just watched your interesting video…
My initial sense of it, and sort of bouncing off some of the aspects of the conversation in these threads on the subject, is that consciousness is (or owes its existence to) infinity and that the idea of reality as a simulation or of infinite splits of possibilities may just be ‘artifacts‘ of ‘looking back at yourself’ from ‘within yourself’ even though you’re not quite within yourself, because that would seem to imply lack of infinity…
You cannot be exactly within something– entirely contained– if it is infinite, can you? It has a certain level of meaninglessness. Even WRT Hightrekker’s mention of ‘the box canyon’, a box still has plenty of ways to escape. IOW, everything’s connected.
If there was such a thing as a real box, we could not know of it because it couldn’t actually exist– even in the mind. The imagination wouldn’t be accurately representing the box. A black hole is perhaps the most extreme ‘box’ we know of and even that apparently leaks info– and, according to one theory, may be where universes are born.
The problem, or maybe paradox, is that the cosmological laws or forces in some sense are ‘life’, which, run over time and opportunity, create so-called ‘chemistry’ and ‘biology’ and thus ‘sub-lives’ that are ‘we’. And so then we look back and attempt to ‘define’ ourselves (our ‘parent’), which we cannot do because once ‘defined’, we could then take the steps to change our ‘definitions’, thereby making ourselves, at least fundamentally, undefinable, and therefore unpredictable, so to speak.
I think the key is really simple and maybe even enough for a hunter and gatherer to understand with some effort perhaps (and if they weren’t too busy hunting and gathering), and that’s infinity and consciousness.
One last thing: In the video, one of them at one point mentions fractals. Well, AFAIK, fractals are in part about self-similarity and so I’m wondering how other universes or many universes or multiverses or whatever have you would have completely different laws of physics and/or be ‘still-born’ if they were all somehow connected.
Infinity ‘breaks the perfect box’, and you can only ‘define’ something (say via the practice of science)— at least, absolutely– within a perfect box.
I think the key is really simple and maybe even enough for even a hunter and gatherer to understand with some effort perhaps, and that’s infinity and consciousness.
Perhaps a hunter-gatherer could understand it, but I seriously doubt it. Infinity and consciousness? You haven’t defined either. So how could anyone understand something that is not defined? What is infinity? Well, I think I have a pretty handle on that, or as well a handle as anyone does anyway. But consciousness is a different story. If you can define and explain consciousness, tell us exactly what it is, then please do so. There is a Noble Prize waiting for the genius who can do that. But you must show proof. Daniel Dennett says consciousness is just an illusion. But he has not one iota of proof. So no Nobel Prize for him. Max Planck said there is nothing other than consciousness. And he did win a Nobel Prize, but not for that bit of wisdom.
so I’m wondering how other universes or many universes or multiverses or whatever have you would have completely different laws of physics and/or be ‘still-born’ if they were all somehow connected.
Okay, I am going to make one final comment on the multiverse theory. The multiverse is nothing more than a stupid myth. And there is no mathematical evidence to support it regardless of what others on this blog may say. I have researched it for two days running now. And I found out that string theory posits 10 dimensions or 11 dimensions, and one theory even posits 26 dimensions. And they surmised that there could be another universe for each of those dimensions, over and above the four dimensions that we can observe. But it’s all guesswork with no hard evidence to support any of that stuff.
Anyway, back when string theory was first proposed, it was explained that there could be another universe for each of those extra dimensions. And that’s all. Nothing in string theory posits or even suggests, that there could be multiple big bangs, or multiple bubble universes popping off the original big bang. So when some folks say that string theory supports the multiverse theory, they just don’t know what the fuck they are talking about. If there were any evidence then physicists would not be arguing about it today. That is, they would not be arguing about whether it was multiple big bangs or multiple bubbles popping off the one original big bang. There is absolutely no evidence to support either hypothesis.
The multiverse theory was just made up to try to explain the very fine-tuning of the universe, and nothing else. There is not one iota of mathematical evidence to support it. End of story.
Your quote which you put in bold: Infinity ‘breaks the perfect box’, and you can only ‘define’ something (say via the practice of science)— at least, absolutely– within a perfect box.
That is nothing more than postmodern bullshit with no meaning whatsoever. Though we cannot comprehend infinity, we do know what the word means.
This is the universe with pizza. Thats all I know.
The multiverse theory was just made up to try to explain the very fine-tuning of the universe, and nothing else. There is not one iota of mathematical evidence to support it. End of story.
Ron, you are fractally and integrally wrong! Both math puns intended. 😉
In this film Stephen Hawking, James Hartle and Thomas Hertog explain their model of the early universe: The No Boundary Proposal. In the 1960’s and 70’s Hawking and Penrose showed that according to classical general relativity, given some minimal assumptions the origin of an expanding universe is a singularity: a point of infinite density and spacetime curvature. But this and other singularity theorems do not take into account the strange world of quantum mechanics. So in the 1980’s Hawking and collaborators started to build a model of the big bang that included quantum effects.The result is the No Boundary Proposal, a model that may be able to explain some of the deepest mysteries of the cosmos such as, is there a multiverse? how is there an arrow of time and what really happened a the big bang?
I can’t for the life of me understand how anyone can claim that There is not one iota of mathematical evidence to support it. End of story.
The result is the No Boundary Proposal, a model that may be able to explain some of the deepest mysteries of the cosmos such as, is there a multiverse? how is there an arrow of time and what really happened a the big bang?
Fred, I agree 100%. One day mathematics may be able to explain these things. So far, however, that hypothesis is still on the drawing board. But now there is not one iota of hard evidence to say they are real.
Adam Frank, American physicist, astronomer, and Lee Smolin, American theoretical physicist, and philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger say Physics has gotten it terribly wrong. Bold theirs.
“Science is corrupted when it abandons the discipline of empirical validation or dis-confirmation. It is also weakened when it mistakes its assumptions for facts and its ready-made philosophy for the way things are.”
Thus, the goal of The Singular Universe and The Reality of Time is to take a giant philosophical step back and see if a new and more promising direction can be found. For the two thinkers, such a new direction can be spelled out in three bold claims about the world.
1. There is only one universe. For lots of folks, this might seem like a no-brainer. The “uni” in universe is supposed to mean “everything there is.” Over the last few decades, however, multiverse cosmologies have gained acceptance via both inflationary Big Bang models and the “landscape” of string theory, which appears to predict 10 to the 500th possible universes. Unger and Smolin push back against these developments saying the proper field of study for cosmology is the one universe to which we have access. As Unger puts it: “We have reason to believe in the existence of only one universe at a time, the universe in which we find ourselves. Nothing science has discovered up to now justifies the belief that our universe is only one of many… The multiplication of universes in contemporary cosmology … has been the outcome of an attempt to convert … an explanatory failure into an explanatory success.”
2. Time is real. This might also fall into the “duh” category for people unfamiliar with the current frontiers of theoretical physics. But there were some good reasons why some physicists began thinking time might not be fundamental to reality. Instead, they began to explore how time might be emergent. That would mean time comes out of some deeper level of structure that exists entirely without anything like duration, past or future. But for Unger and Smolin, denying the reality of time allows physicists to skirt the nature of change on its deepest level.
3. Mathematics is selectively real. We physicists love our equations. They are so powerful that we often become convinced they are real in themselves. It is that way that we become platonists making mathematics a kind of skeleton on which the flesh of the world is hung. But for Unger and Smolin, this reification of mathematics can lead physicists into dangerous territory where mathematical “beauty” and “elegance” get substituted for real information about the real world. As they put it: “Our mathematical inventions offer us no shortcut to timeless truth… They never replace the work of scientific discovery and of imagination. The effectiveness of mathematics in natural science is reasonable because it is limited and relative.”
And thanks to you. Let me know what you think of it.
Ron, perhaps one knows they’ve gone far enough when they’ve hit a paradox and so they have to either step back from it to avoid logic-looping or jump over its ‘hole’. 😀
Otherwise, if one is a cosmologist or whatever, and they didn’t ‘get the memo’ (that maybe their careers are in a ‘boxed canyon’, a la Hightrekker), they can get swamped in flights-of-fancy that the Ron Pattersons of this and perhaps other realities might decry as such.
As for the hunter-and-gatherer in this scenario, this is what I’d have said to one back when I figured out logically what was apparently mathematically proven:
‘If I knew all the variables that affected your behavior, then I could make a prediction about it, but then I could also act to change it, thereby rendering it unpredictable.’
Once upon a time, God created the universe, but he realized very quickly and logically that he couldn’t do anything meaningful with it if he couldn’t see it, which of course, he could anyway. In order to see it, it had to leak and fill his room and engulf him. So he had to become it, which is the same thing as being engulfed by it. But that’s infinity. You can’t talk about the universe without talking about such things as, ‘What happened before that?’ and ‘Ok, but then what happened before that?’ can you? Those are also questions of infinity and they don’t look like they resolve themselves into neat little scientific packets. So the math may never resolve itself if it is to ‘describe’ or ‘scientify’ reality. And so it might be a fool’s errand in a matter of speaking, maybe especially for the tax-paying hostage, but who knows… maybe both and neither…
Fine tuning sounds like a chicken and egg or circular-reasoning thing, but you’ve got me to want to look into it more, so we’ll leave it at that for now.
“Wherever you go, there you are.” ~ Unknown
Fine tuning sounds like a chicken and egg or circular-reasoning thing,…
Oh good gravy, are you serious? Obviously, you haven’t given this thing much thought. If you would just research “The fine-tuning problem” you would get several thousand replies and not one of them would suggest any type of circular-reasoning.
Nay, you haven’t given this one iota of research whatsoever.
Ron’s Gravimetric Gravy Bistro (Banana splits now half off!)
Oh good gravity, I wrote it sounds like it, but again, I’ll look more into it…
Gaahhh… (maybe an Elon Musk expression)
BTW, in your initial video, it looks like ‘infinity’ is ‘statistically-crunched-down’ into probabilities, so ’rounded out’. Who was that? Feynman? How are the astrologists or cosmeticians supposed to paint the future or their fingernails with math like that?
“Needed another general assembly line to reach 5k/week Model 3 production. A new building was impossible, so we built a giant tent in 2 weeks. Tesla team kfa!! Gah, love them so much ♥️??” ~ Elon Musk
😀
Peace, Ron! Let’s just agree to disagree.
Though ‘Real Time’, is not the opposite of ‘Fictitious Time’. Think instead of imaginary numbers and a consequent ‘Imaginary Time’ which is quite real. See 40 min. mark in video.
An imaginary number is a complex number that can be written as a real number multiplied by the imaginary unit i, which is defined by its property i^2 = −1. The square of an imaginary number bi is −b^2. For example, 5i is an imaginary number, and its square is −25. Zero is considered to be both real and imaginary.
Now, I’ll let it rest!
Cheers!
Fred, I read your post, watched your videos and commented. My last post was to point out that there are many physicists that agree with me. I would have thought the least you could do was read it and comment.
The extensions of the standard model, like grand unified theories, they were supposed to simplify it. But in fact they made it more complicated. The number of parameters in the standard model is about 18. The number in grand unified theories is typically 100. In super-symmetric theories, the minimum is 120. And as you may have heard, string theory seems to predict 10 to the power of 1,000 different possible laws of physics. It’s called the multiverse. It’s the ultimate catastrophe: that theoretical physics has led to this crazy situation where the physicists are utterly confused and seem not to have any predictions at all.
Fred, if you don’t realize that there is a crisis in physics, and this crisis is tearing physics apart, then you have just not been paying attention.
Fred, if you don’t realize that there is a crisis in physics, and this crisis is tearing physics apart, then you have just not been paying attention.
Ok, point taken and I did read it. But, I’m certainly not a particle physicist.
Going nowhere fast
After the success of the Standard Model, experiments have stopped answering to grand theories. Is particle physics in crisis?
I’m afraid that I don’t know and will have to leave the answer to that question to actual working particle physicists. However, from a layperson’s outsider point of view, knowing what I know about the history of science, it seems progress has always occurred when scientists are forced to confront inconsistencies in their theories as new and better information becomes available. Einstein’s General Relativity vs Newton’s theory of Gravity is one example that comes to mind. Now we are trying to find a way to include gravity into quantum theory. To me this is not a sign of crisis but rather progress!
Of course to be fair, not everyone agrees that such a crisis exists.
Anyways, my concept of a real crisis that matters to me personally, is the ecological disaster a.k.a. Red Tide, unfolding on Florida’s West coast!
Cheers!
“Anyways, my concept of a real crisis that matters to me personally, is the ecological disaster a.k.a. Red Tide, unfolding on Florida’s West coast!”
My idea of a real crisis that matters is covering Earth with 10 billion humans and turning our planet into a hothouse where innumerable species will disappear forever. After all, many scientists thought idea that the Earth is not the center of the universe was tipping science into a crisis but we seem to have survived that cataclysmic idea. 🙂
“The scenario of many unobserved universes plays the same logical role as the scenario of an intelligent designer. Each provides an untestable hypothesis that, if true, makes something improbable seem quite probable.”
-Smolin
My idea of a real crisis that matters is covering Earth with 10 billion humans and turning our planet into a hothouse where innumerable species will disappear forever.
Yep I agree! Hey, with a mere 7.6 billion we are already seeing the consequences, one of which, is what is happening in Florida. BTW, on my side of the state, the corals reefs are going, going, gone!
I just don’t see the consequences of having 10 billion humans being even remotely survivable, except maybe for a few remaining species of extremophile archaeans. Yes, that is hyperbole but it really doesn’t look that great for a lot of species right now.
Cheers!
Our historical range for homo sapiens was 1-10 million, with a near extinction 70,000 years ago.
Of course, we had intact ecosystems, etc.
7,6 billion? I would laugh——–
Not necessarily a bad thing, in fact I think it is a rational response to illness or some great loss. What is odd is the holding on so long, when the blood barely reaches the capillary beds. And that condition can last for an amazingly long time.
We should not be making it dishonorable, or even difficult to achieve.
I watched my father disappear with dementia, and he experienced long years of animal suffering as his body slowly failed. My mother survived a debilitating stroke and she also suffered and struggled for years.
I definitely plan on exiting on my own terms (not anytime soon hopefully). When my quality of life diminishes to the point that I’m no longer able to enjoy it or contribute meaningfully, then sayonara.
But it so happens that the brother of a dear friend killed himself today. I don’t know the details yet. He was young, in his late thirties; so much pain for the friends and families.
Why does the news always seem worse that expected or is it just my imagination?
‘ABRUPT THAW’ OF PERMAFROST BENEATH LAKES COULD SIGNIFICANTLY AFFECT CLIMATE CHANGE MODELS
“The researchers found the release of greenhouse gases beneath thermokarst lakes is relatively rapid, with deep thawing taking place over the course of decades. Permafrost in terrestrial environments generally experiences shallow seasonal thawing over longer time spans. The release of that surface permafrost soil carbon is often offset by an increased growth in vegetation.
Thermokarst lakes provide a completely different scenario. When the lakes form, they flash-thaw these permafrost areas. Instead of centimeters of thaw, which is common for terrestrial environments, we’ve seen 15 meters of thaw beneath newly formed lakes in Goldstream Valley within the past 60 years.”
Why does the news always seem worse that expected or is it just my imagination?
Nope, it is actually much, much worse than expected! To put things in perspective it took 50,000 years leading up to the PETM to add 10,000 gigatonnes of carbon to the atmosphere. Currently we are adding 10 gigatonnes of carbon to the atmosphere per year.
New study: We’re outpacing the most radical climate event we know of
…The most obvious reason for concern, given these results, is the relatively sedate rate of carbon emission that drove such radical climate and ecological change.
“To put this in perspective,” the authors write, “for PETM carbon emission rates to approach those generated currently from fossil fuels, the PETM onset would have to have occurred over a period of 200 to 500 years.” Instead, it took over 100 times that. That makes the current rate of change unprecedented in what we’ve uncovered of the geological record. The Earth could have done something this rapid in the past, but we haven’t found any indication that it has.
You know, it just occurred to me, that mathematical literacy, is something that should be taught in our primary schools! /sarc
Edit: It looks like the numbers in the article are off somewhere or there is a typo, but still… 10,000 gigatonnes total CO2 at 10 gigatonnes CO2 per year = 1000 years. The author, who is a biologist, is claiming 200 to 500 years. Not quite sure what I’m missing, guess I need another beer! 😉
DougL,
There’s a bright side! It’s in this kind of setting on the outside of river meanders and in thermokarst lakes that we find mammoth tusks melting out. Such a feeling, spotting an emerging mammoth tusk–only opening an eleven-pound bar of Callebaut milk chocolate comes close.
The outside of a meander is where the river is deepest so think of the tons of tusks accumulating there. If we just had a really capable diver and air pumps and lots of inner tubes…
If we just had a really capable diver and air pumps and lots of inner tubes…
Inner tubes?! Do you mean lift bags? Is there enough space for a small pontoon boat with a hoist? How deep is it and how good is the viz?
lift bag
.
eFredM,
We found ours along the Kobuk River; I don’t know anything about the depth at the meanders but it’s a good-sized river and drains the south side of the Brooks Range. The thermokarst lakes I would guess have depths in tens of meters. In the lakes visibility might be obscured by silt but in the rivers there might be strong seasonal differences.
(I got the idea of using inner tubes from an old Scrooge McDuck comic book–they used air pumps and inner tubes to raise an old Mississippi steamboat. I thought of you as I wrote.)
In northern Alaska, anyway, much of the area of potential for mammoth tusks is what’s called corporation land–that’s land under the control of the Eskimo peoples (Iniupiat where we were) and only they can remove ivory or the nephrite jade that’s also found in the region. Write up a proposal and submit it to the appropriate governing body, and you’ll be on your way to untold riches only a small portion of which I’d be hoping to receive myself.
It interests me that (so I was told) the peoples we call Eskimos (Yupik in SW and S(?) Alaska, Iniupiat in NW and N Alaska, and Inuit in N Canada and Greenland) have no word that includes all of them. Their languages are closely related and I believe are to some extent mutually intelligible but each language has its own word for the people whose mother tongue it is and no word for the whole population across the northern part of the continent plus Greenland. In English where we were they called themselves Eskimos.
Great prose Synapsid.
Bob Nickson,
That’s very kind. Thank you.
Ever read Arctic Dreams?
I’ve spent a bit of time in Alaska. It sure has changed!
Hightrekker,
No, but back in the ’50s I read The Arctic Year, by Peter Freuchen.
Freuchen was a Dane, and in the 1920s (I believe) and ’30s he pretty much became an Eskimo, primarily in Canada and Greenland. His book has twelve chapters, January through December, and he wrote it in collaboration with Finn Salomonsen who supplied the material on Arctic birdlife and migration. The book describes the Arctic both High and Low throughout the year and covers weather, climate, animal life, plant life, and the lives of the people who lived there at a time when there hadn’t been much change as a result of contact with Western culture. I’ve treasured it since I was a kid in high school.
I have read parts of Arctic Dreams but I don’t think the whole book. I enjoyed what I did read, I do remember that. That was Barry Lopez, right?
If I were even a just a decade younger I’d be on the next flight up there, but at 65 plus, the best I could do is organize the team of divers.
Who knows, maybe I could even write a proposal. 😉
In any case, as a first step, I’d suggest someone ethical, in a boat with a side scan sonar, do a survey of the river bottom to identify potential dive sites!
No news release yet but by Nasa July looks to be third hottest. August wil be interesting as it was when 2016 really differentiated itself.
The U.S. just suffered the hottest May-June-July on record
For the three-month period of May to July, the entire contiguous United States (CONUS) “ranked hottest on record,” as the National Weather Service in Los Angeles, California tweeted out Wednesday, adding that “records go back to 1895.”
Death Valley had the hottest average monthly temperature for any recording station in the world, 108.1 degrees F. As the National Park Service points out, “If that doesn’t sound hot to you, realize that is the average temperature for the month, including overnight lows.”
in California in particular, “July was off the charts: The state saw its hottest July and hottest month on record with an average temperature of 79.7 degrees F.”
Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene
I thought this was behind a paywall, but apparently not. It’s very easy to read, but scarier than has been reported on. We are heading for the fiery pit, and probably faster even than this paper says (although there are hints the authors know they are being conservative).
Gee, Thanks George!
Another cheerful start to the day thanks to you, much obliged 😉
Cheers!
P.S.
We all know the truth here, but how can we steer this oil tanker away from this massive melting iceberg?!
And BTW, how can any sane person still think that 10 billion plus humans can live on this planet in peace and harmony?!
Forget Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. Kim Kardashian has posed topless again. Can you wait to see when she turns up on Instagram next? You just know it’s going to be good.
We have had forty tears to do something and the path chosen is to have a demented, orange blob, fuckwit, con artist as the putative leader of the free world, and many people still think he is the best possible choice, Putin included; plus most would prefer to be smartphone jacked / social media imbibing / selfy taking zombies than even spend a second considering their responsibilities towards the future of the earth, human race or even their direct descendants (extant or not). How is there a rational solution to anything after that?
We have had forty tears to do something😉
Dunno, George, I think I’ve on occasion shed way more than forty tears into my beer, thinking about how ridiculous we are as a race!
Looks like that last batch of monkeys with typewriters I got aren’t working out so well. Either that or I need another notch on the zoom dial for my screen (11) or to start wearing my glasses a bit more.
I’m going to read that article in full a little later, but my initial reaction is-
“stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.”
Ain’t going to happen in any kind of meaningful timeframe or magnitude. Most of us are ‘fuckwits’ in training, or applaud for them.
So, ponder this. If a proposal arose that was comprised of a global Geo-engineering project aimed at carbon sequestration, would you be willing to support it?
Suppose we were ten years down the road to the hot-house scenario, and the project was supported by the EU, China, India and the USA governments, the UN, along with major scientific organizations from around the world.
Unless we get an unexpected cooling trend, I think the chances are pretty good that we will be hearing about such things in the news before too long, in the name of ‘stabilization of the earth’.
Personally I am highly skeptical of ‘our’ ability to get things right, but we may be forced to try if the trend of the last decade continues, or accelerates.
So, ponder this. If a proposal arose that was comprised of a global Geo-engineering project aimed at carbon sequestration, would you be willing to support it?
Suppose we were ten years down the road to the hot-house scenario, and the project was supported by the EU, China, India and the USA governments, the UN, along with major scientific organizations from around the world.
Um, the devil is always in the details. It would depend on the proposal. Personally I would prefer to immediately put an end to the Geo-engineering project of massive CO2 emissions currently underway!
BTW, This just in, another feel good hopeful story. Unless you actually do the math and realize the enormity of the scale that would be necessary!
>Scientists find way to make mineral which can remove CO2 from atmosphere
While carbon sequestration sounds promising in theory, the problem is finding methods that are cheap and practical enough to make a substantial amount of difference to levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Recent research suggests there’s now more CO2 in the air than at any point in the last 800,00 years – 410 parts per million (ppm). At the moment, we’re all pushing out an extra 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
With a tonne of naturally-occurring magnesite able to capture around half a tonne of CO2, we’re going to need a lot of magnesite, and somewhere to put it all as well. As with other carbon capture processes, it’s not yet clear whether this will successfully scale up as much as it needs to.
Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.”
Oh, Yeah! I can see it now, fundamentalist Turkish Islamists, working side by side with MAGA Trumpists to help save the biosphere! And, just in case you missed the sarcasm, The US and Turkey are both countries where the acceptance of the validity of the T.O.E. is rather low… Then again, I could see Erdogan, Trump and Putin having a ménage à trois… bring out lots of that good old petroleum jelly!
True. And I’m pretty sure Putins gang isn’t too worried about global warming, except perhaps about the effect on their grain yields.
Just to let a little sunshine in on everybody’s Friday!
Brazil had 1,601 MW of grid-connected solar power at the end of June 2018, according to the Monthly Bulletin on the Monitoring of the Electric System from the Brazilian Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM).
This capacity is represented by 1,307 MW of large-scale PV projects selected in auctions held by the Brazilian government, and 296 MW of distributed generation solar power generators (up to 5 MW).
At the end of June 2017, utility-scale solar reached a share of just 145 MW, while DG installations totaled 92 MW. This means that, over the past 12 months, a total of 1.36 GW were connected to the country’s grid, and that growth was stronger than ever in both segments.
The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has released its latest solar PV installation figures for April to July.
Overall, 1.3 GW of ground-mounted solar plants were grid connected in this period, thus bringing cumulative capacity to around 22 GW. In comparison, the rooftop sector saw a paltry 159.02 MW installed, to achieve a total capacity of 12.2 GW.
I thought I would bring these up to demonstrate how fast solar PV can be deployed when there is the political will to do so. Brazil now has more than six times the amount of solar PV connected to the grid as it had at this time last year. According to data under the heading “Countries”, at the Wikipeda page Growth of photovoltaics, India had 18.3 GW installed up to the end of 2017, implying that India has installed 3.7 GW since January 2018 or about 20% of their 2017 year end capacity in seven months!
This is despite the fact that in the English speaking world a concerted effort is being made to malign renewable energy and stymie it’s deployment through what Tony Seba describes as “Regulatory Capture”, a technique that is currently on display with the current US and Australian administrations. See:
In this post Energy and Policy Institute’s Matt Kaspar reveals how the Koch Brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity and Heartland Institute Climate Denier James Taylor have joined the effort to fight a 50% renewable energy mandate for Arizona.
Had to try and find something a little positive after learning that the world lost a bit of a different kind of energy with the death of pop music icon, Aretha Franklin yesterday. Her pop music career started about the time I was born and for the past fifty years or so she has enriched the tapestry of popular music with her emotional, flawless delivery. I enjoyed much of her music as did many millions of us.
What makes me want to cry is that Trump thinks Aretha worked for him.
“I want to begin today by expressing my condolences to the family of a person I knew well,” Trump said, according to reports. “She worked for me on numerous occasions. She was terrific — Aretha Franklin — on her passing. She brought joy to million of lives and her extraordinary legacy will thrive and inspire many generations to come.”
Donald Asshat Trump
Compare That to:
Aretha helped define the American experience. In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade—our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace.
Former President Barack Obama
But there might be hope for our country to regain our hard-won respect on the world stage if more people are willing to stand up and call Trump out!
“Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John,” McRaven wrote in the Washington Post op-ed. “Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.”
“Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation,” he said. “If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken.”
Retired Adm. William McRaven
All true about Trump, and I agree with McRaven, but I was talking about (the life, the energy, the passion that was) Aretha…
I thought I would bring these up to demonstrate how fast solar PV can be deployed when there is the political will to do so. Brazil now has more than six times the amount of solar PV connected to the grid as it had at this time last year.
I haven’t been following this specifically but now you spiked my curiosity. As a Brazilian I know that the Brazilian government, has in the past, placed really high tariffs on imported PV panels. Supposedly under the guise of it being necessary for developing a home grown Brazilian PV manufacturing industry. To be clear, that is pure bullshit and it served only to maintain certain monopolies and enrich a few politicians instead!
Note to people who think tariffs on imported goods are always a good thing. They’re not!
Watching this makes me want human civilization to collapse, human beings in general are a cancer on earth. Is it just me or does anyone else secretly or openly think like this.
Well, actually, nowadays quite a few banks and insurance companies are starting to get very worried about the consequences of global warming and sea level rise to those beach front condos in South Florida. But yeah, that guy is an ignorant, arrogant MOFO!
Trumps new science advisor?
“Is it just me or does anyone else secretly or openly think like this.”
Well, I do own to having an appreciation for the next population bottleneck; 7 billion people on earth, 6.8 (ish) of whom are kept alive thanks to fossil fuels. If you’re interested in seeing how humanity has dealt with perceptions of objective scarcity in the past, then I welcome you to google images for ‘Russian famine’ and ‘einsatzgruppen’; two fine ways to ruin an otherwise pleasant afternoon (anything by Kevin Carter, if you prefer images that are a little more contemporary, will also do the trick). Careful what you wish for, unless you happen have 10 years worth of canned goods and ammo in a very remote mountain wilderness location with only one very long road in that is easily rendered impassable with a few bridge removals, or so I’ve heard.
Is God or Fine Tuning, Anthropomorphizations of The Universe?
(Well maybe they have to be by virtue of the fact that it is we who are doing the interpretations/projections/etc..)
Similarily, is fine tuning (of the idea of the universe as a simulation) a kind of manifestation of the anthropomorphization of the universe via the description of the universe in mathematical symbols?
Hi Ron,
This is on the road and off the cuff and I am still looking over this Fine-Tuning thing, but so far it still seems like a kind of chicken-egg, circular-reasoning and/or anthro, etc., thing…
‘The universe is perfect, so it is fine-tuned; the universe is fine-tuned, so it is perfect.’
Well of course it is ‘fine-tuned’ insofar as it works or exists and we are around to talk about it.
But bear in mind that the universe is being interpreted through mathematical symbols and whatnot.
It is perhaps small wonder that some people (i.e., the late Stephen Hawking?) would suggest that the universe could be a simulation. One could suggest that that could be a manifestation of a species that uses symbols and ‘gets lost on/in the model’…
Like ‘funny money’ and the ‘commodification or monetization of reality’.
Likewise with fine-tuning, as if the universe comes with a bunch of knobs (not talking about the human kind haha) that It can adjust/tweak at will like humans can with so much symbols.
Let’s say you have a giant spherical room representing the universe with some fundamental ‘knob-tweaks’ (‘de-tunings’) and so there is a ‘perfect’ explosion in the room. So what happens? Well, let’s say it all fizzles out– nothing sticks together– no universe happens– because the force of the explosion overcomes the strong force, say…
Ok, now run the experiment again, but this time make the explosion ‘perfect’ again, except for a ‘fractal/chaotic’ nudge— like a ‘quantum’ flick-of-the-finger to infinitely-lightly nudge one particle out of whack. So what happens?
Well, maybe we get/see fractals everywhere, and we exist to talk about it, simply because of a ‘sub-quantum’ ‘particle flick’ that has that particle then bumping against another and so forth to create a cascade of bounces and stick-togethers and what we now see as the cosmos.
Cosmological forces already exist, so why shouldn’t they also act to create us and other, perhaps self-similar, life forms?
Earth is, according to some, ‘Gaia’– alive– so why not the cosmos Gaia as well?
And would that then make us teeny-weeny ‘universalizations’ of the the universe?
“…The map is a simulacrum that, as a model, loses all reference to reality… reality exists only as rotting shreds that are attached to the map, and this is the state of our age according to Baudrillard; that the model, itself, has primacy for us; the real has become irrelevant…” ~ Frances Flannery-Dailey
“Animals don’t do what humans do via speech, namely, make a symbol stand in for the thing. As Tim Ingold puts it, ‘they do not impose a conceptual grid on the flow of experience and hence do not encode that experience in symbolic forms.’ ” ~ John Zerzan
Huh? 😉
Peak knowledge?
“Physics has not progressed much from the completion of the Standard Model in the 1970’s.” ~ Hightrekker
“…since knowledge is information minus misinformation, we probably passed peak knowledge decades ago.” ~ John Michael Greer
The Universe as a Simulation: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?
Apparently, Doc Mojo, who had been creating Mojoworld, a 3D realtime landscape/planet generation software program, abandoned its development.
Perhaps his ostensible photography hobby made him realize that reality was much more interesting, beautiful, complex and mysterious and therefore more worthwhile to devote his time and attention to enjoying in ways that transcended the emptiness and ultimate dissatisfaction of merely mimicking it.
In any case, it is doubtful that we live in Mojoworld-like simulation as the late Stephen Hawking, among others, may have suggested– a cop-out as another suggested if recalled– and we can nowhere near accurately describe the universe in ‘quaint little mathematical rules/formulae’ if that is what you are trying to explain by the video. That is, unless you want to describe Mojoworld or a simulation– which was also part of my point upstairs.
Fundamentally, reality appears exceedingly unknowable in part because the moment we, as conscious entities, ‘know’ it, is the moment we can then take steps to change it.
The ‘simulation’ or symbolism of mathematics may risk its own prophecies.
The theories of the fine-tuning of the universe and the universe as a simulation may be two such examples.
Dunno which universe you live in, but I live in the one described by the equation below. And as Hickory, so kindly reminded us, It’s the one that has pizza! 😉
That’s real enough for me.
.
So you’re saying that they have your entire universe scrunched down to that formula? Splendid. Frankly, I’ve always found ’42’ a little dubious, but maybe that’s without pizza. So, 42 + pizza, or in scientific notation, 42?.
“However, the paper concludes, the new calculations revealing dark energy as an inconstant candidate for the cosmological constant work ‘if the current best-fit dark energy happened to be the true model’.
It is a question that will likely soon be resolved one way or another. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Survey, which will be conducted by the Mayall 4-m telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona, will vastly increase the amount of information on dark energy available.”
*shrug*
I’m maybe a tad more up on this stuff since some homework, thanks to Ron. But, alas, it is strongly suspected that the universe will require forever homework. ?
So you’re saying that they have your entire universe scrunched down to that formula?
‘They’, do you know who they is?! LOL!
Do you even know what that equation describes?
It gives the relationship between space-time, matter and energy, which at least imho, is a pretty darn big and important part of our universe.
To be fair, it doesn’t by itself describe the quantum mechanical properties of the universe or how they fit into the bigger picture. Those are described by separate sets of equations. One of the tasks of modern physics is to somehow attempt to unify those with General Relativity.
But yes, if I had to chose a single equation that most succinctly describes the universe we live in, That one, would be pretty high on my list.
Fred – thanks for the heads up on this. Interesting:
“Time crystals are one of the coolest things physics has dished up in recent months, because they point to a whole new world of ‘non-equilibrium’ phases that are entirely different from anything scientists have studied in the past… AND “One of the most promising applications for time crystals is quantum computing — they could allow physicists to create stable quantum systems at far higher temperatures than can be achieved right now, and that just might be the push we need to finally make quantum computing a reality.”
Meanwhile, Hightrekker persists with his imbecilic view that: “Physics has not progressed much from the completion of the Standard Model in the 1970’s.”
From your link: To realize a time crystal, a periodically driven laser sets the particles in a superconducting loop in motion. When the system is manipulated in a precise way, the particles’ motion collectively synchronizes in a periodic manner, resulting in a time crystal.
Yep! and BTW they have been braiding light too…
Gotta wonder if you could somehow create a quasi time crystal with very specific placement of defects by using braided lasers? Ok, admittedly this bit of wild speculation on my part, may be totally off the wall. Any real physicists out there willing to wade in?
“The greatest significance of this work is that it demonstrates the existence of defects with non-Abelian braiding in optical, rather than electronic, systems,” Iadecola told Phys.org. “Such defects are actively sought-after in the context of solid-state electronic systems, but the optical analogue that we suggest in this work could provide another avenue to observe non-Abelian braiding. The advantage of the optical systems we consider is that they have a high degree of tunability that allows one to precisely control the paths of the defects during braiding.”
Why you ask might that be useful?
Basically, a quasicrystal is a crystalline structure that breaks the periodicity (meaning it has translational symmetry, or the ability to shift the crystal one unit cell without changing the pattern) of a normal crystal for an ordered, yet aperiodic arrangement. This means that quasicrystalline patterns will fill all available space, but in such a way that the pattern of its atomic arrangement never repeats.
Could there be a Quasi Time Crystal analogue of a Quasi Crystal out there?
No progress in physics?! Gimme a break! 😉
For physicists who get paid to work on decades old problems or to teach, you’ll hear that there’s lots of interesting stuff going on.
For physicists who are in it for actual understanding and the chance to move technology and humanity forward by a great leap, such as what happened with Einstein or newton…Physics is dead.
I barely count it as a science anymore. There’s a stratified orthodoxy and a small circle of people who all know each other and market the standard model like it’s some sort of religion.
For physicists who are in it for actual understanding and the chance to move technology and humanity forward by a great leap, such as what happened with Einstein or newton…Physics is dead.
That is a misunderstanding of how all science progresses. Even Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity was not a sudden leap but rather a slow process and he struggled for many years to formalize it.
…Einstein also realized that the effect of gravity is the same as the effect of acceleration; driving off at high speed pushes us backward, just as if gravity were pulling us. These two clues led Einstein to general relativity. Whereas Newton had seen gravity as a force propagated between bodies, Einstein described it is as pseudo force experienced because the entire interwoven fabric of space and time bends around a massive object.
Einstein himself said his path was far from easy. He wrote that “in all my life I have not laboured nearly so hard, and I have become imbued with great respect for mathematics, the subtler part of which I had in my simple-mindedness regarded as pure luxury until now.”
“For physicists who are in it for actual understanding and the chance to move technology and humanity forward by a great leap, such as what happened with Einstein or newton…Physics is dead.”
That comment is almost too inane to address. Science has always moved in small incremental steps. One recent example: even though the detection of gravitational waves has been a major advancement, one beginning an entirely new chapter to the field of astrophysics, getting there has taken hundreds of small steps by thousands of dedicated physicists over the last few decades. Do you think Newton announced his Theory of Universal Gravitation after watching a falling apple? Well, he said something quite the opposite, that his discoveries were built on the shoulders of others — a framework going back many centuries!
One should be wary of claims about “physics” in general since it has many subfields, facing different issues. High-energy particle physics is a subfield that is in danger of ending. On the experimental front, it faces fundamental technological obstacles. Any next generation accelerator able to explore even modestly higher energies than the LHC will be far off in the future and very expensive. Whether there’s the will to finance and build such a thing is now unclear. On the theoretical front, the field is now in crisis, due to the absence of experimental results that point to a better theory, as well as a refusal to abandon failed theoretical ideas.
At its best, physics is the most potent and precise of all scientific fields, and yet it surpasses even psychology in its capacity for bullshit. To keep physics honest, we need watchdogs like Peter Woit. He is renowned for asserting that string theory, which for decades has been the leading candidate for a unified theory of physics, is so flawed that it is “not even wrong.”
To keep physics honest, we need watchdogs like Peter Woit. He is renowned for asserting that string theory, which for decades has been the leading candidate for a unified theory of physics, is so flawed that it is “not even wrong.”
I have never been a big fan of string theory as a candidate for a unified theory of physics, I think a more promising path js probably something along the lines of loop quantum gravity. But who am I to even have an opinion on such matters, so I’ll defer to someone much more qualified than myself!
Fred–
I’m open also.
My dissertation was on anarchism and the Russian Revolution.
Most are more qualified.
Thanks Fred, interesting talk. Perhaps the next wave of astrophysical observations will give theoretical physicists, such as Rovelli, the evidence they need to tip a majority of experts into one dominant view. Of course it may take five decades and several waves of new instruments for this to happen but that’s still within the probable lifetime of kids starting to study science today. Clearly, physics isn’t dead.
Clearly, physics isn’t dead.
Nope! Not quite! 😉
Though there are still many misconceptions about the scientific process, specifically this notion of brilliant scientists sitting alone in their dens and having these sudden eureka moments.
So you are probably right, in that it may take at least another half century for a theory like quantum gravity to become mainstream.
After all, it took a full century since Einstein formulated his Theory of General Relativity for the maturing of technology to allow for the detection of gravity waves.
Is it actually possible to build stuff on earth that can generate the energy required to look at relativity/quantum interactions? I thought it estimated to be several orders of magnitude above the LHC.
I might be wrong but I don’t think Doug is talking about building more powerful colliders here on earth when he refers to instruments. Perhaps more like instruments either launched into space or built here on earth to detect and precisely measure interactions and phenomena predicted by the theories. Maybe insights gained from studying objects such as Black Holes.
Fred, George — Yes, that was (is) my thinking — that most future high energy “experiments” will rely largely on observations of astrophysical phenomena. Isn’t that already the case?
i.e., “Our neighbouring galaxy Messier 87 (M87) accelerates elementary particles to extremely high energies – millions of times higher than anything possible with the particle accelerator LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at CERN. These particles contribute to the cosmic radiation that can be measured on earth. For the first time, physicists can now locate exactly where the acceleration of the particles takes place, which is right next to the black hole in the centre of the galaxy.”
AND: ‘HARD-ROCK EXCAVATION’ BEGINS FOR GIANT MAGELLAN TELESCOPE IN CHILE
Las Campanas sits beneath very dark and clear skies, which provide exceptional views of the universe. GMT team members believe this location, paired with the telescope’s technology, will allow astronomers to make ground-breaking discoveries in a variety of fields, from cosmology and astrophysics to astrobiology.
“Of course it may take five decades and several waves of new instruments for this to happen but that’s still within the probable lifetime of kids starting to study science today.” ~ Doug Leighton
^ That on a collapse/peak oil blog…
Maybe in 50 years, climate change will be under control, species will have recovered, pollution all cleaned up, governments in the black, and we’ll all have PV’s, fusion reactors, and self-driving cars, etc..
WRT George’s comment in this thread, and from my own Ron-inspired homework, FWIW, I now seem to recall some fear some time ago about an experiment possibly producing a black hole or something close to that on Earth.
^ That on a collapse/peak oil blog…
Maybe in 50 years, climate change will be under control, species will have recovered, pollution all cleaned up, governments in the black, and we’ll all have PV’s, fusion reactors, and self-driving cars, etc..
Yes, even some of the most brilliant people, who are completely aware of what is going on, are occasionally susceptible to falling into the trap of the inside-outside view of the planning fallacy, as described by Daniel Kahneman, which I linked to up thread in a response to a previous comment by Doug.
So instead of just making snide remarks for the sake of making them, you might want to think about that a bit yourself. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
As for:
I now seem to recall some fear some time ago about an experiment possibly producing a black hole or something close to that on Earth.
You’re kidding, right?!
^
“That comment is almost too inane to address. ” ~ Doug Leighton
Thanks, Doug…
“I now seem to recall some fear some time ago about an experiment possibly producing a black hole or something close to that on Earth.” ~ Caelan MacIntyre
“No, MAGA-hat fans, you didn’t simply rise in your mighty millions and elect The Donald all by your deplorable selves. You had help, much of it from the very elites you so revile. (“Revile” means hate. Sorry. I know you’re in an oxy stupor much of the time, so I’ll try to move slowly and not use big words.)”
” Investment in North and South America has not increased since 2007 and in Asia it has not increased since 2015. Clean energy investment in Europe has been declining steadily since 2011, and investment in the UK and Germany is now approaching zero. The current level of investment… is also too low to support a global transition to renewable electricity and to meet global emissions targets… The global renewable electricity transition may fail simply because of a lack of funding.”
——
Comment
“I do resent its apparent insistence that all ‘renewably produced electricity’ be labelled as ‘clean’, implying all electricity produced from wind, hydro, and sun has no negative environmental consequences.
Absurd and indeed, outrageous, as anyone who has extracted metals and other minerals from our planet, knows only too well” ~ Hugh Sharman
Um, you do realize that investments in many other sectors of the global economy, such as capex for oil prospecting, has also been in decline during that same period, right?
Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total and their peers are set to cut spending on oil and gas exploration for a fifth year in a row in 2018, according to consultancy Wood Mackenzie (WoodMac), despite a growing urgency to replenish reserves after years of reining back investment.
Care to venture a guess as to why that might be the case?
Oh, never mind, your excerpt and the cherry picked comment were both from another anti renewables post courtesy of climate change science denier and pro fossil fuel lobbyist, Euan Mearns.
For the record, the entire enterprise of global civilization may indeed fail in the not too distant future for a number reasons, well known to many of the readers of this blog.
Most of whom are also aware of, and readily admit that there are no completely clean sources of energy production available to most of humanity, as of yet. However given the urgency of the need to completely get off fossil fuels asap, it should be evident that ‘Perfect’ in this particular case, is quite obviously, the mortal enemy of ‘Good Enough’!
What is truly outrageous and absurd is the attempt at trying to compare the magnitude of the damage being done to the environment through the continued use of fossil fuels and BAU vs. the impacts of producing and using alternative forms of energy whether 100% clean or not!
Edit: Here ya go, now this is what I call really absurd!
Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative for the U.S., the Trump administration declares in a major new policy statement that threatens to undermine decades of government campaigns for gas-thrifty cars and other conservation programs. The position was outlined in a memo released last month in support of the administration’s proposal to relax fuel mileage standards. The government released the memo online this month without fanfare. Growth of natural gas and other alternatives to petroleum has reduced the need for imported oil, which “in turn affects the need of the nation to conserve energy,” the Energy Department said
Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total and their peers are set to cut spending on oil and gas exploration for a fifth year in a row in 2018, according to consultancy Wood Mackenzie (WoodMac), despite a growing urgency to replenish reserves after years of reining back investment.
Care to venture a guess as to why that might be the case?
Well, it could just be the law of diminishing returns. If they keep getting $5.00 in oil for every $7.00 spent on exploration, then pretty soon you would perhaps to cut back on exploration and quit losing so much money. It is well known that most all new discoveries are tiny fields that peter out quickly.
Well, it could just be the law of diminishing returns. If they keep getting $5.00 in oil for every $7.00 spent on exploration, then pretty soon you would perhaps to cut back on exploration and quit losing so much money.
Sure it could and it more than likely in large measure probably is! But it might also might have something to do with a general softening of the global economy which has rippled through many sectors.
In any case my main point was simply that renewables were not the only areas of the many faceted global energy businesses to experience reduced investments recently. That’s only one part of a bigger story.
BTW, what I didn’t highlight in my comment is that despite reduced capital investment in renewables, they are still on an increasing trend line in terms of increased overall installed capacity. The main reason for this is that due to reductions in costs, less investment is necessary to buy the same amount or even more capacity than even a few years ago. So despite reduced capital investment, I don’t expect the total number of installed GWs of capacity to drop or plateau anytime soon.
Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment Report 2018
Back to overview
Banking on sunshine: World added far more solar than fossil fuel power generating capacity in 2017
The Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2018 report, published on April 5th by UN Environment, the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, finds that falling costs for solar electricity, and to some extent wind power, is continuing to drive deployment. Last year was the eighth in a row in which global investment in renewables exceeded $200 billion – and since 2004, the world has invested $2.9 trillion in these green energy sources. Overall, China was by far the world’s largest investing country in renewables, at a record $126.6 billion, up 31 per cent on 2016.
Some people think that humans are so special that they should be granted a waver on their poor behavior. The Pope, for example, advocates this position when he (throughout the ages) supports population growth [of catholics] beyond all other considerations. And sits silent on torture, slavery, sexual torment, and environmental destruction. As long as its good for the team [read fundamentalism in its most extreme from]. And he along with all the company men have been a silent proponent for genocide and ethnic cleansing for a thousand years on every continent, sparing only those whose armies and will are just too strong on their home turf (Thai), or those who convert under threat of starvation or a pike up their bottom.
That biggest team is just an example, with humanity all around guilty of ripping the heart out of nature and only paying lip service to kindness and mindfulness.
The experiment is a failure. Some other type of species may have been a better bet.
Catholic leaders attempt damage control in wake of Pennsylvania child sex abuse report
Two cardinals have backed out from the World Meeting of Families.
A baby with a brain tumor underwent a miraculous recovery after a kiss from Pope Francis
“Catholic leaders attempt damage control in wake of Pennsylvania child sex abuse report.”
Pedophile priests are sick individuals as are drug addicts and people with other mental problems. Enablers, people within in the church who put the institution’s status and reputation above victims are criminals. Enablers are worse than “common criminals” because they hide (hid) behind multiple veils of Christian self-righteousness and the churches’ considerable power to protect its own. Enablers belong in prison. IMHO
“Religion is poison”
-Mao (he got a few things right)
Very much agree Doug.
But let me ask you this- aren’t all the members of the church also enablers, since they empower these people, and turn a blind eye to the sexual misdeeds (and the ethnic cleansing over the past millennium)?
Conserving oil no longer necessary for US, says Trump administration
Re: that rather simplistic and stupid idea that CO2 is plant food, often proffered by all the criminally insane climate change science deniers… Well, it ain’t quite so! I guess we can add this little nugget of scientific knowledge to our growing list of possible negative feedbacks!
Current assessments of climate change could overestimate the amount of carbon that plants remove from the atmosphere. That’s because models of photosynthesis often leave out a poorly-understood limit on the process. Now US researchers have calculated that if its representation is doubled, climate models predict an additional 9 Gigatonnes of carbon will still be in the atmosphere by 2100, instead of being locked away inside plants.
Do we live in a multiverse? | The Economist
A short 9-minute video that describes the “Many world’s theory” in a discussion about the multiverse. It is described in “Level Three Multiverse: Many Worlds” that begins at 5:48 into the video. Just before that, however, the anthropic principle is described. It states that an infinite number of universes exists and we just happen to live in the one where all the laws of physics and forces of nature just happen to allow life to exist. Lucky us.
But the “Many Worlds” theory does not even attempt to explain the fine-tuning of the universe as two of the other “Multiverse” theories attempt to do. The “Many Worlds” theory attempts to explain quantum mechanics. This theory says the world splits off into two different worlds, many times a second. That is you become two different people. That is you split off with the splitting of the world. And split again a tiny fraction of a second later, then split again, then again until billions of copies of yourself exist. Dr. Alan Guth says this theory “makes a lot of sense.”
Again, this “Many Worlds” theory starts at 5:48 into the video and lasts about one minute and twenty seconds. Please take one minute and twenty seconds out of your life and watch this video and tell me if you agree with Dr. Guth, and a lot of other physicists who say that this theory “makes a lot of sense”?
This theory says the world splits off into two different worlds, many times a second. That is you become two different people. That is you split off with the splitting of the world. And split again a tiny fraction of a second later, then split again, then again until billions of copies of yourself exist. Dr. Alan Guth says this theory “makes a lot of sense.”
Yeah riiight! So how come, that for every single split of the universe during my entire lifetime, I personally always seemed to get the short end of the stick?! I think someone out there, seems to have it in for me, here in this universe… 😉
Cheers!
Ron —
My understanding is that the word “multiverse” refers, in fact, to a bigger expanse than the one we now know, a new “totality-of-reality”, that our universe would be just a piece of a larger whole. For this expanded view, scientists have many ideas. In some, other “universes” have the same laws of physics and the same particles making up matter. So, except perhaps for some environmental differences, pretty much what we see here is what happens there. In other multiverse proposals, other universes could be radically different from what we know, the particles could be different — the laws of physics could be different!
That said, I have never studied ANY of these proposals in detail for two reasons: my main interests lie elsewhere, AND the math involved is mostly outside my area of expertise. In any case, one must respect people of Alan Guth’s stature. Perhaps this topic is too big for a Blog? 🙂
Doug, there were four versions of the multiverse given in that very short video. The one you describe was the very first one. That one is the theory that the universe may be many times, perhaps hundreds or even millions of times larger than our observable universe. That one does not even address the fine-tuning problem at all. I have absolutely no problem believing that this one is possible, or even probable. However, that is not the multiverse that almost all physicists believe in. They, almost all, believe in the second or fourth version described in this very short video.
Only the second and fourth one actually posits a real “multiverse”. That is, many, many universes popping into existence, universes by the trillions of trillions. Those two do address the fine-tuning problem. Those describe the multiverse that Rees, Guth, Krauss, Carroll and all the other physicist posit to counter the fine-tuning of the universe. That is if an almost infinite number of universes pop into existence, then surely one of those universes would have all the particles and forces would have the qualities that allowed stars, galaxies, planets, and life to evolve. Okay, forget about all the other three as I sense neither you nor anyone else cares to discuss them.
But it is the third one which really is not a multiverse theory at all. And it does not even address the fine-tuning problem. It was posited to address the quantum mechanics theory of an observer being necessary for the physical universe to exist. It, that is that part of the video lasted for one minute and twenty seconds. That was all I was asking for, that is for people to watch that one minute and twenty-second piece before commenting. And to comment on that segment only.
Apparently, no one has that much time to spare.
Downloading, Ron, and will check it out and try to comment later.
Incidentally, there was a Ron Patterson/POB spit from Darwinian/TOD, Circa 2013… How about another site-split that ‘cosmologically-shifts’ a little toward Doug, your, et al.’s (including my own) somewhat related interests in those regards? I know a bit about WordPress myself and might be motivated to work on and/or maintain it a little as well. Anyway, just a flight of fancy that I thought to throw out there. Unsure if my other splits are thinking along these same lines or have these two tunes too on their laptops…
Split Your Infinities
Loss & Acceptance
(cued at the 2:02 mark for the text)
Caelan, sure, I might be interested. I will have a definite shift in my life, and concentrate on other interest when I leave Mexico on September 26th. So keep me informed.
Ok, well best with your shift and I may consider Sept. 26th. as a kind of deadline to possibly look into a new site if that makes sense such as WRT your shift.
No guarantees but it might be intriguing to see if or what familiar and new faces drop in, what’s discussed and how/where it goes. In the mean time, if anyone wants to make suggestions (ex., site title?) or offer to lend a hand, please feel free.
Unfortunately Ron, string theory has captured academia at the moment, and any hiring to the contrary is not going to happen.
The rational have realized they are in a box canyon, and need to turn around.
Physics has not progressed much from the completion of the Standard Model in the 1970’s.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729063-500-physics-crunch-bang-goes-the-theory/
This changing of the guard is exciting but nerve-wracking. To put it bluntly, it must deliver. Physics is enjoying a period of enormous public support. But if there is no appreciable progress, it is hard to see anyone stumping up the cash to build an even bigger particle smasher or better space probes. We must hope the theories stand up to the test.
Hint: It hasn’t
Thanks for the link Hitrekker. From your link, bold mine:
The result is a cornucopia of awesome ideas: hidden dimensions, shadow particles and an infinity of parallel universes, to name but three.
And that one, an infinity of parallel universes, is the many worlds theory. That’s the one that Alan Guth says “I think makes a lot of sense”. That is the universe, splits off into another parallel universe, many times a second. and of course, those parallel universes also splits off into other parallel universes many times a second. So only after a few minutes, you would have more parallel universes than the number of atoms in the universe. And those universes would just keep splitting into an infinite number of universes forever. And you Hightrekker would just keep on splitting into more and more Hitrekkers until all the trillions of Hightrekkers died. No, goddammit, that does not make a lot of sense. That has to be stupidest goddamn theory ever dreamed up by man.
Nevertheless, Doug Leighton says: In any case, one must respect people of Alan Guth’s stature. Perhaps this topic is too big for a Blog? No, fuck no, that is not an idea too big for a fifth grader, much less this blog. And I am shocked that Doug would support it… if he even bothered to watch it.
That link again: Do we live in a multiverse? | The Economist And the many worlds theory starts at 5:48 minutes into the video and lasts for all of one minute and twenty seconds.
I watched the presentation Ron, and refrained from commenting because I have so little background in area, more like a 5th grader I suppose. And from that perspective my response is- ‘well perhaps, but does it matter since our reality is just here in this one universe that we find ourselves in at this moment?’
Yes, Hickory, it matters, it matters a lot. And you do not need a background in science to doubt that the universe is splitting into parallel universes millions of times a minute. That means you are splitting into millions of Hickorys millions of times a minute. And a million million more times in the next minute. All you need is just a wee bit of common sense.
Why it matters is science should just not be making up shit to explain something they have no explanation for. They should just say “we don’t know”.
Why? Our brains can only understand 4 dimensions and there might be 11 so it’s no surprise things are a bit difficult. Stacking up an infinite number of 2-D sheets of paper is still an infinitely thin volume in 3-D space. Why shouldn’t it be similar with multiplying 4-D universes into 5-D, 6-D etc. space? Science doesn’t just say “I don’t know” with its tacit suggestion of giving up, it works by proposing hypotheses and getting them shot down until they look just about OK. So far in the quantum realm we are way off that, but the only way forward is to keep suggesting new ideas.
George, that is all well and good. However, your reply has nothing to do with the many worlds theory. String theory, perhaps but that applies to the other multiverse theories, not the many worlds theory.
That theory says the universe splits up into many millions of other universes in just a minute or so and continues forever. It has nothing to do with trillions of other big bangs or trillions of miny bangs banging off from our original one big bang.
So far, I am a little shocked. No one has stated whether or not they are inclined to believe or disbelieve that they themselves are splitting off into other “themselves” millions of times a minute. Good gravy, do you guys really believe that shit?
I believe it is a valid hypothesis that has not been disproved. I also believe argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy with especially little bearing in the field of quantum mechanics.
And I’d like to believe that in one of those universes Jim Morrison and/or Ian Curtis are still alive and/or I am now the lead singer of the Doors (now on their third comeback tour) or New Order/Joy Division (now reformed after settling various “artisitic differences”).
I also believe argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy…
The argument from incredulity occurs when one denies a proposition on the basis of not being able to fathom the possibility of it.
In some cases, incredulity is a valid argument, in some cases, it is not. I cannot fathom the possibility that a cow jumped over the moon. Therefore I just don’t believe it. And like the cow jumping over the moon, some cases are just so goddamn stupid that I cannot fathom it being true. One such case is the many worlds theory. That is:
“The whole universe splits and becomes two universes every fraction of a second. And those two universes split and become four universes and those four universes become eight universes, and we only a tiny fraction of a second has elapsed since the first split. And in just a minute or two, there will be millions of copies of you in other universes. Soon, the number of universes would be one times ten to the millionth power. And the number of universes would keep doubling forever.”
If that is an argument from incredulity then just color me incredulous.
My understanding is that the multi-universe theory is much more than even that. Every particle can be be in certain states with some probability, therefore every combination of every state of every particle is valid and therefore exists as a separate universe, and every change in the probability function results in a new set of universes, and every new universe goes through the same process. Therefore the number of universes is an unimaginably large number to the power of another unimaginably large number, recursed an unimaginable number of times and cascaded through time an unimaginably large number of times (but still finite).
Of course my understanding is wrong, just like every other 7.x billion people at the moment (and mine is a good fe years out of date now). Some people have an inkling of why and what they don’t understand and how they might get some better understanding (and some of those built and operate the HLC). I am not one of them, but I wish they’d hurry up.
George, I must have watched at least 100 youtube Closer to Truth, Robert Kuhn videos on the multiverse but that is the first time I have heard that one.
Ron is right, the multiple universe idea isn’t math, it is one interpretation of the collapse of the wave function.
The more common alternative interpretation is called the Copenhagen Interpretation, which says the universe is fundamentally random. Einstein famously criticized it by saying “The old guy doesn’t play dice”. (Der Alter würfelt nicht)
There are other interpretations, but anyway, none of them are very satisfactory intuitively, and none of them are based on any real math or observations. The are just attempts to deal with the weirdness of the math.
I second that. The hunter gatherers that we are can probably never understand QM or perhaps the TOE when (if) if eventually appears. The number of people on earth who can follow advanced math are measured in the hundreds and advanced math is necessary to “grasp” abstract concepts. Why would it be otherwise?
Again, there is not one equation of math involved in the many worlds theory. Not one.
Wrong.
“The many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wave function and denies the actuality of wave function collapse.” Its all math.
Now just a cotton picking minute here Doug. A denial that something that is observed, actually happened, is not math.
The collapse of the wave function cannot be explained mathematically. There is no math that explains why a particle, travelling at near the speed of light, becomes a wave when unobserved but collapses back into a particle when observed.
The many worlds theory just says it collapses in one universe but not the universe that it just split off from.
There is no math that explains the collapse of the wave function and no math says new parallel universes are created, in planck time, to explain that it really didn’t happen.
Really, Doug, I have been studying the double slit theory for well over a year now. And no one denies that the wave function collapses. And no one has put forth any mathematical explanation for it.
One more point. Out of the hundreds of Youtube videos I have watched on that, the multiverse and other theories. No physicist denies that the universe is fine-tuned. At least 90% of them posit the multiverse theory as an explanation. But the many worlds theory is a different theory altogether. Only a tiny fraction of physicist believe it is even a possibility. The vast majority think it is a joke.
Edit: The multiverse theory is a kind of denial that the universe is fine-tuned. That is, if one times ten to the 500th power universes are created, one of them is bound to, just accidently, be so fine tuned that stars, galaxies, planets and life can exist.
I don’t remember the multiverse theory being propounded initially to explain fine tuning, more it just fell out of the statistics. Some discussions and philosophy around the anthropic principle might include it, but not all.
What is the relation between String Theory and Multiverse?
None, particularly. They are both unproven solutions to problems in our understanding of the universe. But they are solutions to quite different problems, and therefore quite unrelated.
String theory is an attempt to answer the question “what are particles?” Current physics explains an awful lot of the universe 17 particles – a neat 4×4 matrix of electrons, quarks, neutrinos, and bosons, plus the Higgs. But what are particles, why 17, and why do those 17 have the properties they do? Trying theory tries to provide an answer to such questions.
The multiverse is an attempt to answer the question of why the universe seems so well fitted for life. There are a number of numbers that characterize the universe – of which the 17 particles might be one. The speed of light, the gravitational constant, the number of spatial dimensions are some well-known ones, but there are others: of the order of twenty in all. If any of those numbers were much different, then life as we know it could not exist. In many, matter could not exist, or the universe would only exist for fractions of a second. How come we got so lucky that universe is suitable for us. One answer is God, but that just provokes the question how come we are so lucky that God wanted to create us. Physicists don’t like the answer “God”. Apart from anything else, you cannot research God – at least, not in the way physicists do research. So the alternative is that we didn’t get lucky. This universe is only one of a large number of possible universes, the multiverse, each with different values of those magic numbers. Or even with completely different numbers. At which point, the question changes from “why is the universe suitable for life” to “why do we find ourselves in one of the few universes in the multiverse suitable for life”. Which has the obvious answer that we can only exist in those universes, so our being in one is totally unsurprising.
However, there are six other answers here. No one can agree. It’s all just one big confusing theory.
“Why it matters is science should just not be making up shit to explain something they have no explanation for. They should just say “we don’t know”.
Yes, I agree with that. And so do most of the millions of other versions of me. Humans seem to have a lot of trouble saying “we don’t know”, and be OK with it. I’d like to think that I am OK with it.
I’m in awe of unknown, this week especially how mitochondria and chloroplasts precursors got a foothold (with gradual integration of the genetics and metabolism) in the bigger cells.
“They should just say “we don’t know”. Yup, all those folks sitting around campfires should have said “we just don’t know” and kept calling thunder gods talking to one another. Well, I for one am thankful for those rare inquiring minds who brought us math and ALL the modern sciences. Maybe you should spend time reading your Bible, a book that contains all the answers.
“Maybe you should spend time reading your Bible, a book that contains all the answers.”
And that is one of the funniest things I have seen in along time.
Doug L,
“We don’t know” is incomplete, in my opinion. I’ve been a proponent of “We don’t know yet” for decades upon decades.
Thanks, Ron. I agree with you and disagree with Dr Guth. Many Worlds makes no sense to me and seems the least likely explanation of the double-slit phenomena. Is the alternative to accept matter as deriving from consciousness?
I also agree that math doesn’t seem to feature in the Many Worlds view; it’s more of a metaphysical approach.
Is the alternative to accept matter as deriving from consciousness?
No, there are other options. As for consciousness, that is known as “the hard problem”. No one has yet figured out just what it is, though a few do claim to know a lot about it. Daniel Dennett says consciousness is an illusion. I disagree. Some claim there is nothing but consciousness. That’s a possibility but I am not ready to make such a claim myself.
I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.
Max Planck
In this universe, on this planet, 2017 was pretty warm.
Looking back 120 yrs, very warm.
Here is some data, if you are one to ‘believe’ data-
http://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperatures-2017/
Yeah, but look on the bright side there are billions upon billions of other universes where we are experiencing an ice age 😉
Is experiencing an ice age looking on the bright side?
Of course! It’s the albedo… 😉
But realize, behind the albedo layer it is very, very dark.
If you feel your way to find the under-surface of that layer,
you will find it to be bumpy.
Strange, I thought it would be smooth.
And I was wondering, in a universe where there is the inverse of a vacuum between black holes, do the black holes become white……, hmmm. What is the opposite of a hole?
Global sea ice extent is second lowest behind last year but on a trajectory that could see new daily records by September.
Eeeep!
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/aug/13/halfway-boiling-city-50c
NAOM
I don’t like to wish bad on people, but maybe we’d be lucky in the long-run if there is a big heat wave during the Qatar World Cup in 2022, that is catastrophic in its manifestations. What else will be a wake up call to billions? Perhaps it will coincide with the next big el nino year.
B.C. WILDFIRE UPDATE MONDAY: MORE FIRES NOW BURNING THAN DURING RECORD 2017 SEASON
“A new wave of lightning strikes has sparked 145 new wildfires across B.C., bringing the current total to nearly 600 fires burning. Of those fires, 47 are considered wildfires of note, meaning these are wildfires which are highly visible or which pose a potential threat to public safety.”
https://globalnews.ca/news/4384377/b-c-wildfire-update-monday/
More fires, (number), but of smaller size. Plus, not as much impact on populated centres this year. So far. Pray for freaking rain.
I have a Honda fire (high pressure) water pump ready to go with 300′ of hose. Where I live the rating is at ‘extreme’, and we have 25-35 kt winds forecast all week. By the end of the week it is supposed to hit 29 degrees. The closest fire to us is 60 miles away, but all it takes is one dragging muffler or a dumb-ass butt tossing smoker to set the valley on fire. It is very smoky today up and down the east coast of Vancouver Island. On the bright side it is cooler today as the smoke seems to be blocking the sun a fair amount, plus the wind is cool off the Strait. I have been in fire zones when it was 35C with 1/4 mile visibilty. Thank God it isn’t that bad here.
My buddy is flying on a fire nw of Vanderhoof. He flies a Bell 204. He says it is Armageddon, and they had to move the camp. Usually he stays in touch with email, but he is so busy I haven’t heard much beyond the basics. The forecats shows no rain for us for at least the next few weeks. This blocking high is re-establishing itself and is very very strong.
Paulo —
Have you thought about mounting one of those long reach farm sprinklers on your roof? Can’t do it myself because my well wouldn’t last long with sustained draw at that volume but a neighbor who lives beside a creek has done this. Works like a damn. Good luck man.
Would one of these be of help if slowly filled from the well as standby? I have 1000L on my roof for constant supply as the mains is intermittent and another 5,000L under my garage as reserve.
http://rotoplasusa.com/products/
NAOM
I am on a river so water is no problem, and I have thought about it for sure. My friend has all the fittings so I just might do it this week. Even though we are at extreme rating, it’s still pretty green. If the woods next door catch with a westerly It’ll be me on the deck with the fire hose. We do keep an eye out for sure. Man, that pump shoots a stream about 40′ and is absolutely soaking.
One thing I have done is volunteer as the local emergency comm guy in the event of a disaster. I set up a Ham base station and also have a portable. In September I am being trained on sending data packets by HF. The Regional District pays for the course work and are really working at getting comms set up in every remote area. We are 75 km from the city of Campbell River, and a fire would isolate us and would most likely take out our phone and hydro. For Ham radio I can simply use a battery bank for the 50 watt or use the portable. If we have a long outage I can use the genset to charge up everything.
Fire prep is number 1 and the subduction quake is overdue so we do train for those 2 specific emergencies.
I always thought emergency communications would simply be done by ‘someone’, like the RCMP, volunteer fire dept, etc. I was surprised to find out that in BC it is tasked to volunteers using the amateur band and that ‘they’ is really us…in my case where I live, me. There are some absolutely awesome people in the Ham radio world and I have enjoyed learningt and fitting in.
Paulo —
LOL “There are some absolutely awesome people in the Ham world.” Yeah, and my Dad was was one of them (VE7EI). He’d dispatch trains for the PGE when snow slides took out telegraph lines — back before you were born (probably?).
I’d memorized the Radio Amateur’s Handbook by age ten but never got a license, but which made EE courses duck soup when I got to Uni. Interesting world. BTW, VE7EI was the second HAM license issued here. Impressed?
Yeah, I am impressed. Actually, an old co-worker of mine….his first job was for CP as a telegrapher. He is around 72 years old. he was stationed somewhere in the boonies and relayed train progress info by morse.
here is this one, Doug. You will enjoy it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRuRE-Bwk1U
Meanwhile in the EV marketing universe things are starting to heat up a bit courtesy of VW.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/13/volkswagen-ev-awareness-campaign/
Volkswagen’s Electrify America subsidiary has put out a commercial that aims to spread awareness of electric vehicles and how far the industry has progressed, Reuters reports. The ad is part of a $45 million public education initiative. “We’re trying to say with this campaign that electric vehicles are fun to drive, the range is great and charging is more widely available than people know,” Richard Steinberg, Electrify America’s senior director of green cities, marketing and communications, told Reuters.
The commercial uses two familiar cartoons to make a point about EVs over standard vehicles. In the ad, you see a man in an orange car stopped at a red light while the Flintstones theme song plays. Then a man in an orange Chevy Bolt drives up to the light while the Jetsons theme takes over. Once the light turns green, the man in the Chevy Bolt drives away, leaving the other man behind, while a speaker says, “With instant acceleration, electric cars are more fun to drive and more affordable than ever. Electric cars are here.” The message from the education campaign, dubbed Plug Into The Present, is “Say goodbye to the Stone Age.”
Though to be frank, I’m not at all impressed by the quality of the ad itself! I think a couple of high school kids with an I-phone on a shoestring budget could have done waaay better than this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRgcJusf280
Plug into the Present with the “JetStones”
Now this is a much more sophisticated commercial for a Mercedes BEV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k1tbf8muMc
LOL! Good one!
“The ad is part of a $45 million public education initiative. …”
They skipped the part where the ‘initiative’ is born of the Dieselgate settlement over lying about their diesel emissions.
Yes, I’m aware of that. To be fair I think VW is on the right track post dieselgate. However that particular ad still leaves an enormous amount to be desired!
Cheers!
Mining free – ENERGY BASED CRYPTO COIN – Gubber mints can’t “PRINT” Energy
“By creating a freely accessible marketplace for renewable energy trading, Solar Bankers is challenging the dominance of the large energy companies.”
https://solarbankers.com/
BUY SELL OR HOLD?
Uggg Forget too complex to fix VW cars After seeing such a stupid Ad! Can’t watch TV – Drug and Car Ads.. 2-4 thousand of Advertising wasted $ in many cars. Hugh advantage for Tesla, not one cent to the Media jackoffs.
Tesla Time News – EV World coverage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=205Zj7sRISo&t=1079s
This is awesome, even if you think (significant) science discovery stopped in the 1970s (Yes I’m talking to you Hightrekker). 🙂
RESEARCHER ACCURATELY DETERMINES ENERGY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TWO QUANTUM STATES
“A kiwi physicist has discovered the energy difference between two quantum states in the helium atom with unprecedented accuracy, a ground-breaking discovery that contributes to our understanding of the universe and space-time and rivals the work of the world’s most expensive physics project, the Large Hadron Collider.”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-accurately-energy-difference-quantum-states.html#jCp
Well—
Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit
Who needs roads?
Meet Cora
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeFxjRMv5U8&t=2s
BlackFly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=671Vf3PFlWU&t=194s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI8AemQcclY
Old School
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGQH7sxkQLg&t=345s
“Growth
for the sake of growth
is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
— Edward Abbey, reminding us that “corporate-sponsored” environmental activities is a rather bad joke.
Nice saying, but not applicable. This is not growth, it’s replacement with collapse of a very degenerate and dangerous system.
Don’t you see that each and every step like this is actually de-growth, smaller and smaller footprint on the earth? Maybe I expect too much.
Replacement?
I just see it as another techno game, soon the be left in the dust, as our emergent reality continues on.
How about these animations and the calculations behind them, from the work that led to Frank Wilczek’s 2004 Nobel prize in physics. Why is any of this more plausible or comprehensible to the average layperson, than is the concept of multiverses?! The math behind this is way above my paygrade, but my point is if you can’t do the math you have no place criticizing any of the theories. You must be fluent in mathematics before you can ever hope to even begin to truly understand the universe and it’s mysteries for mathematics is the language of science.
http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/theory/staff/leinweber/VisualQCD/Nobel/
“What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school… It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it. You see my physics students don’t understand it… That is because I don’t understand it. Nobody does.”
― Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
Fred —
“…but my point is if you can’t do the math you have no place criticizing any of the theories.”
I agree, totally, and would go further, because sometimes you can follow the math and still not (properly) understand the science. One might ask: Was Feynman right when he said, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics then you don’t understand quantum mechanics”? Well I can do the math but don’t pretend to understand QM and I refuse say it’s wrong — just because I don’t understand it.
Fred and Doug. There is no math that supports, or even hints at, the universe splitting into another universe, and those two universes splitting into four universes, and those four universes splitting into eight universes until after several minutes you have more universes than there are atoms in the universe. And more copies of yourself than there atoms in the universe. That is just goddamn down in the dirt stupid. And that should be obvious to anyone with any brains at all.
Saying the math is just above your head when there is no math involved whatsoever, is just a cop-out. There is math involved in quantum mechanics. Math that says Schrodinger’s cat is neither alive or dead until it is observed. Or more correctly both alive and dead at the same time until it is observed. But there is no math that explains why conscious observation collapses the wave function. That is just an observation that cannot be explained by mathematics.
But Schrodinger’s cat and the collapse of the wave function can be explained if the universe splits into parallel universes every fraction of a second. Schrodinger’s cat is alive in one universe but dead in the one that just split off. And the wave function collapses in one universe but not in the other.
The theory was just dreamed up as an out, as an explanation for the unexplainable.
The theory was just dreamed up as an out
Bingo!
For the record, I don’t believe in other universes, or other places in the universe with life.
Until I see proof of it.
Until then, this is quite enough.
This universe has Pizza, and girls who flirt,
and questions that go unanswered.
“The theory was just dreamed up as an out, as an explanation for the unexplainable.”
Actually, collapse of the wave function has been understood (mathematically) since the 1980s. In fact, there are several equivalent approaches to deriving collapse.
Not to mention that no less an authority than Steven Hawking wrote his last paper just before his death, titled:
A smooth exit from eternal inflation?
S.W. Hawking and Thomas Hertogb
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FJHEP04%282018%29147.pdf
Abstract: The usual theory of inflation breaks down in eternal inflation. We derive a
dual description of eternal inflation in terms of a deformed Euclidean CFT located at the
threshold of eternal inflation. The partition function gives the amplitude of different geometries
of the threshold surface in the no-boundary state. Its local and global behavior
in dual toy models shows that the amplitude is low for surfaces which are not nearly conformal
to the round three-sphere and essentially zero for surfaces with negative curvature.
Based on this we conjecture that the exit from eternal inflation does not produce an infinite
fractal-like multiverse, but is finite and reasonably smooth.
Dunno but looks there might be a teensy weensy bit of math in there somewhere…
To put it another way, the concept of multiverses is not some harebrained idea that theoretical physicists just pulled out of there asses.
Hawking’s final paper suggests a framework for understanding the universe that would render the multiverse finite, countable and subject to meaningfully engagement via the tools of science.
Go ahead read the damn paper!
For another perspective you can also watch this lecture by Dr. Max Tegmark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKjj4T1bHrY
Max Tegmark: Mathematics and the Multiverse
Dunno but looks there might be a teensy weensy bit of math in there somewhere…
Fred, Hawking is talking about the multiverse theory, not the many world’s theory. I thought everyone understood by now that they are two entirely different things.
It is all explained here:
Is Multiverse Theory REALLY Scientific?
Hawking was a very smart man, far too smart to buy into the many worlds theory. And very physicists do buy into it.
I agree, totally, and would go further, because sometimes you can follow the math and still not (properly) understand the science.
Yep, like in this lecture: Time Crystals: new states of matter, by Frank Wilczek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYZMqtDxrYg
Whatever you do, stay away from things that might melt your heart! 😉
You’ll have to listen to the entire talk to get that one. Hint, it has to do with phase transition from a Time Crystal to a Time Liquid and would require a defibrillator to reverse it! At least that’s my interpretation.
Cheers!
For anyone interested, certainly those who may find themselves in a smokey zone, there is a worldwide network of particulate monitors that you can access in real time. It doesn’t measure ozone, but I have been finding it very useful during this fire season out west.
Not all areas have monitors, for example there isn’t a single one in the county where the biggest Calif fire has been this month, but there are hundreds of others in this state, one in Tasmania, and two on the east side of the Andes where Brazil, Peru and Bolivia come together, for example.
You can get a monitor and add it to the network for about $200. Good for a public facility such a school, hospital, college or city hall in an area where they don’t have one already.
The map is scroll-able and zoom-able.
Purple air-
https://www.purpleair.com/map?&zoom=3&lat=39.51596757727815&lng=-99.35539180755615&clustersize=45&orderby=L&latr=121.86969544900019&lngr=-132.01171875
It is really smokey in Bend Or this morning.
I might put off fly fishing.
Yep, I canceled a trip to the Sierras last week. Yosemite was closed for 3 weeks, limited reopening today.
Fished yesterday—-
Awfully smokey today.
Library, maybe a swim—-
It is getting late.
Take a look:
https://s.w-x.co/wu/hrrr-smoke-aug14_0.png
As I have said many times, those who still think of TESLA as an auto maker are way off the mark. They just don’t understand what TESLA really does or what its true strengths and assets are.
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/tesla-earnings-bombshell-reminds-us-that-tesla-is-a-tech-company-14671808
Tesla Earnings Bombshell Reminds Us That Tesla’s a Tech Company
Tesla isn’t a car company. It’s a tech company that makes cars.
Currently, Tesla Autopilot uses Nvidia’s (NVDA – Get Report) Drive platform, an autonomous driving platform used by a handful of other automakers. Put simply, Tesla’s new AI Chip will be around an order of magnitude more powerful than the current iteration of chips available from Nvidia.
The Tesla computer is able to handle more than 2,000 frames per second of video from the car’s onboard computers. It does that by bypassing the GPU or CPU that traditional AI hardware uses, instead running computations in the bare silicon itself. The neural networks that drive Tesla’s autonomous car capabilities essentially do a vast number of incredibly simple calculations on matrices; by moving those to bare metal, the speed increases are substantial.
That also gives Tesla a meaningful advantage over competitors.
The only reason Tesla is able to engineer its chips to run this way is because it has an in-depth understanding of its neural net architecture because that AI work is done in-house on a massive amount of training data generated by both a test fleet and customer cars on the road. (Some analysts have pinned the value of Tesla’s data alone in the billions.)
What did you think of those BlackFly 4 pound electric motors that gave 130 pounds of thrust each for a total max of 1040 pounds of thrust. (see upthread)
A Corvette maxed out gives about 750 pounds of thrust over the quarter mile.
ft/lbs or N/m = Torque
Torque times RPM = POWER
Hub Motors are UR – The Ultimate.
Hope my next Truck has 6 of them.
It’s the act of detection not the consciousness. Heisenberg said so. Determination of where the particle/wave is collapses the wave function.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yotBpxXiivA
With further references.
GF, you are right, it is not consciousness, not directly anyway. But it is not the detector that causes the wave function to collapse. First, that was proven by placing the detector after the slit and only on one slit. The wave function collapsed no matter which slit it passed through.
And it was never the detector that deflected the particle. It has been done with buckyballs, a sixty carbon atom molecule. Photons cannot deflect buckyballs.
However the argument was finally settled by the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment This is where consciousness comes in, though indirectly. Just the knowledge of which slit the particle passed through collapsed the wave function.
Wow! From the video you cited. “It only makes sense if the universe is a simulation and all parts are equidistant in space-time from the source of the simulation. Like in a video game or a dream.”
Really?
Quantum Eraser experiment actually explained.
How the Quantum Eraser Rewrites the Past
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ORLN_KwAgs
Wow! From the video you cited. “It only makes sense if the universe is a simulation and all parts are equidistant in space-time from the source of the simulation. Like in a video game or a dream.”
So? 😉
Your link does not in any way dispute what my linked video says. In fact, it reinforces it.
You and I live in different realities. Have a nice evening.
Gone Fishing, Ron,
Your discussion just brought to mind a memory: Long ago Isaac Asimov published an article with the title “The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline”. I remember it fondly.
Thiotimoline is a substance, soluble in water, that dissolves something like 1.4 seconds before the water hits it. Asimov had fun thinking out the uses it could be put to. You might enjoy it.
Thanks, I will look it up.
Psychosomatic substances? What next?
I remember reading my first text on extra-dimensionality back in 7th grade. Was a lot of fun to think about and play with the math but not very useful.
I don’t think much anymore about multi-dimensions/multi-universes/ diffraction-interference problems.
I do wonder about the difference in outcome if we mostly ignore global warming after 2025 compared to making large scale attempts to change society and the environment (in a positive way).
People sometimes talk about a WWII type effort needed to address climate change. I wonder if they understand the scale of that effort and the many governmental changes that forced such a re-tooling of industry. It would be on a larger scale now.
Here is a small glimpse into that effort.
The 1943 St. Louis Glider Accident
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWP7Oq-g5M0
Quantum entanglement you say? 3, 2, 1… And right on cue!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-gravity-quantum/
Is Gravity Quantum?
The ongoing search for the graviton—the proposed fundamental particle carrying gravitational force—is a crucial step in physicists’ long journey toward a theory of everything
…For example, in 2017 two independent studies suggested that if gravity is quantum it could generate a link known as “entanglement” between particles, so that one particle instantaneously influences another no matter where either is located in the cosmos. A tabletop experiment using laser beams and microscopic diamonds might help search for such gravity-based entanglement. The crystals would be kept in a vacuum to avoid collisions with atoms, so they would interact with one another through gravity alone. Scientists would let these diamonds fall at the same time, and if gravity is quantum the gravitational pull each crystal exerts on the other could entangle them together.
Piomas
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2018/08/piomas-august-2018.html
Trump campaign taps Hulk Hogan lawyer in Omarosa case
https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/the-wrap/article/Trump-Campaign-Taps-Hulk-Hogan-Melania-Trump-13156002.php
kakistocracy (plural kakistocracies)
Government under the control of a nation’s worst or least-qualified citizens.
Kakistocracy?! I Don’t think so. What we really have, is a blatant Kleptocracy!
I’m not sure they are that smart—–
DIVING ROBOTS FIND ANTARCTIC WINTER SEAS EXHALE SURPRISING AMOUNTS OF CARBON DIOXIDE
A new study uses data gathered by floating drones in the Southern Ocean over past winters to learn how much carbon dioxide is transferred by the surrounding seas. Results show that in winter the open water nearest the sea ice surrounding Antarctica releases significantly more carbon dioxide than previously believed.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180814134147.htm
Anything natural that produces water vapor exhales CO2, or flatulates it may be a better way of saying. A real study is needed to answer how much contributes to global warming above the baseline that has always existed, as this is one more issue for which we are missing objective conclusions.
Troll, troll, troll your bot,
Intently to blaspheme.
If you see a crocodile,
Don’t forget to scream!
Respecting some comments this interview may be of relevance? To my mind the last (quoted) sentence could contain the most pertinent question of all.
WHAT DO PHYSICISTS MEAN WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT NOTHING?
“Sciences try to answer questions, but every time we answer them, new ones come into focus – we’ll never have a complete picture. When I was starting research in the late 1960s, it was controversial whether there had been a Big Bang at all. Now that’s no longer controversial, and we can say with about 2% precision what the universe was like all the way back from the present 13.8 billion years to a nanosecond. That is huge progress. So it’s not absurdly optimistic to believe that in the next 50 years, the challenging issues about what happens at the quantum or “inflationary” eras will be understood. But of course this raises another question: how much of [future] science is going to be accessible to the human brain?”
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-physicists.html#jCp
That is huge progress. So it’s not absurdly optimistic to believe that in the next 50 years, the challenging issues about what happens at the quantum or “inflationary” eras will be understood. But of course this raises another question: how much of [future] science is going to be accessible to the human brain?”
Yeah, but! I think right there you have an almost perfect example of what Daniel Kahneman has called an inside-outside view of the planning fallacy.
https://www.edge.org/event/edge-master-class-2007-daniel-kahneman-a-short-course-in-thinking-about-thinking
See his 2007 Edge Master Class on
A SHORT COURSE IN THINKING ABOUT THINKING
Session one, if any one should be interested in the gory details! 😉
…how much of [future] science is going to be accessible to the human brain?”
Given what we discuss on this site on an almost daily basis, i.e. the non zero chance possibility, that in fifty years we, (well, not me, because I’ll already be dead) may already be in the throes of societal collapse, so the question in my mind, is also whether or not there will even be enough resources left for a civilization to support the continuation of scientific research at the necessary levels.
So will there even be science that is going to be accessible to the human brain?!
I think we find ourselves at a very strange juncture in human history.
Cheers!
Don’t let it keep you up at night Doug. We are not smart enough to comprehend the universe, being just a notch above chimps. Face it, only a few percent or less are actually capable of true creative thought and action. The rest just use the tools provided and play around with them like super-squirrels after nuts.
The strange brained people are valued since they provide technology and weapons that are useful to the rest. Otherwise they would be mostly shunned as irritating and non-social.
One can imagine creatures that are as far above us mentally as we are above chimps. Humans would be looked upon as cute or annoying toddlers. That is probably the evolutionary leap needed to understand the universe. Even if some highly intelligent race explained the universe to us, we would not actually understand what we were told. Does a 3 year old or a chimp understand nuclear physics. People don’t even seem to understand the current level of our knowledge.
Most people would not care, nor would the chimps. Of course high intelligence appears to be anti-survival, which leads to the conclusion that humans are an evolutionary dead end.
As Jean Shepherd oft exclaimed “Excelsior, you fatheads!”
Or as Longfellow describes the fate of persisting ever upward and onward despite cries to stop due to the danger.
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!
A traveller, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell like a falling star,
Excelsior!
One can imagine creatures that are as far above us mentally as we are above chimps. Humans would be looked upon as cute or annoying toddlers. That is probably the evolutionary leap needed to understand the universe. Even if some highly intelligent race explained the universe to us, we would not actually understand what we were told. Does a 3 year old or a chimp understand nuclear physics. People don’t even seem to understand the current level of our knowledge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhaE3w5QCGg
Human Intelligence vs Alien Intelligence – Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yep, but looking at it from a survival perspective the humans may turn out to be the stupid ones. All the other animals did not jump the tracks of natural selection and evolve to disrupt and destroy the very nature and world that keeps them alive! Maybe we should take that as a clue and stop patting ourselves on the back so much.
Maybe the truly smart ones stayed with the system and didn’t build fortresses to keep nature at bay. An intelligence that needs to wreck things to get a few advantages for a short time is probably not very smart.
Or as the saying goes “Too soon old, too late schmart”
To which I add “And most of them never get schmart”
But, but, but we made the Hubble Telescope! Which will soon cease to function, while we kill the live-giving life around us to build more things that kill more life.
Maybe the aliens would look on us as planetary vermin and rid the planet of us. That might be a perspective.
DougL,
Steven Weinberg once said, about the search for a Grand Unified Theory, that “We don’t know if there is such a thing as a Grand Unified Theory. We don’t know if we, as a species, are smart enough to find out. But we do know that if we don’t try, we never will!” (From memory)
Subversive thinking there, opens the door to endless physicists.
Synapsid –
I hear you man. My wife used to say, pick a problem in an area your good at (and interested in) and with luck you’ll discover a small piece that fits in a very large puzzle. And that’s enough, because the puzzle will probably never be completed owing to the fact we are constrained by an old hunter-gatherer’s brain.
Meanwhile, I play with neutron star physics and leave bigger problems to (much) bigger minds. And, helping my Grandson acquire a grounding in math and physics. He’s now also keen on learning violin and piano — which does my heart good.
Don’t know if you saw this comment and link I posted up thread.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-august-13-2018/#comment-648798
Fred — no I haven’t finished listening to the the Frank Wilczek lecture yet but most certainly will, then get back to you. In the meantime, thanks.
What do you think of the new work on proton/neutron pairing in nuclei and how it may affect what you work on?
NAOM
notanoilman —
“What do you think of the new work on proton/neutron pairing in nuclei and how it may affect what you work on?”
Well, short answer, it introduces a potentially new complication which is the last bloody thing I need at the moment. Good avenue of research though, I admit.
Lucky DougL,
A bow of deepest respect to your wife and a pat on the back for yourself in recognition of having married such a gem.
Vix
16.59
+3.28(+24.64%)
Ok——-
Whose afraid of the big bad wolf?!
Looking at longer term it is still low and regularly fluctuates. Still way lower than the start of the year. No real signs yet but worth keeping an eye on. Check 1y and all in the following :-
http://www.cboe.com/vix
NAOM
We shall see– it is at a low point, for sure, and has been there for quite a while.
In Infinity, Once Defined, The Defined Becomes Undefinable Again
Hi Ron,
I just watched your interesting video…
My initial sense of it, and sort of bouncing off some of the aspects of the conversation in these threads on the subject, is that consciousness is (or owes its existence to) infinity and that the idea of reality as a simulation or of infinite splits of possibilities may just be ‘artifacts‘ of ‘looking back at yourself’ from ‘within yourself’ even though you’re not quite within yourself, because that would seem to imply lack of infinity…
You cannot be exactly within something– entirely contained– if it is infinite, can you? It has a certain level of meaninglessness. Even WRT Hightrekker’s mention of ‘the box canyon’, a box still has plenty of ways to escape. IOW, everything’s connected.
If there was such a thing as a real box, we could not know of it because it couldn’t actually exist– even in the mind. The imagination wouldn’t be accurately representing the box. A black hole is perhaps the most extreme ‘box’ we know of and even that apparently leaks info– and, according to one theory, may be where universes are born.
The problem, or maybe paradox, is that the cosmological laws or forces in some sense are ‘life’, which, run over time and opportunity, create so-called ‘chemistry’ and ‘biology’ and thus ‘sub-lives’ that are ‘we’. And so then we look back and attempt to ‘define’ ourselves (our ‘parent’), which we cannot do because once ‘defined’, we could then take the steps to change our ‘definitions’, thereby making ourselves, at least fundamentally, undefinable, and therefore unpredictable, so to speak.
I think the key is really simple and maybe even enough for a hunter and gatherer to understand with some effort perhaps (and if they weren’t too busy hunting and gathering), and that’s infinity and consciousness.
One last thing: In the video, one of them at one point mentions fractals. Well, AFAIK, fractals are in part about self-similarity and so I’m wondering how other universes or many universes or multiverses or whatever have you would have completely different laws of physics and/or be ‘still-born’ if they were all somehow connected.
Infinity ‘breaks the perfect box’, and you can only ‘define’ something (say via the practice of science)— at least, absolutely– within a perfect box.
I think the key is really simple and maybe even enough for even a hunter and gatherer to understand with some effort perhaps, and that’s infinity and consciousness.
Perhaps a hunter-gatherer could understand it, but I seriously doubt it. Infinity and consciousness? You haven’t defined either. So how could anyone understand something that is not defined? What is infinity? Well, I think I have a pretty handle on that, or as well a handle as anyone does anyway. But consciousness is a different story. If you can define and explain consciousness, tell us exactly what it is, then please do so. There is a Noble Prize waiting for the genius who can do that. But you must show proof. Daniel Dennett says consciousness is just an illusion. But he has not one iota of proof. So no Nobel Prize for him. Max Planck said there is nothing other than consciousness. And he did win a Nobel Prize, but not for that bit of wisdom.
so I’m wondering how other universes or many universes or multiverses or whatever have you would have completely different laws of physics and/or be ‘still-born’ if they were all somehow connected.
Okay, I am going to make one final comment on the multiverse theory. The multiverse is nothing more than a stupid myth. And there is no mathematical evidence to support it regardless of what others on this blog may say. I have researched it for two days running now. And I found out that string theory posits 10 dimensions or 11 dimensions, and one theory even posits 26 dimensions. And they surmised that there could be another universe for each of those dimensions, over and above the four dimensions that we can observe. But it’s all guesswork with no hard evidence to support any of that stuff.
Anyway, back when string theory was first proposed, it was explained that there could be another universe for each of those extra dimensions. And that’s all. Nothing in string theory posits or even suggests, that there could be multiple big bangs, or multiple bubble universes popping off the original big bang. So when some folks say that string theory supports the multiverse theory, they just don’t know what the fuck they are talking about. If there were any evidence then physicists would not be arguing about it today. That is, they would not be arguing about whether it was multiple big bangs or multiple bubbles popping off the one original big bang. There is absolutely no evidence to support either hypothesis.
The multiverse theory was just made up to try to explain the very fine-tuning of the universe, and nothing else. There is not one iota of mathematical evidence to support it. End of story.
Your quote which you put in bold: Infinity ‘breaks the perfect box’, and you can only ‘define’ something (say via the practice of science)— at least, absolutely– within a perfect box.
That is nothing more than postmodern bullshit with no meaning whatsoever. Though we cannot comprehend infinity, we do know what the word means.
This is the universe with pizza. Thats all I know.
The multiverse theory was just made up to try to explain the very fine-tuning of the universe, and nothing else. There is not one iota of mathematical evidence to support it. End of story.
Ron, you are fractally and integrally wrong! Both math puns intended. 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMDTcMD6pOw
You don’t like it? Go somewhere else! by Richard Feynman, the QED Lecture at University of Auckland (2 min. video clip)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry_pILPr7B8
Before the Big Bang 5: The No Boundary Proposal (51 min video)
In this film Stephen Hawking, James Hartle and Thomas Hertog explain their model of the early universe: The No Boundary Proposal. In the 1960’s and 70’s Hawking and Penrose showed that according to classical general relativity, given some minimal assumptions the origin of an expanding universe is a singularity: a point of infinite density and spacetime curvature. But this and other singularity theorems do not take into account the strange world of quantum mechanics. So in the 1980’s Hawking and collaborators started to build a model of the big bang that included quantum effects.The result is the No Boundary Proposal, a model that may be able to explain some of the deepest mysteries of the cosmos such as, is there a multiverse? how is there an arrow of time and what really happened a the big bang?
I can’t for the life of me understand how anyone can claim that There is not one iota of mathematical evidence to support it. End of story.
The result is the No Boundary Proposal, a model that may be able to explain some of the deepest mysteries of the cosmos such as, is there a multiverse? how is there an arrow of time and what really happened a the big bang?
Fred, I agree 100%. One day mathematics may be able to explain these things. So far, however, that hypothesis is still on the drawing board. But now there is not one iota of hard evidence to say they are real.
Adam Frank, American physicist, astronomer, and Lee Smolin, American theoretical physicist, and philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger say Physics has gotten it terribly wrong. Bold theirs.
Has Physics Gotten Something Really Important Really Wrong?
“Science is corrupted when it abandons the discipline of empirical validation or dis-confirmation. It is also weakened when it mistakes its assumptions for facts and its ready-made philosophy for the way things are.”
Thus, the goal of The Singular Universe and The Reality of Time is to take a giant philosophical step back and see if a new and more promising direction can be found. For the two thinkers, such a new direction can be spelled out in three bold claims about the world.
1. There is only one universe. For lots of folks, this might seem like a no-brainer. The “uni” in universe is supposed to mean “everything there is.” Over the last few decades, however, multiverse cosmologies have gained acceptance via both inflationary Big Bang models and the “landscape” of string theory, which appears to predict 10 to the 500th possible universes. Unger and Smolin push back against these developments saying the proper field of study for cosmology is the one universe to which we have access. As Unger puts it: “We have reason to believe in the existence of only one universe at a time, the universe in which we find ourselves. Nothing science has discovered up to now justifies the belief that our universe is only one of many… The multiplication of universes in contemporary cosmology … has been the outcome of an attempt to convert … an explanatory failure into an explanatory success.”
2. Time is real. This might also fall into the “duh” category for people unfamiliar with the current frontiers of theoretical physics. But there were some good reasons why some physicists began thinking time might not be fundamental to reality. Instead, they began to explore how time might be emergent. That would mean time comes out of some deeper level of structure that exists entirely without anything like duration, past or future. But for Unger and Smolin, denying the reality of time allows physicists to skirt the nature of change on its deepest level.
3. Mathematics is selectively real. We physicists love our equations. They are so powerful that we often become convinced they are real in themselves. It is that way that we become platonists making mathematics a kind of skeleton on which the flesh of the world is hung. But for Unger and Smolin, this reification of mathematics can lead physicists into dangerous territory where mathematical “beauty” and “elegance” get substituted for real information about the real world. As they put it: “Our mathematical inventions offer us no shortcut to timeless truth… They never replace the work of scientific discovery and of imagination. The effectiveness of mathematics in natural science is reasonable because it is limited and relative.”
Thanks Ron. Just bought the book.
https://www.amazon.com/Singular-Universe-Reality-Time-Philosophy/dp/1107074061
And thanks to you. Let me know what you think of it.
Ron, perhaps one knows they’ve gone far enough when they’ve hit a paradox and so they have to either step back from it to avoid logic-looping or jump over its ‘hole’. 😀
Otherwise, if one is a cosmologist or whatever, and they didn’t ‘get the memo’ (that maybe their careers are in a ‘boxed canyon’, a la Hightrekker), they can get swamped in flights-of-fancy that the Ron Pattersons of this and perhaps other realities might decry as such.
As for the hunter-and-gatherer in this scenario, this is what I’d have said to one back when I figured out logically what was apparently mathematically proven:
Once upon a time, God created the universe, but he realized very quickly and logically that he couldn’t do anything meaningful with it if he couldn’t see it, which of course, he could anyway. In order to see it, it had to leak and fill his room and engulf him. So he had to become it, which is the same thing as being engulfed by it. But that’s infinity. You can’t talk about the universe without talking about such things as, ‘What happened before that?’ and ‘Ok, but then what happened before that?’ can you? Those are also questions of infinity and they don’t look like they resolve themselves into neat little scientific packets. So the math may never resolve itself if it is to ‘describe’ or ‘scientify’ reality. And so it might be a fool’s errand in a matter of speaking, maybe especially for the tax-paying hostage, but who knows… maybe both and neither…
Fine tuning sounds like a chicken and egg or circular-reasoning thing, but you’ve got me to want to look into it more, so we’ll leave it at that for now.
Fine tuning sounds like a chicken and egg or circular-reasoning thing,…
Oh good gravy, are you serious? Obviously, you haven’t given this thing much thought. If you would just research “The fine-tuning problem” you would get several thousand replies and not one of them would suggest any type of circular-reasoning.
Nay, you haven’t given this one iota of research whatsoever.
Ron’s Gravimetric Gravy Bistro
(Banana splits now half off!)
Oh good gravity, I wrote it sounds like it, but again, I’ll look more into it…
Gaahhh… (maybe an Elon Musk expression)
BTW, in your initial video, it looks like ‘infinity’ is ‘statistically-crunched-down’ into probabilities, so ’rounded out’. Who was that? Feynman? How are the astrologists or cosmeticians supposed to paint the future or their fingernails with math like that?
😀
Peace, Ron! Let’s just agree to disagree.
Though ‘Real Time’, is not the opposite of ‘Fictitious Time’. Think instead of imaginary numbers and a consequent ‘Imaginary Time’ which is quite real. See 40 min. mark in video.
An imaginary number is a complex number that can be written as a real number multiplied by the imaginary unit i, which is defined by its property i^2 = −1. The square of an imaginary number bi is −b^2. For example, 5i is an imaginary number, and its square is −25. Zero is considered to be both real and imaginary.
Now, I’ll let it rest!
Cheers!
Fred, I read your post, watched your videos and commented. My last post was to point out that there are many physicists that agree with me. I would have thought the least you could do was read it and comment.
Perimeter Institute and the crisis in modern physics
The extensions of the standard model, like grand unified theories, they were supposed to simplify it. But in fact they made it more complicated. The number of parameters in the standard model is about 18. The number in grand unified theories is typically 100. In super-symmetric theories, the minimum is 120. And as you may have heard, string theory seems to predict 10 to the power of 1,000 different possible laws of physics. It’s called the multiverse. It’s the ultimate catastrophe: that theoretical physics has led to this crazy situation where the physicists are utterly confused and seem not to have any predictions at all.
Fred, if you don’t realize that there is a crisis in physics, and this crisis is tearing physics apart, then you have just not been paying attention.
Fred, if you don’t realize that there is a crisis in physics, and this crisis is tearing physics apart, then you have just not been paying attention.
Ok, point taken and I did read it. But, I’m certainly not a particle physicist.
https://aeon.co/essays/has-the-quest-for-top-down-unification-of-physics-stalled
Going nowhere fast
After the success of the Standard Model, experiments have stopped answering to grand theories. Is particle physics in crisis?
I’m afraid that I don’t know and will have to leave the answer to that question to actual working particle physicists. However, from a layperson’s outsider point of view, knowing what I know about the history of science, it seems progress has always occurred when scientists are forced to confront inconsistencies in their theories as new and better information becomes available. Einstein’s General Relativity vs Newton’s theory of Gravity is one example that comes to mind. Now we are trying to find a way to include gravity into quantum theory. To me this is not a sign of crisis but rather progress!
Of course to be fair, not everyone agrees that such a crisis exists.
Anyways, my concept of a real crisis that matters to me personally, is the ecological disaster a.k.a. Red Tide, unfolding on Florida’s West coast!
Cheers!
“Anyways, my concept of a real crisis that matters to me personally, is the ecological disaster a.k.a. Red Tide, unfolding on Florida’s West coast!”
My idea of a real crisis that matters is covering Earth with 10 billion humans and turning our planet into a hothouse where innumerable species will disappear forever. After all, many scientists thought idea that the Earth is not the center of the universe was tipping science into a crisis but we seem to have survived that cataclysmic idea. 🙂
“The scenario of many unobserved universes plays the same logical role as the scenario of an intelligent designer. Each provides an untestable hypothesis that, if true, makes something improbable seem quite probable.”
-Smolin
My idea of a real crisis that matters is covering Earth with 10 billion humans and turning our planet into a hothouse where innumerable species will disappear forever.
Yep I agree! Hey, with a mere 7.6 billion we are already seeing the consequences, one of which, is what is happening in Florida. BTW, on my side of the state, the corals reefs are going, going, gone!
I just don’t see the consequences of having 10 billion humans being even remotely survivable, except maybe for a few remaining species of extremophile archaeans. Yes, that is hyperbole but it really doesn’t look that great for a lot of species right now.
Cheers!
Our historical range for homo sapiens was 1-10 million, with a near extinction 70,000 years ago.
Of course, we had intact ecosystems, etc.
7,6 billion? I would laugh——–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0ZbykXlg6Q
Laughing Kookaburra
U.S. Life Expectancy Drops, Now Lowest Among High-Income Countries, New Study Finds
https://ktla.com/2018/08/16/u-s-life-expectancy-drops-now-lowest-among-high-income-countries-new-study-finds/
Short and fat doesn’t help life expectancy—
I noticed they didn’t even mention increasing suicide rates:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/health/suicide-rates-kate-spade.html
Defying Prevention Efforts, Suicide Rates Are Climbing Across the Nation
Not necessarily a bad thing, in fact I think it is a rational response to illness or some great loss. What is odd is the holding on so long, when the blood barely reaches the capillary beds. And that condition can last for an amazingly long time.
We should not be making it dishonorable, or even difficult to achieve.
I watched my father disappear with dementia, and he experienced long years of animal suffering as his body slowly failed. My mother survived a debilitating stroke and she also suffered and struggled for years.
I definitely plan on exiting on my own terms (not anytime soon hopefully). When my quality of life diminishes to the point that I’m no longer able to enjoy it or contribute meaningfully, then sayonara.
But it so happens that the brother of a dear friend killed himself today. I don’t know the details yet. He was young, in his late thirties; so much pain for the friends and families.
Why does the news always seem worse that expected or is it just my imagination?
‘ABRUPT THAW’ OF PERMAFROST BENEATH LAKES COULD SIGNIFICANTLY AFFECT CLIMATE CHANGE MODELS
“The researchers found the release of greenhouse gases beneath thermokarst lakes is relatively rapid, with deep thawing taking place over the course of decades. Permafrost in terrestrial environments generally experiences shallow seasonal thawing over longer time spans. The release of that surface permafrost soil carbon is often offset by an increased growth in vegetation.
Thermokarst lakes provide a completely different scenario. When the lakes form, they flash-thaw these permafrost areas. Instead of centimeters of thaw, which is common for terrestrial environments, we’ve seen 15 meters of thaw beneath newly formed lakes in Goldstream Valley within the past 60 years.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/uoaf-to081618.php
Why does the news always seem worse that expected or is it just my imagination?
Nope, it is actually much, much worse than expected! To put things in perspective it took 50,000 years leading up to the PETM to add 10,000 gigatonnes of carbon to the atmosphere. Currently we are adding 10 gigatonnes of carbon to the atmosphere per year.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/08/new-study-were-outpacing-the-most-radical-climate-event-we-know-of/
New study: We’re outpacing the most radical climate event we know of
…The most obvious reason for concern, given these results, is the relatively sedate rate of carbon emission that drove such radical climate and ecological change.
“To put this in perspective,” the authors write, “for PETM carbon emission rates to approach those generated currently from fossil fuels, the PETM onset would have to have occurred over a period of 200 to 500 years.” Instead, it took over 100 times that. That makes the current rate of change unprecedented in what we’ve uncovered of the geological record. The Earth could have done something this rapid in the past, but we haven’t found any indication that it has.
You know, it just occurred to me, that mathematical literacy, is something that should be taught in our primary schools! /sarc
Edit: It looks like the numbers in the article are off somewhere or there is a typo, but still… 10,000 gigatonnes total CO2 at 10 gigatonnes CO2 per year = 1000 years. The author, who is a biologist, is claiming 200 to 500 years. Not quite sure what I’m missing, guess I need another beer! 😉
DougL,
There’s a bright side! It’s in this kind of setting on the outside of river meanders and in thermokarst lakes that we find mammoth tusks melting out. Such a feeling, spotting an emerging mammoth tusk–only opening an eleven-pound bar of Callebaut milk chocolate comes close.
The outside of a meander is where the river is deepest so think of the tons of tusks accumulating there. If we just had a really capable diver and air pumps and lots of inner tubes…
If we just had a really capable diver and air pumps and lots of inner tubes…
Inner tubes?! Do you mean lift bags? Is there enough space for a small pontoon boat with a hoist? How deep is it and how good is the viz?
lift bag
.
eFredM,
We found ours along the Kobuk River; I don’t know anything about the depth at the meanders but it’s a good-sized river and drains the south side of the Brooks Range. The thermokarst lakes I would guess have depths in tens of meters. In the lakes visibility might be obscured by silt but in the rivers there might be strong seasonal differences.
(I got the idea of using inner tubes from an old Scrooge McDuck comic book–they used air pumps and inner tubes to raise an old Mississippi steamboat. I thought of you as I wrote.)
In northern Alaska, anyway, much of the area of potential for mammoth tusks is what’s called corporation land–that’s land under the control of the Eskimo peoples (Iniupiat where we were) and only they can remove ivory or the nephrite jade that’s also found in the region. Write up a proposal and submit it to the appropriate governing body, and you’ll be on your way to untold riches only a small portion of which I’d be hoping to receive myself.
It interests me that (so I was told) the peoples we call Eskimos (Yupik in SW and S(?) Alaska, Iniupiat in NW and N Alaska, and Inuit in N Canada and Greenland) have no word that includes all of them. Their languages are closely related and I believe are to some extent mutually intelligible but each language has its own word for the people whose mother tongue it is and no word for the whole population across the northern part of the continent plus Greenland. In English where we were they called themselves Eskimos.
Great prose Synapsid.
Bob Nickson,
That’s very kind. Thank you.
Ever read Arctic Dreams?
I’ve spent a bit of time in Alaska. It sure has changed!
Hightrekker,
No, but back in the ’50s I read The Arctic Year, by Peter Freuchen.
Freuchen was a Dane, and in the 1920s (I believe) and ’30s he pretty much became an Eskimo, primarily in Canada and Greenland. His book has twelve chapters, January through December, and he wrote it in collaboration with Finn Salomonsen who supplied the material on Arctic birdlife and migration. The book describes the Arctic both High and Low throughout the year and covers weather, climate, animal life, plant life, and the lives of the people who lived there at a time when there hadn’t been much change as a result of contact with Western culture. I’ve treasured it since I was a kid in high school.
I have read parts of Arctic Dreams but I don’t think the whole book. I enjoyed what I did read, I do remember that. That was Barry Lopez, right?
If I were even a just a decade younger I’d be on the next flight up there, but at 65 plus, the best I could do is organize the team of divers.
Who knows, maybe I could even write a proposal. 😉
In any case, as a first step, I’d suggest someone ethical, in a boat with a side scan sonar, do a survey of the river bottom to identify potential dive sites!
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/10/siberian-mammoth-pirates/503852/
Siberian Mammoth Pirates
Humans can be nasty little creatures…
No news release yet but by Nasa July looks to be third hottest. August wil be interesting as it was when 2016 really differentiated itself.
The U.S. just suffered the hottest May-June-July on record
For the three-month period of May to July, the entire contiguous United States (CONUS) “ranked hottest on record,” as the National Weather Service in Los Angeles, California tweeted out Wednesday, adding that “records go back to 1895.”
Death Valley had the hottest average monthly temperature for any recording station in the world, 108.1 degrees F. As the National Park Service points out, “If that doesn’t sound hot to you, realize that is the average temperature for the month, including overnight lows.”
in California in particular, “July was off the charts: The state saw its hottest July and hottest month on record with an average temperature of 79.7 degrees F.”
https://thinkprogress.org/hottest-may-june-july-in-us-history-ea200870459d/
Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene
I thought this was behind a paywall, but apparently not. It’s very easy to read, but scarier than has been reported on. We are heading for the fiery pit, and probably faster even than this paper says (although there are hints the authors know they are being conservative).
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/07/31/1810141115
Gee, Thanks George!
Another cheerful start to the day thanks to you, much obliged 😉
Cheers!
P.S.
We all know the truth here, but how can we steer this oil tanker away from this massive melting iceberg?!
And BTW, how can any sane person still think that 10 billion plus humans can live on this planet in peace and harmony?!
Forget Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. Kim Kardashian has posed topless again. Can you wait to see when she turns up on Instagram next? You just know it’s going to be good.
We have had forty tears to do something and the path chosen is to have a demented, orange blob, fuckwit, con artist as the putative leader of the free world, and many people still think he is the best possible choice, Putin included; plus most would prefer to be smartphone jacked / social media imbibing / selfy taking zombies than even spend a second considering their responsibilities towards the future of the earth, human race or even their direct descendants (extant or not). How is there a rational solution to anything after that?
We have had forty tears to do something😉
Dunno, George, I think I’ve on occasion shed way more than forty tears into my beer, thinking about how ridiculous we are as a race!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO5FwsblpT8
Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot
Looks like that last batch of monkeys with typewriters I got aren’t working out so well. Either that or I need another notch on the zoom dial for my screen (11) or to start wearing my glasses a bit more.
I’m going to read that article in full a little later, but my initial reaction is-
“stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.”
Ain’t going to happen in any kind of meaningful timeframe or magnitude. Most of us are ‘fuckwits’ in training, or applaud for them.
So, ponder this. If a proposal arose that was comprised of a global Geo-engineering project aimed at carbon sequestration, would you be willing to support it?
Suppose we were ten years down the road to the hot-house scenario, and the project was supported by the EU, China, India and the USA governments, the UN, along with major scientific organizations from around the world.
Unless we get an unexpected cooling trend, I think the chances are pretty good that we will be hearing about such things in the news before too long, in the name of ‘stabilization of the earth’.
Personally I am highly skeptical of ‘our’ ability to get things right, but we may be forced to try if the trend of the last decade continues, or accelerates.
So, ponder this. If a proposal arose that was comprised of a global Geo-engineering project aimed at carbon sequestration, would you be willing to support it?
Suppose we were ten years down the road to the hot-house scenario, and the project was supported by the EU, China, India and the USA governments, the UN, along with major scientific organizations from around the world.
Um, the devil is always in the details. It would depend on the proposal. Personally I would prefer to immediately put an end to the Geo-engineering project of massive CO2 emissions currently underway!
BTW, This just in, another feel good hopeful story. Unless you actually do the math and realize the enormity of the scale that would be necessary!
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-make-natural-mineral-magnesite-to-scrub-carbon-dioxide-co2
>Scientists find way to make mineral which can remove CO2 from atmosphere
While carbon sequestration sounds promising in theory, the problem is finding methods that are cheap and practical enough to make a substantial amount of difference to levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Recent research suggests there’s now more CO2 in the air than at any point in the last 800,00 years – 410 parts per million (ppm). At the moment, we’re all pushing out an extra 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
With a tonne of naturally-occurring magnesite able to capture around half a tonne of CO2, we’re going to need a lot of magnesite, and somewhere to put it all as well. As with other carbon capture processes, it’s not yet clear whether this will successfully scale up as much as it needs to.
Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.”
Oh, Yeah! I can see it now, fundamentalist Turkish Islamists, working side by side with MAGA Trumpists to help save the biosphere! And, just in case you missed the sarcasm, The US and Turkey are both countries where the acceptance of the validity of the T.O.E. is rather low… Then again, I could see Erdogan, Trump and Putin having a ménage à trois… bring out lots of that good old petroleum jelly!
True. And I’m pretty sure Putins gang isn’t too worried about global warming, except perhaps about the effect on their grain yields.
Just to let a little sunshine in on everybody’s Friday!
Brazil’s PV capacity tops 1.6 GW
Brazil had 1,601 MW of grid-connected solar power at the end of June 2018, according to the Monthly Bulletin on the Monitoring of the Electric System from the Brazilian Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM).
This capacity is represented by 1,307 MW of large-scale PV projects selected in auctions held by the Brazilian government, and 296 MW of distributed generation solar power generators (up to 5 MW).
At the end of June 2017, utility-scale solar reached a share of just 145 MW, while DG installations totaled 92 MW. This means that, over the past 12 months, a total of 1.36 GW were connected to the country’s grid, and that growth was stronger than ever in both segments.
India’s cumulative grid connected solar capacity reaches 22 GW
The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has released its latest solar PV installation figures for April to July.
Overall, 1.3 GW of ground-mounted solar plants were grid connected in this period, thus bringing cumulative capacity to around 22 GW. In comparison, the rooftop sector saw a paltry 159.02 MW installed, to achieve a total capacity of 12.2 GW.
I thought I would bring these up to demonstrate how fast solar PV can be deployed when there is the political will to do so. Brazil now has more than six times the amount of solar PV connected to the grid as it had at this time last year. According to data under the heading “Countries”, at the Wikipeda page Growth of photovoltaics, India had 18.3 GW installed up to the end of 2017, implying that India has installed 3.7 GW since January 2018 or about 20% of their 2017 year end capacity in seven months!
This is despite the fact that in the English speaking world a concerted effort is being made to malign renewable energy and stymie it’s deployment through what Tony Seba describes as “Regulatory Capture”, a technique that is currently on display with the current US and Australian administrations. See:
Koch Brothers-backed group, climate denier join APS’s anti-clean energy campaign
In this post Energy and Policy Institute’s Matt Kaspar reveals how the Koch Brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity and Heartland Institute Climate Denier James Taylor have joined the effort to fight a 50% renewable energy mandate for Arizona.
Had to try and find something a little positive after learning that the world lost a bit of a different kind of energy with the death of pop music icon, Aretha Franklin yesterday. Her pop music career started about the time I was born and for the past fifty years or so she has enriched the tapestry of popular music with her emotional, flawless delivery. I enjoyed much of her music as did many millions of us.
This makes me cry. RIP Aretha…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHsnZT7Z2yQ&t=50
What makes me want to cry is that Trump thinks Aretha worked for him.
“I want to begin today by expressing my condolences to the family of a person I knew well,” Trump said, according to reports. “She worked for me on numerous occasions. She was terrific — Aretha Franklin — on her passing. She brought joy to million of lives and her extraordinary legacy will thrive and inspire many generations to come.”
Donald Asshat Trump
Compare That to:
Aretha helped define the American experience. In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade—our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace.
Former President Barack Obama
But there might be hope for our country to regain our hard-won respect on the world stage if more people are willing to stand up and call Trump out!
“Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John,” McRaven wrote in the Washington Post op-ed. “Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.”
“Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation,” he said. “If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken.”
Retired Adm. William McRaven
All true about Trump, and I agree with McRaven, but I was talking about (the life, the energy, the passion that was) Aretha…
I thought I would bring these up to demonstrate how fast solar PV can be deployed when there is the political will to do so. Brazil now has more than six times the amount of solar PV connected to the grid as it had at this time last year.
I haven’t been following this specifically but now you spiked my curiosity. As a Brazilian I know that the Brazilian government, has in the past, placed really high tariffs on imported PV panels. Supposedly under the guise of it being necessary for developing a home grown Brazilian PV manufacturing industry. To be clear, that is pure bullshit and it served only to maintain certain monopolies and enrich a few politicians instead!
Note to people who think tariffs on imported goods are always a good thing. They’re not!
GLOBAL WARMING IS THE BIGGEST FRAUD IN HISTORY – Dan Pena
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjlC02NsIt0
Watching this makes me want human civilization to collapse, human beings in general are a cancer on earth. Is it just me or does anyone else secretly or openly think like this.
Well, actually, nowadays quite a few banks and insurance companies are starting to get very worried about the consequences of global warming and sea level rise to those beach front condos in South Florida. But yeah, that guy is an ignorant, arrogant MOFO!
Trumps new science advisor?
“Is it just me or does anyone else secretly or openly think like this.”
Well, I do own to having an appreciation for the next population bottleneck; 7 billion people on earth, 6.8 (ish) of whom are kept alive thanks to fossil fuels. If you’re interested in seeing how humanity has dealt with perceptions of objective scarcity in the past, then I welcome you to google images for ‘Russian famine’ and ‘einsatzgruppen’; two fine ways to ruin an otherwise pleasant afternoon (anything by Kevin Carter, if you prefer images that are a little more contemporary, will also do the trick). Careful what you wish for, unless you happen have 10 years worth of canned goods and ammo in a very remote mountain wilderness location with only one very long road in that is easily rendered impassable with a few bridge removals, or so I’ve heard.
Is God or Fine Tuning, Anthropomorphizations of The Universe?
(Well maybe they have to be by virtue of the fact that it is we who are doing the interpretations/projections/etc..)
Similarily, is fine tuning (of the idea of the universe as a simulation) a kind of manifestation of the anthropomorphization of the universe via the description of the universe in mathematical symbols?
Hi Ron,
This is on the road and off the cuff and I am still looking over this Fine-Tuning thing, but so far it still seems like a kind of chicken-egg, circular-reasoning and/or anthro, etc., thing…
Well of course it is ‘fine-tuned’ insofar as it works or exists and we are around to talk about it.
But bear in mind that the universe is being interpreted through mathematical symbols and whatnot.
It is perhaps small wonder that some people (i.e., the late Stephen Hawking?) would suggest that the universe could be a simulation. One could suggest that that could be a manifestation of a species that uses symbols and ‘gets lost on/in the model’…
Like ‘funny money’ and the ‘commodification or monetization of reality’.
Likewise with fine-tuning, as if the universe comes with a bunch of knobs (not talking about the human kind haha) that It can adjust/tweak at will like humans can with so much symbols.
Let’s say you have a giant spherical room representing the universe with some fundamental ‘knob-tweaks’ (‘de-tunings’) and so there is a ‘perfect’ explosion in the room. So what happens? Well, let’s say it all fizzles out– nothing sticks together– no universe happens– because the force of the explosion overcomes the strong force, say…
Ok, now run the experiment again, but this time make the explosion ‘perfect’ again, except for a ‘fractal/chaotic’ nudge— like a ‘quantum’ flick-of-the-finger to infinitely-lightly nudge one particle out of whack. So what happens?
Well, maybe we get/see fractals everywhere, and we exist to talk about it, simply because of a ‘sub-quantum’ ‘particle flick’ that has that particle then bumping against another and so forth to create a cascade of bounces and stick-togethers and what we now see as the cosmos.
Cosmological forces already exist, so why shouldn’t they also act to create us and other, perhaps self-similar, life forms?
Earth is, according to some, ‘Gaia’– alive– so why not the cosmos Gaia as well?
And would that then make us teeny-weeny ‘universalizations’ of the the universe?
Huh? 😉
Peak knowledge?
LOL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES-yKOYaXq0
The Universe as a Simulation: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?
Apparently, Doc Mojo, who had been creating Mojoworld, a 3D realtime landscape/planet generation software program, abandoned its development.
Perhaps his ostensible photography hobby made him realize that reality was much more interesting, beautiful, complex and mysterious and therefore more worthwhile to devote his time and attention to enjoying in ways that transcended the emptiness and ultimate dissatisfaction of merely mimicking it.
In any case, it is doubtful that we live in Mojoworld-like simulation as the late Stephen Hawking, among others, may have suggested– a cop-out as another suggested if recalled– and we can nowhere near accurately describe the universe in ‘quaint little mathematical rules/formulae’ if that is what you are trying to explain by the video. That is, unless you want to describe Mojoworld or a simulation– which was also part of my point upstairs.
Fundamentally, reality appears exceedingly unknowable in part because the moment we, as conscious entities, ‘know’ it, is the moment we can then take steps to change it.
The ‘simulation’ or symbolism of mathematics may risk its own prophecies.
The theories of the fine-tuning of the universe and the universe as a simulation may be two such examples.
Dunno which universe you live in, but I live in the one described by the equation below. And as Hickory, so kindly reminded us, It’s the one that has pizza! 😉
That’s real enough for me.
.
So you’re saying that they have your entire universe scrunched down to that formula? Splendid. Frankly, I’ve always found ’42’ a little dubious, but maybe that’s without pizza. So, 42 + pizza, or in scientific notation, 42?.
The cosmological constant may not be constant, after all
*shrug*
I’m maybe a tad more up on this stuff since some homework, thanks to Ron. But, alas, it is strongly suspected that the universe will require forever homework. ?
So you’re saying that they have your entire universe scrunched down to that formula?
‘They’, do you know who they is?! LOL!
Do you even know what that equation describes?
It gives the relationship between space-time, matter and energy, which at least imho, is a pretty darn big and important part of our universe.
To be fair, it doesn’t by itself describe the quantum mechanical properties of the universe or how they fit into the bigger picture. Those are described by separate sets of equations. One of the tasks of modern physics is to somehow attempt to unify those with General Relativity.
But yes, if I had to chose a single equation that most succinctly describes the universe we live in, That one, would be pretty high on my list.
Fred – thanks for the heads up on this. Interesting:
“Time crystals are one of the coolest things physics has dished up in recent months, because they point to a whole new world of ‘non-equilibrium’ phases that are entirely different from anything scientists have studied in the past… AND “One of the most promising applications for time crystals is quantum computing — they could allow physicists to create stable quantum systems at far higher temperatures than can be achieved right now, and that just might be the push we need to finally make quantum computing a reality.”
Meanwhile, Hightrekker persists with his imbecilic view that: “Physics has not progressed much from the completion of the Standard Model in the 1970’s.”
https://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-time-crystals-are-a-new-crazy-state-of-matter-and-now-we-can-create-them
But, but, in more recent news, the time crystals need to be braided!
https://phys.org/news/2018-06-braiding-key-crystals-quantum.html
From your link:
To realize a time crystal, a periodically driven laser sets the particles in a superconducting loop in motion. When the system is manipulated in a precise way, the particles’ motion collectively synchronizes in a periodic manner, resulting in a time crystal.
Yep! and BTW they have been braiding light too…
Gotta wonder if you could somehow create a quasi time crystal with very specific placement of defects by using braided lasers? Ok, admittedly this bit of wild speculation on my part, may be totally off the wall. Any real physicists out there willing to wade in?
https://phys.org/news/2016-08-physicists-method-braiding.html
Physicists propose method for braiding light
“The greatest significance of this work is that it demonstrates the existence of defects with non-Abelian braiding in optical, rather than electronic, systems,” Iadecola told Phys.org. “Such defects are actively sought-after in the context of solid-state electronic systems, but the optical analogue that we suggest in this work could provide another avenue to observe non-Abelian braiding. The advantage of the optical systems we consider is that they have a high degree of tunability that allows one to precisely control the paths of the defects during braiding.”
Why you ask might that be useful?
Basically, a quasicrystal is a crystalline structure that breaks the periodicity (meaning it has translational symmetry, or the ability to shift the crystal one unit cell without changing the pattern) of a normal crystal for an ordered, yet aperiodic arrangement. This means that quasicrystalline patterns will fill all available space, but in such a way that the pattern of its atomic arrangement never repeats.
Could there be a Quasi Time Crystal analogue of a Quasi Crystal out there?
No progress in physics?! Gimme a break! 😉
For physicists who get paid to work on decades old problems or to teach, you’ll hear that there’s lots of interesting stuff going on.
For physicists who are in it for actual understanding and the chance to move technology and humanity forward by a great leap, such as what happened with Einstein or newton…Physics is dead.
I barely count it as a science anymore. There’s a stratified orthodoxy and a small circle of people who all know each other and market the standard model like it’s some sort of religion.
https://www.quora.com/Has-fundamental-physics-stagnated
For physicists who are in it for actual understanding and the chance to move technology and humanity forward by a great leap, such as what happened with Einstein or newton…Physics is dead.
That is a misunderstanding of how all science progresses. Even Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity was not a sudden leap but rather a slow process and he struggled for many years to formalize it.
https://theconversation.com/how-einsteins-general-theory-of-relativity-killed-off-common-sense-physics-50042
…Einstein also realized that the effect of gravity is the same as the effect of acceleration; driving off at high speed pushes us backward, just as if gravity were pulling us. These two clues led Einstein to general relativity. Whereas Newton had seen gravity as a force propagated between bodies, Einstein described it is as pseudo force experienced because the entire interwoven fabric of space and time bends around a massive object.
Einstein himself said his path was far from easy. He wrote that “in all my life I have not laboured nearly so hard, and I have become imbued with great respect for mathematics, the subtler part of which I had in my simple-mindedness regarded as pure luxury until now.”
“For physicists who are in it for actual understanding and the chance to move technology and humanity forward by a great leap, such as what happened with Einstein or newton…Physics is dead.”
That comment is almost too inane to address. Science has always moved in small incremental steps. One recent example: even though the detection of gravitational waves has been a major advancement, one beginning an entirely new chapter to the field of astrophysics, getting there has taken hundreds of small steps by thousands of dedicated physicists over the last few decades. Do you think Newton announced his Theory of Universal Gravitation after watching a falling apple? Well, he said something quite the opposite, that his discoveries were built on the shoulders of others — a framework going back many centuries!
One should be wary of claims about “physics” in general since it has many subfields, facing different issues. High-energy particle physics is a subfield that is in danger of ending. On the experimental front, it faces fundamental technological obstacles. Any next generation accelerator able to explore even modestly higher energies than the LHC will be far off in the future and very expensive. Whether there’s the will to finance and build such a thing is now unclear. On the theoretical front, the field is now in crisis, due to the absence of experimental results that point to a better theory, as well as a refusal to abandon failed theoretical ideas.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/why-string-theory-is-still-not-even-wrong/
At its best, physics is the most potent and precise of all scientific fields, and yet it surpasses even psychology in its capacity for bullshit. To keep physics honest, we need watchdogs like Peter Woit. He is renowned for asserting that string theory, which for decades has been the leading candidate for a unified theory of physics, is so flawed that it is “not even wrong.”
To keep physics honest, we need watchdogs like Peter Woit. He is renowned for asserting that string theory, which for decades has been the leading candidate for a unified theory of physics, is so flawed that it is “not even wrong.”
I have never been a big fan of string theory as a candidate for a unified theory of physics, I think a more promising path js probably something along the lines of loop quantum gravity. But who am I to even have an opinion on such matters, so I’ll defer to someone much more qualified than myself!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_PIEhPMU-k
Carlo Rovelli – The Journey to Quantum Gravity
Fred–
I’m open also.
My dissertation was on anarchism and the Russian Revolution.
Most are more qualified.
Thanks Fred, interesting talk. Perhaps the next wave of astrophysical observations will give theoretical physicists, such as Rovelli, the evidence they need to tip a majority of experts into one dominant view. Of course it may take five decades and several waves of new instruments for this to happen but that’s still within the probable lifetime of kids starting to study science today. Clearly, physics isn’t dead.
Clearly, physics isn’t dead.
Nope! Not quite! 😉
Though there are still many misconceptions about the scientific process, specifically this notion of brilliant scientists sitting alone in their dens and having these sudden eureka moments.
So you are probably right, in that it may take at least another half century for a theory like quantum gravity to become mainstream.
After all, it took a full century since Einstein formulated his Theory of General Relativity for the maturing of technology to allow for the detection of gravity waves.
Is it actually possible to build stuff on earth that can generate the energy required to look at relativity/quantum interactions? I thought it estimated to be several orders of magnitude above the LHC.
I might be wrong but I don’t think Doug is talking about building more powerful colliders here on earth when he refers to instruments. Perhaps more like instruments either launched into space or built here on earth to detect and precisely measure interactions and phenomena predicted by the theories. Maybe insights gained from studying objects such as Black Holes.
Fred, George — Yes, that was (is) my thinking — that most future high energy “experiments” will rely largely on observations of astrophysical phenomena. Isn’t that already the case?
i.e., “Our neighbouring galaxy Messier 87 (M87) accelerates elementary particles to extremely high energies – millions of times higher than anything possible with the particle accelerator LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at CERN. These particles contribute to the cosmic radiation that can be measured on earth. For the first time, physicists can now locate exactly where the acceleration of the particles takes place, which is right next to the black hole in the centre of the galaxy.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090911210539.htm
AND: ‘HARD-ROCK EXCAVATION’ BEGINS FOR GIANT MAGELLAN TELESCOPE IN CHILE
Las Campanas sits beneath very dark and clear skies, which provide exceptional views of the universe. GMT team members believe this location, paired with the telescope’s technology, will allow astronomers to make ground-breaking discoveries in a variety of fields, from cosmology and astrophysics to astrobiology.
^ That on a collapse/peak oil blog…
Maybe in 50 years, climate change will be under control, species will have recovered, pollution all cleaned up, governments in the black, and we’ll all have PV’s, fusion reactors, and self-driving cars, etc..
WRT George’s comment in this thread, and from my own Ron-inspired homework, FWIW, I now seem to recall some fear some time ago about an experiment possibly producing a black hole or something close to that on Earth.
^ That on a collapse/peak oil blog…
Maybe in 50 years, climate change will be under control, species will have recovered, pollution all cleaned up, governments in the black, and we’ll all have PV’s, fusion reactors, and self-driving cars, etc..
Yes, even some of the most brilliant people, who are completely aware of what is going on, are occasionally susceptible to falling into the trap of the inside-outside view of the planning fallacy, as described by Daniel Kahneman, which I linked to up thread in a response to a previous comment by Doug.
http://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-august-13-2018/#comment-648774
So instead of just making snide remarks for the sake of making them, you might want to think about that a bit yourself. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
As for:
I now seem to recall some fear some time ago about an experiment possibly producing a black hole or something close to that on Earth.
You’re kidding, right?!
^
Thanks, Doug…
“I now seem to recall some fear some time ago about an experiment possibly producing a black hole or something close to that on Earth.” ~ Caelan MacIntyre
(rolls eyes)
Not necessarily my fear, just others’ fear as per some news items then.
There is ~60% chance of El Niño in the Northern Hemisphere fall 2018 (September-November), increasing to ~70% during winter 2018-19.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml
Everything Trump Touches Dies
“No, MAGA-hat fans, you didn’t simply rise in your mighty millions and elect The Donald all by your deplorable selves. You had help, much of it from the very elites you so revile. (“Revile” means hate. Sorry. I know you’re in an oxy stupor much of the time, so I’ll try to move slowly and not use big words.)”
https://intpolicydigest.org/2018/08/16/everything-trump-touches-dies/
Have investors lost interest in “clean energy”?
Um, you do realize that investments in many other sectors of the global economy, such as capex for oil prospecting, has also been in decline during that same period, right?
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/04/oil-companies-still-hesitant-over-oil-exploration.html
Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total and their peers are set to cut spending on oil and gas exploration for a fifth year in a row in 2018, according to consultancy Wood Mackenzie (WoodMac), despite a growing urgency to replenish reserves after years of reining back investment.
Care to venture a guess as to why that might be the case?
Oh, never mind, your excerpt and the cherry picked comment were both from another anti renewables post courtesy of climate change science denier and pro fossil fuel lobbyist, Euan Mearns.
For the record, the entire enterprise of global civilization may indeed fail in the not too distant future for a number reasons, well known to many of the readers of this blog.
Most of whom are also aware of, and readily admit that there are no completely clean sources of energy production available to most of humanity, as of yet. However given the urgency of the need to completely get off fossil fuels asap, it should be evident that ‘Perfect’ in this particular case, is quite obviously, the mortal enemy of ‘Good Enough’!
What is truly outrageous and absurd is the attempt at trying to compare the magnitude of the damage being done to the environment through the continued use of fossil fuels and BAU vs. the impacts of producing and using alternative forms of energy whether 100% clean or not!
Edit: Here ya go, now this is what I call really absurd!
Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative for the U.S., the Trump administration declares in a major new policy statement that threatens to undermine decades of government campaigns for gas-thrifty cars and other conservation programs. The position was outlined in a memo released last month in support of the administration’s proposal to relax fuel mileage standards. The government released the memo online this month without fanfare. Growth of natural gas and other alternatives to petroleum has reduced the need for imported oil, which “in turn affects the need of the nation to conserve energy,” the Energy Department said
Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total and their peers are set to cut spending on oil and gas exploration for a fifth year in a row in 2018, according to consultancy Wood Mackenzie (WoodMac), despite a growing urgency to replenish reserves after years of reining back investment.
Care to venture a guess as to why that might be the case?
Well, it could just be the law of diminishing returns. If they keep getting $5.00 in oil for every $7.00 spent on exploration, then pretty soon you would perhaps to cut back on exploration and quit losing so much money. It is well known that most all new discoveries are tiny fields that peter out quickly.
Well, it could just be the law of diminishing returns. If they keep getting $5.00 in oil for every $7.00 spent on exploration, then pretty soon you would perhaps to cut back on exploration and quit losing so much money.
Sure it could and it more than likely in large measure probably is! But it might also might have something to do with a general softening of the global economy which has rippled through many sectors.
In any case my main point was simply that renewables were not the only areas of the many faceted global energy businesses to experience reduced investments recently. That’s only one part of a bigger story.
BTW, what I didn’t highlight in my comment is that despite reduced capital investment in renewables, they are still on an increasing trend line in terms of increased overall installed capacity. The main reason for this is that due to reductions in costs, less investment is necessary to buy the same amount or even more capacity than even a few years ago. So despite reduced capital investment, I don’t expect the total number of installed GWs of capacity to drop or plateau anytime soon.
http://fs-unep-centre.org/publications/global-trends-renewable-energy-investment-report-2018
Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment Report 2018
Back to overview
Banking on sunshine: World added far more solar than fossil fuel power generating capacity in 2017
The Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2018 report, published on April 5th by UN Environment, the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, finds that falling costs for solar electricity, and to some extent wind power, is continuing to drive deployment. Last year was the eighth in a row in which global investment in renewables exceeded $200 billion – and since 2004, the world has invested $2.9 trillion in these green energy sources. Overall, China was by far the world’s largest investing country in renewables, at a record $126.6 billion, up 31 per cent on 2016.
See here.
Some people think that humans are so special that they should be granted a waver on their poor behavior. The Pope, for example, advocates this position when he (throughout the ages) supports population growth [of catholics] beyond all other considerations. And sits silent on torture, slavery, sexual torment, and environmental destruction. As long as its good for the team [read fundamentalism in its most extreme from]. And he along with all the company men have been a silent proponent for genocide and ethnic cleansing for a thousand years on every continent, sparing only those whose armies and will are just too strong on their home turf (Thai), or those who convert under threat of starvation or a pike up their bottom.
That biggest team is just an example, with humanity all around guilty of ripping the heart out of nature and only paying lip service to kindness and mindfulness.
The experiment is a failure. Some other type of species may have been a better bet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmy8WmGH1z0
Tim Minchin – Pope Song
https://thinkprogress.org/catholic-leaders-attempt-damage-control-after-pennsylvania-report-ea5bc905f4b8/
Catholic leaders attempt damage control in wake of Pennsylvania child sex abuse report
Two cardinals have backed out from the World Meeting of Families.
A baby with a brain tumor underwent a miraculous recovery after a kiss from Pope Francis
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/pope-francis-visits-america/baby-kissed-pope-sees-brain-tumor-shrink-family-says-n469751
Yeah, riiight!
Thank You God – Tim Minchin – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZeWPScnolo
Fred –
“Catholic leaders attempt damage control in wake of Pennsylvania child sex abuse report.”
Pedophile priests are sick individuals as are drug addicts and people with other mental problems. Enablers, people within in the church who put the institution’s status and reputation above victims are criminals. Enablers are worse than “common criminals” because they hide (hid) behind multiple veils of Christian self-righteousness and the churches’ considerable power to protect its own. Enablers belong in prison. IMHO
“Religion is poison”
-Mao (he got a few things right)
Very much agree Doug.
But let me ask you this- aren’t all the members of the church also enablers, since they empower these people, and turn a blind eye to the sexual misdeeds (and the ethnic cleansing over the past millennium)?
Conserving oil no longer necessary for US, says Trump administration
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/19/conserving-oil-no-longer-necessary-for-us-says-trump-administration
Government by ox cart is something I’m rather looking forward to.
Oh yeah!
.
Meanwhile, out in the real universe…
https://bgr.com/2018/08/18/hubble-galaxies-photo-nasa-images/
Hubble just took a brand new photo that will make you feel completely insignificant
Re: that rather simplistic and stupid idea that CO2 is plant food, often proffered by all the criminally insane climate change science deniers… Well, it ain’t quite so! I guess we can add this little nugget of scientific knowledge to our growing list of possible negative feedbacks!
https://physicsworld.com/a/plants-may-absorb-less-carbon-under-climate-change/
Current assessments of climate change could overestimate the amount of carbon that plants remove from the atmosphere. That’s because models of photosynthesis often leave out a poorly-understood limit on the process. Now US researchers have calculated that if its representation is doubled, climate models predict an additional 9 Gigatonnes of carbon will still be in the atmosphere by 2100, instead of being locked away inside plants.
Link to paper:
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aacf68/meta
Cheers!