[youtube]JVRsWAjvQSg[/youtube]
This is a very interesting discussion on the subject of Intelligent Design by Brown University’s Kenneth Miller. It’s just under two hours long, and if you have the time I highly recommend watching it. There is even a mention of Pastafarianism at around 90 minutes.
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An elaborate spoof on Intelligent Design, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is neither too elaborate nor too spoofy to succeed in nailing the fallacies of ID. It's even wackier than Jonathan Swift's suggestion that the Irish eat their children as a way to keep them from being a burden, and it may offend just as many people, but Henderson, described elsewhere as a 25-year-old "out-of-work physics major," puts satire to the same serious use that Swift did. Oh, yes, it is very funny. -- Scientific American
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Thanks WT, that’s what I meant, but it was a nuclear-guy who tried to explain this to me (me equals: no idea of physics), so I better shut up now ;)
The wabbit has passed out in a puddle of its own filth…nasty wabbit…I think I’ll apply make up, strip it naked and place it in a taxi to “The Beat”…nasty wabbit…
@Enya
“Thanks WT, that’s what I meant,…but maybe the solution is a Donut”…I find that a nice donut is the solution to most of life’s more complicated dilemmas…I’m not sure about being called “WT” though…becoming a wench was a big step and I’d like to bask in my feminine glory for a bit longer thank you…men are pigs…lucky I’m a committed lesbian…good night…
Sorry ’bout the shortcut, Wench Thumper, I am lazy in typing. I read something about your gender change. Isn’t it a dilemma to be transexual and lesbian but love straight women and not lesbians? somehow I’m stuck in my thoughts again… damn, should sleep more and drink less coffee…
Warning: long post ahead
@Wench Thumper
There still was the bit about relativity and the speed of light to answer.
“My understanding of “relativity†is that it encompasses a great many things such as the inability of an object to move beyond light speed”
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Correct, objects can’t go faster than the speed of light. It’s best explained by looking at the equation that covers this, see equations 2 and 3 at
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_mass
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These two equations can be turned into one that would read
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m(v) = m0/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)
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As equations show poorly in html, in words it reads that the mass m of an object moving at velocity v is equal to its mass in rest m0, divided by the square root of 1 minus the velocity squared divided by the speed of light squared. The speed of light is 3 times 10 to the power 8 m/s. Makes sense? Let’s look at some cases.
We begin with a stationary object, v=0. If v=0 then v^2/c^2 = 0 and the square root is just one. That leads to m = m0, which is as expected of course.
Now we take a moving object. Say it’s you, running slowly at just under 11 km/hour, or 3 m/s. That means that v/c is 10 to the power -8. The square of that is 10 to the power -16. So the term under the square root is just under 1, and so the demoninator is just under one. And therefore your mass is just a tiny little bit larger than when your were standing still. But when I say tiny bit it really is a tiny bit. The effect is present only at many digits behind the comma. You won’t notice. The mass of the air you breath out is orders of magnitude heavier.
Now we speed it up a bit. Instead of going at 11 km/h you’re now sitting in Concord. It’s heading towards the sound barrier, you’re doing 1100 km/h, or a hundred times fatser than running. v/c is then 10 to the power -6 and the denominator is still only very little smaller than one. The effect is still present many digits behind the comma, but fewer for the case where you were running. Still tiny, but already a little bigger.
Now we switch to space craft that go 25 times faster than your Concord flight. Then the effect on the objects mass moves another digit closer to the comma. If a GPS satellite didn’t correct for it, it would slowly drift away from the position that controllers thought it would be. So we are now looking at the fastest macroscopic objects we humans make, and the effect of relativity is only just becoming noticeable.
Now we make a big leap. Suppose we borrow some sci-fi tech and we can go at 90% of the speed of light. If you now calculate the demoninator in the equation it’s 0.43, so the mass of our space ship is now more than twice that of the rest mass.
We go on to 0.999 times the speed of light. Then the mass is more than 22 times the rest mass.
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You can see the pattern emerging. For slow-moving objects, relativity plays no noticeable part at all. That is one reason why people trusted the classical, Newtonian, non-relativistic physics for almost 3 centuries (from around 1600 to early 1900s), they didn’t have things like rockets or particle accelerator that showed Newtonian mechanics to be wrong for fast-moving objects. But as things start going faster, the mass of an object increases. Hardly noticeable at first, but as the speed becomes a sizeable fraction of the speed of light, the mass goes up very fast. To infinity as you get very close to the speed of light. So no matter how powerful your missile engine is, it won’t have much luck pushing forward an object that appears infinitely heavy due to its velocity. So you can’t go faster than the speed of light. Ramen.
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Questions about todays class on relativity?
@Dread Amish Pirate John
“Why not antimatter as an energy storage media? IIRC, CERN was able to manufacture and store antiprotons(I think) for some time. There is the whole “Total conversion w/ hard radiation†problem when containment is breached, but still…”
That makes no sense at all. Creating anti-matter takes lots of energy. So converting energy to antimatter loses energy. It’s also incredibly volitile as it annihilates on contact with ‘normal’ matter. And getting the stored energy out will be not be easy, as it comes out in the form of very high-energy photons.
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You’re a Star Trek fan aren’t you? You listened to all that silly jargon Jordy spews out in The Next Generation. And you thought you could bluff your way into our pirate fleets science vessel with that, didn’t you? Nice tried, but no.
Not that there is anything wrong with Trekkies btw. In fact, nerds are held in high esteem in the CoFSM.
@DutchPastaGuy
“And you thought you could bluff your way into our pirate fleets science vessel with that, didn’t you?”
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I don’t know too much physics :( I do like Star Trek though :)
Can I be on the science vessel anyway?
Long Post.
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In addendum to DPG, antimatter is only ever produced a few particles at a time… kinda hard to blast a ship around space with only 10^(-27)kgs (thats 0.000000000000000000000000001 kgs) of matter.
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Incidentally back up the thread enya commentented on the failure of cold fusion (ie fusion in solution as opposed to hot fusion, a la DPG’s explanation).
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From what I understand, the basic theory is that by using platinum electrodes (platinum being a very porous metal - full of little holes and tunnels) in a solution rich in heavy water, it is possible to use electrolysis (in this case splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen) to produce free floating hydrogen (correctly, deuterium), which then fuses on the platinum surface. Also, trace amounts of *I think* Boron are supposed to help somehow.
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The problems are two-fold. One; our current theories cannot realistically explain how two nuclei can fuse through adsorption (sticking) on a surface. (electron interactions -chemistry in other words- yes, nuclear fusion, no).
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Secondly, it is only limitedly reproduceable. Several scientists have claimed to acheive it, hundreds more have failed totally. Even the people that claim to do it, have had trouble, though they often blame it on things like microfine cracks in the electrode, or incorrect boron ratios.
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Cold fusion isn’t dead, it’s just that nearly no self respecting scientist will touch it, either for fear of ridicule or complete disregard for shaky psuedoscience.
(note all this info is shamelessy stolen from new scientist :p)
@Wench Nikkiee
“I don’t know too much physics :( I do like Star Trek though :)
Can I be on the science vessel anyway?”
I thought you had stepped on board ages ago?! Didn’t notice you stepped off, please come on board again. We appear to be well stocked on physicists but short on biologists, so excellent if you can cover that angle.
@Jingles
I like the addendums you do to some of my posts, thanks. Maybe I can do a small one to yours.
“From what I understand, the basic theory is that by using platinum electrodes (platinum being a very porous metal - full of little holes and tunnels) in a solution rich in heavy water, it is possible to use electrolysis (in this case splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen) to produce free floating hydrogen (correctly, deuterium), which then fuses on the platinum surface. Also, trace amounts of *I think* Boron are supposed to help somehow.”
Apart from the electrolysis experiments, there also was the claim by a man (I believe an Italian) that the implosion of small bubbles caused such acceleration that it could also make nuclei fuse. I believe some sonic wave pulse was supposed to induce the process. Unfortunately, that also prove irreproducible. So one more cold fusion attempt consigned to the Journal of Irreproducible Results (that’s a journal that really exists btw, it wouldn’t have a very high citation index I imagine).
“I thought you had stepped on board ages ago?! Didn’t notice you stepped off”
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Ah yes it’s coming back to me now :) Think I fell overboard and bumped my head resulting in temporary amnesia. :)
Biology….*salutes*… aye aye Captain
Ooh goody :) Can we look at some sea life which may contain compounds useful in chemotherapies? I like that :))
“Think I fell overboard and bumped my head resulting in temporary amnesia. ”
No reason to ever let a bump on the head keep you from the beer, right?
Beer :(
But Vodka, Tequila, Jack Daniels, Sambuka (sp.), a nice wine….ect. ect. No way :)
Not that big a drinker to tell the truth but when I do I…..well when I do, I’m not that small a drinker…leads to a very late night/early morning :))
I just saw a post somewhere that said “Google the worlds most annoying website”…so I did. It’s all… YELLOW…CAPS…and bad spelling.
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http://www.angelfire.com/weird2/mostannoying/
Oh worse I think….scroll down on this one
www.voy.com/48912/
I wanna be on the starship to! Please! I specialist in non-human medicine, don’t you need that on a spaceship? Me! Take me!!! Pleeeeaaase!!!
@DPG maybe we could develope something to make mass into energy. Like a Transporter. We could ’store’ the mass there until dropping out of warp-speed, then put it back again… :)
@Jingles: yes, that’s what I meant ;))
@Enya
Once we get a pirate space ship, you’re happy to come on board. But we’re still looking for ways to obtain an ordinary fleet of sailing ships first. We can use someone skilled in non-human medicine aboard those too btw. The ships will carry lots of animals, and these animals suffer tons of abuse. Verbal abuse in the case of wabbits, or physical abuse in the case of sheep and giraffes. Maybe you could help the poor things recover after their sufferings?
Giraffes??? I mean, I get the sheep, but.. c’mon!! Giraffes! do you really think you are that long… eh… tall?!! :) and don’t overdo it with the animals, I’m good in neutering hehe