Silicon, stars, and sulfur make Apollo's unlikely legacy Fifty-five years after Neil Armstrong's one small step, and the future it promised has not come to pass. Nobody has gone back to the Moon since the end of the Apollo program, let alone out to Mars. As for Clarke and Kubrick's oh-so-plausible 2001 trip to Jupiter with an errant AI, well, one out of two isn't bad. But while those …
Andy 73,
where people arbitrarily decide they don't want to believe things that have been deeply studied and resolved through evidence, "just because".
That's me, whenever I read anything about quantum physics. I reckon they're just making this stuff up for a laugh. Then at academic conferences they lock the doors and all giggle to each other. "We got the idiots to believe that matter spontaneously generates in a vacuum. What if they look for it? Erm. Let's just tell them that it appears with its corresponding anti-particle and so disappears again, almost straight away. OK - I mean it's no cat in a box, but you can only invent a classic every so often.
Still, it's more believable than ecnomics. And I've actually studied that...
The other nice thing about not believing in science - is it really improves the quality of your conspiracy theories. We could never have had the 5G controlled nano-robots in the vaccines story without an impressive belief in what technology can do - even though it currently can't.
Evidence is not out of reach of a determined amateur. Voltage and current are things you cannot see directly but can measure with a volt meter and an ammeter. You could make a basic ammeter out of a coil of wire, a magnet and a spring. A volt meter is an ammeter plus a resistor. Armed with those devices you can confirm the equation for capacitance: C=εA/d where A is the area of a pair of conductive plates, d is the distance between them and ε depends on the insulating material between the plates.
ε measures the ease with which it is possible to separate the charged constituents of the material. Now get a vacuum pump and remove all the material between the plates. No material, no charges to separate so ε for empty space should be 0... but it isn't. It is 8.85x10^-11F/m. Particle/antiparticle pairs appear out of nowhere and recombine continuously. In the electric field of a capacitor they do so in a preferred direction so it is possible to separate the charges in a vacuum.
Normal capacitors with an insulating material between the plates have a voltage limit. In a strong enough electric field any material breaks apart into things with a positive and negative electric charge which move and allow a current to flow. With enough voltage anything you think of as an insulator becomes a conductor. Anything includes a vacuum. With a high enough voltage it is possible to pull electrons and positrons out of nowhere to make a vacuum conduct electricity.
In classical physics, yes, associated with classical economics where "ε measures the ease with which it is possible to separate the [money] of the [wallet]". But if I understood well, in quantum economics, "they lock the doors and all giggle to each other. We got the idiots to believe that [money] spontaneously generates in a vacuum" ... simultaneously with anti-money (but in who's wallet)?
That's what I want to know!
An amateur might not be able to provide vaccine efficacy, but a decent microscope could confirm there are no "5G chips" floating around in covid vaccines. The thing is, the sort of people who believe in that or similar crazy theories like flat earth or Moon landing hoax, wouldn't do that sort of research and even if one was inspired to and report it back to his conspiracy friends, they'd come up with plenty of theories for why you can't see them. They could be transparent. Or so small you'd need an electron microscope to see them. Or the sample you acquired didn't the chip because the place you got it from somehow knew your plans and gave you a vial of water instead.
Or the sample you acquired didn't the chip because the place you got it from somehow knew your plans and gave you a vial of water instead.
But if you believe in homeopathy as well, shouldn't there be even more 5G mind-controlling effect in that vial of water?
See, that's what happened: they put the 5G nanobots in the vaccine, then they purified them back out to increase their power!
Microeconomics is a pretty well defined science. Not every person in an economy behaves exactly the same, but since it is possible to follow the scientific method, do double blind tests, and so forth it is possible to come up with some broad rules for how individuals behave in a very simple economy.
The problem macroeconomics has is that what an individual does in a large complex modern economy is affected by what others do, and what the government and politicians do, and there is no way to conduct such studies. You can point to "here's where tax rates were reduced" and look at what came later and claim it was because of the tax change, but there's no way to prove it. Maybe it was due to the tax change, or maybe it was due to thousands of other things. So there is always room for a lot of different theories, with no way to ever prove them in the way one can prove stuff from the "hard sciences". All they can do is accumulate evidence onto their side, or accumulate evidence against a competing theory.
Quantum effects are there in your everyday life.
One is fluorescence - a molecule absorbs and re-emits light but loses some of the energy to heat. Non-quantum physics would expect the loss to show up in the dimming of the fluorescence. Because of quantum effects the emitted light is of longer wavelength because the energy of a photon depends on wavelength, red having less energy than blue. What's rather more mind-boggling is the duality of light - and that used to be part of my everyday life in the form of fluorescence microscopy. The fluorescence depended on he photon aspect of light but the illumination depended on interference effects in filters and a dichroic mirror to keep light in the excitation and fluorescence bands going where they were supposed to and nowhere else.
Even simpler, your fireplace should give you a lethal case of sunburn if it wasn't for quantum
Computers have made real hardware cheaper to produce and more reliable. Structures used to be overbuilt because it wasn't practical to do all the calculations using tables and slide rules - and that was assuming we had enough understanding to know which calculations to do in the first place. So we built models - systems of calculations - which are updated and refined with real experimental data. These refined models in turn lower the cost of producing real hardware to test, resulting in more data to further refine the model. Rinse and repeat. A reduction in the cost of sending probes and telescopes into space is just one result.
Under my absolute authority, problems insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease.
The human millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge.
Doctor Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for the betterment of man.
We can coexist, but only on my terms.
You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion. All you lose is the emotion of pride.
To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind as to be dominated by others of your species.
Your choice is simple.
All true. The tools we're capable of creating now would boggle the mind of engineers from a century ago when this began.
I also believe in things being overbuilt when failure is going to kill people, 'knowing' it's capable of supporting 273% over design load is better than the previous 'we're fairly certain it's between 2.5 & 3.0 times over capacity'.
"These will be seen as legendary times for humanity's knowledge."
Well said. Fine article.
For many years I've had the habit of saying that we're living in the dark ages.
The more we realize how much we don't know - and this article points out a lot of that - the more I feel justified.
And the more angry I feel with boneheaded chumps like Putin and his cronies who know nothing, and never will know anything, who (we allow to) cause such hardship for so many of the rest of us.
Let's not forget: Since Apollo, we changed the orbit of an asteroid (or rather, its moon), just to show that we can in case we need to. We "caught" a comet and watched it closely as it went through perihelion and we even landed a small probe on it. And we sent two probes into interstellar space, and in the process proved that we can build spacecraft that last 47 years and counting.
And, oh, we proved that people can survive in microgravity for over a year.
Unfortunately, humanity also proved that they can't be bothered to do basic preventive maintenance and repair on one of the biggest radio telescope ever buid...
“It's rocket science that's powered this, it's silicon.”
Was that meant to read “‘not rocket science”?
Great piece, though.
For a moment, I fantasised about how amazing it would be to put man on the moon again so many years later. Then my heart sunk to the realisation that it would just be a passing story in the endless news cycle :(
Definitely is Rocket Science that boosted silicon. T.I. got its big start with Convair wanting metric buttloads of silicon transistors for the Atlas missile program. Mass production of IC's got its start from the Minuteman program, where IC's were needed for the 1,000 missiles deployed, which each missile requiring a large number of IC's for the guidance system. Aiding this process was the NSA who required large number of IC's for codebreaking machines.
Now we have Elon Musk's "Starship" for the role that Truax's Sea Dragon was intended for.
Humanity has a weakness, the desire to have a particular theory be proven right to advance their personal career; alongside a desire to ensure that no one must be permitted to argue otherwise, and damage the status of the theory. A wonderful example being space time. Yes, you may well ask; how does one come to such a profound conclusion? The answer being to read a book published more than a century ago; Waves And Ripples in Water, Air, and Aether; being A Course of Christmas Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain by J. A. Fleming, MA, D.Sc, F.R.S., M.INST.E.E., M.R.I., etc, etc. Lectures delivered 1901, first published 1902, and the book re-published 1912, several years before Einstein delivered Space Time.
The book sets out in great detail how to demonstrate that light waves, as also sound waves, are focused by a lens simply by a change of density within such a lens, for example created by filling a balloon with a dense gas; which then allowed the light or sound waves to be bent out of the original line of the origin of either the light waves or sound waves. That what Einstein later described as "Space Time" was demonstrated to children in 1901, first published 1902 and then subsequently re-published in 1912. That publication, and re-publication, was over a total of 13 years before Einstein published his theory of General Relativity in 1915 to claim that light waves are focused by gravity to create space time, when in fact, it had already been demonstrated 14 years earlier, within a well recognised scientific institution, and subsequently published as described above.
That all such focusing is entirely caused by a change in density of the medium through which the light or sound waves travelled. So what is the medium surrounding a large mass object? It is called an atmosphere, rapidly decreasing in density as the observation rises from from the surface of the object. There is no such force called gravity; that the force we call gravity is simply caused by the attachment of all gas molecules to each other and to mass.
"Humanity has a weakness, the desire to have a particular theory be proven right to advance their personal career"
Yes, as DNA said people are a problem. However that is why the scientific method is used. Science is not a continuous path forward, but a series of loops where each step is re-evaluated based on the evidence presented. Any theory, however elegant, will be rejected if it does not support the evidence. This has happened many times in the past, and is often while science has a adversarial feel since letting go of a cherished theory that maybe a scientist has invested decades on, is going to be painful, but the fact it happens shows the checks and balances do work. If only it worked so well in politics
Yes you are right, there is no such force as gravity. The force that Newton proposed is a useful generalization that in 99.999% of cases is fine, but Einstein showed what we call the force of gravity is actually caused by the paths that objects follow in space time, caused by the distortion of mass.
As for the rest...How the light path changes as it passes through a material with different density has nothing to do with space time, nor does it show why light is deflected by large gravitational objects (which is shown in Special Relativity). General/Special relativity has been tested to considerable precision and is considered a tour de force on how we understand the universe. While JA Fleming was a file scientist (he invented the 1st Radio Valve), the idea he came up with Relativity in 1900 is frankly laughable
Fascinating; you state that "Yes you are right, there is no such force as gravity." And then you state: "As for the rest...How the light path changes as it passes through a material with different density has nothing to do with space time, nor does it show why light is deflected by large gravitational objects (which is shown in Special Relativity)."
So, please; what is a large gravitational object . . ." when there is no such force as gravity"?
Again I did not say JA Fleming came up with Relativity in 1900; what I did show is that he demonstrated, (which is the exact requirement for a demonstration of a fact, a demonstration to confirm a scientific fact), that anyone can deflect light waves by using a transparent balloon lens filled with a dense gas. That, as such; Fleming was demonstrating how light waves are diverted by a change of density through which they are travelling, within a recognised scientific institution in December 1901. All Einstein did was describe such deflection without a specific cause. Space is not a cause; space is a name for a vast void and has no demonstrable function to cause an application of a force . . . neither has the word time any such function. A force has to be applied by some medium within space. So what is the medium?
It is my belief that the medium is the simple demonstrable fact . . . that all mass objects, regardless of how small that mass may be, (a gas molecule is an excellent example), to permit detection, must have an external force relative to the quantum of the mass that lays beyond the orbit of the electron/electrons surrounding the mass; that there is no such thing as a black particle without such an external force field. So everything you can detect within any scientific demonstration . . . must have such an external force field relating to that mass, beyond the orbit of the electrons surrounding the mass. Maxwell states that a positive field seeks the closest negative potential, or extends to infinity. It is thus my reasoning that, as such, any mass object has an external field of positive energy that must reach the closest negative or extend to infinity . . . so that means every single gas molecule within space must be so attached to each other. That such attachment is the force we describe as gravity.
Now we all know full well that space has gas molecules within it's known structure . . . they are regularly detected. So all I have done is show that Fleming had demonstrated that a change in density using a dense gas within a transparent bladder, will divert the motion of a light wave. Now all we need to do is demonstrate such diversion of light waves by changes in the density of the attached gas molecules within a void we describe as "Space". Scientists detect gas molecules in deep space every day. The latest volume of the much more detailed description has been deposited with both the Royal Society and also the British Library.
As a Trekkie, I can tell you that you can't actually reach Warp 10. Ever.
It's supposed to be a curve, can't remember the English term, where 10 equals infinity. So you could go 9.9999999999999 but never 10. Despite some Trek movies/episodes that showed otherwise.
I believe Asimov said that the biggest problem when writing SciFi is that it *has* to make sense. Reality, on a daily basis, doesn't.
