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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 11, 2014 - 08:00pm PT
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//One notable exception was when I went up against the former Deputy CIA director under Reagan in front of a fairly well educated San Juan Island County (lots of retired PhDs out there) audience. The broader topic was the loss of civil liberties post 911. As invariably happens, we got on the topic of 'terrorism', which, he made clear, was synonymous with 'Muslims'.
He had just recently published a book and spent a good deal of his limited time working through it's talking points - the main one being his brilliant (in his own mind, anyway) analogy that, while we all operated on the same 'hardware' - Muslims used a different 'operating system' - which they sought to impose on Americans. //
pfft.. you're so subtle, lol!
re: trotting out credentials. (you mean like in your previous post?)
Well damned if you do, damned if you don't.
tvash, you're sounding ever more like a far left wing liberal hack.
.....
HFCS... This make you a troll (perverse, inauthentic, dishonest) -MkeL
MikeL, you are a serious waste of time and space. You can make the most simple and beautiful seem ugly. Regarding your quote of mine, which you uglified, I could've just as easily phrased it as wanting EdH's interpretation or take on the Hawking line (as opposed to "seeing how he would handle it").
I thought we agreed a long time ago we would ignore each other. When did that give way? Let's get back to that. Thanks.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Sep 11, 2014 - 08:07pm PT
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MikeL, you are a serious waste of time and space.
See now, it's statements like these that are neither true or a good use of space.
Don't be a Anglerfish
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 11, 2014 - 08:13pm PT
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Out of the woodworks they come, you ARE so predictable!!
You, WB, Blu, MkeL, Lgo, etc... enjoy, lol!!
Heck, let's add tvash to the list, too. :)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 11, 2014 - 08:18pm PT
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There is a fundamental rule that governs the entire universe: Causes happen before effects and not the other way around.
did I disagree with this?
did he disagree with me?
do you even know?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 11, 2014 - 08:20pm PT
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The (notorious) question:
There is a fundamental rule that governs the entire universe: Causes happen before effects and not the other way around.
Agree or disagree?
//you have to deal with an issue, regarding causality, from a quantum mechanical point of view where you have made it a relativistic theory that running time forwards and backwards gives you physically reasonable results.
So our electron A emits a photon that goes off and hits another electron B... we have a clear sense of the causal order...
however, there is also the equivalent process that when we run time backward that positron B emits a photon that hits positron A, the causal order is reversed, but the two scenarios are equivalent, they are, in fact, identical.
All sorts of things happen in that transformation, which is a fundamental symmetry of the universe (which is not time reversal alone, however).
The two situations are causal, but the sequence of the causation has been reversed.
To modify your statement to make it consistent with known symmetries (not just known, but measured) you have to allow for the fact that you can reverse the process too...
That gets you to physics in the 1920s...//
....
Well, it's not... "I agree." LOL!
Anyways, MkeL thinks it was a troll. So there it is.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Sep 11, 2014 - 09:04pm PT
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I'm going to attempt to explain my understanding of 'mass' - it's a bit more complicated than one might think. All of this is according to the Standard Model, one that is necessarily incomplete - as of today.
First of all, the universe does not consists of matter and energy - it consists of fields and particles - both of which may have energy. A particle is the smallest possible 'ripple', or concentration of energy, in a field. Like an ocean, fields can have larger waves consisting of many particles.
One can have a field with energy greater than 0 without particles (like the Higgs field), but a particle cannot exist without a field, just as a wave cannot exist without an ocean.
Some fields extend throughout the entire universe - gravity and the Higgs field are two examples, others do not - the fields than bind protons and neutrons together (themselves collections of more fundamental particles), for example.
All particles CAN have energy = mass energy + motion energy. Physicists therefore describe particles in terms of their energy, not mass. Electrons, quarks, and neutrinos at rest have only mass energy. When in motion they have mass energy + motion energy.
Not all particles have mass energy, however. Photons, which are the smallest possible ripples ('flashes') in the electromagnetic field (light, x rays, radio waves...), which also extends throughout the universe, have no mass energy (that we've been able to measure), only motion energy. They always move at the speed of light, however, so they never have no energy.
Now back to the Higgs field. The Higgs field imparts the property of mass (and therefore mass energy) to SOME, not all, particles - electrons, quarks, and neutrinos, to name a few. Ironically, the Higgs field does not impart mass to a Higgs particle (created by the LHC to reveal the existence of the Higgs field), nor does it impart all observed mass in the universe - dark matter likely one of these exceptions. Particles do not 'move' through the Higgs field (like molasses) - the Higgs field is, relative to any given particle, stationary, regardless of that particle's motion.
On to gravitation. Gravity is also a field that extends throughout the universe. Everything with mass energy and motion energy is attracted to everything else with mass energy and motion energy. Note that
'just mass' isn't mentioned here. Classical Newtonian gravitation employs mass, because the mass energy of large, slow moving objects like planets dwarfs the motion energy of same to the point that it is negligible.
Not so, however, with particles moving at a significant percentage of the speed of light, like photons. Unlike planets, photons are all motion energy and no mass energy - yet they are still subject to the laws of gravitation - they can 'orbit' or even fall into sufficiently strong gravitational fields, like those produced by black holes. Why? Because gravitation imparts attraction between particles with mass energy + motion energy - not just 'mass'.
So, you see, viewing the universe as consisting of 'matter and energy' is a misconception. It's really 'fields and particles', with particles being the smallest possible ripples in their respective fields that can have mass energy + motion energy.
That's my layman's understanding, anyway. I'm posting it so I can understand it better. Does this represent 'fundamental reality'? Hell, who knows? It does make predictions, though.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Sep 11, 2014 - 09:06pm PT
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"Don't be a Anglerfish"
There is a special place in Heaven for certain people.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Sep 11, 2014 - 09:11pm PT
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Regarding causality - we've observed time to have a forward bias, but, to my knowledge, we don't really know why entropy increases in a closed system, although we do observe it empirically. The conservation laws work just as well forward or backward, to my knowledge.
Then there's the probabilistic outcome issue. What 'causes' any given outcome there?
Or maybe that's just my issue.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Sep 11, 2014 - 09:49pm PT
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you have to allow for the fact that you can reverse the process too...
That's hard to imagine in the Chemistry and Biological world
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Sep 11, 2014 - 10:27pm PT
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Very good descriptive post Tvash!
Everything with mass energy and motion energy is attracted to everything else with mass energy and motion energy. Note that
'just mass' isn't mentioned here. Classical Newtonian gravitation employs mass, because the mass energy of large, slow moving objects like planets dwarfs the motion energy of same to the point that it is negligible.
It's weird that things with different amounts of mass fall to earth at the same speed.
Your use of "just mass" confuses me. "Resting mass" has a certain amount of energy, maybe just to hold it's form? Like the plate on my table, sitting there it has a resting mass. Then when you pick it up and throw it across the room, it aquires a "motion energy", right?
Now with ur description i can, in my minds eye visualize it running through fields..
Cool!
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Sep 11, 2014 - 11:15pm PT
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bags of imprisoned or “confined” quarks, antiquarks and gluons.
Also among these "things" there must be water in that "bag"! Seems much like the "bag" containing our brain, or our liver,etc. Or the "bag" containing the Oak tree. And even the bag containing the Planet. Each one of these "Things"(can i say Forms?) in a "bag" are incapsulated by a membrane(?), or atmosphere(?), providing for a separate reality.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 11, 2014 - 11:23pm PT
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the fields are particles...
and the particles are fields...
you can write them either way.
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MH2
climber
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Sep 12, 2014 - 07:46am PT
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Words give a smeary picture of our understanding of physics. Mathematics is a necessary partner in the description.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Sep 12, 2014 - 08:28am PT
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See what i mean?
Eds observation is included in any intro to quantum physics class. By all means, tease out some melodrama as required.
Step one in absorbing new ideas: It really isnt all about you.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 12, 2014 - 10:15am PT
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melodrama?
think about your ocean "fields" by which you mean waves, I believe. What are those "waves" made of?
when you are paddling out past the break, you go up a wave and then down the back of that wave... there is a subtle circular motion, but the wave itself leaves all the bits of water just where they were before it passed through.
same thing with an alternating current electrical line, those electrons in the copper are just moving back and forth... not ever going anywhere...
those are waves in some field, and we do know that we can use those waves to extract energy, at least surfers know how to do it in the ocean, and most of use are unknowing users of the later case.
it is ironic that one of the most mathematical contrivances of modern physics, field theory, was created by Michael Faraday to alleviate the need for mathematics.... Faraday did not push the theoretical envelope in math...
instead, he had a wonderfully visual representation of the electro-magnetic forces, originating from the interaction of a charge and a field. His visualizations, which propelled his own researches, were later picked up by Maxwell, and these physical ideas, originating with Faraday, became the first successful field theory, electrodynamics.
electrodynamics extends the Faraday electrostatic representation, if you wiggle the charge fast enough a new phenomena is predicted.. it is a wave, and electromagnetic wave, and that wave has a velocity magnitude equal to the speed of light. Very suggestive...
Hertz went onto show that Maxwell's electromagnetic wave was, in fact, light... a wonderful confirmation of the theory and an explanation of light's origin on a very fundamental level.
The idea of fields provides the connection that Newton famously avoided, hypothesis non fingo, to speculate on how is the gravitational force conveyed.
We view that conveyance now as the gravitational field.
Gravity being a field theory, has a dynamical aspect that has yet to be directly observed... if you "shake" a mass in the right way you should get gravity waves. This is the essential verification of a classical field theory.
And the universe being a big place, there must be someplace where that shaking is going on... but so far we haven't been able to detect it, not for want of trying over 40 years though.
There is excellent indirect evidence that gravity radiates... but we don't have the "smoking gun" experimental evidence. And until we do, we are open to surprise...
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Sep 12, 2014 - 10:22am PT
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That melodrama comment was meant for DMT, ED. I can see how that could have gotten garbled.
I do understand the dynamics of (water) waves from sailing and kayaking, and I stumbled through a semester of quantum physics, rather painfully.
Does any given point in space in the Higgs field have non-zero energy, or is it non-zero something else? Or is the Higgs field non-zero value an average over the entire field - with most of it having a non-zero value?
I'm reading about virtual particles. I'm getting that fundamental particles can be disturbances in more than one field (the electron in the electron and electromagnetic fields, for example), and those resultant disturbances can create disturbances in still more fields they interact with.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Sep 12, 2014 - 11:19am PT
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Tvash: Step one in absorbing new ideas: It really isn't all about you.
It sort of is.
:-)
I like Ed's surfing metaphor. Right now I'm in a condo in Poipu, Kaua'i, watching surfers catching waves. I don't mean to push that metaphor too far, but it seems to me that surfing energy shows up in all respects in life.
Aloha.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Sep 12, 2014 - 11:37am PT
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So get out there and surf, already. What the heck are you doing on a keyboard?
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Sep 12, 2014 - 01:14pm PT
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Vector field in the complex plane - a very simple example having little to no application to physics other than perhaps fluid dynamics. It arises from a periodic continued fraction.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Sep 13, 2014 - 10:36pm PT
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the fields are particles...
and the particles are fields...
Huuuh? Particle=matter, Field=energy?
The Field is observable by the Particles. But that doesn't mean the particles ARE the field.
Did you mean the field is/are the map?
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