So did I (well, I was sort of "invited" not to come back). Nonetheless, although indeed muons decay into three leptons, they are also leptons. You might wish to have stayed a bit longer before quitting.
What if to insert 0.01% of diodes per length of the cable, in series with wires?
That's easy, just cryo treat it!
Speculation is fine, provided that:Cloud Walker said:
- it is required by experimental results which current theory can't explain
- it doesn't violate existing things known to be true
i.e. it has to be better than current understanding. This probably means it will come from people who fully understand the current ideas. Otherwise it is little more than a form of science fiction short story: "I don't like/understand quantum theory/Standard Model/special relativity, therefore it can't be true. The End."
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(forgive me if this quote attempt goes wrong... it's my first time)
Whilst this makes sense and is one way to base speculation, I would be cautious to draw such an abrupt conclusion. I make the following points to take the other side of the argument, out of interest. How did the foundations of science come about? Some of it was speculated long before experiments could verify the results was it not? or even direct someone in the direction of a new result. It's happening right now with SUSY and the Higgs.
As for "violating new things known to be true", i would be cautious once more. There have been numerous occasions where new particles have been declared to exist with utmost confidence (to the same confidence level as the electron, say) only years later to be found incorrect due to unknown physics at the time. That is just one example, but a good scientist is always open to old ideas becoming invalid upon closer inspection. Physics is all about approximation, there is absolutely no way we can produce a theory that is 100% accurate as it would have to take into account the dynamics of every single particle in the universe - everything is linked together like that. Sometimes it is acceptable to ignore some of these interactions, sometimes it's hard to say, and sometimes we just get it wrong. Theories can be re-written and re-written, there are so many possibilities, and it would be very naive of us to assume what we think is true now to hold forever. I make the extreme point again, but I'm not saying what we have is wrong, indeed to our best knowledge what we have so far is very good. I'm just trying to make a point that sometimes it takes someone outside of the ring of knowledge to come up with something new and innovative, even if it breaks what the consensus of what is current "fact".
Whereas the top scientists who are to close-minded will never come up with new physics which violates old physics. I like to think our top scientists to be open minded to be able to come up with new ideas. Maybe i'm wondering off here, but I like to ponder these things. I would be half inclined to say that scientific theory is more like a belief until you've actually done the experiment yourself. There is no way to test absolutely everything in the universe. (understand i'm making the extreme point here out of interest) I'm always cautious to accept what someone tells you is truth, when I personally know little about the subject at hand.
Whilst this makes sense and is one way to base speculation, I would be cautious to draw such an abrupt conclusion. I make the following points to take the other side of the argument, out of interest. How did the foundations of science come about? Some of it was speculated long before experiments could verify the results was it not? or even direct someone in the direction of a new result. It's happening right now with SUSY and the Higgs.
As for "violating new things known to be true", i would be cautious once more. There have been numerous occasions where new particles have been declared to exist with utmost confidence (to the same confidence level as the electron, say) only years later to be found incorrect due to unknown physics at the time. That is just one example, but a good scientist is always open to old ideas becoming invalid upon closer inspection. Physics is all about approximation, there is absolutely no way we can produce a theory that is 100% accurate as it would have to take into account the dynamics of every single particle in the universe - everything is linked together like that. Sometimes it is acceptable to ignore some of these interactions, sometimes it's hard to say, and sometimes we just get it wrong. Theories can be re-written and re-written, there are so many possibilities, and it would be very naive of us to assume what we think is true now to hold forever. I make the extreme point again, but I'm not saying what we have is wrong, indeed to our best knowledge what we have so far is very good. I'm just trying to make a point that sometimes it takes someone outside of the ring of knowledge to come up with something new and innovative, even if it breaks what the consensus of what is current "fact".
Whereas the top scientists who are to close-minded will never come up with new physics which violates old physics. I like to think our top scientists to be open minded to be able to come up with new ideas. Maybe i'm wondering off here, but I like to ponder these things. I would be half inclined to say that scientific theory is more like a belief until you've actually done the experiment yourself. There is no way to test absolutely everything in the universe. (understand i'm making the extreme point here out of interest
) I'm always cautious to accept what someone tells you is truth, when I personally know little about the subject at hand.
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Science started when people started observing (and believed that the universe was, in some sense, rational so potentially understandable to us). There has to be a body of experimental knowledge to constrain the imagination of the thinkers. When the thinkers get too far ahead of the experiments, they usually go off at a tangent. This was the case for cosmology (for many years, although things are improving now with better observations) and, IMHO, is still the case for string theory.
I can only think of one (poor) example: N rays. It seems that in order to detect these it helped if you were not only an experimental physicist but also French.
True, and I do not dispute this. My point is that the closer inspection has to come from people who actually understand the old ideas, even if they reject them. Most people who claim to dispute the old ideas don't actually understand them, although they probably don't realise this.
You are confusing theories with solutions. We could have a perfect theory of dynamics, yet still be unable to perfectly solve the N-body problem.
There is a sense in which this is true, that belief has to be based on sound evidence - but this evidence must include the testimony of others. In much of modern science the theory and experiments are done by different people, because they require different skills.
My requirement that a new theory doesn't violate existing known things is a useful filter: many crackpot ideas make predictions which are already known to be false. Of course, many other daft ideas don't make any predictions at all as they are not theories but merely woffle.
Let me break out the woffle-iron.
Newtonian's were all the rage until Einstein came along.
Einstein violated all over Newton.
Of course at the time it was new and shocking stuff. The lab monkeys of the day were scrambling around to prove or disprove his theories. Most could not get their heads around it because it violated existing "known" things.
These were the people "who actually understand the old ideas".
Newtonian's were all the rage until Einstein came along.
Einstein violated all over Newton.
Of course at the time it was new and shocking stuff. The lab monkeys of the day were scrambling around to prove or disprove his theories. Most could not get their heads around it because it violated existing "known" things.
These were the people "who actually understand the old ideas".
No, Einstein built on Newton. He generalised the idea of relativity, and expanded the ideas of symmetry and conservation laws already in Newtonian theory. Classical mechanics is contained within special relativity, as a limiting case. This had to be so, because classical mechanics is known to be true within its domain.GloBug said:
This is something which non-scientists often seem to misunderstand. Einstein did not prove Newton wrong, he merely showed that Newton was insufficiently right. Extend the domain (to high speeds) and you have to extend the theory.
There may have been 'lab monkeys' who were confused by the new ideas. This probably meant that they did not understand the old ideas sufficiently well, but merely knew how to do the calculations and apply the results. Such 'practical men' sometimes do know less than they realise.
Exactly, and these new results from CERN, if proven, (and there was a fascinating snippet on Radio 4, an interview with one of the scientists working on the problem, saying the measurement error could go either way ), would not disprove Einstein wrong either, just that relativity would become a special case within a new theory, like Newtonian physics.
), would not disprove Einstein wrong either, just that relativity would become a special case within a new theory, like Newtonian physics.
Classic. That's what Newtons Mommy told him.
-It turns out electromagnetic fields can have waves that carry light energy. Same for gravitational fields can carry gravitational waves, which are actual fluctuations of spacetime.
-It turns out the direction of light can be changed in a gravitational field.
-Einstein also predicted that gravitational fields will shift light's wavelength towards the red spectrum.
-His perihelion precession theory overwrote Newton's.
He did a little more then correct his work.
You used the term "correct", I didn't. I used words like generalise, extend, expand. In the domain where Newtonian physics is valid, it is still true. No correction is needed. This is the basic truth you seem to have failed to grasp.
Sometimes science replaces the old theory (e.g. phlogiston theory of combustion), but much of the time it extends it. Laymen often can't tell the difference, so boldly and ignorantly proclaim that the old theory was 'wrong'. They then extrapolate from their confusion to say things like "what do scientists know anyway; their theories are eventually all proved wrong". Science does sometimes get things wrong, but not as often as people think.
Sometimes science replaces the old theory (e.g. phlogiston theory of combustion), but much of the time it extends it. Laymen often can't tell the difference, so boldly and ignorantly proclaim that the old theory was 'wrong'. They then extrapolate from their confusion to say things like "what do scientists know anyway; their theories are eventually all proved wrong". Science does sometimes get things wrong, but not as often as people think.
Back of what envelope? Since we now routinely measure >-100dB distortion after 100's of feet of ordinary Belden wires (coax as well as twisted pair) I don't see any basis for your numbers. An all metal alloy will most likely behave as a nearly ideal metal to electrical signal transmission.
Take your envelope out on constantan wire , or solder for that matter (you might have a spool around) then measure it.
The other fundamental failing of the Canadian educational system is the unawareness of history. Before Einstein, scientists KNEW that classical mechanics had some problems. It accounted for most things, but there were well-known cases where Newtonian mechanics didn't correspond to experiment. And classical mechanics had a well-known lack of correspondence with the successful electromagnetic theory. So it was pretty obvious to everyone that the theories were incomplete and something further needed to be done to account for the anomalous data and the conflict with other solid theories. The "lab monkeys" were extremely smart fellows who had already found the problems experimentally before Einstein came up with the answer.
I did not learn this from the Canadian Education system, so I don't see why you keep bashing it.
The Canadian Education systems is renowned for it's open minded, international views.
Your American system is more narrow minded favoring national history and values.
All the schools in Canada are consistent, US on the other hand has some schools rivaling that of third world countries.
It's your fault I have two different scales on my tape measure.
Get with it, we have had the Metric system for almost 40 years now.
The Canadian Education systems is renowned for it's open minded, international views.
Your American system is more narrow minded favoring national history and values.
All the schools in Canada are consistent, US on the other hand has some schools rivaling that of third world countries.
It's your fault I have two different scales on my tape measure.
Get with it, we have had the Metric system for almost 40 years now.
since a reference was made to neutrinos, i figure it is appropriate to call out that reproduction of experiements, peer reviews and peer experiements is a corner stone of all scientific work. I actually think its great that the cern guys themselves think they may have a problem with the reproduction of their speed findings around neutrinos: Neutrinos may still have broken light barrier - or not | Reuters
Sy, good point.
That said, the CERN FTL figures are bogus. Latest reports (as of 20th Feb) point to
instrumentation measurement errors.
Some lab tech is LHAO - science all in a flutter because he cal'd the gear up a bit wrong. it won't be the first time his has happened.
LOL. RIP Einstein, your theory still stands.
That said, the CERN FTL figures are bogus. Latest reports (as of 20th Feb) point to
instrumentation measurement errors.
Some lab tech is LHAO - science all in a flutter because he cal'd the gear up a bit wrong. it won't be the first time his has happened.
LOL. RIP Einstein, your theory still stands.
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