I see the good Doctor is involved in the creationist movement. Creationism embraces all kinds of crank "science." Creationism is pretty much the ultimate quackery. ANYONE that lends their expertise to creationism should be forever ridiculed, and blackballed from academia.
It gratifies me to see quacks like this exposed for the liars they are. Good debunking!
It gratifies me to see quacks like this exposed for the liars they are. Good debunking!
As a young 3rd. year BSc. Physicist in the nineteen seventies at London University, I was assigned a Quantum Mechanics Physics Project Experiment on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Hall_effect.
My heart wasn't in it. 🙁
All I knew about Physics came from reading Richard Feynman's splendid Lectures on Physics:
What we discovered, after severe messing about with hugely expensive icy Liquid Helium in dewar jars, and plain unreliable soldered joints to Indium Antimonide semiconductor electronics, was that the Quantum exists. Which didn't really help my understanding. I never even wrote it up. If I had, I would have won a Nobel Prize, but TBH it all seemed childishly simple to me!
Oh, well. I often notice a resemblance between myself and non-crank scientist Professor Richard Feynman. I wonder if we are (very distantly) related? 😀
My heart wasn't in it. 🙁
All I knew about Physics came from reading Richard Feynman's splendid Lectures on Physics:
What we discovered, after severe messing about with hugely expensive icy Liquid Helium in dewar jars, and plain unreliable soldered joints to Indium Antimonide semiconductor electronics, was that the Quantum exists. Which didn't really help my understanding. I never even wrote it up. If I had, I would have won a Nobel Prize, but TBH it all seemed childishly simple to me!
Oh, well. I often notice a resemblance between myself and non-crank scientist Professor Richard Feynman. I wonder if we are (very distantly) related? 😀
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Quiz...
Here goes:
Give a shortest proof, why GPS calculation needs data from 4 satellites to figure the location of the receiver.
Why 4 ?
We are dealing with 4 dimensional space so we need 4 satellites.
The mathematics involves four overlapping spheres, because with four satellites the receiver is at the one point where the four spheres overlap.
The mathematics therefore involves the equations of the four spheres described by their x, y, z and t coordinates.
It appears a square root equation must be solved, but I would need to ask Bancroft for help! 😉
I think I followed that. Thankyou. Looks like Relativity to me. The distance between two events in 4D Spacetime, upon which all observers agree according to Einstein.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#
The 24 satellites are synchronised on their atomic clocks. The ground stations know where they are and tell them their position relative to the centre of the Earth and correct their clocks if necessary.
The satellites then transmit their position and time and identity to your GPS car receiver, which doesn't need an atomic clock.
The system can be better than 2cm accurate! Incredible!
You mobile phone is more likely to use known local WiFi hotspots to work out where it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#
The 24 satellites are synchronised on their atomic clocks. The ground stations know where they are and tell them their position relative to the centre of the Earth and correct their clocks if necessary.
The satellites then transmit their position and time and identity to your GPS car receiver, which doesn't need an atomic clock.
The system can be better than 2cm accurate! Incredible!
You mobile phone is more likely to use known local WiFi hotspots to work out where it is.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking#PrivacyYou mobile phone is more likely to use known local WiFi hotspots to work out where it is.
A video of some one who obtained the info that was stored in his case
https://www.ted.com/talks/malte_spitz_your_phone_company_is_watching
There is/was a wiki page that details things like which hotel he stayed in overnight but no luck in finding it.
Another kid on the block
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
Mast triangulation. I recollect a usa president giving the providers time to sort it out. That because they realised it could be done.
🙂I wont mention the well known mobile phone hacking software that has hacked political leaders phones in Europe. No it wasn't Russia etc using it.
The oddity he notices ... https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Sept02/Mirabel/Mirabel1.html
I'm unable to comment on the "oddity", but was interested to read more about microquasars.
A microquasar is a black hole of 5 to 10 stellar masses which is drawing in material from a normal star that is its binary companion.
This results in the formation around the black hole of an accretion disc as well as the emission of polar jets similar, but not identical, to those of the quasars which are associated with supermassive black holes.
The differences between the sizes and temperatures of the accretion discs in the two cases are described in the following Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microquasar
Microquasars only project jets a matter of a few light-years, while quasars project them several million light-years.
However, microquasars are ideal platforms for studying jets as they go through more variations in one day than quasar jets go through in a century!
I hope the above provided a little break from mathematics! 😉
😉 I'm back on the elements again
We can calculate the abundances of U-235 and U-238 at the time the Earth was formed. Knowing further that the production ratio of U-235 to U-238 in a supernova is about 1.65, we can calculate that if all of the uranium now in the solar system were made in a single supernova, this event must have occurred some 6.5 billion years ago.
This 'single stage' is, however, an oversimplification. In fact, multiple supernovae from over 6 billion to about 200 million years ago were involved. Additionally, studies of the isotopic abundances of elements, such as silicon and carbon in meteorites, have shown that more than ten separate stellar sources were involved in the genesis of solar system material. Thus the relative abundance of U-235 and U-238 at the time of formation of the solar system:
Cannot be inverted to a 'single stage' model age.
Is essentially an accidental and unique value.
Reflects the input of the explosive debris of many progenitor stars.
https://www.world-nuclear.org/infor...-resources/the-cosmic-origins-of-uranium.aspx
The general info on the age of the solar system including the sun is thought to be ~4.5billion years. Stars which nova don't last long - some millions of years. The only one where I have found info that gives evidence of elements being formed is
DES16C2nm, the first spectroscopically confirmed hydrogen-free superluminoussupernova(SLSN-I)at redshift»z2
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aaa126/pdf
The furthest away ever discovered. 😉 The dark matter survey found it.
We can calculate the abundances of U-235 and U-238 at the time the Earth was formed. Knowing further that the production ratio of U-235 to U-238 in a supernova is about 1.65, we can calculate that if all of the uranium now in the solar system were made in a single supernova, this event must have occurred some 6.5 billion years ago.
This 'single stage' is, however, an oversimplification. In fact, multiple supernovae from over 6 billion to about 200 million years ago were involved. Additionally, studies of the isotopic abundances of elements, such as silicon and carbon in meteorites, have shown that more than ten separate stellar sources were involved in the genesis of solar system material. Thus the relative abundance of U-235 and U-238 at the time of formation of the solar system:
Cannot be inverted to a 'single stage' model age.
Is essentially an accidental and unique value.
Reflects the input of the explosive debris of many progenitor stars.
https://www.world-nuclear.org/infor...-resources/the-cosmic-origins-of-uranium.aspx
The general info on the age of the solar system including the sun is thought to be ~4.5billion years. Stars which nova don't last long - some millions of years. The only one where I have found info that gives evidence of elements being formed is
DES16C2nm, the first spectroscopically confirmed hydrogen-free superluminoussupernova(SLSN-I)at redshift»z2
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aaa126/pdf
The furthest away ever discovered. 😉 The dark matter survey found it.
I remember an investigative episode on that in the last year or so, it might have been on PBS NOVA, but I think it was on Frontline.🙂I wont mention the well known mobile phone hacking software that ...
But we're getting slightly off topic.
Quantum what(s)? Millikan determined electric charge was quantized (though surely he wasn't the first).What we discovered, after severe messing about with hugely expensive icy Liquid Helium in dewar jars, and plain unreliable soldered joints to Indium Antimonide semiconductor electronics, was that the Quantum exists.
The general info on the age of the solar system including the sun is thought to be ~4.5billion years.
Meteorites are left over debris from the formation of the solar system so radioactive dating of them gives a good estimate if the solar system's age.
4.5 billion years is such a vast timescale that the human brain has no hope of physically comprehending it.
If it were possible to count at the rate of one number per second it would take you about 32 years just to get to 1.0 billion!
It has been suggested that the assumption that uranium isotopes always appear in the same relative quantities in meteorites is wrong, so that recent calculations that place the age of the solar system at more like 4.5672 billion years could be out by 1 million years or more.
WHOOP-DE-DO! 😀
Millikan determined electric charge was quantized (though surely he wasn't the first).
I believe it was Michael Farady who first discovered the discrete nature of electric charge when formulating his laws of electrolysis.
He found that the same amount of charge liberated one gram equivalent of any ion from an electrolytic solution.
That amount is 9.648533289 x 10^4 coulombs (or 6.022140857 x 10^23 electrons) and is called the farady constant.
I have been doing a lot of Physics and Cosmology reading lately, and my head is spinning with it all! Bit of a refresher really. I won't bore you with the Hall Effect. You can look it up if you like.
I do remember the 1909 Millikan Electron Experiment from A-level Physics. It determined and measured the discrete charge e on the electron. You had to be careful not to get a shock!
Up to then all that was known was the ratio of charge to mass, called e/m, determined by deflection of charged particles in a known magnetic field.
I know J.J. Thomson discovered the Electron in 1897 using a glass Cathode ray tube, which were then called Cathode Rays. They were the first particle identified as smaller than an atom.
But nobody knew how big electrons or atoms were, if the Atomic Theory of Dalton from about 1800 was right. Chemistry was all about ratios of properties like weight and volume and temperature, not their actual quantities, if you follow?
Faraday and Maxwell didn't even know about electrons really. It was all amps and volts and magnetic fields to them. I think everyone thought that everything electromagnetic was waves, and debated the (discredited) Aether as the medium.
Everything changed with Max Planck's 1900 explanation of Black-Body radiation with discrete units of light radiation with a proportion of Planck's constant. It just didn't work as a wave theory. Einstein then determined the actual quantity with his photoelectric paper, getting E = hv for a photon, which gave it a particle nature. The mystery deepened when De Brogle noticed that massive particles have a wave nature too.
I still don't understand the Quantum Theory. Nobody knows why Planck's Constant is what it is. Nobody know why every electron in the Universe has the exact same mass or why it should be that mass. I don't think anyone really knows what spin is except as an abstract concept of the mathematics.
I'll just keep reading around, and maybe it'll make some sense! And doubtless so will you! 😀
I do remember the 1909 Millikan Electron Experiment from A-level Physics. It determined and measured the discrete charge e on the electron. You had to be careful not to get a shock!
Up to then all that was known was the ratio of charge to mass, called e/m, determined by deflection of charged particles in a known magnetic field.
I know J.J. Thomson discovered the Electron in 1897 using a glass Cathode ray tube, which were then called Cathode Rays. They were the first particle identified as smaller than an atom.
But nobody knew how big electrons or atoms were, if the Atomic Theory of Dalton from about 1800 was right. Chemistry was all about ratios of properties like weight and volume and temperature, not their actual quantities, if you follow?
Faraday and Maxwell didn't even know about electrons really. It was all amps and volts and magnetic fields to them. I think everyone thought that everything electromagnetic was waves, and debated the (discredited) Aether as the medium.
Everything changed with Max Planck's 1900 explanation of Black-Body radiation with discrete units of light radiation with a proportion of Planck's constant. It just didn't work as a wave theory. Einstein then determined the actual quantity with his photoelectric paper, getting E = hv for a photon, which gave it a particle nature. The mystery deepened when De Brogle noticed that massive particles have a wave nature too.
I still don't understand the Quantum Theory. Nobody knows why Planck's Constant is what it is. Nobody know why every electron in the Universe has the exact same mass or why it should be that mass. I don't think anyone really knows what spin is except as an abstract concept of the mathematics.
I'll just keep reading around, and maybe it'll make some sense! And doubtless so will you! 😀
In 1808, chemist John Dalton developed a very persuasive argument that led to an amazing realization: Perhaps all matter (i.e., stuff, things, objects) is made of tiny, little bits. Fundamental bits. Indivisible bits. Atomic bits. Atoms.But nobody knew how big electrons or atoms were,
The concept had been floating around off and on for a few millennia. Ancient cultures were certainly aware of of the general idea that matter was composed of more fundamental elements (though they disagreed quite a lot about what exactly counted as an element) and knew that these elements combined in interesting and fruitful ways to make complex things
A rather important discovery - valency etc.
On of the proofs that it didn't exist was crazy and just proved the speed of light was constant in terms of where the test was done,I think everyone thought that everything electromagnetic was waves, and debated the (discredited) Aether as the medium.
LOL
Thanks to the uncertainty principle, the vacuum buzzes with particle-antiparticle pairs popping in and out of existence. They include, among many others, electron-positron pairs and pairs of photons, which are their own antiparticles. Ordinarily, those "virtual" particles cannot be directly captured. But like some spooky Greek chorus, they exert subtle influences on the "real" world.
https://www.science.org/content/art...-weird-quantum-fluctuations-empty-space-maybe
😉 The Aether maybe?
😉 Forgot to add something is needed to provide the wave aspects of em radiation.
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Or even M Faraday and his constant... </pedant mode>I believe it was Michael Farady who first discovered the discrete nature of electric charge when formulating his laws of electrolysis.
4.5 billion years is such a vast timescale that the human brain has no hope of physically comprehending it.
Speak for yourself..

Ernst Mach quote:
I don’t believe that atoms exist!
Yes, the scientist we all know for the Mach number about supersonic airplanes speed.
He was actively denying atoms while it was widely accepted in the scientific community.
Mach a famous Austrian scientist 1838-1916. A crank out of his scientific speciality.
I don’t believe that atoms exist!
Yes, the scientist we all know for the Mach number about supersonic airplanes speed.
He was actively denying atoms while it was widely accepted in the scientific community.
Mach a famous Austrian scientist 1838-1916. A crank out of his scientific speciality.
Hall Effect.😀
Everyone that studied electronics is well acquainted with the Hall Effect. A whole lot of electronic designs employ the Hall-effect Transistor. At one time it was very, very common; AFAIK it still is.
Or even M Faraday and his constant... </pedant mode>
How did I manage to do that? 😳 And not just once, but twice!
Thing is, I'm fussy about such things, and was annoyed by not spotting my "if" instead of an "of" in post # 1,410!
In the past they and similar have been put down to planets that didn't form. Asteroid belt for instance.Meteorites are left over debris from the formation of the solar system so radioactive dating of them gives a good estimate if the solar system's age
The interesting aspect is uranium created over 6bilion years ago. Age of the planets ~4.5. Some billion for accretion maybe?? A subject still not really understood. 200million years ago can't really figure with the earth. Neutrons figure in stars. They are trying to look for sources eg
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/331/2/483/1043951
The old idea of the solar system coming out of the sun may have come from Titius-Bode ideas. Some sort of explosion may have figured in it's formation. Bangs figure how ever the subject is viewed. it's reasonable to assume that supernova must have happened in our vicinity. 😉 In galactic terms. The milky way on the other hand is thought to be 13.6billion years old, plenty of time for things to happen. Big stars = big supernova neither last long. We still seem to have problems getting elements out of them
https://www.mpg.de/17702502/carbon-from-a-cosmic-source
It seem stars can get us to Fe. Past that there seems to be a need for more energy.
😉 Hoyle liked the idea of many bangs forming everything.
Betelgeuse is thought to be star that will go nova. A red giant. The stars in the Orion nebulae are young and hot. Was Betelgeuse similar at some stage? The nebulae shows evidence of planet development. There is dust. Where did it all come from? The cloud formation is more or less chaotic. Seems there has been a new discovery
https://www.space.com/37666-orion-nebula-three-ages-star-formation.html
Sounds like we may have to wait 100,000 years for Betelgeuse to do nova. It seems it has periodic hard ons so is unstable. It could be some millions of years to see what the end result is.
This was "rediscovered" fairly recently
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titius–Bode_law#Blagg_formulation
Faraday and Maxwell didn't even know about electrons really ... I think everyone thought that everything electromagnetic was waves
There's an interesting piece of history that predates Faraday (born 1791):
In the 17th century, two different theories about the nature of light were proposed - the wave theory and the corpuscular theory.
The corpuscular theory was proposed by Isaac Newton who suggested that light is made up of tiny particles called corpuscles (little particles) that always travel in a straight line.
Unfortunately, his assumption that the different colours of light are due to the differences in the sizes of corpuscles has no justification.
https://www.physics-and-radio-electronics.com/blog/corpuscular-theory-light/
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