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Fruits of the lab
There are <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=73627">good news</a>, <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=264735">bad news</a>, <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=153415">bizarre news</a>, <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=200232">news from strange places</a>, and then there are science news, combining all of the above.Favourite scientific p-articles:
| Option | Results | Votes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stories of beauty |  |
36% | 4 |
| Truthy stories | |
45% | 5 |
| Stories with charm | |
27% | 3 |
| Strange stories | |
55% | 6 |
| Stories that goes down | |
9% | 1 |
| Stories that are up | |
9% | 1 |
| Total number of votes: | 11 | ||
Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather. [...]
“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”
This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.” You might think that the appearance of this theory is further proof that people have had ample time — perhaps too much time — to think about what will come out of the collider, which has been 15 years and $9 billion in the making.
Then this piece news dropped down:
<b><a href="http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/bread-loving-bird-shuts-down-lhc">Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider (Really)</a></b>
The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation.
The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.
A ripple in time is one thing, but particles preventing their own creation by sending birds to attack a machine goes way to far. This is exactly why some people respond in such a retarded way to these research projects. The media simply doesn't take it seriously anymore after some time.
And the whole black hole thing really cracked me up. A black hole needs a massive amount of matter within a certain period of time in order to actually become a black hole. So it would need the matter of at least the sun, which isn't even heavy enough to ever become one. And even if it was, it would take 8 minutes for its matter to reach earth if it would travel at the speed of light, which is WAY to long. Seriously, there's just simply no way that a black hole can be formed in that machine.
Like I said, this article made me laugh when I first read it, but that's about it. The Times should choose more carefully on what kind of articles they place if they still want people to take that medium seriously.
Opera Mini is awesome
FNORD14. Wipe thine ass with what is written and grin like a ninny at what is Spoken. Take thine refuge with thine wine in the Nothing behind Everything, as you hurry along the Path.
THE PURPLE SAGE, HBT; The Book of Predictions, Chap. 19
story is the Bottom choice.Originally posted by jax:
A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.
Surely, the theory is completely the opposite - that the effect is that of a time traveller unable to kill his grandfather, because only those possible futures in which a paradox is not created are available.
Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:
Surely, the theory is completely the opposite - that the effect is that of a time traveller unable to kill his grandfather, because only those possible futures in which a paradox is not created are available.
I guess it would be more like perpendicular. A mechanism preventing time travel to avoid suicide via avocide isn't exactly the opposite to a mechanism preventing global suicide (omnicide?) via time travel. Neither is it the same, and really time travel isn't involved, so the analogy is rather wobbly.
Originally posted by jax:
Neither is it the same, and really time travel isn't involved, so the analogy is rather wobbly.
As am I at this point.
Without Higgs, I'd be less than feather light. Jaybro sans mass.
Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:
Surely, the theory is completely the opposite - that the effect is that of a time traveller unable to kill his grandfather, because only those possible futures in which a paradox is not created are available.
While we might not allow paradoxes, does that mean that the goofiness of the universe abhors them? So far as I know, the universe may allow all manner of strange processes.
Originally posted by Jaybro:
So far as I know, the universe may allow all manner of strange processes.
It might, but it might equally now. We've not seen any paradoxes yet, right?
Originally posted by Macallan:
No they aren't. If we can't trust the best scientists out there to be serious, then who can we trust?You know, physicists are allowed to have a sense of humour
As for the whole paradox matter: if I understand it correctly (although I'm not taking this stuff seriously), there's supposed to be an endless amount of versions of this universe with every possible outcome for every event that ever took place. So even if you'd somehow travel back in time, how would you know if what you are doing even has any affect on the place you came from?
*brainpain*
I know it's a bit of a necropost, but it was in my active threads tab and felt important. :/
Opera Mini is awesome
Originally posted by yarno:
And the whole black hole thing really cracked me up. A black hole needs a massive amount of matter within a certain period of time in order to actually become a black hole. So it would need the matter of at least the sun, which isn't even heavy enough to ever become one. And even if it was, it would take 8 minutes for its matter to reach earth if it would travel at the speed of light, which is WAY to long. Seriously, there's just simply no way that a black hole can be formed in that machine.
I am glad someone besides me thinks it is impossible to make a black hole in a particle accelerator. I cannot understand why anyone knowledgable would think it could be done.
For an object to collapse under its own mass this way you need a lot of mass. But after a while more ways to create black holes than collapsing big stars were discovered. You have the supermassive black holes expected in the centre of galaxies, including our own, containing the mass of millions of stars. Being big they behave somewhat differently from the star-sized ones. You can for instance approach them without being ripped apart as brutally as you would with a smaller hole.
The tiny black holes are more interesting. You don't need a big mass to create a black hole, you need great density. If you want the mass to collapse of its own into this density you need a whole lot of mass (those three suns above). If you on the other hand elect to shoot very massive particles at each other at very high speed you could achieve very high density. Such tiny holes are not stable, they would blow up as soon as they were made (or so we expect). Neither do they gobble up matter the way a star-sized hole would. You need a whole lot of matter in matter to be big enough to attract more matter.
As for the super massive black holes: I believe those are called quasars. Also, those attract so much mass at times that they can't even "absorb" it, which results in the matter "shooting out" at each pole. Quite strange, but it happens.
The only thing I'm afraid of is the disappearing of the earth's magnetic field someday. It's going to happen a lot sooner then the end of the sun's lifetime or the colliding of our galaxy with another. (which will happen, just google it, can't be bothered to in further into this now) No magnetic field means no protection from radiation, which means instant skin cancer and tissue destruction of all living things, which sucks.
Oh well. At least discovery and nat geo say that it won't happen in the next 1200 years at least. And after that period it might just be another pole switch. You know, as in north becoming south.
Opera Mini is awesome
Originally posted by jax:
(those three suns above)
I have four Suns here, every one of them is quite heavy. I guess I'll place them a little further apart now, just to be safe
FNORD14. Wipe thine ass with what is written and grin like a ninny at what is Spoken. Take thine refuge with thine wine in the Nothing behind Everything, as you hurry along the Path.
THE PURPLE SAGE, HBT; The Book of Predictions, Chap. 19
Originally posted by jax:
Or to be more exact: by observations of the areas around where black holes of any size are supposed to be. You can't actually observe the black hole itself since there's no form of light falling on it. All you can do is measure the radiation and the matter of surrounding objects that's being "pulled in".Basically, but now backed up by observation for the case of star-sized and super-sized black holes, though not really for the tiny black holes. Many will say that we have already observed black holes, and even if those weren't black holes they look and act like black holes.
Opera Mini is awesome
piece, <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427341.100-fair-play-monkeys-share-our-sense-of-injustice.html?full=true">Fair play: Monkeys share our sense of injustice</a>Concern about fairness is always asymmetrical (stronger in the poor than the rich), and the underlying emotions aren't half as lofty as the ideal itself. It is true to say that our sense of fairness seldom transcends self-interest, that it is seldom concerned with something larger than ourselves. Look at how it starts in life. Children react to the slightest discrepancy in the size of their slice of pizza compared to their sibling's. Their shouts of "That's not fair!" never transcend their own desires. [...]
That this sense of unfairness may turn out to be quite ancient in evolutionary terms as well became clear when graduate student Sarah Brosnan and I discovered it in monkeys. While testing pairs of capuchin monkeys, we noticed how much they disliked seeing their partner get a better deal. At first, this was just an impression based on their refusal to participate in our tests. But then we realised that economists had given these reactions the fancy label of "inequity aversion," which they had turned into a topic of academic debate. This debate revolved entirely around human behaviour, but what if monkeys showed the same aversion?
We would offer a pebble to one of the pair and then hold out a hand so that the monkey could give it back in exchange for a cucumber slice. Alternating between them, both monkeys would happily barter 25 times in a row. The atmosphere turned sour, however, as soon as we introduced inequity. One monkey would still receive cucumber, while its partner now enjoyed grapes, a favourite food with monkeys. While that monkey had no problem, the one still working for cucumber would lose interest. Worse, seeing its partner with juicy grapes, this monkey would get agitated, hurl the pebbles out of the test chamber, sometimes even those measly cucumber slices. A food normally devoured with gusto had become distasteful.
Originally posted by jax:
I would add that using children to prove a point about fairness and equity may not be the best case argument. Is self-interest an element of a sense of fairness? If so, I can give you many counter examples where people favor others over themselves. As a parent, I could cite many examples."Look at how it starts in life. Children react to the slightest discrepancy in the size of their slice of pizza compared to their sibling's. Their shouts of "That's not fair!" never transcend their own desires." (from the provided passage)
I just returned from a family gathering where grandchildren and great nephews were in abundance. The only spats came when one of them was enamored of a particular gift. Fairness wasn't involved at all. Perhaps it has more to do with the degree of attachment to a disputed item than fairness. In fact, one of the grandsons was showered with gifts because he won't be present at Christmastime, and one of his cousins who is too young to comprehend that was perfectly happy to have one desirable toy, a car featured in the movie "Cars".
Opera Mini is awesome
Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:
We've not seen any paradoxes yet, right?
Does nature care about paradoxes, or are paradoxes about humans?
Is being in two places at once paradoxical? Being here and not here at the same time?
I need a nap.
Originally posted by New Scientist:
Children with a rare genetic condition seem to lack any kind of racial bias, unlike any other children previously tested. These children are also unusually gregarious and unafraid of strangers, leading to the suggestion that fear of people who are different from ourselves underlies low-level racial prejudice. [...]
To find out, they presented 40 white children, aged 5 to 17, with one white and one dark-skinned cartoon character and asked them to match up the characters with a positive or negative description. The 20 children who were developmentally normal had the usual biases towards their own racial group, which appear in infants as young as 3 years old. They almost always paired descriptions such as "kind" and "smart" to the white character and negative descriptions, such as "ugly" and "stupid," to the dark-skinned protagonist. Not so for 20 children with Williams, who were just as likely to praise a dark-skinned character as they were to admonish a white one.[...]
Surprisingly, the Williams children displayed the same gender biases as other children, with boys loading praise onto male characters and girls favouring the females depicted in the cartoons.
Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:
only those possible futures in which a paradox is not created are available.
That is, according to those who live in paradox-free worlds. But through my wormhole, much is possible.
.........................................
Without Higgs, there would be no need for me to go on yet another diet!
Originally posted by Jaybro:
Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:
only those possible futures in which a paradox is not created are available.
That is, according to those who live in paradox-free worlds. But through my wormhole, much is possible.
http://zs1.smbc-comics.com/comics/20100613.gif
Scientists have long since discovered that you can run simple decision-making experiments with Physarum by presenting it with several food sources and seeing how it behaves. Typically, the plasmodium touches all the potential meals and then either ‘decides’ to move towards one, or splits itself among many.
Latty and Beekman did one such test using two food sources – one containing 3% oatmeal and covered in darkness (known as 3D), and another with 5% oatmeal that was brightly lit (5L). Bright light easily damages Physarum, so it had to choose between a heftier but more irritating food source, and a smaller but more pleasant one. With no clear winner, it’s not surprising that the slime mould had no preference – it oozed towards each option just as often as the other.
But things changed when Latty and Beekman added a third option into the mix – a food source containing 1% oatmeal and shrouded in shadow (1D). This third alternative is clearly the inferior one, and Physarum had little time for it. However, its presence changed the mould’s attitude toward the previous two options. Now, 80% of the plasmodia headed towards the 3D source, while around 20% chose the brightly-lit 5L one.
These results strongly suggest that, like humans, Physarum doesn’t attach any intrinsic value to the options that are available to it. Instead, it compares its alternatives. Add something new into the mix, and its decisions change. The presence of the 1D option made the 3D one more attractive by comparison, even though the 3D and 5L alternatives were fundamentally unchanged.
The Hadrian self destruction, black hole or time travel are just examples of taking theories past their descriptive limits. Theories and Hypothesis are not to be confused with facts
An interesting side note; it is possible for a cow or a boat to fly in the Shetland Islands. The wind is so strong that cows and boats have to be tied down, or so the Scots say.
Originally posted by jax:
Brainless slime mould makes decisions like humans
At first I thought this might be a personal attack.
Originally posted by grysmn:
At one time aerodynamic theory stated that it was aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly. Resulting a modification of aerodynamic theory to describe bumble bee flight. At one time using aerodynamic theory it was possible to design a plane with so much lift that it would be necessary to tie it to the ground to prevent it from lifting off.
This is largely an urban legend. The purported source of this myth could hardly have mistaken a bee's wing for an aircraft's wing. In fact it's hard to track down the source, although there are attempts to do so.
Champagne should be poured 'like beer'
Originally posted by string:
Just to be quirky, I thought I'd contribute with something which is probably on topic:
Champagne should be poured 'like beer'
Thanks for that one, String. I've been pouring both directly into my mouth.
Some folks use an even more primitive method.
Originally posted by grysmn:
When hypothesis gets confused with fact it makes for fascinating discussion. Generally as Theories are applied past their description limits weird things happen. Lets take a look at aerodynamic theory taken past its descriptive limits. At one time aerodynamic theory stated that it was aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly. Resulting a modification of aerodynamic theory to describe bumble bee flight. At one time using aerodynamic theory it was possible to design a plane with so much lift that it would be necessary to tie it to the ground to prevent it from lifting off. Another example of the aerodynamic lift theory taken to its extreme.
As Jaybro says, the bumble bee thing is not true, and has never been true, and neither is the plane thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumblebee#Flight
The Hadrian self destruction, black hole or time travel are just examples of taking theories past their descriptive limits. Theories and Hypothesis are not to be confused with facts
I assume you mean Hadron, not the Roman emperor. Those ideas are possibilities within the descriptive limits; that doesn't mean they're true, rather it means that we're searching for the boundaries. They are hypotheses, not theories. Theory means something different.
An interesting side note; it is possible for a cow or a boat to fly in the Shetland Islands. The wind is so strong that cows and boats have to be tied down, or so the Scots say.
No, they don't. No more than things have to be tied down in wind anywhere.
This illustrates the real problem - not the boundaries of science and the inaccuracy of theory, but the popular misconceptions spread by urban legend and hearsay. The ridiculous will spread more widely than the realistic - the viral internet is proof of that.
Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:
The Hadrian self destruction, black hole or time travel are just examples of taking theories past their descriptive limits. Theories and Hypothesis are not to be confused with facts
I assume you mean Hadron, not the Roman emperor. Those ideas are possibilities within the descriptive limits; that doesn't mean they're true, rather it means that we're searching for the boundaries. They are hypotheses, not theories. Theory means something different.
We can actually observe black holes (or their interaction with surrounding stars, anyway).
What is meant precisely with time travel I don't know, but the effects of time dilation are perfectly measurable as well.
Originally posted by New Scientist:
Life-like cells are made of metal
Could living things that evolved from metals be clunking about somewhere in the universe? Perhaps. In a lab in Glasgow, UK, one man is intent on proving that metal-based life is possible.
He has managed to build cell-like bubbles from giant metal-containing molecules and has given them some life-like properties. He now hopes to induce them to evolve into fully inorganic self-replicating entities.
"I am 100 per cent positive that we can get evolution to work outside organic biology," says Lee Cronin (see photo, right) at the University of Glasgow. His building blocks are large "polyoxometalates" made of a range of metal atoms – most recently tungsten – linked to oxygen and phosphorus. By simply mixing them in solution, he can get them to self-assemble into cell-like spheres.
Originally posted by New Scientist:
The key to pleasant music may be that it pleases our neurons. A new model suggests that harmonious musical intervals trigger a rhythmically consistent firing pattern in certain auditory neurons, and that sweet sounds carry more information than harsh ones.
A rare micro-organism that lives in the sludge of a Norwegian lake is mankind's most remote relative, according to biologists at the University of Oslo. The microscopic creature was first found in Lake As about 150 years ago, but more recent genetic analysis has revealed that the organism does not fit on any of the main branches of the tree of life. The protozoan creature is not a fungus, alga, parasite, plant or animal. "We have found an unknown branch of the tree of life that lives in this lake. It is unique," said Kamran Shalchian-Tabrizi, head of the Microbial Evolution Research Group at the university. He's created a new branch on the tree, and named it "Collodictyon". "So far we know of no other group of organisms that descend from closer to the roots of the tree of life than this species."