1

Just Chat! / Re: Theories to start a new world.

« on: Yesterday at 15:45:19 »

My suggestion is not to suppress religion, but to build a civilisation where superstition never arises in the first place. If you teach kids that "why" is meaningless in terms of the origin of the universe and suchlike (see para 2 of reply # 13 above) your civilisation will avoid a lot of the pitfalls of philosophy. Perhaps we should add Russell's Principia Mathematica to the bookshelf, or at least the Open University Mathematics Foundation course, where set theory is presented rather more gently.

After a few more exchanges, I may have to write my own version of Brave New World and Last and First Men.

2

Just Chat! / Re: Theories to start a new world.

« on: Yesterday at 13:45:46 »

We prevent people from doing  many stupid and dangerous things by education, passing on the summary of hard experience about poisons, predators, jagged rocks, icy water, and so forth. But where religion is taught in schools it is either presented as a set of mandatory practices and beliefs, or as something to be respected  (even in the USA, where the former is forbidden ). That is perverse. How, in the light of all the harm done in the name of faith, can you respect the denial of enquiry and criticism?

So no need for censorship (which is very much the weapon of religious organisations), but an emphasis on thinking for yourself, including questioning the validity of your own thoughts. It all comes back to my objective in reply #4 above, of preventing religion from taking root.

3

Just Chat! / Re: Theories to start a new world.

« on: 03/12/2024 23:23:16 »

So in order not to export the worst of human behaviors, we must either find some means of preventing people from asking meaningless questions, which would be difficult to do, or agree that pretending that such questions are important, or inventing unprovable answers to them, would be a criminal offence.  I'm very much in favor of the latter approach as we already have workable precedents in the Sale of Goods Acts, Insolvent Trading, Impersonation, and suchlike consumer protections: broadly, it is an offence to advertise or solicit if you do not have the intention or capability of delivering goods or services.

Beware of calling such questions "unanswerable". That raises them from the level of contemptible and dangerous absurdity to a spurious importance such as "what is 0/0?"

4

Just Chat! / Re: Theories to start a new world.

« on: 03/12/2024 15:00:21 »

I have never asked "why" for the very reason I pointed out above - the question is meaningless.

Religious professionals do not "seek" an answer but make a living by selling a defective one that they have invented.

I understand that, as a consequence of deep religious thought and study,  the perverts in charge of Afghanistan have today announced further restrictions on the education of women.  The penalties for unbelief remain as savage as you could wish for. Do we really want to export this filth to another planet?

5

Just Chat! / Re: Should smartphones be banned from the dinner table?

« on: 03/12/2024 14:56:31 »

Channel 4, 8 pm 11 December, will be broadcasting an experiment in which a school "confiscated" all the pupils' smartphones. Should make very interesting viewing.

6

Just Chat! / Re: Theories to start a new world.

« on: 02/12/2024 23:19:12 »

Religion is about not wanting to be alone, left feeling pointless, worried about not existing any longer, seeking the answers to fundamental questions  etc. etc.

AFAIK no other species suffers from any of these, though many prefer the company of their fellows for protection and efficient hunting. In my experience they are not innate concerns but have to be taught by the people who will profit from the fear they inculcate.

The question "why does the universe exist" is absurd. "Why" implies an ulterior purpose and therefore some entity outside of the system being studied, that will benefit from that system. But by definition the system being studied is "everything" so there cannot be an external entity and the question is meaningless. "How does the universe work" is an entirely legitimate question, to which the answer appears to be physics, chemistry, and nothing more. 

Turning good and evil into nouns is one of the despicable tricks of religion.  Rational man holds his fellow man entirely responsible for his actions, to which we apply good and evil as adjectives. Perverts and criminals claim in their defence that they are subject to forces beyond their control, hence the nouns.

The nature of human consciousness is another meaningless phrase. Nobody seems to agree on a definition of consciousness, and certainly not one that is uniquely human. 

Religion provides an excuse to treat other humans worse than animals - witness any public debate on birth control, abortion, assisted suicide, or the rights of women. It is the antithesis of civilisation.

7

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: How does H20 wear away stone?

« on: 02/12/2024 23:04:09 »

Rainwater is slightly acidic as it contains dissolved CO2.

8

Just Chat! / Re: Should smartphones be banned from the dinner table?

« on: 02/12/2024 12:34:35 »

Further thought. I have attended a few committee dinners in pub restaurants. Time was that these were places for quiet conversation in an acoustically "soft" environment, separated from any live gigs in the "spit and sawdust" bar.

Nowadays the acoustic environment is  "hard" (no sticky carpets, big glass windows....) and filled throughout with umpteen decibels of piped noise, over which you have to shout to be heard by your nearest neighbor.

So it is quite likely that those under the age of 40 have never experienced conversation over a meal, and don't know how to behave at a family dinner.

9

Just Chat! / Re: Theories to start a new world.

« on: 02/12/2024 12:19:01 »

The notions that (a) metaphysics means anything and (b) there are complete answers to it, have no foundation in fact.

They are the basis of the most immoral form of advertising, and serve only to excuse bad behavior. 

If humans really need this garbage, it would do the universe a great disservice to export humans, and the project should be abandoned.

10

Just Chat! / Re: Theories to start a new world.

« on: 01/12/2024 22:43:39 »

You're biased toward the view that science will emerge from the need to solve practical problems.

It's a reasonable extrapolation from "thermodynamics owes more to the steam engine than the steam engine owes to thermodynamics", "necessity is the mother of invention", etcetera.

I was struck by the story of the American captain who, lost in fog somewhere outside the Bristol Channel, managed to get one sun sight and calculated his position from first principles, thus establishing an entirely new chapter in coastal navigation and avoiding an expensive shipwreck. I only wish I could remember the technique, or his name!   

Probably the only counterexample was the laser, which was derided for at least 20 years as a solution looking for a problem.

11

Just Chat! / Re: Theories to start a new world.

« on: 01/12/2024 22:26:41 »

Religion is all about selling undisprovable hypotheses in order to control people's actions. Science is all about offering disprovable hypotheses to help people make their own decisions. You want to export civilisation, not parasitism, conflict and oppression.

Dawkins pointed out that the one thing all religions have in common is that they tell you to despise all the others. Science, on the other hand, is about being sceptical of your own hypotheses. As Eddington said, the student of physics must become accustomed to having his common sense violated five times before breakfast, and certainly the practice of engineering, where we extend the boundaries of achievement by taking a lot of science for granted, frequently gives us pause to wonder whether our axioms were valid outside the old boundary - and there's a difference between "back to the lab" and a fatwah against the infidel.   

So

They are likely to believe

is a dire warning about exactly the sort of people we don't want to export. I always tell students that I will not teach them what to think, but how to think, including how to think about how they think and what they think they know! The stuff in the book, even Kaye & Laby  or Landolt-Bornstein, is only our best guess to date at the numbers and how things work, and if your experiment shows otherwise, everyone else may indeed be wrong. You won't find many priests selling that line.

12

New Theories / Re: Where does quantization of energy of electromagnetic radiation come from?

« on: 01/12/2024 21:58:05 »

I'm just looking at the electron beam in an oscilloscope. I can measure the beam current, and I can deflect it with a time-varying and/or distance-varying magnetic or electric  field. So I can make a single electron follow any path through space, and whenever it changes direction, it will emit em radiation thanks to Maxwell. Indeed that is the reason for the failure of the Bohr model of the atom, and the need for Heisenberg, Schrodinger, and quantum mechanics!

So if I subject the electron beam to  a spatially sinusoidal static field, what is the energy of the supposedly quantised em radiation it emits? Why is it not a continuum?   

AFAIK the spectrum of x-rays from an undulator or a wiggler is a continuum.

13

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: What is the exact cause of the time dilation of the twin?

« on: 01/12/2024 16:10:52 »

No, both cases are due to being pushed from below.

In my universe, gravity sucks. If I let go of the accelerometer, it flies towards the ground, not away from it.

14

Just Chat! / Re: Should smartphones be banned from the dinner table?

« on: 01/12/2024 16:01:34 »

As a loathsome narcissist, I'm very much in favor of technology. In the days before Facebook, you had to photograph your lunch at least 20 times (36 if you'd bought the full cassette), take the film to the pharmacy, and order enough postcard prints to send to all your friends. Either that, or agree to all sit in a darkened room for a couple of hours waiting for the projector lamp to fail.

Those who believe that CO2 from aircraft causes climate change, should embrace Photoshop. Instead of standing in sweaty queues to sit in  a cramped aircraft, you can just paste a professional portrait of yourself onto an equally professional photograph of Big Ben, Mt Everest, the  Eiffel Tower, Niagara Falls, etc, reduce your carbon footprint, bore your last actual friend. and not have to bother learning another language or wondering where your  luggage has gone.

The response to folk who want to play with phones in company, is to turn away and look at your own phone when they finally deign to speak to you   and not invite them again.

15

Just Chat! / Re: Theories to start a new world.

« on: 01/12/2024 09:49:31 »

Desert Island Discs is still running on Radio 4. The limit is 8 discs (now tracks), one book, and one luxury.

Presumably we are leaving on a rocket, so I'd take Newtonian mechanics, the atomic theory of chemistry, and probably the Krebs cycle if I'm not allowed the whole biochemistry library. Then my descendants would understand how we got here, and religion (the reason why we left Earth) might not take root.

DID participants are asked to name the one track they would save above all else. Gerry Mulligan's "Golden Notebooks"

encompasses the apex of civilisation in four minutes and should set the tone for humanity's next gig.

16

New Theories / Re: Where does quantization of energy of electromagnetic radiation come from?

« on: 01/12/2024 09:23:36 »

But the electron in question follows a smooth sinusoidal path and therefore generates a continuous EM wave at whatever frequency we choose. The emitted radiation is not quantised.

17

New Theories / Re: Where does quantization of energy of electromagnetic radiation come from?

« on: 30/11/2024 14:28:55 »

All EM radiation is quantized.

I can generate any frequency of radio waves, continuously, for as long as I like, by an entirely linear and continuous process. Reception is likewise continuous. No charged particles jump between excited states at either end of the system. What is the energy of the quantum of 100 kHz EMR generated and  emitted for 1 second? 1.01 seconds? 

18

New Theories / Re: Where does quantization of energy of electromagnetic radiation come from?

« on: 29/11/2024 18:40:07 »

Assuming that a photon is like a miniature cannonball only produce more confusion and even contradiction, rather than clarity. Unfortunately, that's how it's often depicted in many popular physics literatures.

For the nth time: we need two models to describe the properties of EM radiation. At low energies a wave model is most useful but at high energies the generation of EMR and its interactions with a target are better described by a particle model. 

19

New Theories / Re: Where does quantization of energy of electromagnetic radiation come from?

« on: 29/11/2024 18:36:09 »

How would you generate sinusoidal electric field using less than 1 electron?

Impossible and irrelevant!
Consider an oscilloscope tube, or a linear accelerator flight tube,  with electrostatic deflection plates. apply a sinusoidal voltage to the plates, and reduce the beam current to one electron at a time. What happens to that electron?

20

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: What is the exact cause of the time dilation of the twin?

« on: 29/11/2024 18:32:08 »

A good point.

Consider one ball moving in a straight line at constant speed. If we want to change its direction we need to exert a force perpendicular to the track, so work is done.

I await your analysis of two balls on a string, with eager anticipation!