121

That CAN'T be true! / Re: I don’t understand physics: does anyone understand physics these days?

« on: 31/12/2020 21:07:25 »

But nowadays, physicists don't use Bubble Chambers any more. Just racks of diodes and transistors which register differences in electrical current.  These differences could result from anything, perhaps differences in thickness of the wiring...So the Higg's Boson might not actually exist, but just be a product of variation in electric wiring?

The first thing to say is that the existence of the Higgs Boson was not inferred from a single reading (a single reading which may have been due to a fault or tolerance variation).

The Higgs Boson was seen by two different teams, using two different types of experimental devices (CMS & ATLAS, kilometers apart) at the LHC.
- Each of these teams studied trillions of proton-proton collisions at various energy levels before they homed in on the particular "resonance" that is represented by the Higgs Boson.
- These trillions of collisions (the vast majority of which did not assist the search for the Higgs boson) exercised all parts of these machines, and showed that they worked well.
- While psychology papers are accepted if they demonstrate a p=0.05 (ie 5% probability that they could be talking nonsense), particle physicists look for 5σ, or approximately 0.00006% chance that the result could be just luck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_the_Higgs_boson#Discovery_of_new_boson

Having said that, physicists have never detected a Higgs Boson directly.
- The mass of this particle is so great (125GeV/c²), and the lifetime is so short(10^-22s) that it doesn't make it out of the vacuum pipe and into the detector before it decays.
- So the existence of the Higgs was determined from its unique decay products and distinctive energy
- This is not so different from the way chemistry worked for many years - many chemical reactions took place in such a small volume, in such a small time, that chemists had to work backwards from the mix of chemical products to determine what chemical species had produced them.

122

Just Chat! / Re: Where is Administration thenakedscientists.com??

« on: 30/12/2020 22:30:34 »

You have.
It is here.
Advertisements are supplied by advertising companies, with content optimized for your country, language and previous interests.
- Ideally, they would like to target your future interests, but that is a lot harder!

Would you like to be more specific?

PS: Please don't post the same thing in multiple threads - moderator...

123

COVID-19 / Could COVID-19 cause Psychological problems?

« on: 30/12/2020 22:20:56 »

A few instances of COVID-19 infection possibly causing psychotic episodes months later?
- Another reason to minimize infection rates until a vaccine arrives!

See: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/health/covid-psychosis-mental.html

124

The Environment / Re: Should train timetables be limited during lockdown to save energy?

« on: 30/12/2020 21:11:18 »

In my youth a lot of deliveries were done by motor tricycle

Only Mr Bean ran it off the road...

And Jeremy Clarkson tries to improve it...

125

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Does the complex constant (i) represent a ratio of special reciprocity?

« on: 30/12/2020 21:02:49 »

Does the complex constant (i) represent a ratio of special reciprocity?

No. Multiplying by i is equivalent to a rotation by 90° in the complex plane.
To rotate by 180°, you need to multiply by -1=i*i (since 180° = 2 rotations of 90°).

Multiplying by i is also equivalent to a rotation by 90° in quaternion 4D space, but like I said, why make it more complex than you need to?.

126

General Science / Re: The journey to the red planet: does humanity need Mars colonisation?

« on: 30/12/2020 20:35:55 »

If we have there a high level of radiation, the water is 100% radioactive

The kinds of radiation are:
- high levels of ultraviolet: Protected by a spacesuit (which you also need due to near-zero atmospheric pressure).
- high levels of cosmic rays: Could be protected by building sleeping quarters underground, or putting a layer of dirt over the base
- Apart from that, there is just the usual rates of radioactive decay due to Uranium, Potassium and Thorium etc that you find on Earth. Except that these elements may be distributed more uniformly on Mars, due to the thinner crust and continental drift of Earth

Surface water is unstable in the low atmospheric pressure of Mars (it sublimates).
- So the water would be mined from below the surface of Mars, where it has been somewhat protected from cosmic rays.
- The first step in refining is to raise the temperature a bit, so pure water distills off, leaving dry dirt

Since transport to Mars is expensive, the idea is to ship equipment which can build stuff from raw materials found on Mars.
- Water: Mined
- Breathable air: Refined from water with solar power
- Rocket fuel from water and carbon dioxide (with solar power)
- Construction materials: Mined on-site
- This equipment would be shipped to Mars before humans arrived, so they could build up stocks of essential supplies, ready for the colonists.

NASA recently ran a competition to design buildings that could be made on Mars from local materials.

127

Physiology & Medicine / Re: Should children get the coronavirus vaccine?

« on: 30/12/2020 11:38:51 »

vaccines are all very well...but they do mean that our immune systems don't have to do anything

I disagree.

When presented with a vaccine, your immune system must:
- Recognize that an "alien" protein has suddenly appeared
- Couple that with a the presence of cellular damage (often from an adjuvent)
- Recruit white blood cells which recognize proteins from the target virus (in the case of COVID vaccines, this is part of the "spike" protein)
- Produce antibodies to this alien protein
- Multiply white blood cells that can recognize the spike protein
- Continually generate a population of antibodies that circulate in your system, to detect later appearance of a virus bearing this spike protein
- Rapidly ramp up production of antibodies and white blood cells, every time this virus is detected in the body
- To me, that doesn't sound to me like a "do nothing" or a "fat and lazy" immune system

What a vaccine does is to exercise your immune system, without causing the widespread (and potentially long-term) damage that the virus itself would do
- There is potentially some local inflammation at the injection site from the vaccine adjuvant
- However, the virus itself has some chemical defences that damp down the immune system, while the virus gains a significant foothold. This "fools" the immune system, with potentially life-threatening consequences like a thickening of the air sacs in your lungs. When the immune system finally "wakes up" to the infection, it sometimes overreacts, with lethal consequences.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination#Mechanism_of_function

Should children get the corona Vaccine?

With the original strains of SARS-COV2, it seems that children were less likely to catch the virus, and less likely to suffer severe disease, and less likely to pass it on to others.
- That is a good reason to vaccinate children under 12 after more susceptible groups are vaccinated (eg health care workers, the elderly and adults generally)

However, it is claimed that some more of the recent strains of SARS-COV2 affect young children more severely
- If this is true, then perhaps children should not be placed right at the end of the priority list
- And children should be scheduled ahead of any major campaign to reach those who are feeling vaccine hesitancy (let alone the anti-vaxxers and the tinfoil hat brigade afraid of implanted 5G chips...) 

In either case, children should receive the vaccine, as:
- It will exercise their immune systems
- It will further reduce the chance of children's death or the lingering disabilities of "long COVID" (this chance may already be small, depending which strain they catch first)
- It will reduce the chance of them infecting their elderly grandmother or their aunt undergoing chemotherapy, whose immune system may not be as responsive as a younger person's immune system.
- And it will protect baby brother who may be too young to be vaccinated, their cousin with severe allergies, or their other cousin who is an anti-vaxxer
- Even if children don't catch SARS-COV2 in the next year, it is likely to remain in circulation for the long haul (decades), and they are likely to catch it when they are older, and more susceptible.

At this time, the vaccines have not been widely tested in children, pregnant women or infants.
- That is partly because children under 18 cannot be considered to give informed consent for a Phase 3 trial
- Those Phase 3 trials should be started over the next few months to assess the best timetable for childhood vaccination
- This timetable may need to be accelerated if the new strain does affect children more severely

128

General Science / Re: The journey to the red planet: does humanity need Mars colonisation?

« on: 30/12/2020 10:49:10 »

Weren't the earliest European settlers in North America, Vikings, who set foot in a kind of "off the record" way, in the area which roughly corresponds to the modern State of Maine.

Yes, the Vikings did reach Newfoundland in Canada, but did not create a permanent settlement.
- Traveling across the North Atlantic was a rough trip, and resupply was undoubtedly difficult
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows#Pre-European_settlements

However, there were colonists in North America well before the Vikings.
- And the climate was even tougher than for the Vikings, perhaps more like the Inuit face today
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas#Migration_into_the_continents

129

General Science / Re: The journey to the red planet: does humanity need Mars colonisation?

« on: 29/12/2020 21:50:31 »

This continent (North America) is not so difficult to reach and it doesn`t have such a harsh environment and high level of radiation like Mars has

You are talking like someone who lives in North America, or who (last year) could have caught a plane to North America.

I take your point about radiation being higher on Mars, but I think the population of bears, cougars, etc would have been much higher in North America.

It is thought that some of the colonists who populated North America had to wait until an ice age reduced sea levels to the extent that the Bering Strait was dry land (or at least, snow & ice).
- But a lot of Russia and North America would have been covered by thick ice sheets at that time
- Not an easy place to live if you can't grow anything, and the only protection you have is the skin of whatever you can kill (before it killed you)

talking about no way back, it`s a bit odd, if we send crewed mission to the red planet, we will send the crew to die, how they survive there???

Same question about the early colonists of North America.
- The difference is that we can see what the climate is on Mars, through telescopes, and (now) orbiting surveyers and landers.
- All they knew was that life was tough in frozen Russia, and tough in frozen Alaska

130

That CAN'T be true! / Re: I don’t understand physics: does anyone understand physics these days?

« on: 29/12/2020 20:47:29 »

Much the same as rolling a pair of dice.  You cannot predict what number the dice will add up to, at the instant they come to rest...
How can there be any "laws" governing "randomness"?

There are laws of statistics.

If you roll a pair of dice, the total score can be anywhere from 2 (snake eyes) up to 12 (double 6).
- If you roll the die once, you could get any of these
- But if you roll it many times (eg 100 times, or more) you are almost certain to see a 7 more than a 2 or 12
- This is because out of the 36 possible combinations of two dice:
- Only 1 combination gives a 2 = 1+1
- Only 1 combination gives a 12 = 6+6
- But 6 combinations gives a 7 = 6+1=5+2=4+3=3+4=2+5=1+6
- So a 7 is six times more likely than 2 or 12
- So you can predict the outcome of rolling a pair of dice, if you are predicting the results over many experiments.

Just like you can predict the bright and dark bands in the 2-slit experiment, if you run the test over very many photons.

131

New Theories / Re: Oscillant circuits to limit the heating in CPU

« on: 29/12/2020 20:34:32 »

In semiconductor manufacturing, constructing capacitors and inductors consumes much more area than a transistor.

An LC circuit oscillates at one frequency.
- A pure frequency carries no information.
- This is not a good start for a technology often used in "information processing"

Oops! Overlap with Bored Chemist...

132

That CAN'T be true! / Re: FAKE NEWS: Could the covid vaccine affect female fertility?

« on: 29/12/2020 20:29:04 »

mice given a Corona virus vaccine died once contracting the illness.

All mice die.
- Some mice die sooner if they contract a novel virus.
- What makes a successful vaccine is if fewer mice die after taking the vaccine and then are challenged with the novel virus.

An effect where the vaccine causes more mice to die when challenged with the virus was seen on one of the candidate vaccines developed against the original SARS virus (which was also a coronavirus, but a different one).

That's why vaccine developers usually test a vaccine candidate first on mice. If it fails in mice, they don't take it any further.
- it is hard to fully test a vaccine "in the dish", as cells in a petri dish don't usually have enough components of the immune system to demonstrate a robust immune response.

133

COVID-19 / Re: When will we be able to stop wearing face coverings and stop social distancing?

« on: 29/12/2020 08:10:09 »

Do you think that us clever humans will be wiped out by some stupid bit of RNA in a fragile protein coat which can be dissolved by washing our hands with soap!

Maybe not "wiped out", but ebola and the 1918 Flu pandemic managed to kill about 30% of patients.
- That is still enough to decimate an economy and badly damage the society's morale.
- Smallpox was even worse in native populations with no immunity

134

New Theories / Re: Big Bang Theory - How the BBT really works?

« on: 29/12/2020 07:57:14 »

A fast moving proton at CERN has a very clearly higher mass than a proton at rest.
Clearly to whom? To you?

This has been known for a long time. The most powerful accelerators in the 1940s & 1950s were cyclotrons.
- The main problem with these is that as the particles approach the speed of light, their mass increases.
- To keep accelerating the particles despite their increased mass, the Synchrocyclotron reduced the frequency of the AC voltage.
- You can see the experience (and equations) here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrocyclotron

In the history section, you can see that this design was the basis for CERN's first accelerator, in 1952.

E=mc^2 doesn't prove that the object has higher mass as it moves faster

No, but the factor mγ in the above equations does.
- This mass equals the rest-mass of the particle at low speeds
- But rapidly increases above the rest mass as the speed approaches c

135

Technology / Re: New Aerospace company?

« on: 28/12/2020 22:25:59 »

The thing I found most intriguing was the visual implication that they will soon be launching the Hubble Space Telescope.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope

136

General Science / Re: Can we smoke and wear surgical masks?

« on: 28/12/2020 22:21:57 »

Can we punch a hole in our surgical masks so we can smoke in public?

It would be much safer if you enclosed the cigarette entirely within the surgical mask. (This may require one of those masks that has a prow like a ship...)

That way some of your exhaled smoke would be captured by the surgical mask, protecting those around you.
- Unfortunately for you, smoking is one behavior that worsens outcomes for COVID-19 patients.

137

General Science / Re: The journey to the red planet: does humanity need Mars colonisation?

« on: 28/12/2020 21:46:55 »

Does humanity actually need Mars colonization?

You could equally ask: "Did humanity actually need colonization of North America?".
- In "colonization of North America", I include colonization by the ancestors of today's South & Central Americans, today's North American Indians, today's Inuit and the Europeans who followed Christopher Columbus.

But as most people know the journey to this continent is not a piece of cake and it is rather dangerous for the crew of the boats, as well as those who walked. Also, they did not figure out how to solve the food issue to get to the continent and bring the crew back. (Not even mentioning the harsh environment of the continent. To prepare the crew for it will be very costly to invent special clothes or boats.)

You could make the same comments about colonization of Australia or the Pacific Islands.

Same, same...

138

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Does the complex constant (i) represent a ratio of special reciprocity?

« on: 28/12/2020 21:16:06 »

the forces act upon a common particle, have equal strength, act in opposite directions...
Does the result of this condition represent the complex constant (i) as a ratio of force components?

If you are looking at forces which directly oppose one another (ie their directions are 180° apart), then you can set up the problem as a 1-dimensional problem. You can then solve it with negative numbers, rather than complex numbers.
- You add the two forces (one of which is negative), and you come up with an answer (which may be positive or negative)

If, however, you are working with forces that operate in 2 dimensions (eg North-East and West, for example), then you need more than just negative numbers.
- As you say, you could use complex numbers. You add the two forces (at least one of one of which contains i), and you come up with an answer (which may be positive or negative, and may or may not contain i)
- Equivalently, you could break down the forces into x and y components (using sine & cosine), then you add the horizontal and vertical components separately. You come up with an answer (which may be positive or negative in the x component, and may or may not be zero in the y component)
- So, solving this problem using i is entirely optional. Solutions without i are equally feasible.

Fn = Fnxin + Fnyjn + Fnzkn

The attachment uses 3-dirmensional arithmetic, expressed in i, j and k.
These numbers are called Quaternions in 4 dimensions, in some ways a superset of imaginary numbers (in 2 dimensions), which is a superset of real numbers (positive and negative, in 1 dimension).

Like imaginary numbers, where i*i = -1, in Quaternions, i*i = j*j = k*k = -1

But if the forces are in opposite directions, you can solve it in 1 dimension. Don't make it harder for yourself than it needs to be.

It is true that Quaternions have been used in 3-dimensional computer graphics. As I understand it, the calculations are slightly more complex than processing the equivalent vectors of x, y and z components, so in practice, Quaternions are rarely used in computer graphics.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion

Two forces are reciprocal.

Editorial comment: I think you may be using the wrong word here,
- The definition of a reciprocal is that if b is the reciprocal of a, then a*b = 1 (eg the reciprocal of 2 is 1/2 = 0.5. 2*0.5 = 1)
        - This uses the Multiplicative inverse. Reciprocals involve division and multiplication
        - This is not the situation you are describing
- What you are talking about here is an opposing force, and forces add.
         - This uses the Additive inverse. Negation involves adding and subtraction..
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplicative_inverse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_inverse

139

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Which clock is faster: clock in ISS or clock in geostationary satellite?

« on: 28/12/2020 11:13:15 »

If it's really cheap, why wouldn't they?

Because today, optical clocks are large, complex, fragile and temperamental. Operational lifetimes are measured in hours, not years.

Optical Clock experiments over the past decade look very promising, but they are not yet considered a reliable or reproducible replacement for ground-based atomic clocks, let alone satellite-based clocks.

140

New Theories / Re: Big Bang Theory - How the BBT really works?

« on: 28/12/2020 11:02:39 »

It's positive mass that is repelled by negative mass, not the other way around.

What happened to "Every Action has an equal and opposite Reaction"?

If "positive mass is repelled by negative mass", ie Force < 0 or repulsion
Then "negative mass must also be repelled by positive mass", ie Force < 0 or repulsion
...which violates the quoted assertion about "not the other way around".

In reality, while we have firm evidence for antimatter, we do not (as yet) have firm evidence for negative mass.
- The common expectation amongst Physicists seems to be that an antimatter particle has exactly the same mass as it's matter counterpart (ie positive mass)
- One way of seeing this is through E=mc²
- It is known that a matter particle and its antimatter counterpart have exactly the same energy E (which is positive)
- The speed of light c is positive, as is c²
- The mass of a particle or its antimatter counterpart is E/c² = +/+, which is > 0
- But the current experiments at the LHC will confirm or disprove this expectation.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass