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Originally posted by DJ Shibby It's a bunch of bullshit designed half-assedly to solve holes in an already holey system. They're stuck on the idea that we're all waves and orbits. In 10 to 20 years there will be a whole new set of criteria for the beginning of the universe, matter, and time. This one, though, is out now, IMO.

That isn't the point. Are you really that dense? Everyday in class we had it beat into our heads that what we were learning and doing has absolutely no bearing on the real world. They're just mathematical models that happen to fairly accurately describe and predict physical phenomena. No more no less. We don't believe the models because we know they will be replaced sooner or later. Hopefully sooner rather than later but that takes brave intelligent people willing to do the work instead of complain and call it bullshit and half assed.

Think about that for a minute when you're enjoying all of the technology that makes your life so easy you have the time to be apathetic about breakthroughs in science instead breaking your back in the fields for 12+ hours a day and dying at the age of 25.

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Originally posted by Zild That isn't the point. Are you really that dense? Everyday in class we had it beat into our heads that what we were learning and doing has absolutely no bearing on the real world. They're just mathematical models that happen to fairly accurately describe and predict physical phenomena. No more no less. We don't believe the models because we know they will be replaced sooner or later. Hopefully sooner rather than later but that takes brave intelligent people willing to do the work instead of complain and call it bullshit and half assed. Think about that for a minute when you're enjoying all of the technology that makes your life so easy you have the time to be apathetic about breakthroughs in science instead breaking your back in the fields for 12+ hours a day and dying at the age of 25.

I meant essentially what you just said.

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby It's a bunch of bullshit designed half-assedly to solve holes in an already holey system.

And the problem is...?

They're going to either fix the hole or make sense of what's wrong with it. That's science

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby There is no theory of everything, ever.

And you're saying that based on...?

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby Eh, people need to believe/have faith in something.

Could you please elaborate? We're talking about believing in a theory, right?

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Originally posted by Fir3start3r Can a second be used to quantify anything to do with black holes?

Yes. If you are inside the black hole, no.

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby Sounds good, except that all "four" forces don't really exist, and are merely temporary placeholders to describe what actually is. They used to believe that four elements controlled the universe, and apparently four is a really popular number for describing this sort of shit, cause it sticks. There is no theory of everything, ever. It's make believe scientific religious jargon to keep moving in the direction we're going, instead of exploring new directions, because we are creatures of comfort. Eh, people need to believe/have faith in something.

The four forces do exist because we can measure them. Whatever can be measured exists. Where you get the idea that scientists conspire to use the number 4 for all their opinions is also beyond me. The only part I might agree with you on is the possible impossibility of a "unified theory of physics". Godel's Incompleteness Theory would say no mathematical system is complete. Whatever new directions you're talking about, I wouldn't know. But what I do know is that scientists are always pushing the envelope because guess what? The most current theories are only on paper. That means it's all imagination and nothing can limit the imagination, especially of minds like Einstein's, Newton's, Hawking, and many others thinking as we speak.

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Originally posted by Shakka Don't black holes technically have infinite gravity?

Sustainable black holes, yes. Anything potentially created in a collider like the LHC will be so small that it's gravity will not be anything close to that of something found out in space, so it will evaporate almost instantly.

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby I meant essentially what you just said.

...but he doesn't take it for granted.

good for him. good for everybody willing to at least try and get to the bottom (if there is a bottom ) of what perplexes us.

good for you too...just stay out of the way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby It's a bunch of bullshit designed half-assedly to solve holes in an already holey system.

Solving holes is a holey system is the very essense of the progress of normal science. There is nothing "bullshit" or "half-assed" about it at all.

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They're stuck on the idea that we're all waves and orbits.

No they're not. Nobody seriously believes that an electron in a hydrogen atom orbits the nucleus in the same way a planet orbits a sun. It's just a convenient, apprehensible way of portraying the patterns of electron distribution in the atomic system.

As for the idea that we're all waves, I'm not sure where you've got that from. M-theory posits that matter is a consequence of vibrating "strings", but conventional physics - so far as I know - still operates under the theory of point particle physics, which may well be wrong but certainly does not posit that we are all "waves and orbits".

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In 10 to 20 years there will be a whole new set of criteria for the beginning of the universe, matter, and time.

And?

Whenever someone raises this argument against the scientific method, I'm quite fond of pointing them in the direction of this essay by Isaac Asimov:

http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScie...vityofWrong.htm

The progress of science isn't so much a history of Kuhnian revolutions, where old theories are found to be "wrong" and dramatically discarded in favour of a new, unrelated theory, so much as it is a process of gradual refinement and precision. Newtonian physics was eventually displaced by Einsteinian phsyics, but is that to say that Newtonian physics was "wrong"? No, not at all. Newtonian physics is still "correct" enough to accurately explain the behaviour of bodies in orbit under most conditions. It just happens that Einsteinian physics can explain this behaviour even more correctly.

Same story with general relativity and quantum mechanics now. They reflect - with extreme accuracy and predictive power - the behaviour of objects on both the smallest and largest scales. It is only under very extreme conditions (objects travelling 99%+ the speed of light, temperatures of those experienced in the immediate aftermath of the big-bang etc.) that the theories break down. But is not to say that they are "wrong" by any meaningful definition of the word: they're just not as "correct" as the succeeding theory will be.

To quote from that essay:

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When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

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Sounds good, except that all "four" forces don't really exist, and are merely temporary placeholders to describe what actually is.

But they do exist. They may be four facets of the same unquantified (as yet) unified force, but these forces do explain and predict the behaviour of particles with almost unfailing accuracy. Saying that they "don't really exist" or that they are just "placeholders" just betrays, I think, a misunderstanding on your part of what a scientific theory actually is.

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They used to believe that four elements controlled the universe, and apparently four is a really popular number for describing this sort of shit, cause it sticks.

Are you seriously suggesting that they arrived at these four forces for completely arbitrary reasons (in the same way Iraneus reached the conclusion that there must only be four Gospels because there are only four elements and four seasons)? They arrived at four forces (three of them now, I believe, unified into a single larger theory) because that was the number of unique forces that they observed. Scientific theories become "dominant pardigms" (to again use the language of Kuhn) not as the result of mere sophistry, but because they pass rigurous tests of empirical deduction. To deny the conclusion of a well-suported scientific theory is to deny the nature of reality as it can be most accurately measured.

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There is no theory of everything, ever. It's make believe scientific religious jargon to keep moving in the direction we're going, instead of exploring new directions, because we are creatures of comfort.

This is just epistemic nihilism. Either we exist in a reality that can be quantified with ever increasing precision or reality is an illusion perpetually beyond our grasp. The latter view, needless to say, is nothing but solopsism. If that's what you choose to believe then good luck with that, but I'd like to see you employ that world-view as a universal maxim rather then only employing it when it suits your argument. There's a wall there next to you that science wrongly classifies as a system of "waves and orbits": why not go walk through it and prove them all wrong?

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Eh, people need to believe/have faith in something.

Such as the belief that one has a greater insight into the nature of the universe than all the world's scientific minds put together?

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Originally posted by Zild It hurts my brain too and I took quantum mechanics. I can do the math but I definitely don't understand it. I think it is the same for most everyone who knows quantum.

"if you think you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics"

Richard Feynman.

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In Laymans Terms:

We as educated people of the real world around us actually have no bearing or clue as to the vast multi-complexities of the universe; The search for the Boson or Higgs Particle merely gives way to showing how even the smartest are still searching for an answer as to where we really are.

Point being, humans are still searching.


Side notes for the not so layman:

Quantum Mechanics more specifically Quantum Electro Dynamics depends upon a ground state or the quantum harmonic oscillations, or the Free Energy Field, aka the aether, which is proven by the Casimir effect.

This background energy state exists @ any point in spacetime across the entire known universe (Theory) For all we know some place out there might defy all laws we currently are capable of comprehending with human intelligence.

That does not mean though that the quantum field or virtual particles which are now proven to exist are not existing here in our very region of spacetime. Nikola Tesla , Thomas Henry Moray, Nathan Stubblefield, Paul Dirac, and many more knew about the aether, even Einstein acknowledge the existence of the aether.

When I say aether I mean the quantum field that exists @ any point in spacetime. This field has become known recently as the Zero Point Energy field. Essentially this complex nature of this all pervasive field is required to explain the casimir effect. . ..Some where though in the 1887 this aether was left to die, as Einstein's theory of spacetime took hold, and math was all nice and geometrically pretty.

Quantum Field Theory though has given light to the aether that has once been forgotten. . . There is some conspiracy out there that speaks of how the aether was given up due to commercialism and corporate greed which saught to remain in control of the energy distribution; aka assert dominance over the people, to enslave them into a world of supplying finite amounts of energy at a premium price.

You can go and look at the History of Nikola Tesla, and what went down with JP Morgan, that is on area to start with. Next look @ Thomas Henry Moray who was shot @ in his own lab for doing experiments which provided a means of attaining energy @ any point on the globe.

The truth is though the commercial business of selling energy to people does not want to die, nor has the well established businesses who sit fat on the hog change their ways. Since the early 1900's the corporate world has ruled the globe, those who really saught to change that were killed by the ruling greedy people.

This is the world we live in currently, where revolutionary ideas are squelched at the price of a fake money systems. Live it up while you can, you greedy mother ******s, keep killing off the revolutionary people who keep spreading around the ideas, for you can kill a person but you can never kill his/her ideas!


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"Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic! If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic — and this we know it is, for certain — then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature." ~Nikola Tesla

Even if we find the answer to the "Higg's Particle", there will just be another question to take it place. The "Theory of Everything" may be unattainable...

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Gödel's incompleteness theorems In mathematical logic, Gödel's incompleteness theorems, proved by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are two theorems stating inherent limitations of all but the most trivial formal systems for arithmetic of mathematical interest. The theorems are also of considerable importance to the philosophy of mathematics. They are widely regarded as showing that Hilbert's program to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all of mathematics is impossible, thus giving a negative answer to Hilbert's second problem. Authors such as J. R. Lucas have argued that the theorems have implications in wider areas of philosophy and even cognitive science as well as preventing any complete theory of everything from being found in physics, but these claims are less generally accepted.

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