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Originally posted by Durafei I may sound arrogant myself, but believe it or not, co-op students are often smarter than management at those corporations. Obviously management gets pissed off... I was lucky enough to spend my last 3 work-terms at a company where management consisted of smart people. Some of my friends weren't so lucky. Their management often forced them to do really stupid things. No wonder hi-tech is in such shit right now... Too many people especially in high-management got too much money for doing nothing !

Sorry, didn't mean any disrespect to you Durafei, just got pissed off, and no you don't sound arrogant to me... I agree, a lot of co-op students are smarter than the management, management people can be complete idiots sometimes (most of the time). I've always held to the belief that "business" trained people with no engineering background should never be allowed to manage a team of engineers.

Miscommunication is a lame excuse, Dr. Z., I'm not letting you off the hook that easily. I probably picked up on 10% of what you said because the other 90% was still in your ass. But I'll drop the subject if you will.

Anyway, back to original topic, I'm actually not at U of T, I'm at Queen's (guess the Toronto is misleading, but that's where I'm from). You know what though, that name sounds kind of familiar, I'm not sure why... (maybe a getting-in party after HS?) but I probably don't know him, sorry.

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Originally posted by DigiNut Miscommunication is a lame excuse, Dr. Z., I'm not letting you off the hook that easily. I probably picked up on 10% of what you said because the other 90% was still in your ass. But I'll drop the subject if you will.

No wonder our communication fails...

Dr. Z since you are taking physics in Uni, ask one of your profs, see what they say and also read "Hyperspace" it's very good and a prof in the states wrote it. He talks how through string theory (mentioned earlier) and other theories (if proven correct) might be used to unify the laws of physics (ei Unified field theory, which is what Stephen Hawkin is trying to do I think) and in unifying those laws things that might seem completely unattainable might be even within reach. Nothing is impossible. It's just we don't know enough about the universe to make it possible as of right now. That doesn't completely disprove that it still could be possible later on.

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Und ich tanz einfach weiter...

i'm sure the true understanding of the universe is far simpler than the human equation .. maybe we're just making it more complicated than it needs to be ..

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Palm Trees > Pine Trees , Sand > Snow

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Originally posted by dEsidEL i'm sure the true understanding of the universe is far simpler than the human equation .. maybe we're just making it more complicated than it needs to be ..

If what they say in their ads are true, one can apparently achieve this by having a Fruitopia.

Today we had a guest speaker in one of our classes, ... I forget his name. But he is the top Canadian physicist under the age of 40. Some man in his 30s, and he got some distinction for doing research in the string theory.

So he did a seminar on string theory. I was like the whole time. One of things he said:
There is a 8km radius particle accelerator near Geneva that is presently studying the string theory. If they can find the existance of some property of the fudemental string particles, then they will have some proof in favor of the string theory.. etc. Then he said, the string theory will bridge the cap between particle motion (mechanics) and qunatum mechanics. That is pretty impressive considering the differences in the two concepts. I can't wait to see what happens next!

See? And about Wormholes being impossible because of something to do with "altering dimensions". A wormhole is just a tear in space/time and supposedly if one were to look at the fabric of the universe, what it is made up of it would not be "smooth" as some people think but instead rippled, filled with holes, ei wormholes, these bridge the gap between universes (at least that's what the theory says).

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Und ich tanz einfach weiter...

Well he didn't mention anything about wormholes. Strings are the fundemental elementary particles that make up all matter/some energy. I dont really see how this can be applied to wormholes.

that's right , there's no such thing as wormholes .. only hyperspace ..

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Palm Trees > Pine Trees , Sand > Snow

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Originally posted by Dr. Z Well he didn't mention anything about wormholes. Strings are the fundemental elementary particles that make up all matter/some energy. I dont really see how this can be applied to wormholes.

Alright, I've looked up what I can to try and refresh my memory and make as much sense as I can here... so listen up...

Look up something called "quantum foam." It's very closely related to string theory. The existence of quantum foam -has- been supported by evidence, although perhaps not conclusively proven. The key points (to the best of my knowledge) are the following:

1) The laws of thermodynamics were cited earlier to contradict the concept of wormholes; however, the laws of thermodynamics do not apply on a quantum level. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle basically proves this. Read on...

2) Space (i.e. a vacuum) is not technically "nothing." On a macroscopic level it is nothing, but on a quantum level it is really theorized to be an infinite number of quantum 'virtual' particles which exist for tiny amounts of time. I guess this is sort of like matter/antimatter here, but anyway, these particles collectively are referred to as quantum foam.

3) The virtual particles require some sort of energy to come into existence, and after a fraction of time it has to "give the energy back" and disappear again. Think of stretching out a rubber band, you give it potential elastic energy but eventually it will go back to the way it was and the energy will be lost. This isn't a very good analogy but it's the best I can think of, and if you look at it this way you can kind of understand why it's called a "foam." Since they come and go, and return the energy they use, energy and entropy laws still apply on a macroscopic level.

4) The more energy a virtual particle has, the shorter its lifespan. Creating this energy would be pretty hard for us, but not so hard for a black hole. As with the big bang theory, this magnitude of energy might be enough to make a 'virtual' particle become 'real' in the sense of existing for a very very long time (billions of years, perhaps...).

5) Maybe you can see where this is going - if we consider that the possibility that the quantum bubbles are actually tiny universes, then it could be said that the big bang caused one of these bubbles to grow huge and become our universe (which is a pretty good explanation for why the universe is considered to be constantly expanding).

6) If one quantum bubble became our universe and there were an infinite number of quantum particles to begin with... well, there's your answer. The question, then, is would it be possible to travel from one to another? The hypothetical answer is a wormhole. If someone would have asked me to explain why I related black holes to wormholes (rather than dissing my post), I would have said that some people consider a wormhole to be nothing but a microscopic ("quantum size") black hole. Smaller black holes cause worse distortion in space, but obviously have less energy and cannot affect as much mass. There's no telling what might happen with one of these infinitessimal black holes (wormholes), but we're never going to just get "sucked into" one, because of their size.

7) The book I mentioned, Timeline, was based largely on these principles (of which #1-4 I can assure you are very real and accepted by many people, and #5-6 have never been proven nor disproven). The fiction in this book was a technology that would somehow shrink something to such a small size that it would actually get sucked through one of these wormholes.

I didn't come up with most of this. Stephen Hawking did. I don't claim any credit whatsoever for this information. If you still don't believe me, then I will point you here. I haven't had time to go over many of the sites on that list, but it's a good place to go if you're looking for scientific information and not just wild speculation. A lot of the sites there are based at universities, so they are not easily dismissed...

i think people today are too occupied with "what-ifs" to live in the here and now... why are you people speculating about useless garbage like quantum foam and wormholes? (not to mention time travel)

OK i'm about to type up quite a bit, it's taken from a book (michael crichton novel, in fact), but it will do infinitely better than any sort of explanation i can give.

if anyone's read the Lost World, you'll recognize this... IMO the best and most moving passage in the book.

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"Are you listening to all that?" Thorne said "I wouldn't take any of it too seriously. It's just theories. Human beings can't help making them, but the fact is that theories are just fantasies. And they change. When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogiston. You know what it is? No? Well, it doesn't matter, because it wasn't real anyway. They also believed that four humours controlled behavior. And they believed that the earth was only a few thousand years old. Now we believe the earth is four billion years old, and we believe in photons and electrons, and we think human behavior is controlled by things like ego and self-esteem. We think those beliefs are more scientific and better."

"Aren't they?"

Thorne shrugged. "They're still just fantasies. They're not real. Have you ever seen a self-esteem? Can you bring me one on a plate? How about a photon? Can you bring me one of those?"

Kelly shook her head. "No, but..."

"And you never will, because those things don't exist. No matter how seriously people take them," Thorne said. "A hundred years from now, people will look back at us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies." Thorne shook his head. "And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. You see all of us together? That's real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else."
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werd.