Seemingly crazy scientific ideas

[NoXion]

I've actually had people respond to that by saying "If the ground is applying force to me, then why am I not flying up into the air?" It's sickening.

*Desperately tries to remember Newtonian Mechanics* Isn't the answer to that question "because your body is applying equal(?) force to counteract that of the ground"?

At least that's the way I've thought of it. I think I understand Newtonian mechanics intuitively, but can't explicitly express my understanding of it. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are another matter entirely. I understand some concepts in those fields, but others I completely fail to grasp. I'm hoping that improving my ability at maths will help me to understand Relativity and QM better.

[Terralthra]

If I recall correctly, in this case, the ground's force on the bottom of your feet is the reaction force. It directly and equally opposes the force you exert downward on the ground due to gravity.

Also, at that site.

[General Soontir Fel]

If I recall correctly, in this case, the ground's force on the bottom of your feet is the reaction force. It directly and equally opposes the force you exert downward on the ground due to gravity.

Also, at that site.

The action and reaction forces are applied to different bodies. That's another of those things beginning physics students often have trouble grasping.

The ground's normal force on your feet counteracts the gravitational pull of the Earth, so the net vertical force on your body is zero.

[Twoyboy]

I may have to learn how to draw a picture here to explain this one.

In high school physics we had a question on a test which asked what several scales would measure with different arrangements of strung weights. One had two 10kg weights at either end of a string with the scale in the middle. It was strung over two beams, so the weights were hanging vertically from either side and the scale was horizontal in the middle. I'm not sure too many people got the right answer, but when told it was 10kg, we fought black and blue with the teacher until she actually set the damn thing up and showed us.

That was the day I realised that I was not as smart as I thought I was.

The magnet thing always used to get me when I was a kid as well. How can it keep itself up like that with no energy source? It wasn't until I learned that it wasn't actually expending any energy because W = F.s that I finally understood. I've always wanted to argue with one of these "magnets are the key to over unity" guys who say magnets have the ability to do work without expending energy (yes, I have actually seen that explanation) and ask them whether sticky tape and Velcro have the same ability.

[Kuroneko]

I've always thought of relativity as just another kind of geometry. It's very intuitive that way; the main difference only that the analogue of the Pythagorean theorem gets a minus sign: distances are calculated through c² = a²-b² instead of c² = a²+b².

An idea that seemed crazy to me at first, however, was that one can have non-trivial topological and geometrical structure in a space that has no points whatsoever. My first thought upon encountering it was that the author was simply playing a formal game: describing geometry in terms of an algebra, deforming the algebra in a way that removes the points, and calling the resulting structure a "geometry." It seemed to be just an matter of names. But the 'crazy' part comes into play with the realization that we just might be living in such a space! The quantization of classical system already involves deforming the phase space in just such a manner, and there are some expectations that a working theory of quantum gravity will do so to spacetime itself. And it just might be insane enough to work.

[Darth Wong]

Preface: I honestly swear that I am not making this up. Some guy actually came to me once with this idea:

Suppose you put a bunch of wind turbines on the front of an electric car. Couldn't they recharge the batteries of the car from the wind as it moves, so that it can go forever?

After half an hour of arguing with the guy, he ended up saying "Well, we'll have to agree to disagree" and walked away

As I said, the simplest concepts seem to boggle the average person's mind.

[Twoyboy]

Preface: I honestly swear that I am not making this up. Some guy actually came to me once with this idea:

Suppose you put a bunch of wind turbines on the front of an electric car. Couldn't they recharge the batteries of the car from the wind as it moves, so that it can go forever?

After half an hour of arguing with the guy, he ended up saying "Well, we'll have to agree to disagree" and walked away

As I said, the simplest concepts seem to boggle the average person's mind.

That's classic. I once was involved in an argument with a guy who thought he could put a big fan on a sailing boat and use it to blow into the sail to push the boat along.

[Singular Intellect]

At a guess, I'd say that the majority of the population does not understand how it can be possible to apply force to something without doing any work on it.

As I recall, your example of this was a person pushing on a massive wall. They're applying force to it, but not doing any actualy work.

Although that does bring up a question...taking that specific example, if a person applies force to a wall, aren't they applying pressure with their hands, and therefore increasing the temperature at that point (however little), thus some work is being done?

No. His efficiency is zero. All of the energy he uses in this process is wasted as heat, without any real work being done. All he's doing is converting sugar to waste heat.

I suppose if you tried to rationalize the person as a heater, then he's doing work. Heaters are the only 100% efficient device we have, because they're the only kind of device where waste heat is actually considered useful.

Ah, that makes perfect sense and clarifies it beautifully Mike. Thanks.

[Singular Intellect]

Preface: I honestly swear that I am not making this up. Some guy actually came to me once with this idea:

Suppose you put a bunch of wind turbines on the front of an electric car. Couldn't they recharge the batteries of the car from the wind as it moves, so that it can go forever?

After half an hour of arguing with the guy, he ended up saying "Well, we'll have to agree to disagree" and walked away

As I said, the simplest concepts seem to boggle the average person's mind.

That's classic. I once was involved in an argument with a guy who thought he could put a big fan on a sailing boat and use it to blow into the sail to push the boat along.

I remember thinking of moving objects in a similiar manner. When I was six.

[Twoyboy]

That's classic. I once was involved in an argument with a guy who thought he could put a big fan on a sailing boat and use it to blow into the sail to push the boat along.

I remember thinking of moving objects in a similiar manner. When I was six.

Yes, I believe Wile E. Coyote used the idea too. It kind of gives away the level of intellect you're arguing with.

[Ariphaos]

An idea that seemed crazy to me at first, however, was that one can have non-trivial topological and geometrical structure in a space that has no points whatsoever. My first thought upon encountering it was that the author was simply playing a formal game: describing geometry in terms of an algebra, deforming the algebra in a way that removes the points, and calling the resulting structure a "geometry." It seemed to be just an matter of names. But the 'crazy' part comes into play with the realization that we just might be living in such a space! The quantization of classical system already involves deforming the phase space in just such a manner, and there are some expectations that a working theory of quantum gravity will do so to spacetime itself. And it just might be insane enough to work.

Could you go into this more? I've heard mention of this (well, that space may not be what we think it is) but it's always been extremely vague, but thinking about it I'm quite intrigued by the idea.

[Darth Wong]

To be honest, I gave up trying to understand leading-edge cosmology a long time ago. I work with practical stuff; that kind of research I happily leave to the professionals, and take little interest in as a matter of course. That's not to say that any specific part of it is necessarily mind-blowing, but once you get beyond a certain point, nothing is intuitive anyway. It's all abstract models which can't be distilled into something relevant to personal experience or practical application, so one has to do an awful lot of mental work for, well, little gain. Let's be realistic; in order to gain real comprehension of the more esoteric physics concepts, it is not enough to read Stephen Hawking's plain-English descriptions; one has to become proficient with the calculations and do a lot of hard work, and it's just not worth it, at least not for me.

I know that's an unpopular sentiment on a sci-fi board, where people would rather wiki-bluff cosmological knowledge than admit they don't care to do the hard work necessary to follow it. But I don't like pretending to be anything I'm not, and I'm not a cosmology expert. Moreover, I know just enough physics to realize how much work it would take to follow this shit in earnest. I'll point it out when some wiki-bluffer makes a really obvious error in the subject due to sloth, but that's it.

PS. Can I trademark "wiki-bluff?" Or did somebody else come up with it first? I finally came up with a word to describe what I see so very often on the Internet.

[Adrian Laguna]

I've had people stare at me skeptically when I try to explain to them that there is no centrifugal force in rotating objects/systems, rather the force is called centripetal and it pushes/pulls in. It's even harder to get through to people if they've been on spinning carnival rides or rollercoasters, because they've felt themselves being pulled outward. Maybe I should try to point out that one can "feel" gravity pulling down, except what one is really feeling is the ground pushing up.

[Ariphaos]

To be honest, I gave up trying to understand leading-edge cosmology a long time ago. I work with practical stuff; that kind of research I happily leave to the professionals, and take little interest in as a matter of course. That's not to say that any specific part of it is necessarily mind-blowing, but once you get beyond a certain point, nothing is intuitive anyway. It's all abstract models which can't be distilled into something relevant to personal experience or practical application, so one has to do an awful lot of mental work for, well, little gain.

It's just a personal interest of mine. Originally I wanted to get into astrophysics but then found out there was no money in it. I realize my mistake in thinking that, now. An astrophysicist (or any profession) who can program is worth a lot more than a programmer with no other skills.

That said, some of the stuff can be applied to actually useful physical models that we can learn from. It took a few decades to get something seriously useful out of quantum mechanics, and a few more decades for it to completely reshape our world - no one in the early 20th century had any remote comprehension of how far computers could take us, or so fast.

Let's be realistic; in order to gain real comprehension of the more esoteric physics concepts, it is not enough to read Stephen Hawking's plain-English descriptions; one has to become proficient with the calculations and do a lot of hard work, and it's just not worth it, at least not for me.

This is also true of general relativity and quantum mechanics. These things were of little practical use to us a century ago. Now the livelihood of billions of people depends, in some small part, of several thousand people understanding these topics well enough to apply them. The same goes for your profession and just about any real science degree.

I know that's an unpopular sentiment on a sci-fi board, where people would rather wiki-bluff cosmological knowledge than admit they don't care to do the hard work necessary to follow it. But I don't like pretending to be anything I'm not, and I'm not a cosmology expert. Moreover, I know just enough physics to realize how much work it would take to follow this shit in earnest.

If someone's (like mine) primary interest in these subjects is for fictional writing, what other course is there, besides a solid general education and Google-bluffing instead (and the occasional visit to the library)?

I can pore over texts and get a general feel for how far materials science can go. I can do basic equations and do some fancy algebra where needed, like calculate the appropriate taper for a space elevator for a material with a tensile strength of 12 gigapascals and run the basic cooling equation to roughly tell how big of heat spreader I'd need.

Do I really need to know what effects a specific impurity will cause in a material? Beyond say, doping, of course, I would get very little benefit from such a thing if writing about it in fiction.

I'll point it out when some wiki-bluffer makes a really obvious error in the subject due to sloth, but that's it.

PS. Can I trademark "wiki-bluff?" Or did somebody else come up with it first? I finally came up with a word to describe what I see so very often on the Internet.

Well, wikibluff.com and wiki-bluff.com are both available.

Google would claim you're first.

[Kuroneko]

I don't follow the physics, but I do follow the mathematics, and non-commutative geometry is pretty hot nowadays. Most of the motivation for it is more than six decades old or more: Weyl quantization was done in the 1920s; it just took that long before mathematicians had enough tools to analyze just what happens when the same thing Weyl (and others) were doing to physical systems was done to nigh-arbitrary mathematical spaces.

I think anyone that has read a decent book on classical mechanics and another book on quantum mechanics will recognize almost all of these terms, if not their particular names--certainly everything on the right-hand column, sans C-star algebra.

Code: Select all

*               ___TM tangent bundle    (Lagrangian L(q;q';t) is L:TM×R-->R,
*              /           ^             a func. on tangent bundle and time)
*             /            |
*manifold ___/    Legendre transformation   (Hamiltonian H(p;q;t) is an
*   M        \             |λ(q;q')=(p;q)    observable corr. to energy)
*             \            v                              
*              \___T^*M cotangent bundle ___ Classical observables: smooth
*                     aka. phase space      functions f:T^*M×R-->R, forming
*               (or any symplectic manifold)    a commutative C^*-algebra
*                                                     |
*                                                     | algebric deformation
*                                                     | [p,q] = i.hbar (phys.
*                                                     | "Weyl quantization")
*                                                     |
*            Quantized phase space,   <~~~~~~ Quantum observables, now a
*         with non-commutative geometry       non-commutative C^*-algebra
*        (crazy people try to work here)              ^
*                                                     | *-isomorphism
*                                                     v
*                                   Bounded operators on some Hilbert space
*                                           (sane people work here)

As an outline, the only difference with undergraduate physics is that undergraduate physics doesn't care that the phase space is related to some manifold and about the exact algebraic structure of their operators; most of quantization would be skipped, jumping almost directly to the Hilbert spaces.

Xeriar, I can go into more detail into C^*-algebras and how they relate to spaces if you like; just tell me how much topology and algebra you're familiar with.

[edit: search&replace replaced a bit too much. Corrected bracket.]

[Darth Wong]

This is also true of general relativity and quantum mechanics. These things were of little practical use to us a century ago. Now the livelihood of billions of people depends, in some small part, of several thousand people understanding these topics well enough to apply them. The same goes for your profession and just about any real science degree.

Somewhere along the line, you seem to have gotten the impression that I'm saying it's totally useless. I'm not. What I am saying is that it would take a lot of work to be functionally up to speed on this material, and it's not worth it for me, since I don't do it for a living.

If someone's (like mine) primary interest in these subjects is for fictional writing, what other course is there, besides a solid general education and Google-bluffing instead (and the occasional visit to the library)?

Well, to be honest, if you're just writing sci-fi, it seems silly to try and understand these subjects. It seems like you're much more likely to learn just enough to sound authoritative while not really being fluent in the material at all.

I can pore over texts and get a general feel for how far materials science can go. I can do basic equations and do some fancy algebra where needed, like calculate the appropriate taper for a space elevator for a material with a tensile strength of 12 gigapascals and run the basic cooling equation to roughly tell how big of heat spreader I'd need.

Do I really need to know what effects a specific impurity will cause in a material? Beyond say, doping, of course, I would get very little benefit from such a thing if writing about it in fiction.

Frankly, I don't see how much benefit dilettante-level knowledge has in writing fiction. It seems to me that it would only give you enough confidence to include discussions of the material in your stories, with a pretty good likelihood of getting something wrong.

I'll point it out when some wiki-bluffer makes a really obvious error in the subject due to sloth, but that's it.

PS. Can I trademark "wiki-bluff?" Or did somebody else come up with it first? I finally came up with a word to describe what I see so very often on the Internet.

Well, wikibluff.com and wiki-bluff.com are both available.

Google would claim you're first.

Cool!

[Darth Servo]

PS. Can I trademark "wiki-bluff?" Or did somebody else come up with it first? I finally came up with a word to describe what I see so very often on the Internet.

Well, wikibluff.com and wiki-bluff.com are both available.

Google would claim you're first.

Cool!

Why not make an article in the wiki here?

[Ariphaos]

Somewhere along the line, you seem to have gotten the impression that I'm saying it's totally useless. I'm not. What I am saying is that it would take a lot of work to be functionally up to speed on this material, and it's not worth it for me, since I don't do it for a living.

Apologies, then.

Frankly, I don't see how much benefit dilettante-level knowledge has in writing fiction. It seems to me that it would only give you enough confidence to include discussions of the material in your stories, with a pretty good likelihood of getting something wrong.

I've certainly learned my lesson on that front, thanks in part to these forums.

Discussing the material is a bad trap, on several levels. Aside from the boredom factor, it's an attempt at showing off research, which, as you say, can easily prove incorrect (for example, I recently learned that assuming 126 is a magic number for protons is not a great idea).

But if you avoid serious discussion about stuff you don't really know much about, you can include what you've learned in the background, and what you get wrong can be forgiven. I smirked half through Clarke's 2001 about "computer costs" (and a lot of other things) but it did not detract significantly from the work.

Why not make an article in the wiki here?

For the same reason "just fucking google it" is it's own site. Instead, we would link to something like 'quitwikibluffing.com' or whatnot. I've met at least one person I'd use it on.

As in, I know a guy who, during an argument, would seriously pick a random wikipedia subject and try to impress you with his ability to read it.

Xeriar, I can go into more detail into C^*-algebras and how they relate to spaces if you like; just tell me how much topology and algebra you're familiar with.

I've taken ordinary differential equations, linear algebra and introductory analysis, but that was nearly a decade ago. The notation in your code segment there a bit unfamiliar, though. : /

As for topology, I know what it is. Several of my courses touched briefly on it but nothing I could really apply (at least that I remember).

If that's not too much of a limitation I'm willing to learn, of course (though this probably belongs in a new thread).

[Shroom Man 777]

Making a wikia to categorize wikipedia-bullshit would be ingenious.

Um...I am an idiot. Why wouldn't an electric fan-sail movement machine not work?

[TimothyC]

Making a wikia to categorize wikipedia-bullshit would be ingenious.

Um...I am an idiot. Why wouldn't an electric fan-sail movement machine not work?

Because the fan would be pulling the ship backward as it pushes the air forward. If you're going to use a fan, just turn the damn thing around and use it to push you (while dropping the sail to cut your drag).

[JointStrikeFighter]

Making a wikia to categorize wikipedia-bullshit would be ingenious.

Um...I am an idiot. Why wouldn't an electric fan-sail movement machine not work?

The fan facing forwards blowing onto the sail would try to push the boat backwards whilst the air hitting the sail would try to push it forwards silly.

Propulsive efficiencies make me think the boat would go backwards though.

[Shroom Man 777]

So the boat would go backwards to the shore? That's good, since I hate the sea.

Man, I can be such an idiot.

[Singular Intellect]

Making a wikia to categorize wikipedia-bullshit would be ingenious.

Um...I am an idiot. Why wouldn't an electric fan-sail movement machine not work?

For the same reason you and your buddies can't push a car into motion while sitting in it, even though you easily have the potential energy to move it.

[Xon]

I've always thought of relativity as just another kind of geometry. It's very intuitive that way; the main difference only that the analogue of the Pythagorean theorem gets a minus sign: distances are calculated through c² = a²-b² instead of c² = a²+b².

I don't have a very solid understanding of higher mathmatics having only done upto 2nd-order ordinary differential equations(last maths unit I took, really didnt have the work-ethic at the time to continue beyond that), but I'm aware of some of the beyond that.

I know modern maths gets stupidly complex too, but hard work and not giving up on lack of progress advances the field. It is one of the reasons I can't stand Cthulhu mythos wankers(apparently entry level calc causes sanity lose and permanent brain damage in that setting) and other settings like it.

[Zixinus]

As far as actually mind-blowing results, I find it absolutely incredible that we know enough about planetary mechanics that we can throw an object across the solar system and have it arrive to the second.

Clarke had a very amusing story about that one. "Jupiter Five". Try to get it in case you didn't read it.