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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Base: Meaning is an interesting word. Our newly found discoveries about the universe. Does it MEAN anything? I leave that up to Mike and Largo and PSP.
Whoa. . . don't ask me, pal. I dunno. I'm surfing.
I agree, the image is beautiful, mysterious, awe-inspiring, Base. I don't dismiss it. On the other hand, I've recently had the chance to renew my exposure to Picasso's Guernica, and it too does something to me that I can't explain conceptually. It reminds me of the worst experiences I had in a combat zone. It is terrible, and it is also awe-inspiring, Base. What does it mean?
You are a closet poet, Base.
BB: Instead why not tell us how science has made you a better person.
:-)
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Amazon says the release date is Tuesay, Sept. 9
That's tomorrow!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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ps, my pattern recognition software still tells me the galaxy patterns still looks like neuron patterns.
of course it does, we make pictures that please us...
this is a part of MikeL's point of the dependence of our perceptions (including scientific ones) on what we "like" (what pleases us...).
what is an actual image, anyway?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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i wish i could find a picture of an olding grey-haired African man sit'in next to a herd of Antelope holding onto his pipe while it hangs from his lips all the while smoke streams from his nose.
Comparatively to your picture, is mine an image?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Is that ur thumb
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Ceci n'est pas une pouce.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Those pics of jgill's are almost painful to look at compared to those of Base, and Mental's. jgill's feel so rigidly unnatural. They are cool look'in, but so unfung-shwei.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 8, 2014 - 11:21pm PT
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Energy IS matter, some say. Others do not.
Matter and Energy: A False Dichotomy
Matt Strassler [April 12, 2012]
It is common that, when reading about the universe or about particle physics, one will come across a phrase that somehow refers to “matter and energy”, as though they are opposites, or partners, or two sides of a coin, or the two classes out of which everything is made. This comes up in many contexts. Sometimes one sees poetic language describing the Big Bang as the creation of all the “matter and energy” in the universe. One reads of “matter and anti-matter annihilating into `pure’ energy.” And of course two of the great mysteries of astronomy are “dark matter” and “dark energy”.
As a scientist and science writer, this phraseology makes me cringe a bit, not because it is deeply wrong, but because such loose talk is misleading to non-scientists. It doesn’t matter much for physicists; these poetic phrases are just referring to something sharply defined in the math or in experiments, and the ambiguous wording is shorthand for longer, unambiguous phrases. But it’s dreadfully confusing for the non-expert, because in each of these contexts a different definition for `matter’ is being used, and a different meaning — in some cases an archaic or even incorrect meaning of `energy’ — is employed. And each of these ways of speaking implies that either things are matter or they are energy — which is false. In reality, matter and energy don’t even belong to the same categories; it is like referring to apples and orangutans, or to heaven and earthworms, or to birds and beach balls.
On this website I try to be more precise, in order to help the reader avoid the confusions that arise from this way of speaking. Admittedly I’m only partly successful, as I’ll mention below.
Summing Up
This article is long, but I hope it is illuminating and informative for those of you who want details. Let me give you a summary of the lessons it contains:
Matter and Energy really aren’t in the same class and shouldn’t be paired in one’s mind.
Matter, in fact, is an ambiguous term; there are several different definitions used in both scientific literature and in public discourse. Each definition selects a certain subset of the particles of nature, for different reasons. Consumer beware! Matter is always some kind of stuff, but which stuff depends on context.
Energy is not ambiguous (not within physics, anyway). But energy is not itself stuff; it is something that all stuff has.
The term Dark Energy confuses the issue, since it isn’t (just) energy after all. It also really isn’t stuff; certain kinds of stuff can be responsible for its presence, though we don’t know the details.
Photons should not be called `energy’, or `pure energy’, or anything similar. All particles are ripples in fields and have energy; photons are not special in this regard. Photons are stuff; energy is not.
The stuff of the universe is all made from fields (the basic ingredients of the universe) and their particles. At least this is the post-1973 viewpoint.
Whole article here: http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/mass-energy-matter-etc/matter-and-energy-a-false-dichotomy/
I very much reading anything from "Professor Strassler."
JL
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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But energy is not itself stuff; it is something that all stuff has.
All stuff? i suppose a rock houses energy, because it posses Form, and Form constitutes an energy?
But what about the "sands" on all the beaches, or in the Sahara. Is each grain a form or energized?
As a scientist and science writer,
Good one!!
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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~sigh~
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Instead why not tell us how science has made you a better person.
Science and morality are, for the most part, disconnected. If anyone wants to say that they are related, I'll listen.
I have to admit that as my life delved deeper into science, my young religious faith took a little hit, but I went to school with many fervent Christians who had no trouble getting an A in historical geology or evolutionary biology or paleontology.
There was this one girl who was a 7th day Adventist or some hardcore Christian sect. She was the best student in my graduating class, and that involved a lot of Earth history. How she reconciled that, I don't know. It never seemed to be an issue.
It isn't just geologists who accept the blatant evidence for evolution and an old Earth, it includes the money guys as well. Many of them are Christians, and when I present a prospect and explain its geologic setting, they never question evolution or the age of the planet. They put their money behind my hypothesis. They do not go out, find a preacher, have him pray with them, and go drill a 2 million dollar hole in the ground.
That never happens, but I'm sure that some people pray that they drill a good well instead of a dry hole.
If science has done anything for my morality, it is the rejection of prejudice.
The roots of morality is an interesting question. Religions teach it thoroughly. Despite that, we still have seen times when a religion went bonkers and committed atrocities. You can look back at the Inquisition, or you can look at ISIS in the Middle East right now. They are cutting off heads and fighting to create a religious state. Does anyone here really believe that they would want to live in such a nation? Those guys certainly feel that way, and they cut off heads while praising God at the same instant. They are immersed in their faith, and they are evil people, IMO.
My distance from religion protects me from that kind of thought, but Science has little to do with it.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Morality is as subject to scientific scrutiny as anything else, given that it is an evolved trait. I find the partitioning of our experience into 'science' and 'other' strange. Science is a methodology that can be applied to anything. That it hasnt yet with regards to a given phenomenon doesnt support a prediction that its application is impossible.
Back to morality, though - there is a large body of research on its various aspects.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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I was doing field work in SW Kansas for a couple of months earlier this year. One of the nearby farmers was a well witcher. He would stand with me out in a sea of perfectly flat irrigated winter wheat fields, and point out where faults and "rivers of oil" were.
I was up there watching five wells in a row, and we had a fun back and forth. He would predict if an upcoming well would be good or not. He was totally off on the geology, but it was fun to listen to him.
There are a few famous oil fields that were found by witchers or psychics. It is just statistical luck, but it makes for some colorful stories.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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i dont get much outta NDTyson, either. Now Sagan or Attenborough? Thats rare talent.
Well, at least you're on-board with Sagan and Attenborough. Attenborough's Trials of Life (re: winning and losing battles, how life is a contest and how this is reflected in gene pools and phenotypes) and The Secret Life of Plants (re predation, predatory mechanisms shown through time-lapse photog) were classics.
If you haven't seen Tyson's interview with Moyers, PBS, you might see a different side to him.
All great communicators of science and science-based living, they are; something I think the early to mid 20th missed out on. Understandable, though. (Jacob Bronowski was an early pioneer though, a good one, who probably set the stage for Sagan.)
.....
I have to admit that as my life delved deeper into science, my young religious faith took a little hit
Why do you say it like that, though... that you have to admit... as though it's something to be ashamed of or that should be kept secret.
In contrast, because of science, my "young religious faith" took a big hit. HUGE. An existential one. Life and death.
My distance from religion protects me from that kind of thought, but Science has little to do with it.
In contrast, my distance from religion is due mostly if not entirely from science and nature exploration, discovery, investigation. Speaking of grateful, I am so grateful I was raised in science and so grateful that that experience prevented any Abrahamic supernaturalism from infecting me too deeply, so deeply I couldn't excise it.
We can readily see from our resident fundamentalists here - most notably Go-b and Blu - that once this extremely addicting narrative is in the blood (or perhaps better nowadays, in the DNA) for a variety of reasons it's impossible or nearly so to get out.
There but for the Grace of Science Education go I.
.....
Even in today's America, I bet only half the population or less can say they have taken / assimilated the modern triad of physics, chemistry and biology. (Here I mean at least a year's worth of each, not a day's worth off of Wiki.) Insofar as this is true it shows I think at once both the shortcoming and the potential area of improvement.
A science education. It's the source. Change your life. I swear. :)
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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I don't think you have to have a lot of science education to opt out of most religion. All you have to do is have a brain. The very few times in childhood that I went to church with a friend, I could pick holes in the sermons based on my own reading and thoughts. It could be I was only hearing low level sermons. I find that any time an educated religious person writes, they have something worthwhile to say. The Pope, Patriarch, Archbishop of Canterbury, Dalai Lama etc. are no dummies.They are in fact smart enough not to spend their time discussing science, but stick to the human condition which is their specialty.
The church I liked best in those days was Catholic as the service was in Latin and you could have your own thoughts while it was on plus you were surrounded by beautiful art and classical music. Of course I knew nothing about aesthetics or universal archetypes in those days.
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WBraun
climber
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
These guys sound exactly like evangelists, HFCS and Base104.
They're doing the exact same thing they are complaining about.
They also compartmentalize everyone into some kind of a box thru their own defect mental speculations and projections.
Extremely narrow minded .......
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Concerning the teaching of science, the University of Colorado used to have a two semester sequence in the philosophy of science that could be used in place of some of the science requirements. I didn't take it but I had friends who did and it struck me that a course explaining the history of scientific discovery and the methodology and world view of science was more useful to most people in their future lives than memorizing formulas and experiments that were soon forgotten by a non major.
People on this thread have done a great job of explaining scientific method and I have often thought, it's too bad that none of my science teachers ever even tried. It was all straight memorization, even in college.
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