Mach Effect progress

[happyjack27]

relativity and quantum physics didn't exactly disprove old physics. classical mechanics still applies in the limit case for both (as v^2 << c^2 for relativity, and for quantum physics when the time / distance scale is sufficiently large for the law of large numbers to make statistical abnormalities ("long tail" effects) like tunneling practically neglible - in this sense quantum physics "disproves" classical physics about as much as statistical mechanics "disproves" the laws of thermodynamics.) all three physical descriptions are perfecly applicable to their respective regimes, and by using limiting conditions (e.g. as x approaches 0/infinity), the mathematics of one can be perfectly transformed into the mathematics of another. the novelty was finding the exact nature of those limiting conditions, and what lies on the other side of the limit; i.e. increasing the generality in the right way.

[KitemanSA]

As for Galileo, what theory did he propose?

The Law of Inertia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertia#Classical_inertia

Galileo, in his further development of the Copernican model, recognized these problems with the then-accepted nature of motion and, at least partially as a result, included a restatement of Aristotle's description of motion in a void as a basic physical principle:

A body moving on a level surface will continue in the same direction at a constant speed unless disturbed.

Sounds like he did experiments on other people's theories. In this case, Cop and Ari. No?

[nogo]

Sounds like he did experiments on other people's theories. In this case, Cop and Ari. No?

Unfortunately, that wikipedia paragraph is misleading, as far a I know.

Aristotle claimed any movement at any time was due to a force acting at that instant. If it didnt looked like it (an arrow flying) then some hidden unaccounted source of force was being overlooked by the observer (for an arrow: fluid dynamics due to a vacuum being filled behind the arrow as it flies, I kid you not).

In any case, the whole discussion is moot in my humble opinion.

Im tempted to say the reason we find it increasingly hard to find surprising experimental events before we have a theory is that as science advances the low hanging fruit is collected first and then you incrementally work from there till next paradigm shift.

It would be interesting to go to your prefered science news source (physorg, sciencedaily or whatever) and classify each news instance as unexpected observation first, theory development first or unwarranted hype :p

I would presume there is plenty of all.

[ladajo]

On a related note, I got to take part in a seminar last night after my "Philospher I am not" post lead by Dr. Bob Ballard.
What a really cool guy. I enjoyed it alot.
Pertinant to this thread was his statements regarding what he has found in the ocean he had no idea he would find.
His whole outlook to ocean science has been and continues to be, "I have no idea what is there, lets go find out."
He discussed finding the mid-ocean ridge chimneys and eco-systems that nobody had any idea would be. The recent find (this past year) of 9000 year old stonehenge like structures (I believe he said 9 of them) in 50meters of water off of the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey while looking for shipwrecks. Footnote on this is the limited-to-no official public announcements of the find yet. Etc. etc.
I really look forward to getting a chance to get together with him again,

[GIThruster]

That's fascinating stuff to me. The reason for limiting the announcement is to avoid treasure hunters and the like? No pics available?

Can you say how he dated the find? 9,000 is very old, even for simple megaliths. Could indeed be the oldest megaliths in the world.

[djolds1]

I'm tempted to say the reason we find it increasingly hard to find surprising experimental events before we have a theory is that as science advances the low hanging fruit is collected first and then you incrementally work from there till next paradigm shift.

I take a bit of a vitalist approach as well. Civilizations have life cycles, they age, and eventually they run out of motivating ideas and ideals. The West and its intellectual traditions are in their middle age right now; not senescent, but no longer explosively creative either.

[ladajo]

That's fascinating stuff to me. The reason for limiting the announcement is to avoid treasure hunters and the like? No pics available?

Can you say how he dated the find? 9,000 is very old, even for simple megaliths. Could indeed be the oldest megaliths in the world.

He said that they are in contact with the stonehenge folks for an assist. He did not specify on the dating techniques, but I am guessing probably multiple vectors. One that they use is silting rates. I think the black sea is like 2cm per 1000 years or something. But Gallipoli is the other side of the straits. He also discussed finding a delta region on the med. side that corrosponded to a freshwater out flow from the black sea, as well as the old shorelines. I know on the black sea side they dated the change from freshwater to salt water by the the bi-valves collected and C-14 dating along the old submerged shorelines. They put that in a very narrow band around 7000 years ago. Salt water mollusks above the submerged shoreline and freshwater below it. Catastrophic failure of the wall at the straits. Apparently they have also surveyed that area and found the flow canyon from the breach. He also pointed out recent research finding that there was a "jump start" in farming and animal domestication techniques in europe in the same timeframe that also correlates to a DNA tracer shift. The current idea is that the folks living on the black sea (freshwater lake at the time) bailed in a hurry north and west when the breach occured. Probably these structures are related to these same folks, and thus may also explain similarities. Really interesting discussion. As he noted, the experts are calling the find a hot potato. The detractors are saying they may be results of depth charges used during the Gallipoli campaign. Ballard asked us what we thought, and got a big laugh. Point being underwater explosions do not tend to make structures, they tend to knock them down. Plus, there is no record of depth charges used at Gallipoli, just mines. But that can not explain the center structure in the constructs. Sorry, no pics to share.

[Giorgio]

I'm not all that up on Archimedes the scientist. He was a pretty good naturalist, but...

Archimede was the greatest scientist of his era, we can say that he was the maximum expression of science of his cycle, and he laid the bases for the next scientific cycle.
Among the many contributions, he was the first to correctly estimate the value of PI and he invented the science of Hydrostatic by formulating the first law of Hydrostatic.

Should I start to list all what he discovered that forms the base of today science like mathematics, mechanics and so on, I could fill quite a few pages.

As for Galileo, what theory did he propose? I know he made many observations that contravened existing (dogma, paradigm, whatever) of the way the world worked. But I don't know of any theory he developed. Enlighten me please?

One example above all. The law of falling objects. He goes beyond the Aristotelian view of motion, which provided that the bodies subject to a constant force will move with constant speed, and proposes an alternative law of motion. The bodies subject to a constant force will move with constant acceleration. The distance traveled is proportional to the square of the time.

But your Newton example doesn't support your contention. In his case he observed data that contradicted the prevailing theory (dogma, paradigm, whatever) of the way the world worked. Having become satisfied that the current theory was flawed, he came up with a new theory (His theory of gravitation) that covered the facts as he saw them. After a long period of experimental "support", his theory was later disproved and gave way to newer theories.

I am not following your "prevailing theory" logic, and I hope to have misinterpreted it. Are you suggesting that everyone can have a view on a subject and sell it as science without caring to actually prove his theories because other have to disprove them?

I really hope not, because this way of thinking is what is allowing crooks to theorize everything it gets to their minds without actually caring to prove them to the outside scientific community. And I am speaking about people like BLP, Orbo, EEstor. Lot of talk, lot of theories, lot of papers, but when you go down to request a dirty old repeatable demonstration or observation, they just melt like snow in the sun.

[KitemanSA]

I am not following your "prevailing theory" logic, and I hope to have misinterpreted it. Are you suggesting that everyone can have a view on a subject and sell it as science without caring to actually prove his theories because other have to disprove them?

Science is a method to test / validate / invalidate theories. Anyone CAN make a theory and if the bulk of folk who think about such things hold to that theory, it is the prevailing theory. It matters not whence the theory came, merely that it IS the prevailing theory. SCIENCE TESTS all theory.
One prevailing theory at the time of Newton was that light from the sun was "pure" white and wholey (or holy) indivisible. Newton saw common evidence that perhaps that wasn't so and theorized a different state of affairs.
Another prevailing theory was the the heavans were distinct and seperate from the mundane (the earth) and that they followed different "laws". Newton saw many things that suggested that the heavans and earth followed the same laws and developed a theory of "universal gravitation" (F=Gm₁m₂/r²).
But in each and every case of Newton's work, there was a "theory" of how things were that was held by a majority, sometimes a VAST majority, of learned men at the time. That the theories were not developed or vlidated by the scientific process does not obviate the fact that they were the prevailing theories of the day. The fact that they were so obviously flawed and held for so long testifies for the need and power of the scientific method. Many (if not most) long held theories of the day fell under it's juggernaut wheels!

[Giorgio]

Anyone CAN make a theory and if the bulk of folk who think about such things hold to that theory, it is the prevailing theory. It matters not whence the theory came, merely that it IS the prevailing theory. SCIENCE TESTS all theory.

Anyone can have his own ideas or personal beliefs, but they should all be called hypothesis. Calling them "theory" without having scientific proof nor validation, and pushing them as truth just because the majority of people believes in them gives me shiver to my spinal cord.

We do have a point in common, that is that science must test all Theories.
We differ on what should be called a Theory.

Many (if not most) long held theories of the day fell under it's juggernaut wheels!

Yes, the juggernaut wheels will make justice in the long time. Too bad we hardly live enough to see it, so is not really a satisfaction

[kurt9]

I'm tempted to say the reason we find it increasingly hard to find surprising experimental events before we have a theory is that as science advances the low hanging fruit is collected first and then you incrementally work from there till next paradigm shift.

I take a bit of a vitalist approach as well. Civilizations have life cycles, they age, and eventually they run out of motivating ideas and ideals. The West and its intellectual traditions are in their middle age right now; not senescent, but no longer explosively creative either.

Its possible that we can literally run out of things to invent. Once we have fully developed biotech, nanotech, and the physics breakthroughs (all of this by the end of the century), what else is there left on the plate?

[chrismb]

Science is a method to test / validate / invalidate theories. Anyone CAN make a theory and if the bulk of folk who think about such things hold to that theory, it is the prevailing theory.

I think this all rather depends on what your definition of 'theory' is.

I would join in this purely semantic debate by raising the point that the term 'theory' is evidently different in different areas. There is a 'scientific theory' as there is a 'philosophical theory', the difference being the objectivity of the underlying claim.

My general interpretation of 'theory', especially on a forum such as this, is clearly going to be that of a 'scientific theory'. A scientific theory is discriminated by the facts that it seeks to explain and the conclusions it reaches; the facts would be particular phenomenologies that are not in question but that are assembled and discussed in a logical manner that arrives at a conclusion that may not necessarily be correct. Its incorrectness may arise because, for example, the logic is incomplete or that all the germane phenomena have not been included in consideration.

One might posit that 'there is a God' is a theory, but it is not a scientific one because it is not based on any phenomena generally agreed as extant, and that there is no logical construction within it (viz., this is usually the 'falsifiable' element). So, for example, 'God exists' is not a theory, it is a claim. 'The Sun's light is white' wasn't/isn't a theory without a definition of 'white', and if white light is defined as all the spectrum mixed, then it is correct. Nor is 'The Sun's light is indivisible' a theory [IMHO] because it is not a statement that purports to define a behaviour of the light, excepting either the explicit statement (viz. it is divisible, or it isn't). But that latter case is now reaching semantic levels and if someone wishes to call it a theory, then it is, indeed, a theory for that person.

"When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean, neither more nor less"

[CaptainBeowulf]

He said that they are in contact with the stonehenge folks for an assist. He did not specify on the dating techniques, but I am guessing probably multiple vectors. One that they use is silting rates. I think the black sea is like 2cm per 1000 years or something. But Gallipoli is the other side of the straits. He also discussed finding a delta region on the med. side that corrosponded to a freshwater out flow from the black sea, as well as the old shorelines. I know on the black sea side they dated the change from freshwater to salt water by the the bi-valves collected and C-14 dating along the old submerged shorelines. They put that in a very narrow band around 7000 years ago. Salt water mollusks above the submerged shoreline and freshwater below it. Catastrophic failure of the wall at the straits. Apparently they have also surveyed that area and found the flow canyon from the breach. He also pointed out recent research finding that there was a "jump start" in farming and animal domestication techniques in europe in the same timeframe that also correlates to a DNA tracer shift. The current idea is that the folks living on the black sea (freshwater lake at the time) bailed in a hurry north and west when the breach occured. Probably these structures are related to these same folks, and thus may also explain similarities. Really interesting discussion. As he noted, the experts are calling the find a hot potato. The detractors are saying they may be results of depth charges used during the Gallipoli campaign. Ballard asked us what we thought, and got a big laugh. Point being underwater explosions do not tend to make structures, they tend to knock them down. Plus, there is no record of depth charges used at Gallipoli, just mines. But that can not explain the center structure in the constructs. Sorry, no pics to share.

If this can be verified, it may very well explain the Indo-European languages. The interesting thing is that if you reconstruct Indo-European from the earliest daughter languages (Norse, Old English, Old Low German and Old High German, Gothic, Latin, bits of ancient Celtic that can be found on inscriptions, classical Greek, ancient Persian/Iranian, Old Church Slavonic, early Lithuanian, Hittite and Sanskrit), you find common root words for flora and fauna originating all over Eurasia. In other words, the early Indo-Europeans lived in a climate or traveled around a large area with stuff you find in western and northern Europe, in the middle east, and in central/eastern Europe and Siberia.

Currently, the leading theories are that Indo-European developed:
a) As part of the Kurgan culture that tamed horses, essentially in the steppe between the Black and Caspian seas, and then spread east and west
b) Developed in Anatolia (now Turkey), and spread northwest and northeast, then back south into India and Iran

It has been speculated before that they may have been displaced by flooding from a central Black Sea location, but that theory has usually been seen as fringe.

There are interesting little bits and pieces, such as in one ancient Norse poem the claim that the Germanic language (originally a dialect of Indo-European before it turned into Norse, Old English, Old German etc.) "came from the east." Probably just a story, but sometimes memory of ancient events can be preserved culturally for very, very long times.

Also, IIRC Plato's Atlantis story, which he claims was told to Solon by Egyptians, makes the claim that around 10,000 years earlier there was a giant flood during the middle of a war between Atlantis (which was in the "west"), and the "ancestors of the Greeks." The flood destroyed Atlantis, as well as most of the land of the Greeks, leaving only the "skeleton" of the land, which was supposed to be the Greek islands and the Peloponnesian peninsula.

A lot of people have speculated that Plato was talking about something much more recent, and got the dates off by an order of magnitude. The volcanic explosion of the island of Thera and the end of early Cretian civilization is a leading candidate for this. It's a good theory.

One thing I always found intriguing about Plato's story, though, is his claim that there was another continent on the other side of the Atlantic, which was once reached by a "lost route" along a number of islands in the north Atlantic. This sounds exactly like the route the Vikings took to get to Greenland, Labrador and Newfoundland: go via Britain, the Shetlands and Orkneys, Iceland, Greenland... and you hit north America. Some people have speculated that small numbers of Celts made the trip before the Vikings. Why not others beforehand?

If Ballard's findings are verified, it might very well suggest that Plato really was talking about something much older than Thera blowing up.

[CaptainBeowulf]

Plato's "Atlantis" in the west may have been made up or conflated from some other story, but it's also possible that something like it existed.

Because of the nature of ancient languages, "island" and "peninsula" can be easily enough confused. You can really see that still in the modern English words: both have the same root -insul- (insul-land becomes island; -insula is contained in pen-insula). He also talks about it being adjacent to a large plain. A lot of France adjacent to the Bay of Biscay is a large plain; if sea levels were much lower that plain would extend west over what now is the Bay, connecting Spain, France and Britain. So, you could be talking about a largish coastal settlement on the ancient coastline of western Europe (not like Rome or anything, but large and capable of projecting military force in terms of several thousand years B.C. Probably mostly built of wooden structures and mud brick).

Basically, there is nothing in Plato's story that requires you to invoke mythical "lost continents" etc.

[GIThruster]

Always fascinating and instructive to see how theories grapple with the Atlantis story. Trouble is, Plato was pretty specific that it was West of and close by Gibralter, which puts it by Madeira, Portugal. The detail in that part of the story is so specific, I would trust it before details about how old, etc.

Pretty sure no one has ever found anything passing for Atlantis off Madeira. . .