Michael’s
Comments
(group member since Jan 04, 2015)
Michael’s
comments
from the Understand the universe group.
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“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”“Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.”
“Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these there must exist life under all conditions and phases of development.”
“There is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science, but science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without.”
“If the genius of invention were to reveal to-morrow the secret of immortality, of eternal beauty and youth, for which all humanity is aching, the same inexorable agents which prevent a mass from changing suddenly its velocity would likewise resist the force of the new knowledge until time gradually modifies human thought.”
I want to discuss big topics and, at the same time, don't talk about gauge bosons, ricci tensors or Yang-Millis. How to inspire and make science more approachable? How to inspire more people? How to make more people excited about the universe?My first step is to write Odes. It's not rigorous and it's not about numbers, but it is a fairy tale. The entire series will be like that. Philosophy disguised in dreams.
Question from raxacoricofallapatorius: Why orbits don’t eventually decay?Response from anna v:
You are right, the planetary model of the atom does not make sense when one considers the electromagnetic forces involved. The electron in an orbit is accelerating continuously and would thus radiate away its energy and fall into the nucleus.
One of the reasons for “inventing” quantum mechanics was exactly this conundrum.
The Bohr model was proposed to solve this, by stipulating that the orbits were closed and quantized and no energy could be lost while the electron was in orbit, thus creating the stability of the atom necessary to form solids and liquids. It also explained the lines observed in the spectra from excited atoms as transitions between orbits.
Question from anna v: How does uranium from supernovae explosions end up in mineral veins in a planet?
Response from Martin Beckett:
Mostly because they are heavy.
Rocks erode putting their constituents into solution, the heavy stuff settles out in river/sea beds, and metals are heavy.
For many metals hydrothermal process are more important. Super hot water deep in the earth dissolves the rock containing the minerals, it moves along cracks in the rock and cools depositing the salt and metals as lines in the rock.
In an asteroid with no geological process the metals are found in their raw state having cooled directly from the original ball of primeval gas
Question from jcw: Why don’t metals bond when touched together?
Response from Hasan:
I think that mere touching does not bring the surfaces close enough. The surface of a metal is not perfect usually. Maybe it has an oxide layer that resists any kind of reaction. If the metal is extremely pure and if you bring two pieces of it extremely close together, then they will join together. It’s also called cold welding.
Question from Nogwater: How does gravity escape a black hole?
Response from Vagelford:
Well, the information doesn’t have to escape from inside the horizon, because it is not inside. The information is on the horizon.
One way to see that is from the fact that from the perspective of an observer outside the horizon of a black hole, nothing ever crosses the horizon. It asymptotically gets to the horizon in infinite time (as it is measured from the perspective of an observer at infinity).
http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/qu...http://physics.stackexchange.com/ques...
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Firstly, some explanations here:1. String theory:
http://www.quora.com/What-is-string-t...
For some more insights: http://www.quora.com/String-Theory
For those more interested: http://physics.stackexchange.com/ques...
2. The GUT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_U...
And, as for the answer, I asked a related question (some time ago) here: http://physics.stackexchange.com/ques...
http://learnyourdream.tumblr.com/post...I will just start a discussion by mentioning a couple of topics. We don't want to go into the details of the QFT, Ricci tensors or gauge bosons, but understand certain things better.
The "big" ones are: the strong artificial intelligence one (i.e. the one that says that we are machines) and the one discussed by e.g. Penrose, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Pe....
We barely know how brain works and this is one of the things that we learn in AI. We can now learn more from observations, both in cosmology and quantum mechanics.
Understanding why this is true was difficult to thousands at first. Now we know the answer. Take a look at the explanations:http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-simp...
If you want some great concepts from cosmology, at introductory level, there's a beautiful presentation from Fields medal winner, prof. Terence Tao, http://terrytao.files.wordpress.com/2...
Requires some topology and previous experience, but definitely an interesting thing to think about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of...
I once answered the question about the structure of the problem. I am referring to a number of concepts that we can use in everyday life. What do you think about it?https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-ba...
I once answered this question about patterns in thinking. What do you think?https://www.quora.com/What-patterns-c...
This is a perfect explanation of the Gödel Incompleteness Theorem:http://www.quora.com/Whats-the-easies...
I started reading the following:http://physics.stackexchange.com/ques...
http://physics.stackexchange.com/ques...
What books discuss this concept?
What are the latest books with time travel? I will start with Odes- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2....
Do there exist things that are not observable, but belong to the imaginable?
