Whole Track Question.

[paradox]

Without any examples to look at, I'd say I can't see what your concern is about.

I see nothing that indicates a move towards a return of the High priest scenario.

There is no room or role for secretive authoritative leadership in either Science or philosophy. Religion is still hung up on that crap, but that's old religion. And new religion doesn't exist yet in recognizable form. But there is no way as trends develop that it will bear any resemblance to the old pyramidal command structures of the past.

Actually looks to be racing in the opposite direction.

Do you have any examples of what you are thinking of?

Yes, understandably so, I know. I mentioned in my post a perfect example of what I was getting at, modern mainstream Astronomy/Cosmology. The Office(s) of High Priest is actually quite active and doing well, although the title has changed significantly, and usually administered under the auspices of major Universities or institutions. There are so many experiences with the current status quo related by professionals working in the field, across so many papers, sites, etc I wouldn't know where to tell you to start looking. Well, actually, I'd probably go with starting here http://www.holoscience.com/synopsis.php and then just do a little further researching into alternate views to Astronomy's current acceptance, in the name of science, of very strange metaphysical ideas of "the big bang," "black holes," "dark matter," "dark energy," "magnetic reconnection," "frozen-in lines of force," etc. etc.

I'm not the best at expressing it so I can also understand if it just sounds like so much tinfoil-hattery, but check around if it actually interests you; there are others so much more eloquent and versed in the subject(s) than I.

 

[SweetnessandLight]

petal,

Did you ever run an incident that Hubbard calls The Gang Bang Goals.

He talked about it in an obscure lecture but for some reason it never made it into History of Man and not many people involved in the Church are aware of it.

===========

The being is instructed that his help is needed so that the universe can be saved. He is told how he is in the upper echelon of the elite because of his recent activities. He is urged on by the promise that his eternity is guaranteed if he hops on board and joins this cause. From the sales pitch he can only imagine a posh headquarters, elegant dining halls, silk blankets and down pilows and matresses.

When he arrives for his first briefing he sees that things are not quite what we he expected. However he it told that after his short introductory program he will be relocated to a more posh environment. He begins with a confessional where he is told that he is freeing his existence of all the past baggage that is holding him back.

Soon thereafter he is put to hard work in manual labor camps coupled with meaningless administrative work that can produce nothing of value. He is never allowed to contact former friends and family. Once he has begun to question things within his own mind the trap is sprung. Eventually he either speaks out or fails at a meaningless task and this is made known to a higher controlling entity. He is then brought before others and overwhelmed by yelling and screaming where he is told how worthless he is and made to stand before others and talk about sexual activities that he has engaged in throughout his life and made to lay bare sexual fantasies for the others to hear. He is overwhelmed further with name calling and forced to eat awful food and bathe in excrement infested water.

Eventually the being is so distraught that they he feels worthless and wishes to leave. He is then dumped out on the streets with the implanted goals of being worthless and sinful and destitute and evil for the rest of eternity.

Did you ever run that incident petal?

Rd00

Ah, Dear Heart, you've been to INT Base!

 

[Student of Trinity]

I think I said that. From my post:

"Now, scientists like to say that they are changing what is observed by observing, but really, it may be more a case that they are CHANGING THE ENERGY of the tiny particle by measuring it with a gaudy measuring device. It might not quite be truly a case of "the observer affecting what is observed". I mean if you hit a baseball with a baseball bat, it changes the direction of the ball, BUT you are not changing what is observed by simply observing it. Observing as passive awareness and "measuring" are two very different things. The measuring of very small energies has a major problem, because the measuring DEVICE itself imparts its own energy to the tiny particle or wave. The act of measuring is not unlike hitting the baseball. It is NOT a "passive activity", though scientists sure wish that it could be."

Yes? No?

Yeah, that's quite true, and it's a very important point that I think most people never understand, because they think science is some kind of modern magic, where we can just 'somehow' measure things, instead of having to actually do stuff in the real world. It's just that, despite widespread impressions that this point has something to do with the uncertainty principle, it really doesn't. The fact that measurement is never really passive simply happens to be the factor that is most often overlooked when somebody tries to beat the uncertainty principle with a clever measurement.

What quantum measurement does seem to do is force something to have a definite value of the quantity you measure, even if before the measurement it didn't. Kind of like asking a somewhat wishy-washy friend whether they like chocolate or vanilla best. They don't really have a preference, but when you put the question to them, they pick one at random, in order to have an answer for you. And at least for a while afterwards, they'll remember to be consistent if you ask them the same question again. But ask them the question next week, and you may get a different random answer.

That's how quantum measurement seems to work. Nobody knows why. The current state of science is, "It just does that." It's called the 'measurement postulate' or 'collapse postulate' of quantum mechanics.

 

[Student of Trinity]

very strange metaphysical ideas of "the big bang," "black holes," "dark matter," "dark energy," "magnetic reconnection," "frozen-in lines of force,"

The others are arguably metaphysical, I'll concede, but magnetic reconnection and 'frozen-in lines of force' are clearly observable phenomena on the surface of the sun. The 'lines of force' thing is just a language for describing magnetic fields. It goes back to Faraday. The 'frozen in' part is a handy way of describing how magnetic fields behave in plasmas. You can practically see the lines of force, though, if you look at images of the solar surface. All those big loops and whorls of glowing gas are plasma following the magnetic field lines. Saying that the field lines are frozen into the plasma is just another way of expressing the fact that the plasma follows the field.

 

[Gadfly]

Yeah, that's quite true, and it's a very important point that I think most people never understand, because they think science is some kind of modern magic, where we can just 'somehow' measure things, instead of having to actually do stuff in the real world. It's just that, despite widespread impressions that this point has something to do with the uncertainty principle, it really doesn't. The fact that measurement is never really passive simply happens to be the factor that is most often overlooked when somebody tries to beat the uncertainty principle with a clever measurement.

What quantum measurement does seem to do is force something to have a definite value of the quantity you measure, even if before the measurement it didn't. Kind of like asking a somewhat wishy-washy friend whether they like chocolate or vanilla best. They don't really have a preference, but when you put the question to them, they pick one at random, in order to have an answer for you. And at least for a while afterwards, they'll remember to be consistent if you ask them the same question again. But ask them the question next week, and you may get a different random answer.

That's how quantum measurement seems to work. Nobody knows why. The current state of science is, "It just does that." It's called the 'measurement postulate' or 'collapse postulate' of quantum mechanics.

I was wondering if anyone would call me on that. I knew that I was being a bit too general, but the way that many authors transfer these findings from science to the realms of the spiritual usually involves "metaphorical" or loose understandings of the ideas from physics.

Let me know if I got this right.

Yes, where this shows up is with sub-atomic particle studies. Where out of all infinite possible conditions or states, when something is observed in a carefully conducted experiemnt, in a certain way, the act of observing seems to "cause" a specific exact detailed event to "collapse" the "probability field". But, the parameters and details of the experiment itself nearly "define" WHAT will be observed. If one changes minor aspects of the experiment, then something else is observed.

I think in all larger contexts, or macro-scenarios, the measuring device itself influences and changes the energy of whatever small particle or photon is being detected or measured. On the tinier scale of sub-atomic particles, the act of observing does seem to interact and affect what is being observed. That idea gets "loosely" extrapolated into other, much different, contexts, where it might not really apply. In the same way, quantum effects are irrelevant at this level of resolution (zoomed-out).

It is like the effects of Relativity when approaching the speed of light - mass increases greatly, and time dilates (for the fast moving object). Except that here on Earth, for us, in our context, that factor is so minor to be inconsequential and not even considered as having an influence.

Are there any studies that discuss the "speed" at which "electrons" travel? It always seemed to me that the reason that there is so much energy locked up in atomic particles is because they are vibrating at frequencies comparable to "close to the speed of light". I mean, anything can cycle, move up and down quickly. What if this "vibrating quickly" were actually close to or at the speed of light? Or, is THAT what is involved with

? Or did Einstien simply come up with equation, never expaining how or why? I am rusty on my physics.

 

[NonScio]

re Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: It always seemed to me that this is
so self evident that its a wonder it took physicists so long to identify it.
( That is, you cannot measure with certainty both position and momentum
simultaneously).
In simple terms, "momentum" implies mass in motion, position implies lack
of motion. So of course, if mass has "position", it cannot at the same time
be in motion. The reverse of that is that momentum implies motion or constant
change of position. In other words, its either moving (has momentum) or it is not (has position).

Calculus attempts to describe this by letting chunks of time become mathematically infinititly small;
allowing the describtion of position of a body in motion
at a precise moment of time. Question is, is there really such a precise
"atom of time"; a "now"; a smallest unit of time which exists in the physical universe
and not just in the universe of Mathematics.

 

[paradox]

The others are arguably metaphysical, I'll concede, but magnetic reconnection and 'frozen-in lines of force' are clearly observable phenomena on the surface of the sun. The 'lines of force' thing is just a language for describing magnetic fields. It goes back to Faraday. The 'frozen in' part is a handy way of describing how magnetic fields behave in plasmas. You can practically see the lines of force, though, if you look at images of the solar surface. All those big loops and whorls of glowing gas are plasma following the magnetic field lines. Saying that the field lines are frozen into the plasma is just another way of expressing the fact that the plasma follows the field.

I agree with your statement regarding lines of force. But regarding magnetic "reconnection" I would submit this is a major misinterpretation of observation. I'm not a professional in the field, but from what I've studied and what I know of electricity and electromagnetism, and magnetics, never but never has a magnetic field ever been observed, let alone verified, to be or to ever have "broken". The ONLY known phenomenon known and observed, and verified, to produce a magnetic field is an electric current. In a plasma, the charged particles flow and produce a corresponding magnetic field; the field of which is in all ways contiguous around the current flow. If the current stops, the field collapses, but it does not "break" or leave a standalone static, "broken" field "line." What we observe on the sun, those great magnificent arcs of plasma, they may appear to represent a broken magnetic field line of force - again, I submit they do not. As one example, see http://www.electric-cosmos.org/sun.htm .

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]It should be well understood (certainly by anyone who has had a basic physics course) that the magnetic field "lines"[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]2[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica] that are drawn to describe a magnetic field, have no beginning nor end. They are closed paths. In fact one of Maxwell's famous equations is: "div [/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]B[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica] = 0". Which says precisely that (in the language of vector differential calculus). So when magnetic fields collapse due to the interruption of the currents that produce them, they do [/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]not[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica] "break" or "merge" and "recombine" as some uninformed astronomers have claimed (e.g., see the quote regarding the mainstream concerns above - in 4. Acceleration of the Solar "Wind" Ions). The field simply collapses (very quickly!). On the Sun this collapse releases a tremendous amount of energy, and matter is thrown out away from the surface - as with any explosively rapid reaction. This release is consistent with and predicted by the Electric Sun model as described above. Some astronomers have proposed that heat is routinely transported out to the lower corona by magnetic fields and released there by "reconnection of magnetic field lines, whereby oppositely directed lines cancel each other out, converting magnetic energy into heat. The process requires that the field lines be able to diffuse through the plasma." This idea is inventive but, unfortunately, has no scientific basis whatever.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]
[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]Note that although astronomers ought to be aware that [/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]magnetic fields require electrical currents or time varying [/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]E-[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]fields[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]to produce them, currents and [/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]E-[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]fields are never mentioned in standard models. Possibly because they do not seem to be included in astrophysics curricula.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]
[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]1. Double layers can be destroyed by at least two different mechanisms: a) Zener Breakdown - The electric field gradient becomes strong enough to rip all charges away from an area, thus breaking the discharge path; b) Avalanche Breakdown - A literal avalanche occurs wherein all charges are swept away and no conducting charges are left - thus the conducting path is opened.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]
[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica]2. A magnetic field is a continuum. It is not a set of discrete 'lines'. Lines are drawn in the classroom to describe the magnetic field (its direction and magnitude). But the lines themselves do not actually exist. They are simply a pedagogical device. Proposing that these lines break, merge, and/or recombine is an error (violation of Maxwell's equations) compounded on another error (the lines do not really exist in the first place). Magnetic field lines are analogous to lines of latitude and longitude. They are not discrete entities with nothing in between them - you can draw as many of them as close together as you'd like. And they most certainly do not break, merge, or reconnect any more than lines of latitude do. Oppositely directed magnetic intensity [/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica]H-fields[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica] simply cancel each other - no energy is stored or released in that event.[/FONT]

I'm really not adequately versed in the subject to argue or present it well, but the gentleman's (Australian physicist, Wal Thornhill's) website at the link I provided does cover it. Even more so does the material of Professor Donald Scott (author of The Electric Sky). I think I gave a youtube link earlier in this thread to a presentation he made at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center two or three years ago.

 

[Winston Smith]

This is really about a whole trick question.

 

[Panda Termint]

If you think the Question is tricky, try following some of the Answers!

 

[Mark A. Baker]

re Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: It always seemed to me that this is
so self evident that its a wonder it took physicists so long to identify it. ...

The point is not that Heisenberg's concept is a 'self-evident idea', the point is that it reflects a physical principle. There is nothing 'self-evident' about the fact that the physical universe functions on a fundamental level in this fashion. However plausible a concept, as a concept it need not represent physical fact. That it does is what makes it notable.


Mark A. Baker

 

[Infinite]

..

Just a reminder . . .

 

[Gadfly]

..

Just a reminder . . .

EXCELLENT!!!!!!! The right side, "faith", sums up so well what I often try to describe about "believers".

I have downloaded the diagram, and am going to go to the website to see if I can get a larger version.

Dang, the site doesn't go anywhere useful. Do you have a link for that chart - a bigger version maybe?

Nevermind, I am a Google-monster, and I found it within 30 seconds. It can be found here:

Science versus Faith Flow Chart

And for a veritable panoply of all sorts of science versus faith flow charts, see HERE.

 

[lwhytock]

Can anyone answer for me wy in Gods green earth would a flag rep when asking me what name I came up with last life, the reply was very quickly...there was a fire. huh?

I don't know. Yet I wonder.

(And no, I don't endorse Freezone, Indies or OSA.)

Just thinking out-loud.

 

[Student of Trinity]

I agree with your statement regarding lines of force. But regarding magnetic "reconnection" I would submit this is a major misinterpretation of observation. ...

Astrophysicists do know Maxwell's equations. It's just that what mostly interests them is the electrodynamics of convecting plasma, since this is what stars are made of. The plasma is charged, so there's all kinds of current, so the magnetic fields are very strong. So the charged particles tend to move in tight spirals around the local magnetic field direction, and so to a very good approximation, the current follows the magnetic field lines. So you can accurately approximate the full problem with a simplified model that only even mentions the magnetic field lines.

Reconnection doesn't actually break any field lines. What happens is that two separate closed loops touch and merge into one. Or the reverse: one loop splits into two. You could do this yourself if you just moved two current-carrying wires close to each other. When the wires are far apart, the field lines are mostly separate circles around each one. Once the wires are on top of each other, obviously the field lines are all circles enclosing them both. To get from one situation to the other, field lines have to merge. Pull your two wires apart again, and you make a lot of field line loops split. Both processes are perfectly continuous. It's just that at the precise point of splitting or merging, the magnetic field is exactly zero, and so its direction is not defined. At such a point, two field lines are allowed to cross.

 

[Dulloldfart]

Student of Trinity, what do you think of the Electric Universe ideas as laid out (extensively!) at www.thunderbolts.info?

I don't recall any comments from you on this specifically.

Paul

 

[NonScio]

The point is not that Heisenberg's concept is a 'self-evident idea', the point is that it reflects a physical principle. There is nothing 'self-evident' about the fact that the physical universe functions on a fundamental level in this fashion. However plausible a concept, as a concept it need not represent physical fact. That it does is what makes it notable.


Mark A. Baker

Well, self evident or not, it would seem to be self contradictary to say a body is both
in motion and standing still at the same time. No? Actually, the most elegant
explanations of the truth of how the universe works are basically so simple
that when outlined most would say "that is so self evdent, why did'nt we
see that before?"

 

[Student of Trinity]

From a quick look, it looks fine — as far as it goes for now. The guy seems to know his electrodynamics and plasma physics, though I haven't looked at this in detail. Stellar astrophysics is not my field; I took a course in it once, but that's all. So I can say he's not an obvious idiot, but he might still be full of crap. If I did take more time to read his stuff I might become skeptical, but perhaps wrongly so. I'd estimate that he's competent enough that it would take a better expert than me for a reliable judgement.

For the future, though, my outlook is less rosy. It looks as though this guy has hopes, though so far no claims, to make some radical revisions to cosmology by means of electrodynamics. Here I'd be a lot more suspicious, because he hasn't yet said anything that shows he understands general relativity. For example, his comment that dark energy is absurd because empty space can't possibly do anything is simply ignorant. Dark matter and dark energy are purely theoretical, but they're really the very opposite of epicyclic fudges. They should be there by default, and it would require more explanation if they didn't exist.

I didn't notice anything to indicate that the guy is really well informed about cosmological observations, either. So once he gets on to propounding his own radical new theories, and not just expounding standard plasma theory, my suspicion level would rise dramatically. Conceivably he'll turn up something new. More likely, he'll turn out to be smart and serious enough to realize that his ideas don't work. Most likely is still that he'll turn out to be just another crackpot, either too vain or too stupid to recognize his mistakes. The competent Newtonian engineer who doesn't get Einstein is unfortunately a common crackpot species, all the sadder for being capable of understanding if they weren't too vain to really try. But maybe he's a different species after all. Time will tell.

 

[Student of Trinity]

Well, self evident or not, it would seem to be self contradictary to say a body is both in motion and standing still at the same time. No?

Nobody said anything about a moving body standing still. The issue is about exactly where it is at some given instant, as it moves. These are subtle questions, but I'm afraid they're over 2000 years old, and they were resolved over three hundred years ago. Quantum mechanics comes several chapters later.

 

[Dulloldfart]

From a quick look, it looks fine — as far as it goes for now. <snip>

Thanks very much for taking a look and your comments.

Paul

 

[Student of Trinity]

Where out of all infinite possible conditions or states, when something is observed in a carefully conducted experiemnt, in a certain way, the act of observing seems to "cause" a specific exact detailed event to "collapse" the "probability field". But, the parameters and details of the experiment itself nearly "define" WHAT will be observed. If one changes minor aspects of the experiment, then something else is

The experimental setup determines what question you're asking. At least, it does if it's a good experiment. With a bad experiment, you might not really know just what property of the atom (or whatever it is) was being represented on your meter. But there's not really anything mystical or mysterious about this business of the experiment determining the question. If you put something on a scale, so that its weight deflects a needle, then you'll be measuring its weight, and not its electric charge. A measurement is, after all, just a particular kind of physical process. It has to happen by some sort of physical cause and effect.

The mysterious part is the Schrödinger's Cat thing. A quantum object might not have single definite values for all its properties, but if you measure those properties, you will force it to pick one answer randomly, and then stick with it. That may sound kind of fudgy and dodgy, but the equations of quantum mechanics predict the probability distributions with insane accuracy. They can predict some pretty complex and surprising patterns of randomness, and then you can go into the lab and see them happen just like that. So somehow it works.

I think in all larger contexts, or macro-scenarios, the measuring device itself influences and changes the energy of whatever small particle or photon is being detected or measured. On the tinier scale of sub-atomic particles, the act of observing does seem to interact and affect what is being observed. That idea gets "loosely" extrapolated into other, much different, contexts, where it might not really apply. In the same way, quantum effects are irrelevant at this level of resolution (zoomed-out).

It is like the effects of Relativity when approaching the speed of light - mass increases greatly, and time dilates (for the fast moving object). Except that here on Earth, for us, in our context, that factor is so minor to be inconsequential and not even considered as having an influence.

If I understand what you're getting at, then yes. Weird quantum effects are dramatic in some contexts, such as atomic-size systems, but negligible in others, such as daily life. There's even a sort of figure-of-merit you can compute, to indicate how important quantum effects will be. Comparable to the Reynolds number for turbulence in hydrodynamics, or the ratio of velocity to the speed of light for relativity. For QM it's the typical energy scale of your problem, times its typical time scale, divided by Planck's constant (about 10^(-35) Joule-seconds). So if you put in the numbers for an electron orbiting a proton in a hydrogen atom, you get about 1 (QM is very important). If you put in the numbers for the earth going around the sun, it's something like 10^(+72) or so (big number means QM is really unimportant).

Are there any studies that discuss the "speed" at which "electrons" travel? It always seemed to me that the reason that there is so much energy locked up in atomic particles is because they are vibrating at frequencies comparable to "close to the speed of light". I mean, anything can cycle, move up and down quickly. What if this "vibrating quickly" were actually close to or at the speed of light? Or, is THAT what is involved with

? Or did Einstien simply come up with equation, never expaining how or why? I am rusty on my physics.

Sure, we talk about electron motion all the time. Electrons can travel at a speed arbitrarily close to the speed of light, but in the atoms of most rather light elements, they never do. The innermost electrons in some very heavy elements do get to within a few percent of the speed of light, though, if I remember rightly.

But that doesn't really have much to do with E=mc^2. Even a particle just sitting motionless does have a rest energy. Did Einstein explain this or did he just postulate it? Well, sort of both. He introduced a deeper level of theory in which mass and energy have a definite and elegant relationship, and he gave a lot of good reasons why we should believe in this deeper theory, rather than in the older Newtonian idea of kinetic energy. He did not explain his new theory in terms of the older one, but rather argued that we should abandon the old in favor of the new.

As a matter of grim fact I have to teach about exactly this, tomorrow morning at 8:15. So this little discussion may have helped me focus my thoughts, but it's not actually getting my lecture notes written. I better get to work.