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2012-10-18 -Short Attention Span Theater-

German Woman Fails to Prove Atom-Smasher Will End World

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Posted by Fred 2012-10-18 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 Iff the CERN SC wasn't responsible, then it had to be + can only be the SUN that dun it, but it can't be the Sun because Govts-Perts keep saying the Sun is A-Okay???

Posted by JosephMendiola 2012-10-18 00:39|| 2012-10-18 00:39|| Front Page Top

#2 I'll tell you, folks are gonna be just pretty darned unhappy when they find she was right.

Posted by Skidmark 2012-10-18 01:38|| 2012-10-18 01:38|| Front Page Top

#3 There seems to be some misunderstanding about the energy involved in creating a black hole. The electric grid in Geneva ain't quite up to it.

Posted by Perfesser 2012-10-18 07:31|| 2012-10-18 07:31|| Front Page Top

#4 "B!+ch, it ain't gonna happen!" - Stephan Hawking

I think that clears it up.

Posted by AlmostAnonymous5839 2012-10-18 09:07|| 2012-10-18 09:07|| Front Page Top

#5 As I understand it, the teeny, tiny size of singularity they'd be able to create would leak more energy than it could absorb, so they'd disappear pretty much immediately.

You need the mass of a star to get it to last long enough to be self-sustaining.

Posted by Rob Crawford 2012-10-18 09:43|| 2012-10-18 09:43|| Front Page Top

#6 This does, however, beg the question of what is physics these days?

The physicists keep throwing out statements in public which when taken together are at best self-contradictory and at worst just wacko.

I personally think that the problem is primarily "a failure to communicate" with the public because all they can really use to communicate is math of a truly bizzare nature that the public, no matter how smart, can't begin to follow. So, they are forced to use metaphors and analogies. When you see them "communicating" with each other through books or TV they don't seem to communicate with each other all that well either.

The metaphors and analogies don't hold up across those multiple announcements. A particularly simple example is the infamous E = mc2. If that simple math truly held up then you could also say that m = E/c2 where energy has mass (granted very little) but according to physicists photons (energy) have 0 mass so either photons do have mass or the equation isn't quite right.

The simplistic explanation falls apart as do all of the extrapolations from statements about dark matter & energy, neutrinos, string theory, light, etc. Is anti-matter dark matter or is there an anti-dark-matter too?

Personally, all of this boils down to my reason behind my agnosticism. Until the brainiacs work this all out I'll hold out for the chance that a god can exist. If they work it out than we can revisit the issue.

Posted by AlanC 2012-10-18 10:03|| 2012-10-18 10:03|| Front Page Top

#7 all of this boils down to my reason behind my agnosticism.
Prepared for the agnostiotomy?

Posted by Skidmark 2012-10-18 15:22|| 2012-10-18 15:22|| Front Page Top

#8 Skid, given my disdain for organized religion (if God wants to let me in on something he can contact me directly) which is based on my cynical attitude towards my fellow man, one might expect me to be an atheist. However, I don't have anymore respect for those opinions / dogmas as proposed by anti-believers.

There are too many questions that science can't answer now to be categorical.

Was watching a show on varying theories of universe creation the other night; big bang, big bounce, bubbles from black holes etc. and all I could hear was "And God said, Let there be Light!" at appropriate times in the narrative.

Posted by AlanC 2012-10-18 19:28|| 2012-10-18 19:28|| Front Page Top

#9 " have 0 mass"

No photons have zero REST mass. e = HF
so hf=mc^2
i.e high frequency = high energy. The zero rest mass implies a zero frequency photon ( rather impossible but there for the math to work).

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2012-10-18 19:31|| 2012-10-18 19:31|| Front Page Top

#10 Photons are never at rest, they travel at speed of light c. Their rest mass is zero. E = mc^2 only holds in the rest frame; the general relation includes a spatial momentum component p in the energy/momentum four-vector.

The energy of the photon is actually E = pc. As Bright Pebbles said, you can equate that to E = h times frequency to get the frequency (and color) of the photon.

Posted by KBK 2012-10-18 22:28|| 2012-10-18 22:28|| Front Page Top

23:56 JosephMendiola
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