Sun has been emitting unknown particles, carbon dating may be completely off

I think I will avoid that book.

Even the physics PHDs have trouble with the math explanations within it.
 
Then be better than the physics Ph.D.s - it's really a remarkable book. It'll be totally understandable if you get totally stuck at parts, and the very end may not be something you even think about cracking open, but he does actually spend enough time on even the basics - algebra, geometry, calculus - of mathematics needed to get through the concepts. It's certainly not watered-down.

Jef
 
I like George Johnson's NYT Book Review of The Road to Reality:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/books/review/27JOHNSON.html

I think this quote from his review sums it up quite well - both the mathematics requirement and what the book can bring to the reader:

Meanwhile, earthlings are invited to try following along. Penrose says the book can be approached, or at least skimmed, at four different heights, ranging from Level 1 (mathophobes, who might skip the equations altogether and glean what they can from the words) to Level 4, Olympus of the physics elite.

Figuring that I live somewhere between rungs 1 and 2, I absorbed what I could osmotically. I came away stimulated, sometimes flummoxed, and with an encouraging sense one rarely gets from a science book: how very much there is we still don't know
Click to expand...

I consider myself between rungs 1 and 2 as well. ;)
 
well I found it for $10 including shipping, so I ordered it.


Its going to look great on my bookshelf.
 
Wasn't there a link floating around recently with dozens of free-released actual scientific books in .pdf format all gathered on a same page ? I opened a few of them and discovered most of them are understandable to anyone why had a decent mathematics/physics training which surprised me !
 
SocialNumb said:
I had to look up the words "flummoxed" and "osmotically". Why doesn't he just say "Perplexed"? FFS.
Click to expand...
[OT]
Flummoxed is not *quite* the same as perplexed. Very perplexed would be a bit closer. It's quite common in British English. I always think of flummoxed as "Whhuuuu???" with appropriate confused look and gesturing.

Osmotically is pretty obvious if you know what osmosis is, which I would have thought is covered by high schools or equivalent the world over. The phrase "by osmosis" is more commonly used, e.g. "I absorbed what I could by osmosis".

On the one hand, language is about communication and therefore one should focus on being maximally understandable to the greatest number (i.e. no flummoxed or osmotically).
On the other hand the English language provides so many wonderful words that there tends to be one that is *exactly* right, without having to form a phrase. Taking advantage of that isn't something that we should look down on through some sort of inverted snobbery.
[/OT]
 
I was kidding with my last remark, hence the ;) and I do know what osmosis means, I even have reverse osmosis water filters in my houses. For some reason I didn't connect the two because I've never in my life heard it put that way. I don't know about being "very perplexed" VS plain old perplexed, In my mind they both mean the same thing and the "very" seems unnecessary.

Bah, I don't give a shit really. I'm a high school dropout, there's plenty I don't know.

 
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Genius Gone Insane said:
Here, I like Dr. Soria's take, there should be more of it:

Astronomers talk about it all the time, yet the presence of dark matter has never been directly verified. In essence, it is a convenient ad-hoc term to reconcile the observed motion of galaxies with the accepted laws of Newtonian gravity, Dr Soria suggests."I would not be certain that dark matter exists," he admits.

Dark matter, he adds, is "the lazy option". The hard option, he says, would be to admit that the law of gravity is wrong at large scales and needs to be improved. "Most astronomers prefer to take the easy option, but then they have no clue what dark matter could be."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/kept-in-the-dark-20130614-2o8ps.html#ixzz2Wrupnlaz
Click to expand...

okay
wait a sec
even if we were to totally just assume that "darkmatter does not exist"

this statement
has absolutely no affect on the observation of the motion of the galaxies
the galaxies are moving, we can observe it, we can measure it, we have already measured it, and whether or not darkmatter exists or not, the movement of the galaxies shows how long ago the big bang was, proving the original poster wrong in the first post
 
kass said:
Can you re-explain what you're trying to say? I'm not following you...
Click to expand...

i'm pointing out

1
the existence or non-existence of darkmatter has no effect on how the galaxies have already moved

if someone in the future were to conclusively prove darkmatter to be real, or if someone conclusively proves darkmatter to be non-existing, neither one of those things hapening will have anny affect at all on our assessment of how long ago the big bang happened

2
the existence or non-existence of darkmatter has no impact on the fact that the very first post in this thread was total bullshit, the age of the universe is, in the real world, billions of years older than the age of the universe acording to Creationism
 
The big bang theory is based on general relativity being correct for cosmological objects. If the explanation for modern observation really requires a modification of our ideas about gravity, that surely could result in small or very large changes in our ideas about the big bang.

The original post said nothing at all about creationism or the age of the universe. Hell, radiometric dating is not even involved in the calculation of the age of the universe.


The comment you quoted was not in any context related to creationism or the age of the universe either.

You are kind of arguing with nobody.:cool:
 
kass said:
The big bang theory is based on general relativity being correct for cosmological objects. If the explanation for modern observation really requires a modification of our ideas about gravity, that surely could result in small or very large changes in our ideas about the big bang.

The original post said nothing at all about creationism or the age of the universe. Hell, radiometric dating is not even involved in the calculation of the age of the universe.


The comment you quoted was not in any context related to creationism or the age of the universe either.

You are kind of arguing with nobody.:cool:
Click to expand...

okay
if we are assuming that darkmatter is non-existing,
would it then be possible to modify the age of the universe and give a whole new date for the big bang??
seriously asking

iirc
the original post was saying that the radiometric dating was wrong in a way that made it possible that dinosaurs interacted with humans

my understanding was that the whole "living dinosuars interacting with living humans thing" was the main part of "creationism"
you know the idea that dinosaurs were "created" a mere couple of days before the "creation of Adam"
corect me if i'm wrong here, but i had believed that the first post talking about radiometric dating "being wrong" was referencing the idea that the giant creatures in the Biblical Book of Job were actually dinosaurs interacting with humans
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-...,or.r_qf.&fp=1421b30eb90a77a6&biw=792&bih=425

the idea that "Behemoth and Leviathan being dinosaurs" is laughably ludacrous
 
monoxide_child said:
okay
if we are assuming that darkmatter is non-existing,
would it then be possible to modify the age of the universe and give a whole new date for the big bang??
seriously asking
Click to expand...

Assuming we understand gravity wrong (not likely!), then yes...that almost certainly would change what we think about the early universe. The big bang is theorized in the context of general relativty, so if GR is flat out wrong for cosmological objects/distances, then who knows what we would think about the age of the universe or whatever?





iirc
the original post was saying that the radiometric dating was wrong in a way that made it possible that dinosaurs interacted with humans
Click to expand...

He just said that carbon dating could be wrong, and fossils could be younger than they are. That might have been true if that research checked out (i seem to remember that it didnt hold up to scrutiny).

He might have been hinting at creationism, but I didnt get that impression.




my understanding was that the whole "living dinosuars interacting with living humans thing" was the main part of "creationism"
you know the idea that dinosaurs were "created" a mere couple of days before the "creation of Adam"
corect me if i'm wrong here, but i had believed that the first post talking about radiometric dating "being wrong" was referencing the idea that the giant creatures in the Biblical Book of Job were actually dinosaurs interacting with humans
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-...,or.r_qf.&fp=1421b30eb90a77a6&biw=792&bih=425

the idea that "Behemoth and Leviathan being dinosaurs" is laughably ludacrous
Click to expand...
 
ludacris.jpg
 
We're already considering a bunch of ways to get a better picture of everything from itty-bitty fundamental particles to the large-scale structure of the universe (which, in GR, is how gravity pops up) - everything is a mess of weird stringy things, everything is a grainy mess and past the Planck length there's no 'smaller' anymore, everything is actually just cheese, and so on - and, working with the distinct possibility that everything we know breaks down at sufficiently high energies and we'll basically have to explode chunks of the universe to see what general idea has current theories as a special case, there's plenty to do.

The key is to look for things that explicitly break our predictions in an unavoidable way, so obviously we're looking for dark matter, but our options largely seem to look like

(1) it's a slippery little critter, but we'll find it
(2) it's not there, so everything is ruined

and basically since (1) seems like the better prediction, not to mention the one that'll let us keep in more direct form the things we use already, that would be nice to see. Throwing out what appears to be fundamental physics is not out of the question, but we also want to avoid academic amputation - so we hope for (1) and work under that premise, because if (2) comes out right now we're in trouble anyway. It's like a persistent cough - we'll get it checked out when we can, but the first thought probably isn't going to be terminal lung cancer. (Of course, if it is that bad, we have some arrangements to make, but since it probably isn't we'll try to postpone the funeral planning for now.)

Jef
 
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