HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Date: 10 Nov 1992 11:27 PST
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: na
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.196
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1992Nov8.160429.14488@galileo.physics.arizona.edu>, lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat) writes...
> 
>(I do not know what religions you have been exposed to, but my
>beckground in is a sect that specifically encourages constant
>questioning and self-examination.)

Would you mind being more specific?  I assume that we're talking about
some branch of Christianity.  Do they encourage you to question whether
Jesus is the Lord?  How about asking if Jesus really rose from the dead, 
or said the things which he is quoted to have said in the Bible?

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"It is not a simple life to be a single cell,
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		 although I have no right to say so, having
				 been a single cell so long ago myself that I 
				 have no memory at all of that stage of my 
				 life." - Lewis Thomas
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: chaloux@mandolin.mitre.org (Dave Chaloux)
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA, ABIAN replies to CHALOUX
Reply-To: chaloux@mandolin.mitre.org (Dave Chaloux)
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean, Va
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 17:18:01 GMT

Abian replies:

> chaloux@mandolin.mitre.org (Dave Chaloux) writes:
> 
> >I think there is at least one case where this is wrong. To be specific,
> >elementary particles decay under no provocation whatsoever. Thus you have
> >change without provocation and you have a tendency over time to change
> >rather than to stay the same.
>  
>    What provokes  an elementary particles to decay -  is exactly the
> annoying tendency of TIME  to stay still and maintain its status quo. 
> So, the elementary particle is annoyed with the stubbornness of TIME and 
> supplies energy to PUSHM TIME FORWARD - and hence the elementary particle
> DECAYS, and TIME MOVES FORWARD.

There are a number of problems with this reply.

1) You maintain that time has inertia. You say it takes energy to move time
forward. Energy is not conserved in your equation over time (the energy used
to move time forward is lost). Here you say that the energy is supplied by
radioactive decay. However, energy is conserved in this decay. In otherwords,
no energy is left over to move time forward.

2) By saying the above, you have destroyed the ability of your theory to
make predictions. This is required for it to be in the realm of science.
If something changes, it can always be explained as due to the stubbornness of
time. If it stays the same it can always be explained as maintaining the
status quo. Thus any eventuality can be explained. It might be said that
the ability to explain any eventuality is the mark of a great theory. Not so.
What you now need in order to make predictions that can be tested to verify
the theory is some way of deciding ahead of time when the stubbornness of
time will act as a provoker and when it will not.

Without such a way of deciding you may be able to always explain things after
the fact but you cannot make predictions that can be tested. Unless you
can make predictions that can be tested, your theory is not science. This
doesn't mean it isn't true. It does mean it isn't science. If it isn't
science, it doesn't belong is sci.physics.

I am not trying to start a flame war with you. I am trying to show you that
what you have proposed either has problems with science, or by fixing it in
such a way that it no longer has problems, you have removed it from the
realm of science. Again, just because it isn't science doesn't necessarily
make it wrong. Historical "facts" are not science either and can be true.
Debating them in sci.physics would be a good way to get people irate.

Now if you can give a way of discriminating ahead of time when time will
act as a provoker and when it will not, your theory might have predictive
ability again. 

Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
Subject: Re: NASA Coverup
Organization: Software Engineering Institute
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 14:11:18 GMT

In article <11291@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr) writes:

[the mass of the moon]

>Is such an estimate really all that accurate?  I have always discounted 
>it since the height (not to mention the timing) of tides depend to such 
>a large extent on local conditions.  Is this method accurate to a factor 
>of 2 given the calculational tools in Newton's day?  

Well, Newton did the calculation, and concluded that the moon
was 1/29 as massive as the earth.  So no, he wasn't within a
factor of 2, but he admitted that better data on the tides were
required.
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.chem
From: john@aquarius.unm.edu (John Prentice)
Subject: Looking for scientific contacts in Argentina
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 92 21:55:39 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Physics & Astro, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

I will be visiting Argentina from about 10 Jan to 10 Feb, primarily for
the purpose of climibing Aconcagua.  However, I am anticipating having
one or two weeks free after the climb, during which I hope to tour the
country a bit.  I would very much like to visit one or more universities
during that time, find out what research is going on, and make some
friends.  I don't have any contacts in Argentina however, so if you have
any suggestions for people to talk to, I would much appreciate it.  If
anyone in Argentina would be interested in helping arrange a visit to
a university, I would also much appreciate that! 

My scientific interests are fairly broad, I am currently doing research in 
quantum mechanical scattering from surfaces, computational solid mechanics, 
and constitutive modeling of solids.  I am also doing some work with the
use of symbolic algebra packages for automatic code generation and do
alot of work in supercomputing, both vector and parallel.  I would 
certainly be interested in meeting scientists working in related fields, 
but I would also be extremely interested in meeting and talking to scientists
working in other disciplines.  I am extremely curious about what research
is being carried out in Argentina and South America in general.

John
-- 
Dr. John K. Prentice                      
Quetzal Computational Associates    
3200 Carlisle N.E., Albuquerque, NM   87110-1664  USA
Phone: 505-889-4543  E-mail: quetzal@pinet.aip.org -or- jkprent@cs.sandia.gov
From: bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Some physics questions
Date: 9 Nov 92 01:26:32 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Intel Corp., Chandler, Arizona
NNTP-Posting-Host: alfalfa.intel.com

In article <1dk21rINN5e6@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca> ramsay@unixg.ubc.ca (Keith Ramsay) writes:
>I would agree that it is conceivable
>that one would have two measures of time, neither one with a greater
>claim to being "time", although it seems unlikely.

We already have at least two.

There is subjective time, in which we sense the flow of
events around us.  Time flies when we're having fun, and
crawls at the oddest of times.

There is objective time, in which we compare the flow of
events in a machine with the flow of events around us.

One can add relativistic time and sidereal time, off the
top of one's head (this fourth is too closely related to
4/4 time for me to use that as a fifth).

These are mere implications of nuances in the definition of
time.  I would say to your inspiration that he should first
adequately define the obvious sort of time before implying that
there is another that fits all of our conventional versions.

				--Blair
				  "Who said 'science is truth?'
				   Where is his proof?"
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: abian@iastate.edu (Alexander Abian)
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA. ABIAN's PROOF OF THE FUND. THM. OF ALGEBRA 
Keywords:  CORRECTION        FUNDAMENTAL THM. OF ALGEBRA
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 10:00:13 GMT

                          CORRECTION
  
           PLEASE  SUBSTITUTE THIS FOR PREVIOUS  VERSION

Dear Mr. C.G 
 
  You asked me to give a proof of the Fundamental Theorem of
Algebra by e-mail.  I post only in TIME HAS INERTIA.  Here is my own
proof (I am almost sure that I have published it somewhere).
 

   THEOREM.  Every nonconstant polynomial over complex numbers has a
             root.

   PROOF. Assume on the contrary that  a + bz +...+ kz^n   with nonzero k, 
 
has no root, i.e., never vanishes.  Thus,  REWRITING THE POLYNOMIAL

IN DESCENDING POWERS    kz^n + ... + bz + a     it follows that the

quotient (since by our assumption never vanishes)

(1)    1 / (kz^n + ...+ bz + a)         
  
has a derivative at every point of the z-plane.
   
Hence, in particular,  

(2)    0   is an analytic point of  1/(kz^n + ... + bz + a),  and there-

fore the latter has a Laurent expansion in powers of  z  valid in the entire 
plane  (since we are over complex numbers - this is  not true over real 
numbers). 
  
  However, the Laurent expansion can be obtained by LONG DIVISION of (1).
  
Performing the long division of (1), we obtain

(3)   1/(kz^n + ...+ bz + a)  =  (1/k) z^(-n) + ........
 
But (3) shows that  0  is an essential isolated singularity of 
                   
                    1/(kz^n + ...+ bz + a)
 
contradicting (2).  Hence our assumption is false and the Theorem is
proved.

P.S.  Note that the proof will fail if instead of a polynomial we con-
      sider an entire function  (i.e., a power series, i.e., so to speak 
"an infinite polynomial"). The reason is that one cannot rewrite the
power series in descending order. Indeed, there are nonvanishing power
series such as the power series of  e^z.
     With best regards,                              Alexander ABIAN
           

P.S.  I typed the previous version and I thought that I pressed "i"
      to check the spelling and the mistakes.  Apparently I pressed
      "s" because I could no longer edit the text.
       Also, I know all the standard proofs e.g., by Liouville's Thm.











>-- 
>   The tendency of maintaining the status-quo, Reaction to provocation and
>                The tendency of maintaining again a status-quo.  
>    TIME HAS INERTIA  and some energy is lost to move Time forward  
>  E = mcc  (Einstein)    must be replaced by    E = m(0) exp(-At) (Abian)
-- 
   The tendency of maintaining the status-quo, Reaction to provocation and
                The tendency of maintaining again a status-quo.  
    TIME HAS INERTIA  and some energy is lost to move Time forward  
  E = mcc  (Einstein)    must be replaced by    E = m(0) exp(-At) (Abian)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: NASA Coverup
Keywords: Moon Neutral point possible explanation
Date: 8 Nov 92 21:40:11 GMT
Reply-To: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University

In article <4577@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us> snarfy@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us writes:
>
>   During the Apollo moon missions, ascent stages of lunar modules  as  well
>   as  the  spent third stages of rockets crashed on the hard surface of the
>   moon. Each time ,these caused the moon, according to NASA ,to "ring  like
>   a gong or a bell." After the Apollo 12 flight , reverberations lasted for
>   nearly  four hours. NASA appears to be reluctant to suggest that the moon
>   may actually be hollow . Otherwise, it offers no explanation.

Of course, the earth does exactly the same thing.  It is quite interesting 
to watch the echoes of something like a nuclear test.  

But, as I wrote this, I noticed snarfy's address for the first time: 
santa-cruz.ca!  Aha!  Perhaps the problem is that snarfy's head is 
still ringing from the earthquake a few years ago.... 

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Subject: Re: No big crunch?
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 23:26:02 GMT

In article <6NOV199214083231@csa1.lbl.gov> sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
>In article <1992Nov6.200752.26007@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes...
>
>>     That's funny.  I thought I heard several Senators tell us the SSC
>>     is about 'jobs'.
>
>What a Senator has to say about the SSC is meaningless.  Most of what 
>Senators have to say about most topics is meaningless.  No one in this
>newsgroup has tried to argue that the SSC should be built because it
>will employ warm bodies.  

     Your memory is apparently shorter than mine.  How many old articles
     would you like to see with people using 'jobs' as a motivation for
     the SSC?  I'm sure numbers in the low teens are possible.

                            dale bass
-- 
C. R. Bass                                          crb7q@virginia.edu        
Department of Mechanical, 
     Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering
University of Virginia                              (804) 924-7926
From: joe@astro.as.utexas.edu (Joe Wang)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: NO BIG BANG
Date: 6 Nov 92 10:06:31 GMT
Organization: McDonald Observatory, University of Texas @ Austin

In article <Nov.4.12.10.14.1992.24509@ruhets.rutgers.edu> bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes:
>But also, nobody has found any stars or
>other objects with absolutely zero metallicity.  This is annoying,

A related annoying fact is that quasars have metal lines.  Since these
objects are supposedly some of the oldest objects around, it's quite
disconcerting to see metal lines in them.  (But there do appear to be
gas clouds in the quasar's line of sight that are metal-less.)
From: dbc@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Bryan Carpenter)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Size of a PHOTON?
Date: 9 Nov 92 17:52:58 GMT

In <4NOV199211055734@csa1.lbl.gov> sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:

>In article <13379@ecs.soton.ac.uk>, dbc@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Bryan Carpenter) writes...
>>In <1992Nov3.175155.27867@impmh.uucp> dsg@impmh.uucp (Dave Gordon) writes:
>>>...
>> 
>>>This relates to something I have been wondering about for a while now:
>>>is there an upper bound on the freqency of electromagnetic radiation?
>> 
>>You can increase the energy of a photon indefinitely just
>>by boosting it into a fast enough reference frame.  So the answer
>>is: no, there is no upper limit on the energy.

>As I tried to make clear yesterday, this presupposes that the physics of 
>high energy QED is the same as at low energy, a fact against which there
>is at least some indirect suggestion (I hesitate to use the word "evidence",
>though some would call it that).

>...

>Clearly, you get into a nasty tangle trying to imagine such a modification,
>and the implications that it would have for special relativity.  But this
>does not imply, as Bryan infers, that it could not happen.  It just means
>that we don't understand the behavior of photons at energies higher than 
>we have ever studied them.  

Well ok.  I certainly don't want to get into any argument about what
might happen near the Plank scale.
I thought Dave was making arguments based on standard special-
relativistic effects like Lorentz-contraction and mass increase
possibly leading to a gravitational collapse.  I just meant to point out
that that logic wasn't right, assuming Lorentz invariance.
 
>-Scott

Bryan

Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
Subject: Re: Error in NO FTL Signal Proofs exposed.
Organization: Software Engineering Institute
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 15:21:35 GMT

In article <92317.082912MRG3@psuvm.psu.edu> MRG3@psuvm.psu.edu writes:

>The effect of the measuring apparatus
>on the system which produces the correlated photon system
>still propogates at the speed of light or less.

Yes, this is precisely what the experiment is supposed to test.
And there's only one way to find out, isn't there?

I'm not going to sound like a broken record, so this will be
absolutely my last contribution to the debate: please, somebody,
DO THE EXPERIMENT.  This issue will never be decided on the
basis of scripture, dogma, and anathema.  Only Nature knows;
go ask her.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: Massive Photons Tomorrow (was Scientists Plan...)
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 22:19:46 GMT

In article <Bx8y2F.3wD@brunel.ac.uk> mt90dac@brunel.ac.uk (Del Cotter) writes:

>Someone told me once that a massive photon might not be fatal if the mass
>was low enough.  The range of the electromagnetic interaction would shrink
>from infinity to a length of the order of a metre or so, with no practical
>consequences (?), and there would be a lower frequency limit to the EM spec-
>trum.  Atoms, nervous systems and Usenet would be unharmed; we would simply
>wake up one morning without TV. 

Hmm, *every* morning I wake up I'm without TV, so that wouldn't bother
me.  Would there be sunshine, though?  
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.space,alt.conspiracy
From: soh@tmp_ip_003.trl.OZ.AU (Soh Kam Hung)
Subject: Re: NASA Coverup
Keywords: Evidence gravity falsified
Organization: Telecom Research Labs, Melbourne, Australia
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 23:21:56 GMT

I been lied to by the damned physicists!  I thought gravity was more or
less constant close to the surface of the Earth but I've found proof to
the contrary.  The gravity at the top of a stair well must be much
higher than I thought: I can't jump a fraction of an inch after walking
up three flights of stairs!

Humour for the smiley impaired.

--
Soh Kam Hung, Network Management Research,     | h.soh@trl.oz.au  
TRL, POB 249 Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia | +61 3 253 6638
From: paul@mtnmath.UUCP (Paul Budnik)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: NEWS: Galileo Cleared of Heresy Charges by Vatican
Date: 5 Nov 92 15:35:21 GMT
Organization: Mountain Math Software, P. O. Box 2124, Saratoga. CA 95070

In article <4NOV199211234121@csa1.lbl.gov>, sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
...
> I think that the Vatican statement is more general than you imply.  The 
> point is not that the Church now accepts that the world is Galilean.  Rather,
> it conceeds that physics is the right tool for understanding the physical
> world, and that the Church should not get involved in deciding whether or 
> not a particular cosmology is right or wrong.  
> 
> The statement accurately explains that Christians should not confuse
> Faith with the belief in any particular out-dated cosmology.  
> 
> I think that this is a very positive attitude, and hope that the 
> Pat Buchannans and Pat Robertsons of the world take it to heart.

I would not be so optimistic. It is easy for the Vatican to make this
concession today. No one but a handful of religious fanatics believes
that religion should be in the cosmology business. The battles of today
concern such issues as abortion and bith control where both science and
religion feel they have a legitimate role to play.  The Vatican's stand
and influence on birth control in third world countries is responsible
for far more human misery today than the inquisition ever was.

Paul Budnik
From: sschaff@roc.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Stephen F. Schaffner)
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 23:27:25 GMT

In article <74353@hydra.gatech.EDU>, cegtitd@prism.gatech.EDU (Tim Dodd) writes:

|> It is true that there are many scientists who are religious.  It is also
|> true that there are many religious people who are scientifically minded or
|> at least take an interest in science.  However, there are two very different
|> modes of thought in operation here.

How surprising, I (very nearly) agree with you now (I still think your 
definition of "meaning" has grave philosophical problems, but the world is 
full of philosophical problems, so who cares?).  Part of the problem has been 
that some posters have taken the point of view, roughly speaking, that the 
two don't mix because only idiots are religious and idiots can't do physics; 
this is bound to make religious physicists a bit cranky.

|> These two modes of thought are mutually exclusive.  Neither can encompass
|> the other:  they cannot be mixed.  You can think mystically or rationally,
|> but you cannot do both at the same time.  People who call themselves
|> "religious" and "scientific" are not being completely honest.  You can
|> be religious *or* scientific; you cannot be both simultaneously.

I have only a couple of quibbles.  One was pointed out in an early post in 
this thread: while the two activities are quite different, there is some 
leakage in practice between them, at least at the psychological level.  One's 
religious beliefs (and philosophy, and economic and social position, etc.) 
may have some influence on the particular form a scientist's theorizing takes 
(off-hand I can't see any comparable effect for an experimentalist); similarly, 
one's science (along with all of the other factors) may have an influence on 
how one approaches religion.  Second, precisely because they are quite 
different modes of thought, you can actually do them at the same time.  A 
religious person may worship God by studying slime molds, rather as one can 
also be earning a living while doing science: neither one has any impact on how 
the science is done.  This in no way contradicts your point.
	Finally, I do think that doing science requires a prior commitment to 
a world-view in a way that is not wholly unlike that found in religion.  But 
this is at a deep (you might say meaningless) level that does not come up in 
the daily practice of science, and the latter is, after all, the thing that 
most scientists are interested in.
	My impression is that this thread has just about been done to death 
by now.


-- 
Steve Schaffner        sschaff@unixhub.slac.stanford.edu
	The opinions expressed may be mine, and may not be those of SLAC, 
Stanford University, or the DOE.
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.space
From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Subject: Re: NASA Coverup
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 16:25:19 GMT

In article <1992Nov4.092243.1@fnalo.fnal.gov> higgins@fnalo.fnal.gov (Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey) writes:
>In article <1992Nov4.140750.22909@nntpd2.cxo.dec.com>, doucette@hannah.enet.dec.com () writes:
>> 
>> Monday night on PBS, there was a special on Space Exploration which showed an
>> interesting experiment.  One of the astronauts dropped a hammer and feather
>> at the same time to show that Galieo was right.  
>[...]
>
>Hidden assumption:  this film is playing back on your TV set at the
>same speed it was photographed.  (Or is it video?)  In any case, you
>need to know the correct frame rate to get an accurate value for t, and
>even then you will have some irreducible error in the measurement,
>thanks to the discrete time resolution of film and video.

I remember this. It was *live* video from the moon. I was working the
late shift at CBS when it came in. I know we made a quad tape of it.
The field rate of NTSC limits time resolution to 1/60th second, but
that's certainly sufficient to tell the difference between .6 G and 
.166 G.

Gary