HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: emarkp@soda.berkeley.edu (E. Mark Ping)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA ---- ABIAN  replies to  TALBOT
Date: 12 Nov 1992 23:56:01 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley, CS Undergraduate Association
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu
Keywords: TIME, INERTIA, MATTER

MR. ABIAN

  You continually ignore the following question:

  If your A1 holds, then why does time require energy to perpetuate it's
status quo -- i.e. moving forward.  BY YOUR OWN A1 TIME SHOULD RETAIN IT'S
STATUS QUO.  ADDING ENERGY SHOULD **CHANGE** IT'S MOTION FORWARD.

  Until you answer this question, DON'T POST ANYTHING ELSE OR

****GET OFF THIS NEWSGROUP****
GO POST IN ALT.SCI.PHYSICS.NEW-THEORIES!!!!

------------
E. Mark Ping
emarkp@soda.Berkeley.EDU

  "Stand aside, I take large steps."  --Michael Dorn
  "Say, that's a nice bike."          --Cyberdyne Systems T-1000
  "Pituita es."                       --Unknown Latin Scholar
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer)
Subject: Re: Do Balloons fly?
Organization: Simon Fraser University
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 20:46:10 GMT

In article <1992Nov5.192807.1440@sfu.ca> palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer) writes:

>Well, that is correct, but it's a second order effect, and not causal in this
>case. The pressure's the thing, and of course density is inversely
proportional
>to pressure.

erk! Make that "directly proportional to pressure", of course!
Xref: sparky sci.physics:18529 sci.bio:4091
From: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Some physics questions
Date: 9 Nov 1992 10:54 PST
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: na
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.197
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1992Nov7.192950.23136@galois.mit.edu>, jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes...
>In article <1detccINNkst@chnews.intel.com> bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>>
>>Here's where I prove I slept through biology (and that I
>>have the balls to take on the ideas of people like Lewis Thomas):
>>
>>Before the sperm enters the egg, it isn't you, and after
>>it enters the egg, it's not a single cell, it's two cells,
>>or something entirely different.  Right or wrong?
> 
>I'm sure Lewis Thomas wasn't identifying unduly with his dad's sperm.
>As far as I can tell, he's referring to the continuity of life and the
>fact that you can in theory trace all our cells back to single-celled
>ancestors.  Then the "so long ago" makes sense and the "I" is a grand
>exaggeration.  

No.  Though it obviously is a joke, Thomas was referring to his own 
early childhood as a fertilized egg.  The quote if from one of the 
essays in _The Youngest Science_, in which he discusses the remarkable
sophistication of single-celled organisms in being able to biochemically
distinguish self from non-self.

-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: zellner@stsci.edu
Subject: Two tracks of time
Organization: Space Telescope Science Institute
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 06:38:39 GMT

> 
> I once went to a talk by someone who had worked on especially accurate
> measures of time, and he remarked that it was conceivable that we
> could end up at some point in the future with ... two ways of measuring 
> it which were both reasonably consistent with ordinary timepieces, and both
> self-consistent to ...

I believe we do have two such measures, Atomic Time measured with lasers and
such and Ephemeris Time measured from the motions and positions of solar-
system bodies with reference to General Relativity.   Atomic time was set 
up to be as consistent with Ephemeris Time as experiment would allow, but 
the ultimate agreement of the two scales in the future is really a matter
of experiment, right?

If they should be found to run on different tracks, that would no doubt be 
taken to indicate that we need to modify quantum mechanics or general 
relativity, or both.

Ben

From: clw@hprnd.rose.hp.com (Carl Wuebker)
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1992 18:35:10 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: Self charging capacitor ? (No, I don't understand it myself)
Organization: HP Roseville Networks
Newsgroups: sci.physics

     I've heard of a couple of similar phenomena:

          * In the late '60s or early '70s, Popular Electronics had
            an article on an "electret" -- so named because it was
            an E-field version of a magnet.  They even had a way to
            make one -- place a voltage between two plates, pour melted
            carnuba wax between them and let the voltage remain until
 	    the wax had cooled.  The resulting "electret" would charge
	    up, and you could short it periodically and get a spark.
	    I'm not sure how it works -- perhaps polar molecules are
	    aligned by the voltage before the wax cools, and naturally
	    tend to line up that way afterwards.  I guess it could also
	    be another "cold fusion"...

	  * People who fix TVs usually learn early to ground the second
	    anode of the CRT while fixing it, because, if left ungrounded,
	    the second anode tends to charge up to a painful voltage.
	    Again, I'm not sure of the "why" behind it.

						Carl Wuebker
						clw@hprnd.rose.hp.com
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: mt90dac@brunel.ac.uk (Del Cotter)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Massive Photons Tomorrow (was Scientists Plan...)
Date: 5 Nov 92 14:11:02 GMT
Organization: Brunel University, West London, UK

In article <4NOV199214241699@csa1.lbl.gov> SCOTT I CHASE writes:
>
>Another small thing to keep you up at night:  What if a mechanism analogous
>to electoweak symmetry breaking is eventually going to break the remaining
>electromagnetic symmetry?  As the Universe continues to cool, it might
>reach a point when it freezes out into a state in which the photon has mass.
>(Just like the W and Z have mass right now.) What if the range of the 
>electromagnetic interaction became .01 meters all of a sudden?  My nervous
>system might fail.  Heck - atoms might not be stable.  I'm not sure.
>
>And the neat thing is that it could happen at any time.  You folks might
>cease to exist before you ever read this post.  Farewell (just in case).

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. 
-- 
 ',' ' ',','  |                                                  |  ',' ' ',','
   ', ,','    |       Del Cotter       mt90dac@brunel.ac.uk      |    ', ,','  
     ','      |                                                  |      ','
From: tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Date: 11 Nov 92 05:31:58 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Meteorology and Space Science

In article <1d9tejINNq6p@chnews.intel.com> bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>
>Science is truth, and truth is science.  They are one and the same.

Hmmm. What happenned to beauty?

mt
From: cegtitd@prism.gatech.EDU (Tim Dodd)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Date: 9 Nov 92 15:18:47 GMT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

In article <1992Nov6.190131.25000@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU| crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
|In article <73878@hydra.gatech.EDU| cegtitd@prism.gatech.EDU (Tim Dodd) writes:
||In article <1992Nov5.221645.26360@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU| crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
|||In article <73795@hydra.gatech.EDU| cegtitd@prism.gatech.EDU (Tim Dodd) writes:
||This is true, but if the concept has no correspondence to any elements
||in reality, or is defined in such a way that such a correspndence can
||never be established, then by definition, the concept is meaningless.
||I did not say anything about concepts not existing, but about whether
||or not they should be regarded as meaningful.
|
|     Your statement was that 'a word can be regarded as meaningful
|     if the concept it refers to exists'.  So, every concept is meaningful.

This does not follow.  Just because a word is meaningful does not mean
that the concept it refers to is meaningful.

||Again, you have not paid attention to what I said.  I was not speaking of
||a "subject existing outside of a conceptual universe" but of whether or
||not the "subject *pertains* to anything outside" the conceptual universe
||(emphasis added).
|
|     I paid complete attention (or at least as complete as I'm wont to
|     do).  How can there be a concept outside of the conceptual universe?

I never said anything about concepts existing outside the conceptual
universe.  What I was discussing was whether a concept corresponds to
anything outside the conceptual universe (i.e., whether there exists
a semantic mapping between the concept and corresponding elements of
reality).

Chomsky's famous "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" was contrived as
a deliberate attempt to demonstrate that a syntactically correct sentence
could in fact be meaningless.  The phrase "colorless green ideas" describes
a concept.  It is obvious at a glance that this concept cannot refer to
anything real.  Nevertheless, the concept itself exists.

||No, this is exactly what I am arguing against!  Meaning is established
||by the semantic mapping between words or concepts and their referents.
||Since the existence of these referents must be empirically verifiable
||in principle, and reality is something we all share, then the presence
||or absence of meaning is something we can all agree on.
|
|     So now they must be 'empirically verifiable'?

This requirement is nothing new.  If an object is real, then by definition
it has some interaction with observable reality.  Therefore its existence
is subject to empirical verification.  If it is impossible in principle
to devise such an empirical test, then the object in question cannot have
any interaction with reality.  Hence by definition it is unreal.

|     Have you ever said 'I love you'?

Relevance?

|                            dale bass

Tim
-- 
Tim Dodd, Research Scientist, Georgia Tech:  cegtitd@prism.gatech.edu
From: matt@physics2.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Scientists Plan to Blow Up the World!
Date: 5 Nov 92 10:52:33
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
	<Nov.4.13.31.48.1992.25862@ruhets.rutgers.edu>
	<mcirvin.720987478@husc8>
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics2.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu's message of 5 Nov 92 18:17:58 GMT

In article <mcirvin.720987478@husc8> mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu
(Mcirvin) writes about the possibility that we are only living in a
false vacuum now and that high-energy experiments might catalyze a 
phase transition to the true vacuum:

> I once opined to Eric Carlson that this was an idea that had been
> insufficiently exploited in science fiction.  He pointed out to
> me that "it would be a very short novel."

And I once suggested to Lawrence Hall that it was a truly wonderful
opportunity for rabble-rousing politics---definitely an argument
against the SSC that hasn't yet been sufficiently exploited by the
project's opponents.

I can just visualize the scene in Waxahachie: thousands of protestors
chaining themselves to the gates and throwing themselves in front of
bulldozers, holding up signs that say "Save the universe"!
--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
austern@lbl.bitnet                faction, an army!  If you don't have any
matt@physics.berkeley.edu         solutions, become a part of the problem!
From: mlevin@husc8.harvard.edu (Michael Levin)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: a question on powerful lasers
Date: 9 Nov 92 18:28:42 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Nov9.132842.17252
Distribution: usa
Organization: Harvard University Science Center


     Are there any lasers available which will actually cut things?
The ones I see for sale in catalogs (like Edmund Scientific) seem only
to be for demonstration purposes. Is it possible to obtain a laser
that will cut metal, or are they only industrial ones that weigh tons
and cost millions? If anyone has any info on this (company names,
etc.) please reply to mlevin@husc8.harvard.edu.

Mike Levin
From: sschaff@roc.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Stephen F. Schaffner)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Date: 6 Nov 92 19:43:52 GMT
Article-I.D.: unixhub.BxB855.7Mq
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

In article <73878@hydra.gatech.EDU>, cegtitd@prism.gatech.EDU (Tim Dodd) writes:
[on whether religious talk can be considered meaningful]

|> In order to judge whether a particular concept is meaningful, it is not enough
|> to ask if the concept exists.  Even asking the question makes it clear that
|> it does.  One must ask if the concept has any real referents.  If it
|> cannot be shown that such referents exist, then the concept is meaningless
|> as it does not refer to anything.

It's not clear to me exactly what you mean by reality.  Religious believers in 
general think that God is part of reality, just that he is not demostrable by 
scientific means.  Is reality to be identified with physical reality?  In an 
earlier post (which apparantly no longer exists -- is this an ironic gesture 
on the part of Usenet?) you seemed to suggest that for a word or concept to be 
meaningful, it had not only to refer to an element of reality, but had to refer 
to an element that could (at least in principle) be detected.  Is this in fact 
your position?
	To clarify matters, could you tell me which of the following statements 
are meaningful?

		Physical laws exist.
		God exists (and what if the observable effects of these two 
statements are taken to be the same?).
		My daughter's imaginary playmate has brown hair (if this is 
meaningful, is it rendered less so by the fact that I don't have a daughter?)
		Noninteracting particles exist.
		Some objects are beautiful.
		Some statements are meaningful.

The last statement (I believe) echoes a complaint about logical positivism.  
It seems pretty clear to me that the concept of meaning that you espouse is 
itself meaningless under your own definition (meaning does not, after all, 
refer to anything observable), and is in fact a philosophical rather than 
a scientific statement.  

		


-- 
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.
From: cegtitd@prism.gatech.EDU (Tim Dodd)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Physics, religion, & mysticism
Date: 11 Nov 92 14:55:07 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

In article <1992Nov10.182833.1@stsci.edu| zellner@stsci.edu writes:
|Tim Dodd, cegtitd@prism.gatech.edu, writes:
|
||  How do we decide if a statement is true?  We devise an empirical test 
||  and let reality tell us if the statement is accurate.
|
|Sure, if you can.  When did you last try the Eotvos experiment?  Or did 
|you (heavens forbid!) take the results of that experiment "on faith"?  And
|do you have a good experiment to test superstring theory?

You're missing the point.  If it is not possible in principle to devise
a test of a proposition, then that proposition describes things which have
nothing to do with reality.  Note the "in principle"!  This is a crucial
distinction.

||  Religious thought is typified by "mystical mode".  In this mode of 
||  thought, it is recognized that there exists a level of "truth" or 
||  "reality" to which mere rational thought does not have access.  
|
|There certainly might be levels of reality to which neither experience nor 
|experiment have access.  That isn't the same thing as the limits of ration-

Then how are you justified in referring to these "levels" as real?

|ality.  If a proposition isn't falsifiable, it isn't science.  But that 
|doesn't say whether it's true or false, or even rational.  According to the 
|Gospel of John, Jesus said "Before Abraham existed, I already was."  Science 
|cannot touch that one, but it's a simple statement of fact, either true or 

How has this been established as a fact?

|false, with nothing "mystical" about it. 
|
||  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.  
|
|I don't see that much difference.  I can read one of St. Paul's letters with 
|the exactly the same thought-modes that I read a physics book or a computer 
|manual:  with every attention to detail, and with the DEFAULT assumption that 
|the writer knows much more about it than I do (yet).  What is this saying?  
|
|Where's the "mysticism" in all that?
|
|Ben

If you read physics books the same way you read the Bible, then I would
have to say you don't read physics very well.  What do you do when a
statement is made in a physics book which pertains to something of which
you have no direct experience?  You can decide if the statement is
accurate by reading about experiments that have been done to test it,
tracing through the mathematics, etc.  If you have the necessary tools,
you can even test it yourself.  Why don't you demand the same sort of
justification from religious writings?  In reference to the quote from
John above, what reason do you have for accepting this statement as true?
Any possible "reasons" will necessarily be of a fundamentally different
character from the reasons which are acceptable to rational thought.

Tim
-- 
Tim Dodd, Research Scientist, Georgia Tech:  cegtitd@prism.gatech.edu
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: gsmith@lauren.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de (Gene W. Smith)
Subject: Re: The size of electrons, and Fanciful misc SAGA
Organization: IWR, University of Heidelberg, Germany
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 17:33:02 GMT

In article <1992Nov8.154955.15938@prim> dave@prim.demon.co.uk (Dave
Griffiths) writes:

>Our current theories say that spacetime is infinitely subdivisable. This is
>a fundamental part of our model of reality. The other two examples you
>quote are imaginary mathematical concepts, but they are not part of the
>physical model itself.

Since things like sqrt(-1) are used in QM, they *are* a part of the
model.  Nor can I see the difference between an imaginary mathematical
concept and any other kind.  Including the kinds used in mathematical
physics.

>After a while, the implications of working with zeros and ones just start
>to sink in. The digitization of life has been proceeding so gradually that
>maybe you don't realize what a revolution we are going through. Music is now
>nearly all digital and most of us can't tell the difference. Occams razor
>might suggest that there are _no_ continuums out there. We can get by OK
>without 'em.

We can also get by with 'em.  If the simplest idea is the best, it
follows that if continuums are simplest, they are best.

Of course, if you want some of the advantages of discreteness as well
as some of the advantages of having a continuum, you can replace R
with R*, where R* is an ultrapower of R.  A discrete in R*^n is then a
continuum which works like your digitized model.

>Now you might argue that computers are just a tool, no big deal. But
>I would say that technology leading to digitization is no coincidence,
>rather the digitization of life _reflects_ the underlying nature of reality.

I would say you've been staring at the monitor too long.  Life is not the
game of life.

>Nature is trying to give us a hint.

Your computer is an artifact.


-- 
     Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/IWR/Ruprecht-Karls University 
               gsmith@kalliope.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de
From: bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Background Radiation and Olber's Paradox
Date: 5 Nov 92 23:37:56 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu (RING, DAVID WAYNE) writes:
>Which reminds me, does anyone know when stars first formed? Was it before or
>after galaxies? before or after globular clusters?

If I could answer this question, I would be doing something far more
enjoyable than reading Uselessnet.
From: johno@sdd.hp.com (John Ongtooguk)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Date: 6 Nov 1992 01:26:50 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, San Diego Division
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: hpsdlg10.sdd.hp.com

In article <1992Nov06.003459.120859@zeus.calpoly.edu>, mhorning@zeus.calpoly.edu (Mark E. Horning (Captain Neutrino)) writes:
|> johno@sdd.hp.com (John Ongtooguk) states
|> >In article <1d9tejINNq6p@chnews.intel.com>, bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
|> >|> 
|> >|> Science is truth, and truth is science. They are one and the same. 
|> >
|> >  If the truth is always changing then what is it after it changes ?
|> 
|> No, no. You have to treat science as an approximation. As information
|> goes towards infinity, science goes towards reality. Therefore when it 
|> changes it more closely approximates the truth.

   I'll agree with that. Science is more of a falsifier than deliverer of 
   truth and after enough "is, is not" the truth may become evident, or at
   least accepted as such. 

   John Ongtooguk (johno@sdd.hp.com)
From: mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Mcirvin)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: NASA Coverup
Keywords: Moon Neutral Point calculation
Date: 6 Nov 92 00:16:44 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc8.mcirvin.721009004

whit@carson.u.washington.edu (John Whitmore) writes:

[quoting Snarfy]

>>    Throughout the fifties and sixties  ,  the  so  called  "neutral  point"
>>   where  the  gravitational  forces  of  the earth-moon system balance,was
>>   given over and over again as being between 22,100 and 25,200  miles  from
>>   the surface of the moon in the direction of the earth. 

>	Given by who?  It doesn't follow from anything I see in
>the data, nor do you give any attribution.

Judging from calculations I just did, I think this range comes from
there being at least two different "neutral points" in question; the low
number looks about right for the place where gravitational forces
balance, and the high number is probably the Lagrange point where an
object will orbit the earth in step with the moon.

>>    The  July  25th  ,  1969  issue of TIME magazine stated that the Neutral
>>    Point was 43,495 miles from the center of  the moon.  Werner  von  Braun
>>    stated  in  the  1969  edition of "History of Rocketry and Space Travel"
>>    that the neutral point was 43,495 miles the center of  the  moon  .  The
>>    pre-Apollo  distances  were  given  as  20,000  to 25,000 miles from the
>>    center of the moon. 

>	Given by whom?  Either there is a second definition involved, or
>SOMEONE made an error.  Several someones, if the range of 20,000 to 25,000
>is to be believed.  Again, I see no source for the questionable numbers.

Someone who redirected the thread to alt.sci.physics.new-theories
suggested that this was the result of a typo, since the number is
very close to the distance of the Lagrange point from the moon in
*kilometers* rather than miles.  I suspect this may be the case.

Note that the Lagrange point, not the balancing-forces point, is
the spot around which you can actually orbit things; in the rotating
frame, it's a saddle point of the effective potential, with the
stable direction transverse to the earth-moon line.

-- 
Matt McIrvin
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.chem,sci.engr.chem