One subject NOBODY knows practically anything about - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Skimask
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 07:36:02 pm
content: Gotta find one subject that nobody knows anything about.

author: Skimask
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 07:47:11 pm
content: Well, I'm thinking REAL objects. Not fantasy.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 07:52:45 pm
content: The relationship between a non Newtonian fluid and the stiction of an inclined plane attachment utilising an amorphous alloy and an organic monomer of arbitrary composition.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 08:45:16 pm
content: Quote from: Skimask on July 10, 2016, 07:36:02 pmWhy 42 is the answer to everything.

author: m98
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 09:55:47 pm
content: Quote from: SeanB on July 10, 2016, 07:52:45 pmGets my vote. Did you make that one up, or is this a real research subject?

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 10:03:00 pm
content: If he told you you'd already know too much

author: bitseeker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 10:26:53 pm
content: Quote from: SeanB on July 10, 2016, 07:52:45 pmOne is more fun to jump on?

author: Wytnucls
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 10:52:58 pm
content: Gravity.

author: StillTrying
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 10:54:47 pm
content: If the whole Universe is expanding, what is it expanding into ?Yes, gravity is one of my favourites.

author: StillTrying
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 10:58:26 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2016, 08:45:16 pm42.

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2016, 10:58:51 pm
content: What was going on before the Big Bang.

author: timb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 01:14:24 am
content: Quote from: xrunner on July 10, 2016, 10:58:51 pmThat one's easy: The Big Foreplay.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 01:22:58 am
content: Quote from: SeanB on July 10, 2016, 07:52:45 pmSounds like pushing shit uphill to me.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 01:42:40 am
content: Turbulence.The genetic mechanisms of aging. (Actually there are some knowns, but only by very few.)A moral political system compatible with long term industrial civilization and ecological sustainability.Banking and the origin and nature of currency.The various varieties of infinity.How to teach people to think rationally and cast off belief-based memetic thought habits and cognitive biases.Provability.Why the American political/justice system is so broken, and how to fix it.Who really runs most of the world's political/power structures, and why they like to create wars.Women.The use of subliminal and neuro-linguistic conditioning techniques by mainstream media for public opinion manipulation.The original construction of the Communist ideology as a deliberate tool of social and economic destruction and mass murder.A unified theory of quantum physics, gravity, and everything else.The underlying process of Cognition (aka how to make a real AI.)The actual solution to the Fermi Paradox.

author: System Error Message
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 01:57:25 am
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on July 11, 2016, 01:42:40 ama lot of these has been answered and explored. Even the brain has been mapped out neuron by neuron on a computer cluster and has managed to be simulated (they put stimuli through and learned a lot that everything is a perception).

author: Muttley Snickers
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 03:08:54 am
content: What the hell is in Chicken Mc Nuggets ?They are currently promoting 24 nuggets for 10 bucks down here , tempting but no thanks and as if people were not sick enough already.Eleven herbs and spices should probably get a mention as well, I stay the hell away from all this crap.

author: Cubdriver
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 04:15:45 am
content: Quote from: timb on July 11, 2016, 01:14:24 amThat just made me burst out laughing. Good one, Tim!!-Pat

author: gnavigator1007
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 04:22:23 am
content: Just checked the forum member list and came up with 3 usernames containing "nobody". I wonder what they know

author: Skimask
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 04:22:43 am
content: Quote from: StillTrying on July 10, 2016, 10:54:47 pmOhhhhhhh crap.Stuck in a reboot loop...

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 04:35:53 am
content: Speaking of mcnuggets, ask a counter drone of Dunkin Donuts what the company name means... I haven't found one who knew.Disclaimer: I am old enough to remember the feature.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 05:06:05 am
content: Quote from: StillTrying on July 10, 2016, 10:54:47 pmMaybe the Universe is a constant size, and everything in it is shrinking?Howeverhttp://arxiv.org/abs/1606.08444might be a better answer...We examine how to construct a spatial manifold and its geometry from the entanglement structure of an abstract quantum state in Hilbert space. Given a decomposition of Hilbert space H into a tensor product of factors, we consider a class of "redundancy-constrained states" in H that generalize the area-law behavior for entanglement entropy usually found in condensed-matter systems with gapped local Hamiltonians. Using mutual information to define a distance measure on the graph, we employ classical multidimensional scaling to extract the best-fit spatial dimensionality of the emergent geometry. We then show that entanglement perturbations on such emergent geometries naturally give rise to local modifications of spatial curvature which obey a (spatial) analog of Einstein's equation. The Hilbert space corresponding to a region of flat space is finite-dimensional and scales as the volume, though the entropy (and the maximum change thereof) scales like the area of the boundary. A version of the ER=EPR conjecture is recovered, in that perturbations that entangle distant parts of the emergent geometry generate a configuration that may be considered as a highly quantum wormhole.[/i[

author: Carl_Smith
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 05:08:14 am
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on July 11, 2016, 01:42:40 amI have found this one to be particularly interesting to think about in recent years. It's also interesting that most people have no idea that there are different varieties of infinity and they are all not equal. On the other hand, it's not too surprising, since I took enough math in the course of my engineering degree to almost be a math major and I was never introduced to this concept.It's not a new concept to the mathematical world. I have a book I got for free at a local used book store when they had a bin of stuff they were clearing out, called "One Two Three ...Infinity" by George Gamow. It was first copyrighted in 1947. It discusses the differences between levels of infinity. Good book. There are other parts that discuss the nature of galaxies and space that are very outdated, but the parts about numbers are still valid and quite interesting.It may not be mathematically rigorous, but here is a way I once introduced the concept to someone. Consider how many points there are on an infinite line. Most people would say an infinite number. Each point can be represented by a real number, such as on a number line. There are an infinite number of real numbers to represent the location of each point on the line. Let this infinity be called Infinity A. Do this same thing for a second identical line and use the two lines to represent the X and Y axes of a plane. There are an infinite number of points on the plane, and we will call this number Infinity B. You can now represent any of these infinite number of points on the plane with a real number from that X and Y axes. Yet there are an infinite number of X axis real numbers, and an infinite number of Y axis real numbers, so the number of coordinates for the points on the plane, our "Infinity B" is simply Infinity A squared.Problem is that you might make an argument against these infinities being different as follows: Take all your infinite number of X axis coordinates and multiply them by two, just to space them apart. Now take all your Y axis coordinates and multiply them by two as well, and move them over one and fit them in between all the previously existing X axis points. You have now crammed all the X and Y axis coordinates of every point on the infinite plane back into an infinite line that is equivalent to the first original infinite line that we called Infinity A.And then you might argue against that by saying that since the line is continuous, the idea of multiplying by two to create space between numbers is not valid.Professionals in the field of mathematics would probably cringe at this explanation, but it does convey the idea that there are different infinities and they are not all equivalent. Well, enough brain cell melting for now...

author: ChunkyPastaSauce
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 05:23:51 am
content: Why anything exists at all (including reality itself).

author: mtdoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 05:27:39 am
content: Why we need to sleep.We spend about 1/3 of our life doing it but nobody understands why it is necessary - only the ill effects if we don't.Really.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 05:38:30 am
content: Quote from: ChunkyPastaSauce on July 11, 2016, 05:23:51 amTake the red pill.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 04:49:22 pm
content: Quote from: BradC on July 11, 2016, 01:22:58 amWhy tomato sauce always comes out the bottle in a rush.....

author: Hydrawerk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 05:05:21 pm
content: Is there Vishnu?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VishnuIs there any other God?Well...http://godisimaginary.com/

author: blackbird
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 06:04:50 pm
content: Quote from: hamster_nz on July 11, 2016, 05:06:05 amIf the universe has a size, doesn't it mean it has a boundary?

author: The Soulman
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 07:02:50 pm
content: Quote from: blackbird on July 11, 2016, 06:04:50 pmNah it's probably sphere shaped otherwise you'd fall of if you were to cross the boundary, already made that mistake once, whoops....

author: TheAmmoniacal
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 11, 2016, 07:12:17 pm
content: Alkaline phosphatase.

author: AlfBaz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 12:11:05 am
content: What's causing dark flow

author: retrolefty
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 12:20:31 am
content: Quote from: blackbird on July 11, 2016, 06:04:50 pmIt does seem to have boundary, however it seems to be a dynamic and accelerating boundary. I suspect we won't have that all figured out in my lifetime, but I'm amazed how much has been learned and discovered just during my turn at life.

author: StillTrying
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 01:18:53 am
content: Quote from: retrolefty on July 12, 2016, 12:20:31 amIs there any evidence of what is at the boundary, a sharp edge, or slowly fading to... erm nothing.I don't believe anything is known about 'the boundary' or even if there is one, or one that we would recognise in 4 dimensions.

author: AntiProtonBoy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 01:26:03 am
content: Why my slice of bread always falls to the ground, buttered side down.

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 04:28:44 am
content: mythbusters busted the toast landing thing, but it was peanut butter. ("insert entity or null entity"), I miss bread and peanut butter).

author: Aeternam
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 02:33:35 pm
content: We should ask John Snow, he knows nothing.

author: Wytnucls
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 02:52:03 pm
content: The Riemann Hypothesis

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 03:05:34 pm
content: The air speed velocity of a laden swallow.

author: boffin
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 03:14:03 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on July 10, 2016, 08:45:16 pm613* 913= 4213

author: Aeternam
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 05:33:45 pm
content: Quote from: rrinker on July 12, 2016, 03:05:34 pmOh come on, this is common knowledge.http://style.org/unladenswallow/

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 06:13:50 pm
content: Quote from: Muttley Snickers on July 11, 2016, 03:08:54 amMojo Nixon once suggested that Chicken McNuggets were made from pieces of Ed Meese inflatable dolls.

author: Cubdriver
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 07:01:42 pm
content: Quote from: Aeternam on July 12, 2016, 05:33:45 pmYes, but that website is aboutunladen swallows, and he specifically asks about laden ones...(cool analysis there, though.)-Pat

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 07:30:47 pm
content: Besides, African or European?

author: jitter
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 07:37:34 pm
content: Quote from: Skimask on July 10, 2016, 07:36:02 pmThe meaning of life.

author: mtdoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2016, 09:33:36 pm
content: Air speed velocity of laden swallows?The meaning of life?

author: Chris Mr
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2016, 08:10:23 pm
content: .NothingWhat's it contained in?How big is it?How long has it been there?I remember seeing an ebay ad for "Nothing", which pointed out the planet friendly nature of it as it wouldn't cost anything to post and that each customer would be completely satisfied - except you get an email saying you bought it so it's not really nothing.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 10:55:50 am
content: Why the letter 'I' is used for current.Most seasoned electronics engineers don't know the answer.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 11:34:23 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on July 15, 2016, 10:55:50 amEasy. Current in French is refered to as "intensité du courant". Intensité for short. Ampère was a frenchman!

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 11:41:20 am
content: Quote from: Ice-Tea on July 15, 2016, 11:34:23 amI knew that as a kid when reading my dads 1940's Electricity and Magnetism school textbook and a quick look for it failed to find it.Thanks for refreshing my memory.

author: Buriedcode
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 11:45:32 am
content: Although already mentioned: gravity.The more you delve into research into what is labelled as 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' the more you realise just how many assumptions were made to make a certain theory fit - and just how-many wack jobs there are both in the 'amateur pseudo-science' community and in professional research.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 12:08:53 pm
content: Quote from: Chris Mr on July 14, 2016, 08:10:23 pmBy contrast, 'Everything'.Exactly the same questions apply (though I suspect that the ebay shipping cost would be higher).

author: PartialDischarge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 12:11:14 pm
content: Quote from: System Error Message on July 11, 2016, 01:57:25 amha, dont make me laugh, we are knowledgeable about the brain?!?yes , we know 0.001% of what is to be known (be it about the brain or medicine) but people act as if we knew everything, just like 100 years ago they thought they knew lots of things

author: Galenbo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 01:47:54 pm
content: Percentages

author: System Error Message
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 01:50:34 pm
content: Quote from: mtdoc on July 11, 2016, 05:27:39 am

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 05:57:03 pm
content: LOL tha was hilarious.As far as subjects nobody knows about, I'm going to go with woman. I was originally going to say quantum physics, but some people actually know stuff about that.

author: ez24
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 07:30:54 pm
content: The history of Power Design power supplies.I believe they were made by aliens but no one else believes me.

author: Philfreeze
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 15, 2016, 09:43:05 pm
content: Quote from: StillTrying on July 10, 2016, 10:54:47 pmAs far as I understand it the question has a problem.You are talking about an expansion where something (energy or whatever) expands into a space.Since there is no space outside our universe (mostly because there is no 'outside') it doesn't expand in this classical sense. The space between galaxy clusters however is increasing which just means (said in my very limited vocabulary) one unit of space just becomes more.But I am not a physicist at all.

author: jitter
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2016, 06:40:31 am
content: Quote from: MasterTech on July 15, 2016, 12:11:14 pmAgreed, but that is also something of all times, just look atthis listof "facts" that most of us believe to be true but actually aren't. So how do we know then that that list itself is correct?And if we know so little about our own bodies, let alone about our own sentient minds or egos, how can we even expect to understand our surroundings?

author: ez24
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2016, 06:47:31 am
content: Since the brain has a limited number of brain cellsThe answer is - infinity

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2016, 07:14:09 am
content: How altcoins are "invented". More specifically, a new altcoin seems to pop up out of nowhere every once in a while, and most never get off the ground, but a few end up being profitable to mine. Most of those end up becoming unprofitable to mine in a relatively short time, but a few have somehow defied the "predictions" that they would die out in another few weeks. (I remember that near the start of the year, a certain altcoin was forecast to collapse in a few weeks. I'm still making great profit mining it...) The big question now is how long would this "mining rush" actually last...And then there are those people who seem to be able to eat as much as they want and still be really skinny. Such as my friend Allie Moore. I have a theory that she's just converting the excess energy into heat, but I had no thermal camera to check at that time. I have a thermal camera now, but I don't think I'll see her again for a long time...Speaking of Allie Moore, at one point, I fixed her PC and she was very satisfied with my work. But she didn't accept my offer of "free lifetime tech support", if you know what I mean...

author: HackedFridgeMagnet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2016, 08:01:36 am
content: How about 'the afterlife'.

author: Hydrawerk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2016, 08:51:30 pm
content: It is generally recommended to enjoy your present on-earth life.http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Afterlife

author: jitter
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2016, 06:50:48 am
content: Quote from: Hydrawerk on July 16, 2016, 08:51:30 pmInteresting article. While reading it, I noticed two things:How easy it is to misread "theology" for "technology" and the mention of Klingons...Is this supposed to be a rational article? Did they refer to the fictitional Klingons in an effort to make people think about our religious texts as also just fiction?

author: VK5RC
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 17, 2016, 07:26:36 am
content: From my reading of epistemology I thought you can't prove something doesn't exist, you can only prove it is extremely unlikely.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 17, 2016, 09:36:34 am
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on July 11, 2016, 01:42:40 amCouldn't resist:

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2016, 12:57:37 am
content: Structure of planets. There seems to be fuck all practical information about what's below. Myself, I can live without yet another picture of a dot of light on the other side of the universe when we've barely dug into the crust of this planet.Then there's Jupiter. What the hell is that? What's in there?

author: StillTrying
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2016, 04:18:47 pm
content: Time.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2016, 08:28:54 pm
content: Quote from: StillTrying on July 18, 2016, 04:18:47 pmHa, yeah right.Just ask all us greybeards, we know we haven't got lots left.

author: AlfBaz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2016, 11:53:11 pm
content: Quote from: Alex Eisenhut on July 18, 2016, 12:57:37 amThey're tryinghttp://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/overview/index.html

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 18, 2016, 11:56:06 pm
content: Quote from: xrunner on July 10, 2016, 10:58:51 pmNothing/ill-defined question. What's North of the North pole? Nothing/ill-defined question.Quote from: StillTrying on July 10, 2016, 10:54:47 pmNothing/ill-defined question. As you travel south from the north pole, the lines of latitude around the Earth get bigger and bigger -- i.e., they "expand". What do they expand into? You could say "space", but that'd be to totally abuse the (admittedly limited) analogy and to disregard that thesurfaceof a sphere is strictly two-dimensional.Quote from: blackbird on July 11, 2016, 06:04:50 pmNo. Again, the surface of a sphere is a perfectly accessible example of an object that has a finite size (area), but has no edge/boundary. Similarly, it is easy for mathematicians to construct 3D manifolds thatlooklocally like traditional infinite 3D Euclidean space, except actually wraps back onto itself ("through the fourth dimension", not that you need to actually invoke the fourth dimension to describe the manifold).Besides, when people talk about "the universe", especially when quantifying it, they are almost always talking about theobservableuniverse -- i.e., all the things from which light has had a chance to reach us since the big bang. The observable universe is obviously expanding, but it has a very human-centric edge definition -- the "edge" is just a sphere 13.82 billion light years* centred on the observer's face. It is not surprising that this "edge" can "travel" through space.An unusual but enjoyable video that explains the idea of a finite, boundaryless universe:https://youtu.be/_k3_B9Eq7eM* Actually not 13.82 billion light years at all because stuff's being moving around since the big bang, but I digress.

author: StillTrying
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2016, 12:09:41 am
content: How can light from something take 13bn years to reach us, surely 13bn years ago, the thing must have been much closer.

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2016, 01:19:42 am
content: Quote from: StillTrying on July 19, 2016, 12:09:41 amThat's exactly what my footnote was referring to. This is why the edge of the observable universe is actually ~46.5 billion light-years away.

author: Galenbo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2016, 09:48:09 am
content: Quote from: mtdoc on July 11, 2016, 05:27:39 am"Nobody" understands why electricity is necessary, only the effects when there isn't any.The neccesarity of sleep is mentioned even in basic biology classes.

author: WackyGerman
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2016, 10:42:49 am
content: which was present at first , the chicken or the egg ?

author: Galenbo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2016, 12:09:16 pm
content: Quote from: rs20 on July 18, 2016, 11:56:06 pmGrrr.. you made me loose 2 hours watching the guy's videos.Overtime again, this evening :-)

author: Galenbo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2016, 12:12:23 pm
content: Quote from: WackyGerman on July 22, 2016, 10:42:49 amDoesn't matter, there was a time when none existed, and then there was a time when both existed.Inbetween these times, nothing with our definition "chicken" or "egg" existed, only temporarily related evolving forms.Only one can never have existed, because a chicken is defined as: egg fabricated species, and an egg is defined as: fabricated by a chicken. It's like Volts and Amps, 2 definitions that exist together, tied to eachother, within the general concept we know as "electricity"

author: grifftech
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2016, 12:53:56 pm
content: Quote from: WackyGerman on July 22, 2016, 10:42:49 ameggs dinosaurs laid eggs.

author: Galenbo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2016, 01:14:56 pm
content: :-)

author: StillTrying
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2016, 02:03:40 pm
content: Brain memory, especially human, seems to have unlimited capacity.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 22, 2016, 02:11:09 pm
content: ... for forgetting stuff.

author: StillTrying
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 22, 2016, 03:08:12 pm
content: Quote from: Brumby on July 22, 2016, 02:11:09 pmI was thinking of adding that it only applies to some people.