Say it ain't so! Kirchhoff's law has problems & the surface of the sun's liquid? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Cliff Matthews
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 12, 2025, 06:58:42 pm
content: This kinda upsets a few paradigm's but then again I couldn't even find this Dr. P.M. Robitaille on Wikipedia..

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2025, 07:10:47 pm
content: 1. TL:DW. 2 hours and 53 minutes: really?2. I will say this about it, though: human ignorance is just astounding.And hey, it's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just the consequence of a lot of things in a universe that are unknowable or nearly so.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2025, 10:03:11 pm
content: Seems like he might be a bit of a quack, nobody in astrophysics accepts his theories, and "they wouldn't stand a chance in peer-reviewed literature"... er, maybe because they're trivially debunked? He also looks like he's a creationist, which is a contrived position for someone who works in a scientific field. But he's fundamentally a radiologist, so working quite outside his field of experience.https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/19/us/ripples-in-ohio-from-ad-on-the-big-bang.htmlHe states:"There is no empirical evidence of any gases making a continuous spectra anywhere in any laboratory."Which is false. Any gas that is 'hot and dense' will have a black body spectra (and the sun is definitely hot and dense). It will look pretty much continuous, with excitation lines at certain points depending upon the density... but it exists. And it seems the majority of his theory is based on this false statement, so it's not a great start. It also looks like he's been pedalling it in one form or another for about two decades going by that NY Times article.

author: Cliff Matthews
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 12, 2025, 10:06:52 pm
content: I tried search for the fellow with AI and got this:QuotePerhaps there's a narrative scientist's must follow, if they don't want their names prohibited from being mentioned on Wikipedia. Step outta line and they'll silence anything novel.

author: NE666
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2025, 10:12:30 pm
content: Quote from: Cliff Matthews on May 12, 2025, 10:06:52 pmYou'll find the tin foil in aisle three, just up from perpetual motion supplies and the biscuits.

author: bdunham7
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2025, 10:16:48 pm
content: Quote from: Cliff Matthews on May 12, 2025, 06:58:42 pmhttps://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pierre-Marie_Robitaille

author: Cliff Matthews
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 12, 2025, 11:19:52 pm
content: Saw that, but it's not exactly Wikipedia. I just saw this in the 3 minute daily with Ben Davidson this morning. (yes, I'm a bit of a prepper at times)So in summary, he's persona non grata because he blazes his own trail. OK fine.

author: bdunham7
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 12, 2025, 11:42:22 pm
content: Quote from: Cliff Matthews on May 12, 2025, 11:19:52 pmYeah, when you "blaze your own trail" through a developed town people don't take it well. When he refutes established science by first badly misunderstanding it and then refuting his own misunderstanding... well I see no point in debating the science. I'll just say that astrophysicists aren't typically closed-minded sorts and at least some of them would probably take a look at almost any new, weird theory and only dismiss it when they see clearly false claims.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2025, 08:57:45 am
content: I have never met a more open group of people than scientists. They love talking about and debating their work. Sure, if you turn up with a theory that turns everything on its head you will get some pushback. But if your theory is supported by the evidence then you will have supporters and people will be happy to debate and discuss with you. If instead you just make up psuedoscience and claim that some grand conspiracy is holding back your work, you are just going be laughed at. What conspiracy would there be that the sun is not a liquid? "Big Sun Corp" intending to make money on solar gas mining?? It's just asinine.

author: u666sa
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2025, 11:24:19 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on May 12, 2025, 07:10:47 pmThere is this one particular channel I know of, each video is 2 to 4 hours long. Each video has at least 2 million views. I'm not BS/ing you here. Here is thelink, you can see for yourself. I myself, watched several of those long videos more than once.The point I'm trying to make here, if the video and subject matter is interesting, and engaging, there shouldn't be a problem with a long video. In fact, as a youtuber, I can tell you that those short 5 - 10 minute long videos are trash, because they are specifically made for consumption of attention disorder folks, before even the video is made, author thinks of subject and creates a caption image for the video, and only then, he thinks of crap to put into the video. People watch it. It's socially engineered to be consumed by folks. It has no value.Quote from: Cliff Matthews on May 12, 2025, 06:58:42 pmThanks, great video.!

author: HuronKing
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 13, 2025, 12:55:56 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on May 13, 2025, 08:57:45 amI like her analogy about what it is like to receive a crackpot. It perfectly captures the inanity of a crackpot's worldview... while also reminding us how deadly serious these people can be. It was in this video that I learned a crackpot straight up murdered an American Physical Society receptionist in 1952... which is why the APS now has sessions dedicated to receiving crackpot papers... because they are still afraid a crackpot will murder a physicist or their secretary...https://youtu.be/11lPhMSulSU?si=Sy4JRZ2h5d6MZx8O&t=1129

author: Cliff Matthews
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 14, 2025, 06:41:21 pm
content: Last weekend he gave a one hour talk (which I found much easier to digest).

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2025, 08:14:17 pm
content: Kirchhoff's law is for the birds, and I don't know about the sun, but love is liquid:

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2025, 09:09:07 pm
content: I can tell you, that I absolutely hate physics clickbait channels, like veritasium, Sabine Hossenfelder and the others. Even old giants like Bill Nye and Neil Tyson have completely destroyed their own reputation.Because they run out of content in their own field, so they will start making videos about stuff they don't really understand. And make faces for thumbnails. Or they turn political.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2025, 10:58:36 pm
content: I actually like Veritasium and have watched several of his videos with interest. Not sure why others would dislike them.Then again, I'm not a nuclear physicist, electrical engineer or theoretical mathematician. So maybe I'm just enough of a dummy to enjoy their stuff.

author: bdunham7
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2025, 12:00:47 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on May 14, 2025, 10:58:36 pmAlthough the subjects are often worth discussion, to get a lot of views you have to present it in a dramatic way implying a controversy, mystery, discovery, etc instead of just being straightforward. For drama I'd prefer to watch StyroPyro.

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2025, 12:14:14 am
content: Quote from: bdunham7 on May 15, 2025, 12:00:47 amSo what's wrong with presenting otherwise dry, scientific material in a dramatic manner? Nothing wrong with that that I can see, so long as the content isn't dumbed down in the process.It's the same reason I enjoy watching Mentour Pilot's stuff, since before seeing his videos I was quite ignorant about aviation. Seeing his reconstructions and simulations of incidents makes things a lot more vivid than just a dry narration.

author: bdunham7
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2025, 04:29:41 am
content: Quote from: Analog Kid on May 15, 2025, 12:14:14 amI'm not saying it is wrong, just that I sometimes don't like the way it is done--or overdone. Mentour Pilot is good b/t/w.

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2025, 02:39:50 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on May 14, 2025, 08:14:17 pmI took that as an allusion to the "sum of voltages is zero" does not hold for non-conservative fields, though Kirchhoff never said it should do that. Kirchhoff initial paper was not exactly how we learn now "the Kirchhoff's laws of electric circuits". Not his fault that 200 years later his paper is thought in schools differently.However, the law discussed in that video about the Sun, it's another law: Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation, so not about electricity.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchhoff%27s_lawsFrom that video I didn't understand what the problem might be about the Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation, though I didn't finish the video yet.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2025, 09:05:08 pm
content: Kirchhoff law is how you fix things easily and it works makes sense on a lab scale with your tools to make a circuitIts going to stay the electrical engineering model for most things regardless of what people prove in oddball situations. Until most stuff requires that way of thinking its not going to be anythingIt sounds kind of like maybe this has something to do with individual components or distributed systems. Most complicated useful machinery will be lumped element designed.I think it makes more sense to think about current then voltage in many cases. Voltage is just easier to measure. Voltage is a property of current but current is fundamental. When something has to happen currents occur. The current may be highly localized (i.e. on capacitor plate) but its always there when work has to be done. You can measure current to a FET that is switching, its just small.I think that even electrostatic things must have currents, even picking up a hair with a balloon, it must redistribute things on the surface on some level because its pushing electrons around. Like eddy currents. Are the electrons really that fiixed in place? I thought it was always kinda moving around. To me thats like tiny whirl pools or somethingIf you put a tiny ammeter on a hair that is picked up with a balloon, would it measure some current as the balloon is attracting the hair (i.e. it levitates to stick to the balloon)?? First one side tilts up, floats, and then the whole thing is accelerated to the electric charge. Is there current paths occurring on the hair or balloon before it touches to discharge?? It still has alot of electrons. I know that if you got rid of ALL the electrons in something it would completely blow up with gigantic force (coulomb explosion). The explanation that I got is that they migrate on dielectrics some what. To me if the electrons are moving in space that is a current.For a FET that is static (i.e. turned on and holding a charge) I imagine there must be some interaction between the electrons on the gate and the electrons passing through the FET and its making them move a little on the gate capacitance material as the current changes, and that this is kind of like a eddy current? If you hooked up a ammeter to the gate (a sensitive one) and then you run a giant pulse through the FET, it will generate a little tiny bit of current on the gate? Or is it really that perfect? (I don't know)

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2025, 09:20:33 pm
content: Besides Kirchhoff’s laws for electrical circuits, there is another Kirchhoff’s law, unrelated to KVL and KCL, about the radiation from black bodies, which was later improved by Planck in the first bit leading to quantum mechanics.See thermodynamics books, or the dreaded Wikipedia.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2025, 09:25:23 pm
content: I think that means there is a KCL and KVL that applies to phonons instead of electrons in whatever units they have?Oh nmv, its radiation not conducted heat

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2025, 09:28:06 pm
content: No. Kirchhoff (a physicist) worked on thermodynamics as well as electrical theory.He also is famous for his work on optical diffraction.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2025, 09:36:25 pm
content: i don't touch the hard stuff like that

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 16, 2025, 09:54:48 pm
content: One of my university professors (from Romania) once commented on Kirchhoff and Frauenhofer, while discussing diffraction theory, that German scientists always had such lovely surnames.