Quoted: Quoted: I'm not an expert of any kind on high-energy physics, but it seems pretty clear to me that "string theory" doesn't actually meet the technical definition of THEORY.   Absolute rubbish. I think it was about two years ago I IM'd you some falsifiable aspects...?  Remember? If we had the SSC in Waxahachie we would already know.  CERN will find the answer in the next decade.  String Theory can be tested, it just takes a bit more power than we have right now. Since Witten's M-Theory brought all the nutcases together it has been a real contender.

Witten is the leading physicist in the world today.  Yes, the SSC would have answered a lot of questions.  Do you really think it will take ten years?

Quoted: How can you heat up space?  Space is nothingness, and can therefore have no heat or temperature.

Incorrect.  We have measured areas of empty space that were 20,000 Kelvin.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: How can you heat up space?  Space is nothingness, and can therefore have no heat or temperature. Are you sure that nothing exists in a vaccuum? In what most of us think of as "the vacuum of space" there is all kinds of stuff.  Not just simple protons (even in intergalactic space) but time, "space", various waves, and a plethora of intersecting dimensions. In a real vacuum, where space, time, etc do not exist, it is more correct to say that everything exists, ie in such a perfect non-environment you can get vacuum fluctuations.  These tend to be (keep in mind this is all theory...) very short lived phenomemon but can be of any complexity, as the energy sum is always zero.  One theory is that our universe is such a vacuum fluctuation, and to understand this you need to look at gravity as 'negative' energy.  Imagine a flock of penguins appearing in their own universe, singing a song, and then vanishing.  It was this kind of nutty (but mathematically correct) theorization that helped Douglas Adams come up with the 'infinite improbability' drive in his "Hitchhiker's Guide" series.

Particle and anti-particle pairs appear and disappear all the time in empty space.  Feynman diagrams help understand the process.

Quoted: Seriously - sorry if I forgot stuff we talked about.

According to quantum mechanics every decision can lead to the creation of branching universes.  In one you will apologize for the memory lapse, in another you will vociferously deny everthing, in another you will hunt me down and kill me, etc.  Most of these universes are not viable, and collapse on themselves, but theory and testing say they exist.  
This is a long way of saying I definitely IM'd you, but it may have been a different you and me in a different universe.



The Euro's will get it tested soon with CERN.  Euro's....   Should have been Texans!

correct me if im wrong,

but wouldnt we just turn to instant ash at 5,000 farenht????let alone 10 to the 50 whatever the F_CK temp you are stating?????????????????
shit, what if the next universe was hillery clintons ass crack.
I am not going , .

Quoted: Quoted: So... exactly how close would the flare need to be to the gasoline and tannerite to blow me into another universe? Hold my beer and watch this!

If you don't make it back I get your beer

Quoted: Quoted: Useless information.... I say amen to that! Most of Da Vinci's designs, such as the flying machine and the tank, were useless at the time, yet many of our current vehicles (like the helicopter) were based on his drawings.  Sikorsky said it was Da Vinci who inspired him to invent the helicopter.  Of course, in the late 1800's, when H G Wells wrote of a trip to the moon, that too was useless information, but it inspired folks who like Von Braun to build the rockets that took us there in 1969.  The level of  scientific literacy and interest sure has gone downhill in the country in the past 50 years.  One day, we are going to end up unable to read and write.

At the risk of reviving a flame war....

(donning Aramid suit)

This "heating space to Plank's temp" is hardly relative to anybody in the near, or reasonably forseeable future

This babble about class 0 civiliazation....  is just that babble...  have we any first hand knowledge of any other civilizatoins?   Who's to set the classes then?    Academic dribble I say.

and the folks who get paid to sit around and dream it up are as lost as those who follow them around slurping up their dribble.

Now before I'm called a moron by those who may feel I'm pissing in their cherios...  I love space flight, and -realistic- endeavors to broaden our understanding of the universe.   But I think some of this stuff is just an intelectual fad.

For a while monks plotted circles with circles with circles around them, and they explained the motion of the planets around the earth (earth centric view of the universe) pretty good.... then low and behold somebody came up with a simpler notion (sun centric) and all those circles with circles and more circles was proved to be bunk...

First the universe is colapsing, then its expanding, now its expanding at an accelerating rate... all the time theriores are spewing about how it will end and be reborn cause its collapsing, and now its accelerating away...   dark matter, string theory,  nothingness that isn't nothingness, etc...  explanations that have to have correction factors brought in...

starting to sound to me like they don't got it figured out....  and when you call em out you get flamed...

But then again, I believe their is a God and that He's in control, so all this is interesting, but really doesn't matter...  the truth will be revealed in the long run.  

And to the common man (and 99.99% of ARFCOM) this is useless information.

I agree that God is in control, but he works through the physical laws of this universe,  and not in spite of them.  They're his laws anyway.

Once we stepped beyond the boundaries of classical Newtonian physics and Neils Bohr's vision of the atom as a nucleus composed of protons and neutrons, and orbiting electrons,
and got into subatomic particles and quantum mechanics,  suddenly things started to get
very weird.   But apparently that's because the universe is fundamentally weird.   But it works!

The funny thing is that quantum physics research has come up with suggestions of ways in which all the "magical" technologies of Star Trek might actually be realize, on a very small scale at the very least.   Like quantum simultaneity.   Sounds transporter-ish, to me!


CJ

Quoted: Quoted: Useless information.... I say amen to that! Most of Da Vinci's designs, such as the flying machine and the tank, were useless at the time, yet many of our current vehicles (like the helicopter) were based on his drawings.  Sikorsky said it was Da Vinci who inspired him to invent the helicopter.  Of course, in the late 1800's, when H G Wells wrote of a trip to the moon, that too was useless information, but it inspired folks who like Von Braun to build the rockets that took us there in 1969.  The level of  scientific literacy and interest sure has gone downhill in the country in the past 50 years.  One day, we are going to end up unable to read and write.

+1

we used to have a used bookstore here in town back when I was a teenager, and it wasn't uncommon for me to spend all day in there during the summer. I have noticed how on average the quality of sci-fi was so much better in the older books, they just seemed far more creative and far-reaching.

Quoted: I agree that God is in control, but he works through the physical laws of this universe,  and not in spite of them.  They're his laws anyway. Once we stepped beyond the boundaries of classical Newtonian physics and Neils Bohr's vision of the atom as a nucleus composed of protons and neutrons, and orbiting electrons, and got into subatomic particles and quantum mechanics,  suddenly things started to get very weird.   But apparently that's because the universe is fundamentally weird.   But it works! The funny thing is that quantum physics research has come up with suggestions of ways in which all the "magical" technologies of Star Trek might actually be realize, on a very small scale at the very least.   Like quantum simultaneity.   Sounds transporter-ish, to me! CJ

i still want to know how a transporter would disassemble you, molecule by molecule, then reassemble you without killing you?

Quoted: The temperature required to introduce the whole in space is 10 with 43 zeroes Kelvin (Planck's temperature).  Right now, we are a class 0 civilization.  In a hundred years, if we survive, we may be a class 1 (Planetary - capable of manipulating the weather, volcanoes, etc).  In 1000 years, if we survive, we may be a class 2 (Solar system - able to manipulate solar flares, etc).  Kaku says we'd have to be a class 3 civilization to generate those temperatures.  We may be one of those in 10,000-100,000 years.

I thought about it and I think Michio Kaku's String Theory is partially correct. As the human race becomes class 1, the evolution of the sea otter population will grow exponentially so that they become a class 4 civilization of sea otters. They will then take over the world and turn all human beings into Soylent Green.

So, it's not the humans who will travel through space, it will be the sea otters. Oh, I do love the sea otters.

Wouldn't that suck if some alien civilization made the same discovery and superheated earth and all it's inhabitants on their journey down the intergalactic highway?

Quoted: Wouldn't that suck if some alien civilization made the same discovery and superheated earth and all it's inhabitants on their journey down the intergalactic highway?

Are you talking about class 2 aliens or class 3 aliens. I think that detail would help "debate" the issue. With all the string theory theorems and mathematical calculations and gases and planets and Wookies, we need the best information to make an informative decision... 10000 years into the future.

Quoted: Quoted: I agree that God is in control, but he works through the physical laws of this universe,  and not in spite of them.  They're his laws anyway. Once we stepped beyond the boundaries of classical Newtonian physics and Neils Bohr's vision of the atom as a nucleus composed of protons and neutrons, and orbiting electrons, and got into subatomic particles and quantum mechanics,  suddenly things started to get very weird.   But apparently that's because the universe is fundamentally weird.   But it works! The funny thing is that quantum physics research has come up with suggestions of ways in which all the "magical" technologies of Star Trek might actually be realize, on a very small scale at the very least.   Like quantum simultaneity.   Sounds transporter-ish, to me! CJ i still want to know how a transporter would disassemble you, molecule by molecule, then reassemble you without killing you?

I think the transporter is the only thing that won't work no matter how advanced our physics is, due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.  What may work is some sort of dimensional door device.

Quoted: Quoted: Seriously - sorry if I forgot stuff we talked about. According to quantum mechanics every decision can lead to the creation of branching universes.  In one you will apologize for the memory lapse, in another you will vociferously deny everthing, in another you will hunt me down and kill me, etc.  Most of these universes are not viable, and collapse on themselves, but theory and testing say they exist.   This is a long way of saying I definitely IM'd you, but it may have been a different you and me in a different universe.

You're very gracious.  My memory really is ridiculously bad.

Several times in the past couple of years, I've spent about a week working on a particularly tricky statistical problem, or figuring out some complex point of methodology or research design - only to proudly tell my wife about my brilliant solution and have her point out that three months before, I already spent a week solving the exact same problem! (and told her about it then)  

Just the other day I was searching a database to find research that would allow me to make a particular argument in a paper I am working on.  Finally, after much searching I found a published paper that had exactly the effects I was looking for - only to realize that it was one of my own papers.

The Euro's will get it tested soon with CERN.  Euro's....   Should have been Texans!

When I was a young fresh-faced lad, and fully intended to pursue a career in high energy physics, I got to visit the DESY facility in Hamburg and talk to researchers there.  Even though it wasn't up to the scale of CERN, their PETRA ring was pretty impressive, and some of their big detectors were like science fiction come alive to me!


Then I realized just how hard math could get, and joined the army instead.

Quoted: Quit listening to Coast to Coast.

Michiu Kaku is a world renowned physicist in his own right who co-developed String Field Theory.  He is very well respected.  He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, where Einstein taught.  He has written several PHd level physics textbooks.  He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard in physics, the top of his class.  He receieved his PhD from UC Berkeley.  So, what does your comment have to do with the price of tea in China?

Quoted: In my book, string theory is about as scientifically valid as an episode of Star Trek: TNG. It sounds nice and has lots of fancy terms, but when it comes to actual science, it tends to be downright insulting of people's intelligence.

"I ain't no teknikul fisassist or nuthin', but I did stay at a Holidhay Inn last night."

Quoted: How can you heat up space?  Space is nothingness, and can therefore have no heat or temperature.

So then you're willing to take a stroll on the surface of the sun, since it's in space and there's no heat in space?

I would rather see us get to the moon again and build a permanant base there, go to Mars and do the same, and start mining those two rocks in 50 years. I would think that current progression of technology would at least allow us to do that. Small steps......
I wish Carl Sagan was still alive..........

Quoted: i still want to know how a transporter would disassemble you, molecule by molecule, then reassemble you without killing you?

Pattern buffer.

Quoted: The only limitation is that we do not currently possess the technology to heat anything to that temperature.

Huh

Quoted: Quoted: The temperature required to introduce the whole in space is 10 with 43 zeroes Kelvin (Planck's temperature).  Right now, we are a class 0 civilization.  In a hundred years, if we survive, we may be a class 1 (Planetary - capable of manipulating the weather, volcanoes, etc).  In 1000 years, if we survive, we may be a class 2 (Solar system - able to manipulate solar flares, etc).  Kaku says we'd have to be a class 3 civilization to generate those temperatures.  We may be one of those in 10,000-100,000 years. www.kurzweilai.net/bios/images/KakuPhoto2.jpg This guy has nothing else better to do than speculate about stuff 10 to 100 thousand years from now. I can do that. In the year 10000, a polar bear will drive a car into Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch and find a videotape of Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson riding a rickshaw pulled by Emmanuel Lewis.

You have to include the mathematical construct or it's just a fairy tale.

Sometimes it's a fairy tail with the math, or at least until someone figures out a method to circumvent the current limitations imposed by the materials we have on hand.

i for one welcome our new sea otter overlords

Quoted: Quoted: Quit listening to Coast to Coast. Michiu Kaku is a world renowned physicist in his own right who co-developed String Field Theory.  He is very well respected.  He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, where Einstein taught.  He has written several PHd level physics textbooks.  He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard in physics, the top of his class.  He receieved his PhD from UC Berkeley.  So, what does your comment have to do with the price of tea in China?

And until this is usable technology this guy is worthless.
I mean big deal, every Year there is a Summa Cum Laude from Harvard in Physics.
Every year they have visiting Professors at Princeton.
They all write textbooks, because if they didnt no one would pay them for just sitting around doing soduku puzzles all day.

They need to figure a way to save our country from middle eastern oil, and militant islam, if not they will never see the fruit of their works.

Instead of heating a portion of our physical universe, why not just cut it?  God says the space that we live in can be rolled up like a scroll (meaning it is very thin- like a curtin that is veiling other dimensions).  Now the hard part- how are you going to cut something by utilizing something within the same dimension?  Wouldn't the cutting item have to be outside of the dimension you live in?

Currently, the only way to access these other dimensions is through death.

January 23, 1960 the US Navy reached the bottom of the Marianas Trench....35,813 feet down.

The deepest water hole on Earth. That's 15,751 PSI of pressure put on something.



If they had a beachball (ok....titanium reinforced sphere) and released it how high up would it go? Would it go into orbit?


I've shot frogs with air cannons and they've gone pretty high with 100psi. With almost 16,000 PSI you'd think you could sent them to the moon.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quit listening to Coast to Coast. Michiu Kaku is a world renowned physicist in his own right who co-developed String Field Theory.  He is very well respected.  He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, where Einstein taught.  He has written several PHd level physics textbooks.  He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard in physics, the top of his class.  He receieved his PhD from UC Berkeley.  So, what does your comment have to do with the price of tea in China? And until this is usable technology this guy is worthless. I mean big deal, every Year there is a Summa Cum Laude from Harvard in Physics. Every year they have visiting Professors at Princeton. They all write textbooks, because if they didnt no one would pay them for just sitting around doing soduku puzzles all day. They need to figure a way to save our country from middle eastern oil, and militant islam, if not they will never see the fruit of their works.

These same folks you poke fun at gave us the Predator UAV and many other weapons useful in the War on Terror.  Who do you think thinks these things up?

Everything we take foregranted today - flight, electricity, the computer - are the result of "dreamers".  In the end, these "dreamers" you are making fun of will be proven right and recorded in history.

Quoted: i for one welcome our new sea otter overlords

Excellent.

Quoted: Everything we take foregranted today - flight, electricity, the computer - are the result of "dreamers".  In the end, these "dreamers" you are making fun of will be proven right and recorded in history.

Is this before all humans are extinct?

There's a big difference between an inventor who is working on stuff for the here and now, and a physics professor who completes sudoku puzzles and writes about class 2 human civilizations 10000 years into the future whilst completely denying the future sea otter take-over. I love sea otters.

Quoted: Instead of heating a portion of our physical universe, why not just cut it?  God says the space that we live in can be rolled up like a scroll (meaning it is very thin- like a curtin that is veiling other dimensions).  Now the hard part- how are you going to cut something by utilizing something within the same dimension?  Wouldn't the cutting item have to be outside of the dimension you live in? Currently, the only way to access these other dimensions is through death.

LOL...ever heard of a Planck Length?  

Planck has more than just a Constant to his credit.  A Planck length is the finest division you can make within our realm of space and time.  It is ridiculously small...but at the a point you can no longer divide anything into half.  I guess anything smaller is not technically in this dimension.

Quoted: And until this is usable technology this guy is worthless. I mean big deal, every Year there is a Summa Cum Laude from Harvard in Physics. Every year they have visiting Professors at Princeton. They all write textbooks, because if they didnt no one would pay them for just sitting around doing soduku puzzles all day. They need to figure a way to save our country from middle eastern oil, and militant islam, if not they will never see the fruit of their works.

At big research universities, it is generally NOT the top researchers who write the textbooks.  I my field (one of the social sciences), I know tons of top researchers, and none of them waste their valuable research time writing textbooks

And in a lot of fields, the university DOES pay them to sit around and think big thoughts.  That's how tenure works.

I'm glad there is now going to be another way to travel in space.

... I just don't want to come out the other end well done!

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I was listening to the radio, and Dr. Michiu Kaku, respected physicist in the area of string theory, was discussing a new theory of space travel physicists are exploring.  Apparently, just as you can boil water, you can boil a region of space by raising it to the Planck temperature.  Pockets form in the region and destabilize space, and you can  walk through it into another universe, similar to way the Star Gate technology works.  It does not involve wormholes or anything like that.  The only limitation is that we do not currently possess the technology to heat anything to that temperature. I'd also argue that the other potential snag here is that many physicists seem to feel that string theory may be nothing but mumbo-jumbo nonsense.  Until string theory actually generates testable hypotheses, it really is nothing but a mathematically sophisticated fairy tale. Don't get me wrong - it MAY be true, but until there is some kind of evidence (no matter how thin) that string theory may actually be a legitimate theory, I remain completely skeptical about any of its "predictions" Maybe I'm just overly cynical In my book, string theory is about as scientifically valid as an episode of Star Trek: TNG. It sounds nice and has lots of fancy terms, but when it comes to actual science, it tends to be downright insulting of people's intelligence. We'll see.  Some of our brightest physicists at Harvard and MIT tend to believe their's something to it, but you might know more than they do or something. A lot of otherwise intelligent people think Star Trek's technology is feasible and realistic, when in fact it shits all over science, engineering, and anyone who ever worked in the QC department of an electronics company. Just because you have a degree, a fancy job, and can do math that would make most people's heads explode doesn't mean you're necessarily a genius. I've known quite a few people who were pretty amazing with complex calculations and such, but were otherwise total dumbasses.

Yep, StarTrek TNG lost me (as a viewer) when Jordi opened the shuttle bay doors to put out a plasma fire in the shuttle bay he was in and held on the the pedestal to keep from being sucked out. Mind you he wasn't in a space suit...

I liked Babylon 5 much better.....

IF - and it's the big IF, humanity manages to avoid major world wars for the next 10,000 years, then I'll grant the argument's plausibility that humanity could 'go to the next level' - trouble is, with our tendency to in-fighting and devilishly create more and more deadly weapons and better and better bureaucracies with which to control fellow human beings, I doubt we'll 'survive' another 100 years in our current moral/philosophical/cultural condition.

Now, we might very well survive ad infinitum like Amish or the Mennonites- content with one level of civilization out of religious belief as opposed to perpetually abuzz with 'more' for the sake of 'more'.

No luddite here. Just sayin.... there are any number of weapons or combinations thereof that can RIGHT NOW bring "modern civilization" come crashing down - and leave the survivors hard pressed to feed themselves much less pick up the pieces and regain what is lost.

EMP, - global nuclear exchange, are just two. Bird flu or Muslim Caliphate revolt are two more. Good old fashioned conventional war with chemicals or bugs might do the trick.

Yellow Stone or a couple "big one's" shaking the earth could set the USA back 20 years.

I predict that Ray K won't live to see his 80th birthday... he'll get hit by a truck or his plane will crash.... or he'll choke on something and all those vitamins and implants won't save him. Neither will freezing his corpse.

As for 'the next level' - if the US economy tanks - it'll drag the rest of the world down and in the ensuing political turmoil all those think tanks and geniuses working on billion dollar labs will get the axe in favor of soup kitchens and retirement checks.

There's just no reason to PRESUME humanity will get more and more advanced in a linear fashion.