The Science Video Thread

[Tuco]

Originally Posted by Terial

Very interested to see what happens when he turns it on

holy shit they're getting advanced. He's going to steal tv's and send them back into the past before they're even bought. FLAWLESS PLAN.

But seriously that's cool.

[Tuco]

Originally Posted by Tuco

holy shit they're getting advanced. He's going to steal tv's and send them back into the past before they're even bought. FLAWLESS PLAN.

But seriously that's cool.

In retrospect I did some thinking and decided upon the follow original thought and conclusions about this man's work.

In a recent paper by Ken Olum and Allen Everett[1] the authors claimed to have found problems with Mallett's analysis. One of their objections is that the spacetime which Mallett used in his analysis contains a singularity even when the power to the laser is off, and is not the spacetime that would be expected to arise naturally if the circulating laser were turned on in previously empty space. Mallett has not offered a published response to Olum and Everett, but in his book Time Traveler he mentions that he was unable to directly model the optical fiber or photonic crystal which bends the light's path as it travels through it, so the light circulates around rather than moving in a straight line; as a substitute he chose to include a "line source" (a type of one-dimensional singularity) which would act as a "geometric constraint", bending spacetime in such a way that the light would circulate around on a helix-shaped path in a vacuum.[2] He notes that closed timelike curves are present in a spacetime containing both the line source and the circulating light, while they are not present in a spacetime containing only the line source, so that "the closed loops in time had been produced by the circulating flow of light, and not by the non-moving line source."[3] However, he does not provide any additional argument as to why we should expect to see closed timelike curves in a different spacetime where there is no line source, and where the light is caused to circulate due to passing through a physical substance like a photonic crystal rather than circulating in a vacuum due to the curved spacetime around the line source.

Another objection by Olum and Everett is that even if Mallett's choice of spacetime were correct, the energy required to twist spacetime sufficiently would be huge, and that with lasers of the type in use today the ring would have to be much larger than the observable universe. At one point Mallett agreed that in a vacuum the energy requirements would be impractical, but noted that the energy required goes down as the speed of light goes down, so he argued that if the light is slowed down significantly by passing it through a medium (as in the experiments of Lene Hau where light was passed through a superfluid and slowed to about 17 metres per second) the needed energy would be attainable.[4] However, the physicist J. Richard Gott argues that slowing down light by passing it through a medium cannot be treated as equivalent to lowering the constant c (the speed of light in a vacuum) in the equations of general relativity, saying:

One has to distinguish between the speed of light in empty space, which is a constant, and through a medium, which can be less. Light travels more slowly through water than through empty space but this does not mean that you age more slowly while scuba diving or that it is easier to twist space-time underwater.

The experiments done so far don't lower the speed of light in empty space; they just lower the speed of light in a medium and should not make it easier to twist space-time. Thus, it should not take any less mass-energy to form a black hole or a time machine of a given size in such a medium.[5]

Later, Mallett abandoned the idea of using slowed light to reduce the energy, writing "For a time, I considered the possibility that slowing down light might increase the gravitational frame dragging effect of the ring laser ... Slow light, however, turned out not to be helpful for my research."[6]

Finally, Olum and Everett note a theorem proved by Stephen Hawking in a 1992 paper on the chronology protection conjecture,[7] which demonstrated that according to general relativity it should be impossible to create closed timelike curves in any finite region that satisfies the weak energy condition, meaning that the region contains no exotic matter with negative energy. Mallett's original solution involved a spacetime containing a line source of infinite length, so it did not violate this theorem despite the absence of exotic matter, but Olum and Everett point out that the theorem "would, however, rule out the creation of CTC's in any finite-sized approximation to this spacetime." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Mallett

[Zuuljin]

I wish I knew what you were talking about. If I ever win the lottery I'd love to devote my free time to learning all this. Its fascinating, but WAY over my head.

[Celebrindal]

Michael Shermer - Count the Passes

[Morphyous]

What do you guys think about this:

Zeitgeist - The Movie, 2007

Pretty much covers 3 myths we believe today.

I know it's pretty long (2 hrs) but I'm pretty convinced these are supported facts.

[Eduardo]

Originally Posted by Morphyous

What do you guys think about this:

Zeitgeist - The Movie, 2007

Pretty much covers 3 myths we believe today.

I know it's pretty long (2 hrs) but I'm pretty convinced these are supported facts.

It has a lot of valid information in it. I was hoping for a better job of tying together the different lines of thought, but the guy says it is a work in progress so that is fine. I enjoyed the beginning and the part about pagan worship of the sun, and the many myths that embody/parody this worship. The 911 stuff is redundant at this point as that info is more clearly put together in other films. Overall it is worth the time spent watching it.

[Dashal]

Originally Posted by Morphyous

What do you guys think about this:

Zeitgeist - The Movie, 2007

Pretty much covers 3 myths we believe today.

I know it's pretty long (2 hrs) but I'm pretty convinced these are supported facts.

Damn 2 hours, I'm about 4 minutes in and so far it's funny. I can pretty much predict the rest.

[vurt]

This thing's chock-full of misinformation and misappropriation.

[Schatze]

Zeitgeist has a lot of bullshit in it. I didn't make it through to the end, simply due to frustration.

The astrology bullshit is complete bullshit, I don't even know where to start.

Well, here's one. Latitude. Their arguments completely ignore that the appearance of the sun on relative dates depends upon where you are, the appearance of the sun as it travels varies. Where all these religions were spawned, were damned near horse latitude. The sun was relatively motionless.

For example, in Egypt, the sun would not really move at all very much. In fact, the constancy of the Sun's position is a central tenet to Egyptian culture. Their seasons were based upon the flooding of the Nile, because there isn't even a wet/dry season (although there was at the head of the Nile, hence the flooding). The linkages between astrology and religious motif are from very specific locations in the northern hemispheres; where these religions did NOT originate. They make a backwards causal link.

They do have some things right, for instance Egypt/Greece/Persia are really the genesis of Christianity. Greece was the key, Egypt was the center of learning and Persia and aegea/grecian city states were constantly at war but also in cultural interexchange.

Rome co-opts Greece, mystery cults arise further blending the religions, seeking commonalities. These provide the basis for Christianity: yet many of the important Christian beliefs were incorporated after its creation. Particularly Germanic beliefs are incorporated AFTER Christianity's rise. Easter = Eostre oh hay i see what you did there! Eggs, rebirth, spring, rabbits. God, now is someone going to tell me Christmas trees are fucking from pagan Germans too? Jeez.

The argument presented blends all this shit together and mixes it up and selectively presents it to create a false conception, a singular narrative where none really exists. Maybe it's meta-ironic because the film is perpetuating the same human tendency to organize disparate facts and events, after the fact, into a singular narrative. Does it pull the M Night Shymalan in the last 5 minutes and present the punch line? Please tell me it does.

2.) Loose change bullshit. Here's the real doozy. Al Qaeda, as perpetuated and conceived by most of the population, never has, never will exist. Which is not to say that 9/11 wasn't committed by a group of half-competent islamists. It was. But Al Qaeda, as pictured, a single, monolithic entity, a COBRA like fortress of Doom as Tora Bora, a centrally directed, organized, aligned entity, does not exist. It's not even an issue of contention except among idiots, because even a simple examination of events (or reading any of the official documentation, 9/11 report for example). But no, America can't be hurt and scared of 19 dudes with box cutters. Just like the American military can't be laid low by a bunch of sectarian, squabbling, jihadists in Iraq. Ironically, if AQ was as popularly pictured, if the Iraq conflict was as constantly pictured by people, the US would have won. Easy. It wouldn't even have sweated.

[Khorum]

Originally Posted by Morphyous

What do you guys think about this:

Zeitgeist - The Movie, 2007

Pretty much covers 3 myths we believe today.

I know it's pretty long (2 hrs) but I'm pretty convinced these are supported facts.

Jesus. I've got a lot of colourful things to say about that movie, but the most relevant one would be that this is the wrong thread to discuss it.

[equobix]

that time machine idea is really crazy/awesome.

he should build two time machines and put one through the other.

what do you think would happen?

[AngryGerbil]

Originally Posted by Khorum

Jesus. I've got a lot of colourful things to say about that movie, but the most relevant one would be that this is the wrong thread to discuss it.

This is the correct answer.

[Sithro]

Originally Posted by Terial

Very interested to see what happens when he turns it on

Is that Tom Baker?

[Celebrindal]

Richard Dawkins - The Enemies of Reason part 1



Richard Dawkins - Enemies of Reason pt.2 - The Irrational Health Service

[vurt]

I heard this was out there; thanks again Celeb.