During the course of any given day, I usually come across something that is both scientific and filled with quantities of pure ownage.

Let's bond.

You need to know about this.

"On Tuesday, Feb. 14, noted physicist Dr. Franklin Felber will present his new exact solution of Einstein's 90-year-old gravitational field equation."

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I conclude you feel better now

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awesome

pure awesome

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Get out of this thread before I suspend you.

By the way, that article rules.

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Although Einstein's Field Equation has many solutions, this is very interesting. I had to be able to derive the Gravitational Field Equation at university but, thankfully, not solve it.

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that article owns. I just want to see if it will takes us anywhere in the next 50 years

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There are three big recurring methodological problems I see with experimental psychology.

1) Demand characteristics/the placebo effect - does the environment or design of the experiment suggest, consciously or unconsiously, how people should behave in it?

2) Construction of variables - for example, exactly what is 'verbal reasoning'? Or 'intelligence'? Or any number of other skills, qualities, states of mind etc. that we are quite comfortable with as concepts but have great difficulty in quantifying?

3) Correlative-causative fallacy - a fancy-arse way of saying that things that co-occur may do so because of a third unrelated factor.

Now, cast your stupid fat eyes over this.

Of course, you can't tell exactly how the research was conducted without reading it and journalism concerning science is almost always hammered shit (a source of unending frustration to me), but which of the above problems does the article suggest this study committed?

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All of the above. In my AP psych class last year at least one (if not all) of these always floated around even the most prestige research.

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It could also be that people who are good multi-taskers are more likely to play video games rather than video gamers being more likely to multi-task well.

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Close, Dyldonics. I don't think there was any relevant demand characteristic in this experiment. However, we have almost certainly have problems with constructs and with cor./caus.

Constructs - 'tricky mental tests', is it? Which ones? Will the results be different if I use entirely different tests which are still 'tricky'?

Cor./Caus. - the big problem. My first immediate thought was "People I know who are gamers are already nerds. They are computer oriented people who used Apple IIes in the 80's and are now working in software 15 years later. They spend their lives PRACTISING multitasking, and the computer games are incidental."



Excellent point, cumboy! I think formally that would be a form of sample bias, but I'm not 100% sure.

The way around all of this is of course to use a randomised controlled trial.

1) Specify the outcome you expect, for the reasons you expect.
2) Take a big-as-possible group of random people who do NOT play computer games.
3) Test their 1337 skillz.
4) Select half at random.
5) Make that half play video games.
6) After a period of time, re-test them.
7) Have the hax0rz group increased in skill? Are they now m4d with phatazz sk111z?

I sincerely doubt any psychologist breathing is gay enough to attempt said research.

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Yeah, I couldn't quite put my finger on that one. I more have an "inkling" that there is some placebo effect involved.

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Don't forget in vivo or in vitro--or however the hell you spell those. It's very hard to study shit. That article sounds good so far, but I try to be suspicious of everything. I'll wait till valentine's day to say anything worth my while......

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How fucking weird is this: http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/0...rms_roachb.html

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It seems like they chose entirely video gamers who are generally geeks. They certainly didn't choose the stoned-ass college kids who play each new version of Madden as it comes out and get excited and yell when they make a player run the length of the field. It's no secret that people who multi-task a lot are good at it, just like anybody who practices anything gets better at it, but not all video gamers multi-task - a lot just sit and play the game. I'm interested as to how they chose their gamers and non-gamers. Then the tests.

On the other hand, I know 3-4 languages and occasionally play video games. I must be a multi-tasking god.

My Physics homework was pissing me off earlier today. That article kicks the shit out of anything I'm learning.

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We have an alarming tendency not to test the vast majority of propositions in experimental psychology in vitro. I think you can guess why.


Neuroscience marches ever onwards.

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I am seriously sceptical of the concepts presented in your first posts' article, FBS.
Ok, so people thought the sound barrier couldnt be breached ... they were all proved wrong .... but this is (approx.) 300,000 km per second we're talking about here.
So they give some explanation that theyll be hitching rides on stars -- but how close is the closest star (apart from the sun) .. hmm few light years??? and i doubt the sun's gravitational field will be strong enough, let alone the let the craft close enough, thats massive heat we're talking about here.... 30,000 or so celcius? .

Also, The fastest humans have gone so far is Mach 21 on reentry to earth in the space shuttle ... speed of light?!? thats ridiculous ....

... and I see no way they are going to blow up 30 billion tonnes of TNT to propel their craft... unless they get the Middle East involved

This post is a great example of how most people today use of language like it was their own personal fucktoy.

Regardless of what the common definition of a concept it, in science it is an explanatory principle that is abstract. So what you've done is:

1) Said you are sceptical of the concept.
2) Proceeded to unload a ton of dribble about your scepticism of the practicality of said concept.

If you doubt the concept that means you doubt Felber's solution to the equation as it was solved. Seeing as it isn't being released until tomorrow, and your knowledge of hardcore theoretical physics is probably as scabby as your knowledge of the basic functions of scientific language, I think we can wait for some peer opinions on this before leaping to conclusions.

The feasibility of this idea is complete arse-in-the-air conjecture, seeing as we have no crazy rockets to launch and space payloads to send. Consider also that this article was written by a journalist and the comments about 'star-riding' aren't posed as the 'reality' Felber talks about. Even so, your objections pretty much amount to this:

OH NOES!!!1 CRAZZY SCI3NC3!!one HOWWW???>

In conclusion, you molest hedgehogs.



P.S. The speed of light is 300,000km/s IN A VACUUM. It's not a fucking constant.

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Jesus Fucking Christ, you elitist piece of shit. I think you were brutally abused as a child to put you in your 'insane' (Lolzzzzzzz) state of mind. I was fucking voicing my opinion, like your fucking meant to do on a forum, for fucks sake, only to be shut down by your PMS.
IM SOOO sorry that i'm not as smart as you, mr. astrophysicist, mr. cosmologist, mr. Hawking.

P.S. Go fuck yourself you homoerotic cunt.

Part of the concept of democracy assumes that people will do their research in order to allow them a voice. You're right that voicing your opinion is basically the only reason these forums exist, but what keeps them from being a total glut of bullshit is that people are held to a certain standard; if you can't attain this standard you're better off keeping your fingers off the keys. You made a nonsense post and got called on it, even after something similar happened in the math thread. Hopefully, this time you'll learn the lesson of doing a minimum of research before saying something. We're not all qualified to talk on every subject, and as long as that's true we should know when to shut the fuck up. This has just been a missed opportunity to do just that. It's sad to see it happen.

Well, indeed. And I wasn't even that nasty to you.



Starts well!



...but goes downhill from there. Get a little more creative. That was so boring I think you gave me cancer.

Now, as you seem to be convinced I'm a fag, let's put a scenario on the following remark - imagine I am boring hard into your arsehole with my enormous Maddox-sized penis. On every word, I want you to imagine a long finessed stroke smoking you open and bouncing off your little boy-prostate and a gravelly voice grunting the following at the back of your head.

Don't.
Express.
Opinions.
If.
You.
Don't.
Know.
What.
You're.
Talking.
About.

*more lube*

Ask.
Questions.
Instead.

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All wah and no science...

...makes this thread fucking dull.

Right then. This one will do your head in - it concerns the first (that I'm aware of) testable hypothesis to start chiselling pieces off string theory. I read this a while ago (was published last year) but thought it could use a write-up as I vaguely remember we used to have a string theory thread with you nerdier types being rather interested.

If you can deal, you can read the abstract here and a killer explanation of hierarchy theory here.

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"Of course, string theory hasn't been tested yet — experimental evidence is necessary. Additionally, Hewett, Lillie and Rizzo’s analysis can only disprove critical string theory; it cannot prove it."

Why not? Does this have something to do with the "theory" part?

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Long story short: it's possible for them to get an experimental result which falsifies the predictions of string theory (which is the discovery of many more dimensions than string theory predicts) but not possible for them to confirm it with a congruent result. That is, they can get a consistent result (evidence of 10 dimensions, for example) but not confirmatory result.

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FBS, Your posts make me giggle like a little school girl

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Looks like it's just me in this thread.

Cockpunching Einstein, Dark Matter and re-writing the parameters of gravity.

MIND. FUCK.

Lots of physics stuff seems to be happening lately!

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With all this new shit, I'll be in the same boat as an old cenile man in 20 years. Too bad I won't be in school all my life.

Can the theory of gravity be proven, as opposed to the string theory?

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Proved, no. This isn't mathematics, where we prove theorems. Physics, as the name implies, is a physical science. Of course, we use what we could corasely call mathematical techniques to get theories about different phenomena. What's different is then we have to make them fit environmental and experimental evidence... and sometimes 'good' theories fuck up spectacularly when it comes to mating them with the available evidence.

So! Dark Matter is something that gives physicists the shits, and is highly confusing. If this solution to the gravitational theory is congruent with the cosmological data we get from galaxies, it will be an excellent indication that it describes reality. But not proof.

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The 'Dark Matter' theory reminds me this belief in 'aether', which was popular before the Michelson-Morley experiment in the 19th century. Both are pathetic attempts to connect raw theories with experimental data.

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^ most brutal burn ever.

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This has often been said. But there is a great counterexample - the neutrino. Fermi said "this wacky little particle must exist". Many people said "Fuck off, wop". It took another twenty five years to find them, using a wacky nuclear reactor.

Two further problems - dark matter theories explain some results a lot better than competing theories of non-Newtonian gravity, and some physicists think exactly the same kind of 'fudging' criticism applies to arbitrarily farting around with the laws of gravity to explain cosmological anomalies.

I don't like the dark matter explanations very much myself. But then again, I don't understand them, either.

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Yeah, but that was Fermi, whom we all, gifted with hindsight, know to have been awesome, even if he was a wop. These BM guys may or may not be Fermis. On the other hand, that gravity should be a continuous function that changes over distance feels like it should be right to non-scientist me. Doesn't mean it is, but it seems logical. Anyway, let's see some falsifying.

Very true. The mathematics behind physics is based on a "modelling" concept - it models what we observe, sometimes good enough to derive very accurate predictions. But whether nature itself is embodied and somehow, for want of a better word, "aware" of the special relationships within these mathematical models is very much a subject for philosophers.

Unfortuantely, even the most rigourous of theories will be chock full of assumptions that are highly unlikley to occur in reality, i.e. planets are assumed to be perfect spheres, many fields are assumed to act uniformly, etc, etc. Basically, there's only so much detail that can be contained within a mathematical model, or else it becomes impractical to solve. I'd actually venture to say that a perfect model of the universe would take an infinite amount of time to solve.

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There's a Borges satire on the exactitude of science which addresses this problem.

A bunch of cartographers determine to make the most accurate map of the land ever built. It becomes larger and larger in scale until the bastard covers the entire country - scale 1:1. Then it becomes impossible to maintain and gets run down and tore up, and goats ended up chewing bits off the side.

Moral of the story: anything that has to account for every variable in its entirety becomes as complicated as the system it's describing.

In conclusion, use the phrase "Borges' map" in conversation and watch the women flock to your feet in wonder.

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Knowing Latin American fabulism is always the best route, to understanding as well as to getting laid.

Even the simplest dynamical systems described by differential equations sets are pain in the neck to solve. In practice to find a solution they use one of the iteration methods which implies the solution is never exact.

Another problem is that the universe is too imperfect for the perfect mathematical models we could build. Because of this, physicists will always have their jobs, even after all mathematical problems are solved

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Hopefully we'll all be dead before Mansley's math major is made useless by the solving of all possible mathematical problems. I don't want to live in a world where Mansley means nothing!

And then, we have things like brains with their 2^100 possible synaptic pathways.

Brains make us cry, and pretend we know things.

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This week, I have been mostly learning about Multinuclear NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy.

In solids, shielding anisotropy, dipolar interactions and quadrupolar interactions broaden the peaks in the spectrum - fucking it up.

However, all these interactions are dependent on cos^2(theta) - 1, so spinning your sample at 54.74 degrees (the magic angle) to the applied magnetic field reduces this term to zero, giving a readable spectrum with sharp peaks.

There you have it - Magic angle spectroscopy - I think it's pretty nifty.

Haha, the movie Total Recall comes alive!!!!

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The word MAGNETAR is totally awesome.

It sounds like a Transformer.


More astronomy - not everything built in Mexico is cheap shit.

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Well, now we've got astonomy and astrophysics out of the way for a while, let's see if we can't savagely debunk some silly psychologist's research like the limp fish it is.

Read this sensationalised account of a recent study into decision making, and see if you can spot the big problem.

The study is here.

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It's a subjective opinion that they are basing it on, i.e. choosing the 'best' car?

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Close. Possibly a problem, depending on the way you construct the study.

But not as serious as something else.

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Har har. Anyone who believe in Chinese tradition medicine is a dick!

Also, today's classic "conflated third variable" study brought to you by some goofy Yankee fucks.

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The way in which if a person uncovers a particular unconscious thought , it no longer is in the unconscious, and is subject to the same "problems" this pop psychologist describes, that enter conscious thought?

Or is it the fact that a person can't possibly know what kind of unconscious decisions he's making, and if one does, it's no longer an unconscious decision?

Those two are kind of similar, but it's all I could come up with.

Yeah, now we're getting to it.



More like BILL AWESOME! GO CYBERBILL!

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OH, THIS ONE IS GOING TO FUCK YOU.

Read that.

That whooshing sound?

That's the cold air of the universe blowing over your brain.

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So in essence, what the boneheads that constructed Deep Thought (Hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy...) really should have done, whas shutting the thing down and see if maybe something had happened the day after.

One question though, to anyone more up to date than myself on quantum computing:
Even though you can control the state of the photon you send into the system - you can decide to put it into a superposition - how can you control what the computer does, since the thing technically is shut down? Or do you just start (no, no pun intended) the process and hope for the best?

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That one seemed fairly intriguing. But I can't help to feel that there is a certain risk in tampering with your own consciousness in order to gain knowledge about your consciousness. A little bit like setting out to open a box with the key that is safely locked away in said box. And, perhaps even more, a little bit of modern physics as well (good going FBS, you've found a philosophical connection between your subjects) in that it appears, to me, impossible to observe without affecting. Are the humanists, in fact, heading towards an uncertanity principle all of their own? I am looking forward to more posting on this matter from you, FBS.

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Presumably, the computer is not shut down completely otherwise there would be no means by which to view the answer. Maybe the series of commands is known but not "run" and so you get the answer whether you run the command or not. Quite startling really, but not the weirdest occurrence in the quantum world.

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Certainly not. Jeez, I've been studying the practical aspects of science for so long that I'd almost, well not forgot but anyhow, how endless much fun that can be derived from the field of quantum mechanics.
We salute thee, Planck.

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Say now, you are not going to abandon this thread already are you? It's things like these that really make the forum, if you get my drift.

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You must be kidding. This is the only thread the morons are afraid of. I love it, and want to let it rape me.

Today's science is pretty gay.

Finally. I always suspected this was true. The more we know about faggery, the less people will be scared of it.

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OH DEAR, THIS IS FANTASTIC.

My name is Far Beyond Sane, and I heartily endorse the phrase "Penis-Melting Zionist Robot Combs".

Too awesome for words. Read.

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Whatever next?!

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Alright, you pig-dicker. I bet you don't have the balls to read these. I'm posting them anyway.

First we have the Eukaryote theory and then we have the Viral theory.

What are they? Two competing accounts on where life came from. Get into it.

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delete this post if you want FBS but this new PC game thats coming out looks fucking awesome and is tied in to the creation of life
http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...0559198&q=spore

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www.badastronomy.com

I love this site. It shows how wrong every movie is on science and other cool stuff.

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Thank you very much, you have just managed to motivate the whole lenght of that biotechnology course I took a few years back. That viruses were the originator of, well, mitokondrier in Swedish - the ATP factory I mean - is something I have already endorsed, but this was really taking it to the limit.
And I must also say that I like the thought. Just think... as we live, we carry with us all the genetic material right back to the start. The possibilites that come of this are somehow comforting.

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Mitochondria, in English.

Two ideas which disagree so fundamentally can only really be described as hypotheses, but damn it if they aren't powerfully interesting ones.

As Transient would say, Virology > Mortician.

(Then again, that isn't a very fair comparison.)

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No, the viruses might sue you if they heard about it. Or take it to the press in a tearswelling story about how they have had their personal integrity molested, if they happened to be Swedish viruses.

I became interested in this whole concept of junk DNA from the very first time the teacher mentioned it. I mean, nature has this way of sorting out everything that carries around too much that isn't of use to the creature in question, evolutionary dead ends are quite literaly dead. Naming all those pieces of code we carry about "junk" sounded to me like cutting a big hole in that idea... we have had millions, even billions of years to produce mutations with less junk codes, but the bastards don't seem to have anything on the rest of us.
Nah, never trust something in your own body that doesn't seem to do anything. It's up to something.

Hey, I forgot to ask in the last post, the latest date mentioned in the article was in 2003 - how up-to-date is it?
And do anyone know where there is more information - i.e. red hot new information - on this?

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I'm trying to decipher this! THIS IS SCIENCE, LADDY!

Deep sea creatures are a fucking mystery, even now.

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Wow, blind.....give it some glasses and we could re-name it Transient.


There's a small deep sea fish that I forgot that has the fastest bite in the world. ....like it could gulp it's prey in 1/1000 of a second or something. And I can't find a site for it.....

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Deep Sea creatures are awesome. They've got to be the strangest looking things I've seen.

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fuckin weird....its like me but in crustacean form.

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Thought I'd post this vid. here:

Buzz Aldren punches out conspiracy theorist

Fucking Black Hole Quantum Computing!

Nerdgasm anyone?

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This should be in the heroes thread.

"You're a fraud and a liar and a..."

*BAM*

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FUCKING A MAN!

Nerve regrowth is one of the holy grails of neuroscience. Welcome to the fuggin' future.

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we were actually talking about that in school a little while ago. lots of really interesting possibilities there.

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Hey, thanks a lot for that one. The irritating thing about it is that it works. And what do they mean, controversial? Hawking radiation and the fact that even black holes finally walk the way enthropy has laid out for us isn't all that new; at least not by the standards of this science.
And why why why didn't they name them black stars or black globes when they had the chance?

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Hear that sound? That is the inordely march of a depressingly large horde of people all claiming, basically, that we are meddling in things man were not meant to wot of. Anyone wanna bet on how long it takes before God, through his earthly representatives naturaly, start shouting about how wrong it is?

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Well, God gave us brains to use. I bet Pat Robertson will be pissed though.

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Ahem... who?

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This is not an article but a science question

Aim: To know the reason for the observation

Apparatus: A computer screen, a guitar (dadgbe works better, or even lower).

Theory: I am guessing string vibration along with persistence of vision.

Procedure:
Sit in front of your comp screen close enough.

Catch your guitar straight (perpendicular to the ground) with the head pointing up, and the fretboard pointing towards you.

Now start rotating the guitar slowly (with the right side coming towards you and left side going away).

Keep rotating till the lowest (d) string is just seen against the screen (IE it
should be silhouetted against the comp screen)

Now catch the guitar still with your right hand and pick the lowest string with ur left hand.

Observe the string at the neck (the part silhouetted against the comp screen).

Observation: The string is seen to be a wave with different phase.
IE it seems like a wave rather than a vibration.

Reason: WTF?????

Note: The magnitude of the normal vibration of the string gives a wave form against time. I am guessing this wave is equivalent to the observed wave (from the expt)


YEAH SCIENCE IS FUN

Getting back to my usual self...why does this happen.

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So do you do weird shit like this in your spare time man?

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Yeah!

Man seriously try it

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Ask pst about this one. Regardless of how good he may be at science, he knows his english language, and I think if you knew the exact link between the literal words "vibration" and "wave", you'll figure out the answer yourself.

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This is what we normally see without a comp screen.
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e...thoutscreen.gif


But in front of a comp screen it looks like a (at first fucked up) wave.
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e.../withscreen.gif



So if the reason is as simple as the relation between waves and vibration....Why should a comp screen be needed.

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I prefer 'minuscule' to 'miniscule'.

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I'm not sure about this one.

Really am not sure... an auditory intellignece testing thing to test 'brain speed'.

(I did really well. With a hangover. I am superb.)

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No, you're not, you're a musician, and with a claim at tabbing skills at that; don't try to deny it, I've seen the incriminating posts.
Though I will have to agree that I'm not really sure how accurate that test really was... but mildly ego-flattering to see that one fall within the acceptable range.

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I really, really doubt it. I have never tabbed anything, ever. If I said I had before, I was drunk, joking, lying or a combination of those.

Neutrinos have mass, ya fucks.

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(Damn, someone has messed up my keyboard...)

Now youre talking. I have been waiting for something like this for years, thank you for this thrill of old ways taking a beating.

Would be fun indeed to find out that the extra mass in the universe actually can be explained like this, and that all the talk of dark matter and gigantic, invisible galactic halos were nothing but a sidetrack.

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http://www.harpers.org/

long ass read, but there was an argument somewhere here a while back about aids research, i thought this was interesting.

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When's the next train to Cassiopeia?

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Not soon enough, I fear.

An alcohol constellation. Do the Irish have a space program yet?

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I think they just got started on it.

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One more piece..

http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releas...tiktaalik.shtml

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how bout nanotechnology???

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/r...echnology.shtml

that shit is trippy. anyone have any good articles on this subject?

haha, zing..this is old news..and I apologize if it has been posted..but man, I'm starting to hate technology.


http://www.blu-ray.com/


"This together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 is what enables Blu-ray Discs to hold 25GB/50GB."

There goes the thousands invested into dvd's..my fuck, I should have stayed with BETA tapes.

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I highly doubt that Sony's Blu-Ray technology will gain the upper hand over the DVD format in the near future. Especially once you consider that HD-DVD's have a capacity of 30gb. The Blu-Ray format will be more expensive than HD-DVD, since it utilises totally new manufacturing techniques, whereas HD-DVD production is very similar to normal DVD production.

And don't worry, you'll still be able to play regular DVD's on an HD-DVD player.

I don't really care much for this Blu-Ray/HD-DVD business, when those two formats get out of their niche markets, then I'll consider them as viable options. That isn't happening anytime soon though.

I wish I could beleive you...

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It will happen soon enough, and whichever format becomes more popular will make theo ther one fit the role of the next generations 8-track, Beta, or Laserdisc. Probably the stuff that allows for existing DVDs to play will be dominant at first.

I should also note that the University of Chicago rules as indicated in Dyldo's article.

As far as science collaborating with entertainment, you know what would kick ass? Three-dimensional television. A projector on the ceiling casts the image down between that space and the floor, creating a full view from all angles of the scene. Film makers would have to dramatically change the way they shoot their scenes, probably using many cameras -- or perhaps special ones specifcally designed for this -- to capture every angle. But imagine if they could get the light to pull together just right and form the three-dimensional moving pitcure! I know one thing for sure, porn sales would skyrocket.

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