Well we already discussed this it looks like some particle explanation is not too far off.uwot wrote:Yes, I should have added Copenhagen, Shut Up and Calculate to the list. Incidentally, I meant to say 'you ask whether GR and QM are incompatible', I don't know whether that makes it any clearer that I understand that physics can be interpreted entirely instrumentally.Blaggard wrote:Well Copenhagen has no ontology until a measurement is performed.
Energy fluctuations are the cause of everything, energy is the potential to do work, gravity even causes the creation of particles in a near vacuum.Only if you are prepared to say what the ultimate cause of the phenomenon is.Blaggard wrote:If that counts as an ontology that would be it.
Well you are restricted to what you can measure ultimately or at least infer or induce.Thanks Arising for putting it so succinctly. Yes, we get that observations/sensations imply observers/sensors although almost from the time Descartes said it, even that has been challenged; by Gassendi, initially.Blaggard wrote:As I said on another thread if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?
Atoms are real, they are made up of sub atomic particles which are also real, who exhibit certain behaviours which induce even smaller units called quarks. The strong force though becomes stronger as you try to tease matter apart up to a certain distance, so far the energy concerns needed to release a quark from say a proton are just too great to experimentally verify quarks, but the mathematical model is in fact pretty water tight, there has to be something about the atom that gives it its properties and these must be different for different types of particles hence it is induced there must be something intrinsic about some of the energy contained in the atom and something hence intrinsically particular.There's a bit more to it than making up dancing angel shit. It's what philosophy does, you take the phenomenal world and put it in a context; try and make sense of it. Quite literally the oldest question in philosophy is 'What is everything made of?' According to our best physics, the universe is made of something that can grow from eansy-weansy to really, really big in just shy of 14 billion years. And do all the freaky is it a wave? is it a particle? two slit jiggery-pokery, form stars, planets and conscious beings, indistinguishable from magic stuff. Philosophers are as much party to that information as physicists, second hand, granted; but for all that we are dumbstruck by the brilliance of experimentalists in finding things to measure, and the mathematical genius it takes to account for the measurements, can physics or maths say anything about what the universe, what fundamental particles are made of?Blaggard wrote:What we actually need is experiment, and it is all we have to verify science, we don't have the benefit of making shit up like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or whatever.
Steven Weinberg, no friend of philosophy, but undoubtedly a brilliant man, Nobel laureate no less, says that most physicists assume 'a rough and ready realism'. What is it that most physicists think is real?
I said that I haven't studied it enough and it's hard to explain things without using some pretty complicated maths. I can give you an overview but I can't tell you why in laymens terms an electron is a spin half particle and a photon is a spin 1 particle.You said before: "I can't do what you want." I'm not trying to be funny, but do you at least understand the question 'What are fundamental particles made of?' I quite appreciate that 'Yes, but who cares?' is entirely reasonable, but this is a philosophy forum and you wouldn't be playing the game. Bad Blaggard!
What I can do is say that since an up an down quark are charge 2/3 charge -1/3 they have antimatter partners charge -2/3 +1/3 this gives us the electrons properties of charge it also is what relates intrinsically to its negative charge and it's counterpart antimatter positrons +1 charge. ie 1/3+2/3=1
mesons are said to contain 2 quarks which can have various configuration of up down anti up and antidown.
On the other hand a proton is made up of charges up up down 2/3+2/3-1/3 this gives an integer value 1 and a neutron is up down down giving also a value of 0 for charge in the neutrons and +1 in protons. The quarks also are related by a mass concern and an energy concern which means particles with the same configuration have the same mass, and particles with different configurations such as nuetrons and protons have simillar but different masses.
Spin is a natural consequence of mass energy relations that gives all particles their inherent properties and is related to their inherent quark configuration.
the weak interaction can change the configuration of quarks meaning particles can decay, such as a proton becoming a neutron or vise a versa, the energy given off is also particular and the whole process is called beta minus or positive decay according to which particle is created. This implies also that there is something non fundamental about the proton and neutron.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_decay
This is a pretty good overview of the process.
Black holes are still hypothetical despite what pop science says, until someone actually performs an experiment which shows what they are it's a bit of a philosophical mine field more than a theoretical one. That said the inferred evidence is so strong (uwot wrote:In your own time.Blaggard wrote:This forum is running so slowly at the moment I can't possibly answer your questions, when it stops basically running that slowly I will endeavour to do so. It's like swimming through treacle though atm, fucked if I can be assed to.
About dancing angel shit, dunno whether you saw New Scientist, 8 Feb. Pop science, I know, but just as an example, four different versions of black holes, I'm sure there are plenty more. The kudos will go to those that devise the experiment that determines whether it's foxtrot or rumba. The glory will go to the one that can say: I told you it was angels.
pardon the pun) you could probably say it is at least a weak theory.
As do I, gently swaying in the background, controlling information as always whilst very very slightly pissed.I blame the Inebriatti.Blaggard wrote:cnuts will of course be cnuts. It's ever so human to restrict access to those who can think.
