Sci Fi TV science or fiction?

Well. The exact nature of observation is really kinda undecided as to whether consciousness really plays a role, but yeah overall it's kinda troubling when you think in those terms.. 

I can only agree with that but it remains a deep mystery, the number of experiments which show that whether we attempt to get information from the world or we don't changes the outcome of the experiment, are numerous and unquestionable, and the result is always the same: like it or not, our attempt at obtaining information changes the outcome of the experiment. Denying it does not solve the issue. What does that tell us about the world I don't know, and I refrain from making any guesses, but it is a persisting mystery which has puzzled the most clever scientists for decades and nobody could come with a satisfactory solution.

Edited by Gerinski - August 02 2013 at 07:18

Two mathematicians are in a bar. The first one says to the second that the average person knows very little about basic mathematics. The second one disagrees, and claims that most people can cope with a reasonable amount of mathematics.

Edited by Dean - August 02 2013 at 09:26

Aye.

pfft! You're not fooling anyone Jim. That's the formula for making laser light stop short at precisely 1m from the handle of a light sabre.

Gerinski wrote: Dean wrote:   I'm sure all this has been considered before and discarded I'm no physicist either but I bet this is the case.

As I said, I'm sure it has, but evidence and proof is always more convincing than off-hand dismissal (or simply ignoring it).

BaldFriede wrote: Dean, it is obvious that we are not talking of the same thing when we talk of invisibility. You talk of clever camouflage tricks, but I talk of the real McCoy. Think of "The Invisible Man" from the movie of the same name. Now take some of your methods, the one-way mirror for example: It cleverly hides you from people on the other side of the mirror while you can see them. But to anyone who is on the same side of the mirror you are still completely visible.So you are not invisible at all. But real invisibility means "you can't see him or her though he or she is directly in front of you, from any direction". You can walk around him or her and don't get a single glimpse. But if you want to walk through him or her you go "bump". To achieve this kind of invisibility there are only two methods: Either bend the light around him or her without any distortion or let all light fall through this person without any being absorbed or reflected. But in either case no light reacts with the eyes of the invisible person, and thus he or she is blind. This is a well-known fact to scientists, of course. But there is good news: Since magic defies the laws of nature Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility does not make you blind at all.

It doth appear that you have not quite grasped the concept of this thread and its subject matter. I know that actual invisibility is not possible and that the impossible invisible person would not actually be able to see, for while I play on my dimness relative to the most clever of scientists of recent decades, I am actually a little brighter than two Toc H lamps in parallel so I can actually understand the point being made and the science behind it and I do know the difference between actual invisibility and apparent invisibility, but this thread is about the scientific possibility that the technologies predicted in Science Fiction literature (and SF moving image entertainment) could ever be a reality. So therefore and thusly, to that end the invisibility in question would not be the actual invisibility, which is a physical impossibility, but the technological trickery of camouflage that is related to the smoke and mirrors of the Victorian parlour magician, as typified by the Romulan Cloaking Device, used by both the Romulans and the Klingons in the televisual broadcast entertainment production Star Trek, and the invisible suit of the Predator before he got his ass handed to him on a plate by the 38th govenor of the US state of Cali-forn-eye-aye ... (as opposed to the cloak of a poorly written children's novel... or the one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them... which, both being fiction magic, are not so much defying the laws of nature (or physics to be a little more precise) as simply ignoring them).

Edited by Dean - August 04 2013 at 20:09

^ Interpreting body language and microexpressions is a genuine science that doesn't require the use of enhanced individuals. Enhancing human capabilities is a practical reality, though making people smarter is a different issue. It is more likely, (f you've read Brave New World) that the opposite would be more of a reality - they'd engineer drones to be less smart, but the last thing any "power" would want to do would be to make someone smarter than them. Ethics can be argued from here 'til doomsday with no conclusion or agreement.

Dean wrote: BaldFriede wrote: Dean, it is obvious that we are not talking of the same thing when we talk of invisibility. You talk of clever camouflage tricks, but I talk of the real McCoy. Think of "The Invisible Man" from the movie of the same name. Now take some of your methods, the one-way mirror for example: It cleverly hides you from people on the other side of the mirror while you can see them. But to anyone who is on the same side of the mirror you are still completely visible.So you are not invisible at all. But real invisibility means "you can't see him or her though he or she is directly in front of you, from any direction". You can walk around him or her and don't get a single glimpse. But if you want to walk through him or her you go "bump". To achieve this kind of invisibility there are only two methods: Either bend the light around him or her without any distortion or let all light fall through this person without any being absorbed or reflected. But in either case no light reacts with the eyes of the invisible person, and thus he or she is blind. This is a well-known fact to scientists, of course. But there is good news: Since magic defies the laws of nature Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility does not make you blind at all. It doth appear that you have not quite grasped the concept of this thread and its subject matter. I know that actual invisibility is not possible and that the impossible invisible person would not actually be able to see, for while I play on my dimness relative to the most clever of scientists of recent decades, I am actually a little brighter than two Toc H lamps in parallel so I can actually understand the point being made and the science behind it and I do know the difference between actual invisibility and apparent invisibility, but this thread is about the scientific possibility that the technologies predicted in Science Fiction literature (and SF moving image entertainment) could ever be a reality. So therefore and thusly, to that end the invisibility in question would not be the actual invisibility, which is a physical impossibility, but the technological trickery of camouflage that is related to the smoke and mirrors of the Victorian parlour magician, as typified by the Romulan Cloaking Device, used by both the Romulans and the Klingons in the televisual broadcast entertainment production Star Trek, and the invisible suit of the Predator before he got his ass handed to him on a plate by the 38th govenor of the US state of Cali-forn-eye-aye ... (as opposed to the cloak of a poorly written children's novel... or the one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them... which, both being fiction magic, are not so much defying the laws of nature (or physics to be a little more precise) as simply ignoring them).   But if you insist on pressing this point then a transparent body that had the exact same refractive index as air could feasibly include transparent photosensitive cells that could absorb a small percentage of the EM radiation and remain undetectable to the naked eye, as would a body that could bend most of the light around it and allow a very small percentage to be absorbed and thus used for sight. Since the photoelectric effect operates at the atomic level these photosensitive cells would for all intents and purposes be transparent if they were only a few atoms thick. This would be possible because the human eye is not a particularly sensitive measuring instrument of relative light levels and is dreadful measurement instrument of absolute light levels. It is also easily fooled because of the amount of "data processing" that is required to process the information in the human's stereoscopic field of vision - we don't immediately "see" everything in a scene but focus on the things that move, so the obscuring of the object does not have to be 100% perfect. The whole science of camouflage relies on this (as does nature) so even if the subject did absorb or reflect a small percentage of the light the naked eye would not be able to detect it.   But since you are going to come back at me with the self-same argument until I am beaten into submission, then for the sake of peace I will concur that a completely invisible body that did not reflect or absorb any light would not be able to see anything and would be totally blind.     ps: the two-way mirror was not an example of invisibility but an illustration that the reflection, refraction or bending of light does not have to be 100% to fool the human eye - that some of the light can pass through (or be absorbed) by the mirror and still look indistinguishable from a normal mirror to the observer. A mirror is no more effective as an "invisible suit" as a brick wall would be since it reflects light back - kind of a dead give-away really if you actually thought about it instead of assuming I had implied it was a means of creating invisibility.

So what you are talking about is actually a replacement of the human eye by some artificial device that is a better receptor and can not be as easily fooled. That idea, however, has two flaws.. The first flaw is that it is not the eye which is being fooled; it is actually the brain. The second flaw is: Just as you yourself have a better receptor for ligjht so will the others. Which means that as less visible the eye would become to a naked human eye it would not change its visibility much to that device. To drop out of sight of the devices of others that device would have to achieve blindness again.

As to the Klingon cloaking device: As far as I understood that device is a variation of the method of bending the light around the object that is supposed to become invisible. This will not make the Klingons inside blind as long as they have their own light sources inside their ship, but it will make them blind to the outside world. But I may be wrong, I am by no means an expert on the technology of Star Trek.

I have actually given the invisibility problem a lot of thought because I wrote a short story about invisibility and wanted  to cover all angles.


Edited by BaldFriede - August 05 2013 at 03:11

Dean wrote: BaldFriede wrote: So what you are talking about is actually a replacement of the human eye by some artificial device that is a better receptor and can not be as easily fooled. That idea, however, has two flaws.. The first flaw is that it is not the eye which is being fooled; it is actually the brain. The second flaw is: Just as you yourself have a better receptor for ligjht so will the others. Which means that as less visible the eye would become to a naked human eye it would not change its visibility much to that device. To drop out of sight of the devices of others that device would have to achieve blindness again. Well, to be pedantic I would not talking about a replacement for the human eye but a total replacement for the human body where the spirit, id, consciousness, metaphysical, essence, vigor, soul, being (call it what you will), would be encapsulated in a new substrate that is optically transparent - there is not other possible solution. Any practical actual impossible invisibility would completely alter the physical structure and composition of the human bean. The retina and lens arrangement would be a different form of photosensitive device and focussing system as different from the human eye as the eye of the mantis shrimp is from the eye of a fly. This "eye" would not necessarily be better than the human eye, though possibly more sensitive to extremely low light levels, there is nothing to suggest that an invisible eye would be able to detect another invisible eyes. If you create a fantasy world where invisibility is possible then all things are possible. BaldFriede wrote: As to the Klingon cloaking device: As far as I understood that device is a variation of the method of bending the light around the object that is supposed to become invisible. This will not make the Klingons inside blind as long as they have their own light sources inside their ship, but it will make them blind to the outside world. But I may be wrong, I am by no means an expert on the technology of Star Trek. I have actually given the invisibility problem a lot of thought because I wrote a short story about invisibility and wanted  to cover all angles. Well, Klingons are not blind when cloaked so some small percentage of the bent light must be allowed to pass through just like a two-way mirror reflects most of the light but allows enough to pass through - just as I have decribed several times in this thread in response to your repeated ignoiring of that observation. Klingons do have to de-cloak to fire weapons but that is explaned in the fictional TV series as being the result of the Bird Of Prey being unable to power the cloaking device and weapons simultaneously, not because they are blind to the outside "world" - they can see the outside space and all it contains perfectly well enough.

I did not ignore your explanations at all, Dean; I just think they are flawed.  You are actually running in circles. If the Klingons can see the outside with that little bit of light that passes through then they can be seen as well, because the receptors of the others are just as good as theirs. That is inescapable.