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BaldFriede View Drop Down
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Points: 10266 		Direct Link To This Post Topic: Interesting article fom yesterday's PhysicsWorld
    Posted: April 02 2016 at 06:24
I get the weekly newslettter from PhysicsWorld, and there are always very interesting articles in it. Yesterday there was a specifically interesting one:

http://tinyurl.com/jhnow28

This amazing device will greatly help us to explore the forces which sew this universe together..


BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue.
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InstrupsychedeMental View Drop Down
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Points: 75 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 02 2016 at 08:15
That's pretty mind-boggling stuff.  If I understand this right, it suggests that people could measure the microscopic differences in the gravity--the warping of spacetime, assuming that Albert et al have it right--between two very close locations in the same system.  Goofy example, but if such were sensitive enough then such could detect how my body mass distorts spacetime compared to that of my cat, maybe only a few feet away.  I would have thought a system's (e.g. the entire earth) overall gravity would be so dominant as to override any such detection.
 
Just last night I was listening to a couple of SETI podcasts.  One was very cool in that it said a new technology will (might) be able to decipher some ancient scrolls from Pompeii that are so charred and brittle that attempts to unroll them simply destroys them.  Very cool.
 
The other one was regarding CRISPR technology (for rather precise genetic modification).  Sounds like the medical applications could be fantastic.  However, they interviewed a former NASA employee who retired to start playing with some kind of hobby kit for gene-hacking, which he claims is inexpensive and anyone could dick around with.  I rarely get concerned about the misuse of technology, at least relative to today's current climate in that regard, but this sounded majorly disconcerting;  dude went so far as to say that, instead of the medical benefits, he's be interested in giving himself wings, a tail, or another limb.  Only in the last sentence of the podcast did the word 'ethics' even appear, if memory serves.
 
Cool stuff.
Didn't expect to see this type of thing in this forum.
 
 correction:the Pompeii blurb was from The Future & You podcast:
 
the CRISPR discussion is here:
 
a much saner (imo) discussion of CRISPR is here:
 
 


Edited by InstrupsychedeMental - April 02 2016 at 08:23
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Points: 75 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 03 2016 at 13:47
Hey, Blue Angel,
 
You might appreciate this article a little more:
 
Just my opinion, but it's antipodally not unlike the article you linked to above.
 
It's from a few years back, but I found it enlightening, coming across the same when I had more hair on my head and less floating around the room from the cat.
 
And yes, more success today.  Thank Hendrix.
 
 
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Points: 52792 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 04 2016 at 11:54
The article originally is pointing out something different than the course of this conversation has taken. In the second to last paragraph it states "The device has a sensitivity that is about ten times worse than the best commercial devices." (emphasis mine). The key point of the article is that this gravimeter can be produced for 1000th the cost of higher end models and due to its small size, it can fill a lot of mobile applications. I also think it's intended use (at the moment) is measuring the gravity of the earth in various locations and not the gravity of cats.
 
The Sokal article is a purposely intended hoax:
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InstrupsychedeMental View Drop Down
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Points: 75 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 06 2016 at 12:44
Originally posted by progaardvark progaardvark wrote:

The article originally is pointing out something different than the course of this conversation has taken. In the second to last paragraph it states "The device has a sensitivity that is about ten times worse than the best commercial devices." (emphasis mine). The key point of the article is that this gravimeter can be produced for 1000th the cost of higher end models and due to its small size, it can fill a lot of mobile applications. I also think it's intended use (at the moment) is measuring the gravity of the earth in various locations and not the gravity of cats.
 
The Sokal article is a purposely intended hoax:
 
While you do acknowledge that gravity may have an influence on how my cat is sewn into the fabric of reality, I believe that you are missing the point of my analogy.  Most scanning of the earth to find deposits are based on satellite techniques for finding distortions in the Earth's magnetic field or by thermal emissions topography.  Detection of slight distortions in the spacetime curvature within the Earth seem to be a mind-boggling accomplishment, if my hazy glossing of the article was not completely devoid of comprehension.  From there, I was simply making an inference to the least pragmatic application.
 
Further, with my cat currently in a state of being both alive and dead, until decomposition she should retain the same affect on spacetime curvature as the theory of vitalism has been disproven.
 
The Sokal paper and its context is hilarious, so thanks for posting said context.  Speaking of context, you are at an unfair disadvantage in that the context of the superfluous 'course of this conversation' is not fully disclosed within the available thread.  My apologies for misleading any of the few spectators.
 
Looks can be deceiving may aptly apply to my apparent appropriation of progarchives and perhaps the picture provided pertains approximately to my point
 
 
Just a microscope but this device and many others share a similar appearance.
 
Fortunately, music doesn't presently affect the curvature of spacetime as it has in years past (save for, perhaps, quantity), for the gradient phase transitions may have slowed down entropy production enough to at least let me survive through the ballgame.  This is probably what Albert would have been working on, if he were still alive, as it is clear that spacetime--whatever that may be--and energy cannot fully be studied in isolation.
 
Go Jays!
 
 
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