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Post by principled on Jan 3, 2014 18:45:57 GMT 1
About a week ago I was listening to a podcast of a R4 Material World programme first broadcast in 2011/12. Part of the programme was dedicated to an experiment carried out at Imperial College to measure the roundness of an electron. The conclusion was that the electron is the so perfectly round that if its size were increased to the size of our galaxy, then its "out-of-roundness" would equate to the thickness of a human hair. Today, I read an article (below) which reports that scientists believe that the Earth is between 0.005 and 0.008% heavier than previously thought. www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2533148/Is-Earth-HEAVIER-think-GPS-satellites-suggest-halo-dark-matter-surrounding-planet.htmlThe precision required to give this level of accuracy is quite daunting. Should I accept the results as verbatim or remain just a tad sceptical? P
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 3, 2014 19:37:39 GMT 1
About a week ago I was listening to a podcast of a R4 Material World programme first broadcast in 2011/12. Part of the programme was dedicated to an experiment carried out at Imperial College to measure the roundness of an electron. The conclusion was that the electron is the so perfectly round that if its size were increased to the size of our galaxy, then its "out-of-roundness" would equate to the thickness of a human hair. Today, I read an article (below) which reports that scientists believe that the Earth is between 0.005 and 0.008% heavier than previously thought. www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2533148/Is-Earth-HEAVIER-think-GPS-satellites-suggest-halo-dark-matter-surrounding-planet.htmlThe precision required to give this level of accuracy is quite daunting. Should I accept the results as verbatim or remain just a tad sceptical? P The problem with measuring things like electrons is that they do not exist in isolation from the measurement! In other words, it is the way we measure such an "object" that yields what we see. Before an electron is measured it is not at all a "particle" but is all spread out in terms of waves of probabilities. Even this is confusing because waves of probabilities are not real, physical waves but refer to mathematical probabilities, so one should not get carried away with the idea that an electron or, for that matter, any sub- atomic entity exists as a kind of billiard ball waiting to be measured. What we are really measuring is the result of probabilities in combination with our measuring apparatus. In fact, even to call an electron a "particle" is misleading because it is not really a particle as such but exhibits a "particulate-like" aspect. The basic problem is that whatever it is we attempt to measure we inevitably interfere with which means we can never actually know what something is like in its "unmeasured" native state. This is why any measurement must involve a degree of subjectiveness due to the necessity of having to adapt what we humans measure to "appeal" to our senses.
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Post by principled on Jan 3, 2014 21:51:56 GMT 1
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Post by mrsonde on Jan 4, 2014 1:56:47 GMT 1
And before we go any further along Abacus' line, I think it would be a good idea for him to reply to the objections on another thread to his assertions. He contends things about reality with no evidence whatsoever - indeed, no possible evidence whatsoever - based on a creed promulgated in the late 1920s by a small group of a dozen or so physicists strongly swayed not by logic or science but by a then in vogue metaphysical creed known as logical positivism and a professional envy of the achievements and status of Albert Einstein.
I would like Abacus to answer a question put to him for once, instead of these repetitive chantings of the credo of Copenhagen. How is it if electrons don't exist I'm able to tune into my radio stations? Or watch television? Or communicate by this broadband facilitated means? How did the pre-ancient Greeks first observe the phenomenon of electric charge? How is it that the universe exists at all? Hydrogen might possibly have evolved without electrons, but helium certainly couldn't - therefore no stars. Who was doing all this essential "measuring"?
Think for yourself, abacus. You read some half-baked popular science regurgitation of quantum mechanics by some semi-qualified journalist like Paul Davies or Nigel Calder back in 1970 whatever, the era of dancing woo-woo tai-chi God is a mathematician physics, and you've been floating along happy to think whatever you believe is true simply because you think it ever since. Stop polluting the intellectual atmosphere of the world with such nonsense. Out here - in reality - there's a demand to be logical, and respond to rational criticism.
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 4, 2014 12:00:25 GMT 1
Well, I don't pretend to understand the jargon but, nevertheless, all you have to bear in mind is that whatever data they have obtained in their measurements is derived from the way they have set-up their instruments. So, really this just supports my original contention that what we are really doing in all this scientific activity is defining reality in our own terms, i.e, from the data we extract from particular experiments. Once again, you have to get away from the idea that what science does is "discover" reality", no, science interferes with reality to produce conscious representations of it. So, to return to your original question, measurement cannot be judged in any "absolute" sense in that there exists some perfect standard by which any measurement can be compared. Such a standard does not pre-exist because in making scientific measurements physicists are effectively forging the state of the art where it did not exist before. Possibly, in the future, there will be further refinements made in measuring things like electrons, etc., but that is not guaranteed since we can never be sure of the future, however, whatever is forthcoming from future scientific measurements will be changing our representation of reality over time, something I have always maintained.
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 4, 2014 12:43:20 GMT 1
And before we go any further along Abacus' line, I think it would be a good idea for him to reply to the objections on another thread to his assertions. He contends things about reality with no evidence whatsoever - indeed, no possible evidence whatsoever - based on a creed promulgated in the late 1920s by a small group of a dozen or so physicists strongly swayed not by logic or science but by a then in vogue metaphysical creed known as logical positivism and a professional envy of the achievements and status of Albert Einstein. I would like Abacus to answer a question put to him for once, instead of these repetitive chantings of the credo of Copenhagen. How is it if electrons don't exist I'm able to tune into my radio stations? Or watch television? Or communicate by this broadband facilitated means? How did the pre-ancient Greeks first observe the phenomenon of electric charge? How is it that the universe exists at all? Hydrogen might possibly have evolved without electrons, but helium certainly couldn't - therefore no stars. Who was doing all this essential "measuring"? Think for yourself, abacus. You read some half-baked popular science regurgitation of quantum mechanics by some semi-qualified journalist like Paul Davies or Nigel Calder back in 1970 whatever, the era of dancing woo-woo tai-chi God is a mathematician physics, and you've been floating along happy to think whatever you believe is true simply because you think it ever since. Stop polluting the intellectual atmosphere of the world with such nonsense. Out here - in reality - there's a demand to be logical, and respond to rational criticism. You are still labouring under the impression that I have said electrons do not exist. Electrons do exist in the context of an interaction between consciousness and probability waves or, as I referred to them earlier, as "potentials", but what I actually said was that electrons do not exist in their own right, in an unobserved state (eigenstate).
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Post by principled on Jan 4, 2014 14:09:01 GMT 1
Abacus I started this thread because, as a mechanical engineer, I know how difficult it is to produce things to an accuracy of a micron and the complexity to get the precision of the measurement appartatus right. Anyway, the thread has moved on a little. So have a look at the article quoted below, which is talking about the research I mentioned earlier. You will see that the fact that the electron is almost perfectly spherical has far reaching implications for the supersymmetry model. (The pasted section below is only half the article, the rest can be found here www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/11/electron-shape-measurement-new-physics-theories_n_4254285.html
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 4, 2014 14:53:07 GMT 1
Principled, I don't wish to seem patronising to anyone, however, it does strike me quite forcefully that what this shows is that we are forced to continually modify our models of what we think of as real. To be honest, any current scientific model is only based on the information that has been garnered from people who design scientific experiments and this, of course, is an ongoing process that changes our ideas through testing. In engineering you have to be precise but not to the extent that it questions your basic ideas about reality so from a practical standpoint engineering and sub-atomic particles don't normally have anything to do with one another (unless we consider things like semi-conductor operation in electronic engineering, which I assume you were not referring to).
I have to say that, once again, I am struck by the idea that what science is really all about is adapting "nature" to perform something or other that is useful to us and this, in my view, applies to the world of quantum mechanics equally as much as it does to the world of engineering whether it be mechanical engineering or software engineering and this leads me, at least, to the deeper insight that what it really is all about is the world of ideas or, as some would call it, the world of information. For example, take the play Romeo and Juliet. This work exists via various mediums, such as books, CD's, video tapes, fibre optic Internet wires, etc., yet if I asked you if this work was really the ink and paper of a book, for example, would you answer in the affirmative? If you would then I would have to point out that since the work could exist via many other mediums it must somehow be more than the physical form it is expressed in. It is as if Romeo and Juliet is something that does not rely on a particular physical structure but that has the ability to be expressed as an abstract expression of matter. Now, in my view, the same principle applies to the world of quantum mechanics in that whatever instruments are used and however the data is collected in any measurement it is, crucially, the information or, if you will, the ideas that are paramount, not the physical equipment used in such measurements. So, the point I am (rather badly) attempting to make is that we should not be restrained in our thinking by the apparent limitations of our current models of reality such as, for example, the spacetime model, where information cannot travel faster than the speed of light, because information, aka ideas, transcend such models and in the same way as a chimpanzee with a pencil and paper only has a limited ability to use these to express abstract ideas where it is not the pencil and paper that are important but the role of an "observer", then we can see that a physical instrument is only as good as the ideas an intelligent observer can use it for.
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Post by principled on Jan 4, 2014 18:02:06 GMT 1
Abacus I previously explained that my original post was posing a question. We have scientists who say they are measuring something to an accuracy of 1x10^-31m (bearing in mind a human hair is around 1x10^-4m), this is truly amazing, and as I implied almost unbelievable. Then we have another scientist who says that the Earth is 0.005% heavier than expected. Again, a level of accuracy that seems hard to believe bearing in mind the complexity of deciding how much the Earth should weigh without this "lump" of dark matter/energy.
You have responded that an electron is not a particle prior to measurement but "is all spread out in terms of waves of probabilities". So, why should the "wave of probability" always result in a particle that is perfectly spherical when observed/measured? Why not a perfect cube, an ovoid etc.?
Do you dispute the following wording taken from the article that seems to support the idea that an electron is a particle? "According to quantum mechanics, all particles, including the electron...." "... should give rise to a cloud of virtual particles around them that continually sweep in and out of existence". Do you support the idea of virtual particles? Do these only become particles on observation? The other point raised by the measurement obtained relates to super symmetry. Are you a supporter of the super-symmetry camp?
P
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Post by alancalverd on Jan 5, 2014 2:39:05 GMT 1
Weighing the earth isn't too difficult. You just measure the gravitational force on a 1 kilogram standard mass and use F = GmM/r^2 to calculate M. Now you may not know G and r to any great degree of precision, but you can be sure that they (and m) haven't changed by 0.005% since you last did the experiment, so your new value of M may not be accurate but it is at least more precise than your previous estimate.
Not sure about the sphericity of the electron. I'll get back to you on that one!
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 5, 2014 10:25:58 GMT 1
Supersymmetry is an attempt to provide a framework with which to resolve hitherto inconsistencies in the standard model but thus far has not found evidential support. Virtual particles are not really particles but are disturbances surrounding what they call "real" particles, such as electrons. This is all very arbitrary, however.
The roundness question must be linked to the way the object is measured, so here again, it is not that an electron has a certain shape unobserved, but only when "interfered" with it presents a certain aspect.
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 5, 2014 11:43:12 GMT 1
Well, this idea has arisen from data on the location of satellites orbiting the earth which may or may not prove to be correct. If no other explanation can be provided to account for the anomalous data then the dark matter hypothesis would seem to be reasonable. Bear in mind though that the scientific method itself is based on a skeptical approach to phenomena which is why continual testing of ideas is a built in-feature. So, to answer your question, yes, you should remain a tad skeptical.
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Post by principled on Jan 5, 2014 22:03:37 GMT 1
Abacus, Thanks for your posts. I have no problem accepting that in the quantum world particles may exhibit the characteristic of both a wave and a particle. However, I find it difficult to accept the idea that it is both a wave and a particle until it is observed. Alan Thanks for your post. I was aware of Newton's law of Gravitation F=GmM/r2. My question was not about calculating the mass per se, but the increase in mass (0.005%) and the reasons given for it. My understanding is that this is the first time the mass has been calculated using satellites. The article isn't specific about how this was achieved, but let us assume that the Gravitation Law was used. Now Canvendish's Gravitational Constant has been around a few hundred years, so I think we can safely accept that as correct! I assume m in this case would be the mass of the satellite. F not sure which value and level of accuracy was used, but let's assume it was correct. That leaves us with r. This has been known since Eratosthenes and improved since by various means, but was that measurement as accurate as one would assume we can now get using satellitte technology? We also know that the radius fluctuates (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_radius ). In short, we have a new method to measure the Earth's mass. A method that gives a result 0.005% greater that previously thought. Is it not possible that this small change could be down to better measurement of Earth's radius than the "dark energy/matter proposed? That is now the question? P
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Post by abacus9900 on Jan 5, 2014 22:44:10 GMT 1
It is my understanding that because the position of GPS satellites are so precisely known, any alteration from what was thought to be their position must be due to some extra mass or "pull" from earth's gravity and, assuming the boffins got their sums right, this extra mass must be due to something not considered in the original calculations which has led to the idea of dark matter surrounding the earth. But, as I said earlier, you have to exaust all other possible explanations before such a theory gains widespread support.
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Post by alancalverd on Jan 6, 2014 1:34:28 GMT 1
Alan Thanks for your post. I was aware of Newton's law of Gravitation F=GmM/r2. My question was not about calculating the mass per se, but the increase in mass (0.005%) and the reasons given for it. But we don't have any evidence for an increase in mass, only for an increased value of our best estimate of mass. If the estimate continues to increase year by year, we may indeed have stumbled upon something interesting but I wouldn't get too excited just yet.
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