Science is a peculiar thing.

IT cannot be 'believed' justifiably by 'faith'. It must be 'proven' by empirical methodology or by mathematical description. Both must be applicable, however mathematical description can 'fool' us at times by making a model that has no true empirical application.

When it comes to science there is neither true OR false, there is only experimental support and a wedding of empirical evidence with the theory that explains the evidence.

Unfortunately, for us, River, pure science generally will have no direct application. The direct application happens 50 to 100 years AFTER the science that supports it is identified. Sometimes the time is less, as in the application of special relativity that formed the frame for the 1st atomic weapon (40 years or so) and sometimes it is more, lots more, as in the application of Archimedes' principles were used for the steam engine or DaVinci's drawings of flying machines realized by man at a much later date.

janekane, your concepts of field theory to replace the lumineferous ether I see as not too properly associated. One is and the other is not and there can be no true association. They are what they are and they are not what they are not and science cannot make something appear that is not there in the first place. IT can only describe a logical explanation and then leave it to the experimenters to 'find' it.

Tensor calculus and field matrices notwithstanding for these are only mathematical descriptions. You cannot "prove" the existence of flying saucers by making a portrait of one in fine detail in beautiful ink and watercolor or even in fine oils.

Spock has not yet landed in North Dakota. If you truly want 'out of this world' try seeking Bachmann in Minnesota.

Setting the stage for the discussion of 'wave-particle duality' I would like to state that Louis DeBroglie started his education with a degree in history and the humanities. Physics education came later, as did his Nobel Prize in Physics. His expression of the so-called 'wave-particle' duality was an attempt to escape mathematical probability to describe the behavior of very small particles. There is no beliefs involved. The body of the work rests upon strong mathematical description and experiments that uphold it. Belief is for God, not for science.

The rationalization was simple. DeBroglie simply postulated that if a small particle had a wavelength then a larger particle had a wavelength.

Simply put, every moving particle has a wavelength regardless of size or momentum and the wavelength is dependent upon Planck's constant divided by the momentum of the particle. (In the case of extreme velocities the relativistic correction of the square root of the quantity one minus the quantity of the square of the velocity of the particle divided by the square of the speed of light) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_de_Broglie)This provides an alternative description of particle behavior that makes the same predictions and obtains the same results as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Schrodinger Equation.

There is nothing true or false. There is nothing in science that "I believe or I don't believe". There are only the physical facts and the mathematical models that predict the outcomes. The theories that all produce the same results, make the same predictions that all turn out to be valid are what they are.

Simply put, You say "toe MAY toe", I say "toe MAH toe" and in the end, we all must still eat the same soup.

Science is funny that way...

curious_guy (imported) wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2012 1:25 am While vacuum tubes might work with quantum mechanics, They would have been discovered even if we had never discovered quantum mechanics, just as cave men used fire without knowing anything about the chemistry of combustion.

I think that if we had not discovered quantum mechanics, vacuum tubes would have progressed more than they did. Tubes used in a computer might be as small as a grain of rice. They would still be enormously larger and consume very much more power than the integrated circuits we have now.

As janekane said, vacuum tubes are included in quantum mechanics. Electrons are quantum events, and without electrons, vacuum tubes don't work. Without the understanding of quantum mechanics, vacuum tubes wouldn't exist either.

Even if you could reduce vacuum tubes down to grains of rice, a processor can contain the equivalent of 2 billion transistors. 2 billion grains of rice take up a lot of space, and that's just one chip. Without integrated circuits we wouldn't have home computers.

Yes.

Paolo wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2012 11:46 am Dark Matter can be found in Riverwind's bathroom.

Uncle Matter can be found in Flo's.

I think the Higgs is in Talula's loo.

Strange things happen there. This is the only explanation.

Yes, but what unseen forces lurk in the bathroom of the dreaded Dark Lord?

That unknown DARK MATTER is creeping out of the corners of his bathroom and we should all BEWARE.

It will be a DARK and dismal MATTER if that is unleashed on the world of science, especially Quantum Mechanics...

Who know, Schroedinger's Cat might have three more states -- charmed, undead, and Lepton ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Slammr (imported) wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2012 9:40 am Even if you could reduce vacuum tubes down to grains of rice, a processor can contain the equivalent of 2 billion transistors. 2 billion grains of rice take up a lot of space, and that's just one chip. Without integrated circuits we wouldn't have home computers.

Remember, most of those 2 billion transistors is used for cache, and compatibility with 30 year old processors

Look up simpler chips. ARM6 had only about 35000 transistors (oh, and it can run modern OS like Linux, so it is advanced enough).

Also, earlier computers had some ingenious solutions to the needs of lots of tubes.

See "Setun" for example - 40 tubes, 100 transistors and most of the logic was built on ferrite-diode cells, not fast, but capable enough.

Slammr (imported) wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2012 9:40 am Without the understanding of quantum mechanics, vacuum tubes wouldn't exist either.

Do you know of any evidence that the inventors of vacuum tubes used quantum mechanics? I think that vacuum tubes could have (and might have) been developed empirically.

Slammr (imported) wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2012 9:40 am Without integrated circuits we wouldn't have home computers.

You originally wrote "computers" not "home computers."

Another modern use of nuclear theory that seemed useless right after discovery is in nuclear magnet resonance tomograph.

How many lives it have saved?

The first tube computers were the size of large buildings they were called first generation, they were for the most part over in the 1950's. I got to work on one of the second generation computers, an IBM 1401, it was about 4' wide, 12' long, and 6' high, it was all wire, it had 8k of memory. We had 6 tape drives and used things like sort 7 to sort a file into the sequence we needed. programs were written in Autocoder, my first language. We also had a side machine about 4' square with an additional 4k of memory. Programs were entered into the computer and an object deck was generated that was used to actually run one program at a time.

My next machine was still wire but had transistors, it was a Univac 90/30. we had both tape drives and removal disk drives. This machine had 96K of memory. Now both of these machines tape drives were about 7 ft tall you have seen them in old movies big reel to reel with the tape going all the way to the floor. The removal disk drives were about 2' round and had 7 platters, each of these big old drives held about 500k if memory serves.

Before I retired the main frame where I worked had 3 Tera bites of space, today i have more then that on my PC.

It took three shifts a day to process everything we had to do, today a small PC would sit idle most of the day and do the same thing.

It was a fun carrier field, always changing faster, smaller.

I remember sorting my card file, 100,000 cards 3 cards per person by social security number, that was 5 passes = 3 days, then 2 more days on a collator. Then we would update the file run reports and start the next sort. Today this can be done in couple minutes.

Foot Note, the first bug was found under one of those vacuum tubes, programs that don't work even today have bugs in them.

River

Riverwind (imported) wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2012 4:50 am Yes moi, frivolous science. If you can so easily dismiss Global warming which anybody can see touch and feel, Frivolous Science of describing multi Universes is just that, FRIVOLOUS. Higgs Boson is another, at least today it is, now if you don't like my comment maybe if they can do something with it, I will change my mind however spending millions of dollars to prove it involving countless scientists is a waist of talent when there are real problems that science needs to be working on, but I guess from your point of view Global Warming is not real or a problem and is just frivolous to you.

So tell me, now that we know Higgs Boson is real, what applications are you going to develop for it? How will it help our lives? Will it allow us to build a space craft to move mass people to other worlds? Will it help the population explosion on this world? Will it end global warming? (sorry that was Frivolous). Will it stop, prevent, accelerate, open new doors, close doors, what, anything?

I await your response with great anticipation for you to tell me all the things that Higgs Boson will do for us, now and in the future. Some suggest it might take 500 years, if man is still on the world in 500 years. Remember another science, extension is the rule not the exception.

Is it time for Spock to land in North Dakota?

River

River, DEAR

See Message 26.

I gave you an application of Higgs Boson Science.

A most classic example that plays a major role in advancing science

Psst, look at the large font of message 26

PS I read today they found "dark matter strings" that bind the universe together too.

I have no idea or joke on that one.

curious_guy (imported) wrote: Fri Jul 06, 2012 2:51 pm Do you know of any evidence that the inventors of vacuum tubes used quantum mechanics? I think that vacuum tubes could have (and might have) been developed empirically.

You originally wrote "computers" not "home computers."

Electrons are quantum events and function according to the laws of quantum mechanics not according to the laws of classical mechanics. If not for the knowledge of quantum mechanics, no one would know how to make vacuum tubes even. No one would know how the electron functions or how to utilize it. I will go back to my original statement: without knowledge of quantum mechanics, computers wouldn't exist.