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October 16
[edit]Total global river discharge rate
[edit]Is there an estimate for the total global discharge rate of surface / ground water to the sea? It would be nice to state e.g. the Amazon as a percentage of the global total, just as we do for areas and populations of large countries. — kwami (talk) 06:23, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
- I googled "amazon river total discharge rate" and it led me back to Amazon River, which says "The Amazon River has an average discharge of about 215,000–230,000 m3/s (7,600,000–8,100,000 cu ft/s)—approximately 6,591–7,570 km3 (1,581–1,816 cu mi) per year, greater than the next seven largest independent rivers combined." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 07:25, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, rather amazing. We used to have a circle graph in that article that gave percentages, but the numbers were bullshit so I removed it. It would be nice to have an accurate graph, though: the full circle would be the global total, with pie slices for individual rivers. — kwami (talk) 07:55, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
- @kwami By a global discharge do you mean including rivers ending in endorheic basins, like a Caspian Sea? Not that it would make any noticeable difference... --nitpicking CiaPan (talk) 15:28, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- The Caspian is an ocean, so certainly. As you say, I doubt the others would even be visible on a global scale. I'm not going to quibble with whatever I can find. — kwami (talk) 20:28, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- The place to search I would think would be in studies of the water cycle, and to look at the estimates that cut off that segment. Maybe check out some of the sources in that article to start (and their background sections to find sources for wider overviews, that might put down some hard estimates). SamuelRiv (talk) 15:50, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. I haven't had much luck, but I've written a couple of those sources to ask if they know of any estimates. — kwami (talk) 23:59, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- "
The estimated total from all rivers, large and small, measured and unmeasured, is about 9200 mi3 (38,300 km3) yearly (25 mi3 or 105 km3 daily).
"[1] --Lambiam 13:38, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks! That comes out to 1.2 million m3/second, so per our figures the Amazon is ~ 18% of the global total. — kwami (talk) 03:24, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- Less than one Sears Tower volume per second, though there are probably times when ice dams break and snow gets rained on and some rivers flood and it is more. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:50, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
Daylight saving time - why change on different dates?
[edit]In the UK & Europe, daylight saving time this year runs from 31 Mar – 27 Oct.
In the USA & Canada, it's 10 Mar – 3 Nov.
In Australia, the opposite changes are 7 Apl – 6 Oct.
Why not make them coincide? Surely there would be cost savings on all sides? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:12, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
- Why have DST at all? :D
- Speaking a bit more seriously: isn't the debate more about abolishing DST than making it consistent across countries? According to this Bloomberg article from 2021, there are moves to do so in the US and the EU. Double sharp (talk) 15:20, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
- There is also discussion in America of making DST permanent. But nothing ever gets done. America and Europe's dates used to be pretty close to coinciding, but America expanded it some years back. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:17, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
- In Australia it's determined on a state-by-state basis. It's settled down now to a consistent set of dates, but Queensland and Western Australia both adopted and abandoned it more than once. For some decades now neither state has had DST, which makes it fun and games when working out times in the eastern states, and when travelling east-west or reverse, during the summer period. This is all because our Constitution makes no mention of time as a Commonwealth responsibility, which means it's automatically a state matter. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 17:07, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
- Also state-by-state in America: Daylight saving time in the United States. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:15, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Well, sort of. As I understand it, states have the option to observe DST or not, but they do not have the option to choose their own starting/ending dates. I'm not really convinced that this restriction is constitutional (I have a fairly narrow view of the Commerce Clause) but there doesn't seem to be any great advantage for a state to challenge it. --Trovatore (talk) 00:21, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, that's what I was trying to say. And presumably interstate commerce is the justification for the federal law. If I remember correctly, the need for standard time was driven by the railroads, in place of a myriad of local times. And also, if I recall correctly, it used to be that the railroads worked strictly within standard time, even during DST, as DST was only sporadically used until 1967. Once DST became standardized, the railroads could change to DST also. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:15, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Well, sort of. As I understand it, states have the option to observe DST or not, but they do not have the option to choose their own starting/ending dates. I'm not really convinced that this restriction is constitutional (I have a fairly narrow view of the Commerce Clause) but there doesn't seem to be any great advantage for a state to challenge it. --Trovatore (talk) 00:21, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Also state-by-state in America: Daylight saving time in the United States. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:15, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- While we have an article on Summer time in Europe, it is not very detailed. I found what appears at glance to be a reliable and well-researched article on the history of European time zones at "When Did DST Start in Europe?" via timeanddate, which suggests that Central European Summer Time
Standard Timeas we know it (with its onset date) really began its continuity and spread from the Nazi conquests. (Other countries had been experimenting with daylight saving, but inconsistently, as the article explains.) The incongruity in clock-switch dates would be due to the haphazard nature of daylight saving being adopted in various countries, where countries tend to only finally decide to align their clocks with some treaty or conquest or absolute trade necessity. (Of course there are famous exceptions: the U.S. state of Indiana only adopted daylight saving in 2005, despite [EDIT: most of] the rest of the continental U.S., including the entire surrounding time zone, having uniform daylight saving dates.) SamuelRiv (talk) 01:56, 17 October 2024 (UTC)- Be careful — CEST does not stand for "Central European Standard Time" (easy mistake to make as a North American) but for "Central European Summer Time". It's the opposite of what you would expect from PST / PDT. CET is UTC+1; CEST is UTC+2. --Trovatore (talk) 06:08, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- As for Indiana, I assume that's because they're so far west in their time zone, making DST a double misery for night owls and farmers. They really should be on Central Time and then it would be much less of a problem. --Trovatore (talk) 06:18, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Indeed. They did it to get the same time and business hours as the East (I've heard New York Stock Exchange is important somehow) and cause the enlatenization lobbies like businesses headquartered in EDT and golf are collectively stronger than the delayzation lobbies like CDT headquarters and nightclubs. Great for us New Yorkers, terrible for the Indianan colonists of the aggrandized UTC-4 Time Empire. So no, permanently stopping leap seconds won't cause 9 to 5 jobs to get later till the night owl torture is really bad like Urumqi. There's probably still 9 to 5 jobs in Urumqi, I wonder if they pay better than similar 12 to 8 jobs. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:11, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- Leap seconds should have been strangled in the cradle. Horrible idea from the very start. People will absolutely adjust nominal start and stop times to the Sun, no matter what the clock says. It just takes a while; doesn't usually happen in six months, which is why DST has any effect at all. --Trovatore (talk) 16:25, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
- Indeed. They did it to get the same time and business hours as the East (I've heard New York Stock Exchange is important somehow) and cause the enlatenization lobbies like businesses headquartered in EDT and golf are collectively stronger than the delayzation lobbies like CDT headquarters and nightclubs. Great for us New Yorkers, terrible for the Indianan colonists of the aggrandized UTC-4 Time Empire. So no, permanently stopping leap seconds won't cause 9 to 5 jobs to get later till the night owl torture is really bad like Urumqi. There's probably still 9 to 5 jobs in Urumqi, I wonder if they pay better than similar 12 to 8 jobs. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:11, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- Oh, and not quite true about "the rest of the Continental US" -- Arizona, except for the Navajo Nation, does not observe DST. I expect that's because they're far enough south that the difference between summer and winter times doesn't justify it. Not sure why other southern states don't do the same thing. --Trovatore (talk) 06:21, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- It gets even more confusing. Within the Navajo Nation is the separate Hopi Reservation. Which does not observe DST. So, you go from Arizona in general (no DST), enter the Navajo Nation (has DST), and continue onward into the Hopi Reservation (no DST).--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:08, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yes my mistakes, the article I linked specifies CEST = "Summer Time", not "Standard", so that's on me. Also I knew there were other U.S. states that didn't do daylight saving, but I had only remembered Hawaii, and Indiana has always felt like an odd one out for its area in so many ways (usually good ways, Hoosiers). SamuelRiv (talk) 15:57, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Even Cuba has DST for some reason. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:52, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- My nerdy brain tells me that, logically, daylight saving should run for the same amount of time either side of the summer solstice. It doesn't in my state of Australia. My ageing memory tells me that the finishing date was extended further into autumn by a populist state premier who wanted more people to go to the Formula 1 Grand Prix. HiLo48 (talk) 02:16, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Your logic may fail to take into account that the Equation of time is not symmetrical, owing to that pesky 0.0167 eccentricity of the Earth's orbit: see the end of the Practical use section. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 03:47, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- What difference would it make? HiLo48 (talk) 03:53, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Mid-sunlight isn't 12:00 at 150° East, it's 12:14 in February and 11:44 in early November and 12:00ish in April and December and early September and a few minutes early or late in May and July.
- What difference would it make? HiLo48 (talk) 03:53, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Your logic may fail to take into account that the Equation of time is not symmetrical, owing to that pesky 0.0167 eccentricity of the Earth's orbit: see the end of the Practical use section. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 03:47, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:47, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- My nerdy brain tells me that you can't save daylight hours; what you gain at one end of the day, is lost at the other. The intended result of shifting working hours relative to daylight hours can also be reached by shifting working hours, and there's nobody stopping us from doing that. I remember a ferry with the notice "Operating hours: 6:00–20:00 winter time, 7:00–21:00 summer time". Although it would be convenient to put zero o'clock, when the date changes, at a time when most people are asleep. Right, it's one o'clock now here, time to go to bed. PiusImpavidus (talk) 23:06, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Here in Australia, one argument against daylight saving is the issue of milking cows. It's hard to tell cows with bursting udders to just hold on a bit longer. HiLo48 (talk) 23:14, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- British cows concur. DuncanHill (talk) 23:25, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- We now have milking robots; they don't care when the cows want to be milked (molken?), although the cows may have to wait for their turn. You can't run a big dairy farm without robotic help. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:14, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- Aarrgh, AI has struck! We're all doomed! -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 17:07, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- We now have milking robots; they don't care when the cows want to be milked (molken?), although the cows may have to wait for their turn. You can't run a big dairy farm without robotic help. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:14, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- British cows concur. DuncanHill (talk) 23:25, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Here in Australia, one argument against daylight saving is the issue of milking cows. It's hard to tell cows with bursting udders to just hold on a bit longer. HiLo48 (talk) 23:14, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- My nerdy brain tells me that you can't save daylight hours; what you gain at one end of the day, is lost at the other. The intended result of shifting working hours relative to daylight hours can also be reached by shifting working hours, and there's nobody stopping us from doing that. I remember a ferry with the notice "Operating hours: 6:00–20:00 winter time, 7:00–21:00 summer time". Although it would be convenient to put zero o'clock, when the date changes, at a time when most people are asleep. Right, it's one o'clock now here, time to go to bed. PiusImpavidus (talk) 23:06, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- What have the Nazis done for us? In the UK - Double daylight saving. -- Verbarson talkedits 08:53, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- The first national daylight saving was courtesy of Kaiser Bill and his minions. Alansplodge (talk) 09:27, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- The more I hear about that man the less I like him. DuncanHill (talk) 21:54, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- The first national daylight saving was courtesy of Kaiser Bill and his minions. Alansplodge (talk) 09:27, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- What have the Nazis done for us? In the UK - Double daylight saving. -- Verbarson talkedits 08:53, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
The above is all interesting, but almost none of it addresses the question: "Why not make them coincide? Surely there would be cost savings on all sides?". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:08, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- You really expect America to do something that makes it easier to interact with the rest of the world? You know, like we've (the US) so readily done with the metric system? Or date format?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:29, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- I expect them to do so when it is in their interest, yes. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:19, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- Once again I point to the metric system.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:45, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- Europe got tired of copying our extensions. Also Europe time's fucked up maybe they can't take more, 9 degrees West has the time of 30 degrees East in summer just cause they copied Hitler & seem to want all EU same time, (30+9)'s even worse than extreme west Indiana, or the "7.5 degrees plus or minus nearest country border" that it could be. Nov 7 Northwest Iberian sunrise would be late as hell at that latitude. Europe doesn't have many October 31st kids door-to-door afterschool either, Eurolatists can't say "won't someone think of the children!". Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:47, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- To make the dates the same would require a treaty - and if so, it would be best for the clock to roll over at the same UTC time everywhere, not just the same date. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:06, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- A treaty would work, so would the governments of one side unilaterally wanting to shorten the "wrong offset time" from weeks to hours like they did till we extended for trick-or-treaters (and March for some reason) they didn't copy that one. The latism lobby is stronger (i.e. EUST creeped west from this) but they're not omnipotent. DST's 1:00 UT Eurowide (no earlier than 1 to 2/2 to 1 or later than 3 to 4/4 to 3 with intermediate values as disparate as 9.3 West & 31.6 East). If EU copied our dates a town of 4,736 would get Monday to Friday sunrises after 9:16, sunrises as late as ~9:19.0 11/6/88 at the cape (~43°10'N 9°13'W) seeing the Sun would take even longer cause hills/mountains instead of an idealized mirror-smooth globe. I don't know how late Spain starts but this is past where Americans would start saying "think of the children" outside in the dark & some would get miserable if it's too dark when they work, learn or wake. Everyone would hate it but Bizzaro World DST might be better for unconscientious night owls actually (our dates plus 6 months or centering the 34 weeks on Sunday nearest Dec solstice). At least kids wouldn't go weeks or months without full dark and mornings already suck if you can't sleep in may as well make them night so 16:30 isn't. Half of US time zones wouldn't even get that bad if centered on 75 90 105 120 like they should be only about 8:30 sunrise (nautical dawn would reach the threes though which would suck) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- To make the dates the same would require a treaty - and if so, it would be best for the clock to roll over at the same UTC time everywhere, not just the same date. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:06, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Europe got tired of copying our extensions. Also Europe time's fucked up maybe they can't take more, 9 degrees West has the time of 30 degrees East in summer just cause they copied Hitler & seem to want all EU same time, (30+9)'s even worse than extreme west Indiana, or the "7.5 degrees plus or minus nearest country border" that it could be. Nov 7 Northwest Iberian sunrise would be late as hell at that latitude. Europe doesn't have many October 31st kids door-to-door afterschool either, Eurolatists can't say "won't someone think of the children!". Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:47, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- Once again I point to the metric system.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:45, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- I expect them to do so when it is in their interest, yes. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:19, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
October 18
[edit]Gruesome question about injury
[edit]In this (warning: gruesome image) photo of Sinwar's body, is it a shrapnel stuck in his bow? What caused the hole to its right? Zarnivop (talk) 13:36, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- Where are you seeing a bow? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:34, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- ‘brow’ maybe? —Tamfang (talk) 18:07, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
October 19
[edit]Falling into Jupiter
[edit]I was thinking one day. Imagine you are an astronaut in free fall to Jupiter. You are in a spacesuit with plenty of oxygen and food available so you are not dying from suffocation or starvation in your spacesuit. You have no way of escaping Jupiter's gravity. There are no other dangers than Jupiter itself. You will eventually enter Jupiter's atmosphere. At which point would you die? JIP | Talk 09:30, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- You would be moving so fast, that you would burn up in the upper atmosphere, turning into plasma temporarily. But when the space suit ruptured, by burning through, suffocation and depressurisation would be a terminal issue. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:53, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- The thing about vague hypotheticals is, they're vague, and hypothetical. The astronaut could bring along a bigass rocket, and once in a stable orbit around Jupiter fire it to cancel out their orbital momentum until they were at rest relative to Jupiter, then "let go" and just let gravity do its thing pulling them towards Jove's center of mass.
- Most spacecraft don't do this b/c hauling reaction mass up a gravity well is a giant pain. The "easiest" way to slow down for landing, is to slam into the atmosphere and let that bleed off your velocity. If you can. If not, for ex the atmosphere is very thin, other methods are required: see the Mars probes, or lunar landings.
- (The real non-hypothetical answer: they would be long-dead of acute radiation syndrome before anything else, unless their "spacesuit" was a massive, very dense and multilayered radiation shield chamber) Slowking Man (talk) 04:30, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- The onset of radiation syndrome is slow enough that the fall is over before the radiation really kills. Or the radiation is very high, then that should be said where and why. 176.0.161.3 (talk) 12:45, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
Since neutrinos (and dark matter) don't interact with light, so what should happen when light comes across them?
[edit]I can think about two options:
Option #1: The light keeps travelling "through" them, as if they don't exist. But if this is the case, then what does that mean, in terms of the neutrino's (and dark matter's) refractive index? Is it identical to the vacuum's refractive index?
Option #2: The light experiences absorption or reflection or scattering, in which case the neutrino's (and dark matter's) momentum must be influenced by that encounter with light, due to the conservation of momentum, so we do see them interact with light, in some sense...
So, what's the correct option? Is it #1 or #2 or another one?
HOTmag (talk) 16:29, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- Since neutrinos do not interact with light, the light never collides with them. Ruslik_Zero 20:42, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- By "collides" I meant "comes across" (due to your important comment I've just fixed that in the header) So, what should happen if a [a beam of] photon[s] and a [beam of] neutrino[s] travel towards each other, i.e. on the same route but in opposite directions? Similarly, what should happen when light comes across dark matter? HOTmag (talk) 21:04, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- protons and electrons interact with photons. What is their refractive index? Short answer: no one can tell, because the refractive index is not of a particle alone. It depends on the interaction. And neutrinos not only do not interact with photons, they don't interact with each other. So you have no interactions to base a refractive index on. 176.0.161.3 (talk) 22:25, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
- The refractive index of a given medium is only relevant if [a beam of] photons can travel through that medium. In the case of protons-electrons you're talking about, nobody claims [a beam of] photons can travel through a proton or through an electron, so I can't see how any refractive index may be relevant in that case. But a refractive index may be relevant in option #1 I was talking about as you can see above in that option. HOTmag (talk) 02:16, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- Your fundamental problem is you keep trying to think about "quantum stuff" intuitively, in terms of the familiar everyday big world we all have direct experience of via our senses. You're asking what photons etc "really act like". Billiard balls? Pebbles? Ocean waves etc etc? The correct answer is, they act like none of those things. They act like photons. They don't "take up space" in any way we can visualize, or occupy a definite fixed position in space, or "move" by plodding around from point A to B in a fixed interval of time, or "pass through one another", anything like that.
- A necessary precondition to really "grokking" "modern physics", is to throw out your preconceptions, and simply start with: what do our observations of things tell us. From those, we make predictions (hypotheses), and then we test them to see if they're right. That's how science is done. And if you think it's all made up, you're presumably reading this on some kind of electronic device, which simply wouldn't work if electrons were really tiny little balls, or photons were really little tiny beams or rays or water waves that "bounced off" other stuff when they "ran into it".
- Richard Feynman:
Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen.
Slowking Man (talk) 05:02, 20 October 2024 (UTC)- What do you mean by
keep trying
? When did I try to do that for the first time? - When I posted my question in the header, I had already been quite aware of the methodological idea you're describing quite well. Of course what you're depicting is the correct approach, methodologically speaking. But while you're portraying the correct methodological attitude one should take when thinking about modern physics, my question has nothing to do with methodology, because my question is only a practical one, empirically speaking (as follows), so the correct methodological approach you're quite well picturing has nothing to do with what I've practically asked about. To put it in a clear cut way: Just as you can practically ask, what is empirically expected to happen when one actualizes the photoelectric effect - although it heavily involves quantum physics that should be grokked by means of the methodological idea you're describing, so I can practically ask, what is empirically expected to happen when a [beam of] photon[s] and a [beam of] neutrino[s] travel towards each other, i.e. on the same route but in opposite directions, although both the photon and the neutrino are described in that quantum physics.
- So, are you claiming that I can't suggest any experiment in which a [beam of] photon[s] and a [beam of] neutrino[s] travel towards each other, i.e. on the same route but in opposite directions? Similarly are you claiming, that once Science detects (somehow) any dark matter, still we won't be able to suggest any experiment in which we send light towards dark matter? Or what are you actually claiming, practically speaking? HOTmag (talk) 07:53, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- you can never design an experiment where a photon travels on a path. Whatever the path maybe. 😁 For example you can do a photon in a fiber travel from a source to a detector. You will never know that the photon really after the first atom leaves the fiber, travels to the black hole in the centre of the Andromeda galaxy, does half a round around the black hole, a quantum leap short of the event horizon, comes back at the last atom of the fiber and hitting the detector bearing the spectral attenuation of a sodium atom in the middle of the fiber it never passed on the way. Okay that is an extreme example for a very improbable but possible event in quantum mechanics. Now to your question. What if "never interacts with" is a code for active avoidance? That would mean a neutrino near another particle (photon, neutrinos...Whatever) goes out of the way and resumed its travel after the particle has passed. What would you do then? Even going out of time is possible. Think about the length of the way to Andromeda! 176.0.154.107 (talk) 13:13, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- According to your attitude, the very concept of "refractive index" of a given medium through which light travels, would have had no meaning. Additionally, please notice that my original post (i.e. the question in the header and under it), mentions no photons, but rather mentions light only, for example a beam of photons. Anyway, thanks to your comment, I've just added "a beam of" before every "photon" mentioned in my later responses (following my original post). To sum up: the main question in my original post still remains. HOTmag (talk) 13:36, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- Rewriting "photon" as "a beam of photons" changes the question. The exact path that a photon will follow cannot be predicted. Subsequent detection of a single photon is possible but allows only an estimate of the spread of likely refractive indices the photon has traversed. One increases the accuracy of a determination of refractive index by averaging measurements of many photons i.e. using "a beam of photons". However there will be practical limits to the focusing of both light sources and detectors. Philvoids (talk) 14:30, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
Rewriting "photon" as "a beam of photons" changes the question.
Please re-read the second sentence (the one beginning with "Additionally") in my last response.- As for the rest of your response, I agree, but what's the answer to my original question summed up in the header? HOTmag (talk) 15:44, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- Rewriting "photon" as "a beam of photons" changes the question. The exact path that a photon will follow cannot be predicted. Subsequent detection of a single photon is possible but allows only an estimate of the spread of likely refractive indices the photon has traversed. One increases the accuracy of a determination of refractive index by averaging measurements of many photons i.e. using "a beam of photons". However there will be practical limits to the focusing of both light sources and detectors. Philvoids (talk) 14:30, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- According to your attitude, the very concept of "refractive index" of a given medium through which light travels, would have had no meaning. Additionally, please notice that my original post (i.e. the question in the header and under it), mentions no photons, but rather mentions light only, for example a beam of photons. Anyway, thanks to your comment, I've just added "a beam of" before every "photon" mentioned in my later responses (following my original post). To sum up: the main question in my original post still remains. HOTmag (talk) 13:36, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
So, are you claiming that I can't suggest any experiment in which a [beam of] photon[s] and a [beam of] neutrino[s] travel towards each other, i.e. on the same route but in opposite directions? Similarly are you claiming, that once Science detects (somehow) any dark matter, still we won't be able to suggest any experiment in which we send light towards dark matter?
- Essentially, yes, assuming we're right about dark matter not interacting with the electromagnetic field. Or, perhaps it could be put as: we can propose sending photons "this way" and neutrinos "that way", such that their worldlines at some point intersect, but we would expect to observe nothing (other than the extremely minute effects of their gravitational and weak interactions), because why would we?
- In this vein: the neutrino fields don't interact with the EM field. The question "what if a beam of X and Y" travel towards each other" is still formulated in intuitive "classical" terms. Talking in strict QM terms, questions like "a beam of X and beam of Y" are ill-formed questions: to be meaningful (answerable) questions, rephrase them in terms of quantum operators, Dirac matrices, Hamiltonian mechanics etc.
- you can never design an experiment where a photon travels on a path. Whatever the path maybe. 😁 For example you can do a photon in a fiber travel from a source to a detector. You will never know that the photon really after the first atom leaves the fiber, travels to the black hole in the centre of the Andromeda galaxy, does half a round around the black hole, a quantum leap short of the event horizon, comes back at the last atom of the fiber and hitting the detector bearing the spectral attenuation of a sodium atom in the middle of the fiber it never passed on the way. Okay that is an extreme example for a very improbable but possible event in quantum mechanics. Now to your question. What if "never interacts with" is a code for active avoidance? That would mean a neutrino near another particle (photon, neutrinos...Whatever) goes out of the way and resumed its travel after the particle has passed. What would you do then? Even going out of time is possible. Think about the length of the way to Andromeda! 176.0.154.107 (talk) 13:13, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- What do you mean by
Michio Kaku has some good advice for people "talking science": [2]:
Extended content
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What to Do If You Have a Proposal for the Unified Field Theory?…and what not to do Due to volume of e-mail I have received (several thousand at last count) I cannot answer all requests, especially those from individuals who have a new proposal for completing Einstein’s dream of a unified field theory, or a new theory of space and time. However, I would like to give some guidelines for people who have thoughtfully pondered the question of the meaning of space-time. |
--Slowking Man (talk) 16:28, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- In my view, presenting Michio Kaku's advice in this thread is redundant, as follows.
- Introduction: the reason for which I mentioned the photoelectric effect in my last response to you, is because this effect can be formulated, not only in the language of Quantum chemistry, but also in the language of Classical electromagnetism - which indeed disagrees with this effect but can still tell us what it disagrees with.
- The same is true for my original question in the header: It can also be formulated in the language of classical mechanics, as you have done yourself, stating in a classical language (a bit relativistic yet not the language of quantum mechanics):
we can propose sending photons this way and neutrinos that way, such that their worldlines at some point intersect, but we would expect to observe nothing
. To sum up, you agree to option #1 (in my original post), i.e.: We will see the beam of light keep travelling in the same 4D-route without any change, as if this route is not intersected by the 4D-route of the beam of neutrinos. Am I right? HOTmag (talk) 17:35, 20 October 2024 (UTC)- "Doing" special relativity, which ignores gravitation (assumes flat spacetime) and plotting it out on a Minkowski diagram, correct, b/c they only interact via the weak interaction and it's called that b/c seriously it's really weak. (Not as weak as gravity though!) Which is why gazillions of solar neutrinos are flooding through us and the entire Earth after plowing through half the Sun, like we're all not even there, constantly. (The neat fact being that what changes is simply the direction they come from: at night they're coming upwards from the ground having just zipped through the entire planet, after calling on Earth's day side!)
- In gen rel, it would still be the same, b/c the only thing changing is adding in gravitation. The neutrino's mass is immensely tiny, thus its stress-energy-momentum tensor has accordingly miniscule effect on local spacetime geometry (which is what we call "gravity", in GR). Photon's mass is, well, zero, so it has even less effect. And gravitation is really weak.
- ...Unless, you can crank things up to truly mind-and-spacetime-warping energies, and channel and confine absolutely mind-boggling amounts of photons into a vanishingly-tiny volume of space. Somehow. Photons are bosons, which, unlike fermions such as quarks (or neutrinos), are "allowed" to have all identical quantum numbers if they feel like it. Meaning their wavefunctions can completely overlap and they can all "take up" an arbitrarily small volume. So if you figure how to do that out do tell the scientific journals, preferably before building your death ray and taking over the world.
- Nota bene: when physicists these days are "talking shop" generally they only ever use "mass" to mean "the invariant or 'rest mass' according to GR": [3]. So I will try to do the same. --Slowking Man (talk) 19:38, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
Unless, you can crank things up to truly mind-and-spacetime-warping energies, and channel and confine absolutely mind-boggling amounts of photons into a vanishingly-tiny volume of space
. Btw, some weeks ago I read a scientific article (I think in Nature or in Science) that discovered that a Kugelblitz was actually impossible, because it would've started to emit radiation before it became a black hole, so it would never become a black hole...when physicists these days are "talking shop" generally they only ever use "mass" to mean "the invariant or 'rest mass' according to GR.
I think you've noticed (as follows) that this fact is irrelevant, because the geometry of spcetrime is shaped by energy (and momentum) rather than by mass.The neutrino's mass is immensely tiny...Photon's mass is, well, zero, so it has even less effect.
Correct, less effect but not zero effect, because the geometry of spcetrime is shaped by energy/momentum rather than by mass. Anyway, thank you for noticing the (immensely tiny) generally-relativistic effect being done to the geometry of spacetime by each beam, thus influencing the other beam, so actually they do have some impact on each other after all, yet not via any force other than the fictitious force of gravitation. Well, your noticing this generally-relativistic effect was an important reservation. Anyway, what I'm taking from your answer to my original question is as follows: Both beams don't interact with each other, as far as gravity is ignored. HOTmag (talk) 22:35, 20 October 2024 (UTC)I think you've noticed (as follows) that this fact is irrelevant, because the geometry of spcetrime is shaped by energy (and momentum) rather than by mass.
- See invariant mass: a bunch of photons with the same momentum vector have zero effect on spacetime geometry, because a single photon (having no invariant mass) has no center-of-momentum frame where it is at rest, no matter what Lorentz transformations are applied to it. This is why a beam of light always travels at c in vacuum. If you have two+ photons with different vectors relative to each other (they have a scattering angle) then you can calc a center-of-momentum frame for the multiple-photon system, and then the photons have an effect on the spacetime metric. Hence the kugelblitz idea: if hypothetically you could stuff tons (heh) of photons into a tiny volume of space, they can't be all at rest relative to each other, so the whole system would have a CoM frame and the photons would affect the local metric.
In general, only changes in energy have physical significance.
--Slowking Man (talk) 15:10, 22 October 2024 (UTC)- when I wrote that the geometry of spacetime was shaped by energy and momentum rather than by mass, I tried to be brief. actually I meant what I'd already written in my last response of this old thread: that the geometry of spacetime was shaped by the "density and flux of momentum and of energy".
- Anyway, my main point in my last response, was not about energy (or about momentum), but rather about mass, that is: as far as gravity is concerned, mass is irrelevant. HOTmag (talk) 15:57, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Interactions are predicted. See [4]. Modocc (talk) 22:44, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for this source. HOTmag (talk) 23:02, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
October 20
[edit]Soap bubbles and flatulence
[edit]Let's say that someone ate a whole can of beans for lunch and had a piece of steak, and some milk to wash it all down. A couple of hours later, they're suffering from farting problems, as they have to fart a lot, and the gas doesn't smell good at all. They have filled a bathtub full of water and added a generous amount of soap, and in they go the bathtub. They fart in the there and those bubbles of soap caused by the release of gas travel up onto the surface. If they had a lighter nearby (for whatever reason) and tried to ignite those bubbles, would the bubbles catch on fire? Kurnahusa (talk) 05:16, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- I don't think the human digestive system works as fast as that, but leaving that aside, it's well known that human flatulance is inflammable – lighting one's farts is a widespread activity; I recall a story that one squad of British Army recruits managed to burn down their barracks hut while indulging in it; I would have liked to have been in the Colonel's office the following morning. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 05:40, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- I guess? Why wouldn't they? Is there a reason you were expecting them not to? Fun bio facts time the flammable stuff in human flatus is mostly hydrogen gas, made by your little belly buddies fermenting complex carbohydrates that your digestive system can't tackle. And they actually share some of the products with your cells and they're probably good for gut health. (Non-human primates consume buttloads of fiber, as did all humans pre-agriculture.)
- The rest of it is mostly swallowed air which makes its way down there, along with small amounts of volatile sulfur compounds also produced by your flora, thiols, which your smeller is extremely sensitive to. That's the smelly stuff. Slowking Man (talk) 19:52, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- Haha, no reason why I wouldn't think the bubbles were not flammable; after all, the gases are basically trapped inside, but very interesting as well as informative - thank you! A while back I sprayed some gas from a nearly empty alcohol rub bottle into water and ignited it, and so I thought, if it was possible, the same stuff applies to farts. Kurnahusa (talk) 23:16, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- A bubble of flammable gas in water is an interesting apparatus where you can see inside the bubble before and during it popping. With an electronic igniter, could be fun to try to ignite the bubble itself to demonstate the effect of UEL. Are H2 and methane actually "flammable" when pure? DMacks (talk) 02:11, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- "Flame"/"fire" is a redox reaction, between at least 2 reactants, a fuel and an oxidizer. H2 and CH4 fill the "fuel" role while most commonly O2 takes the "oxidizer" one. If by "pure" you mean, "a volume of gas which is 100% eg H2 and no other substance", then no, no "flame" can occur without mixing w/ an oxidizer first. H2 is routinely used as a coolant in environments where lots of "sparky"/"arc-y" stuff is liable to happen; other stuff is simply kept out of said environment (already necessary anyway for things to work right). H2 is hard to beat in terms of drag coefficient!
- This is why if you block an ICE's air intake, it's not going to be running much longer, and why jet engines don't work in space, and why rockets generally need two things, fuel and oxidizer. (The latter being often O2, sometimes even nastier stuff.) As do most chemical explosives—a rocket is in essence just a bomb that explodes more slowly, if everything goes right. (And when it doesn't...) --Slowking Man (talk) 22:28, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Conventional jet engines may not work in space, but see Bussard ramjet. --Lambiam 16:55, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- For pure hydrogen or methane, not by itself, no. The combustion of the gases inside the bubbles are using the air around it, which doesn't contain too much oxygen. Fun thing is if you managed to inject some oxygen into those fart bubbles, the mixture would be potentially explosive, and when ignited can create a small bang. People do, however, like to weld with fuel and oxidizer mixtures (see oxy-fuel welding); the flame of oxygen and acetylene can go up to 3,500 °C (6,330 °F), hot enough to melt a variety of metals. Kurnahusa (talk) 00:56, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
- For the record, I was proposing experiments, not being ignorant of UEL that I had mentioned:) DMacks (talk) 12:01, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- A bubble of flammable gas in water is an interesting apparatus where you can see inside the bubble before and during it popping. With an electronic igniter, could be fun to try to ignite the bubble itself to demonstate the effect of UEL. Are H2 and methane actually "flammable" when pure? DMacks (talk) 02:11, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- Haha, no reason why I wouldn't think the bubbles were not flammable; after all, the gases are basically trapped inside, but very interesting as well as informative - thank you! A while back I sprayed some gas from a nearly empty alcohol rub bottle into water and ignited it, and so I thought, if it was possible, the same stuff applies to farts. Kurnahusa (talk) 23:16, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
Must every moving [accelerating] body lose energy, namely the energy of the gravitational waves emitted by that body while moving [accelerating]?
[edit]HOTmag (talk) 10:08, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- Can you accept as a counter example the body envisaged in Newton's first law of motion that remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, except insofar as it is acted upon by a force? Philvoids (talk) 13:36, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- Given a body moving at a constant speed, there is a reference frame in which the body is at rest, from which it follows that it does not emit gravitational waves. Only a change in the gravitational interaction between massive bodies can stir up the gravitational field. --Lambiam 15:31, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
OP's apology: Sorry for replacing the correct word "accelerating" by the wrong word "moving". I've just fixed that in the header [by brackets]. HOTmag (talk) 16:00, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
- Responders can lose interest in freely helping a questioner who keeps changing their question. Can you accept that energy must always be added (or subtracted) to accelerate (or decelerate) a body? Reference: Kinetic energy. Philvoids (talk) 19:45, 20 October 2024 (UTC)
Responders can lose interest in freely helping a questioner who keeps changing their question.
What do you mean bykeeps
changing my question? When did I change my question, excluding this single time (for which I have already apologized)?Can you accept that energy must always be added (or subtracted) to accelerate (or decelerate) a body?
Yes, I can, and I do accept. Still, I'm asking if, besides the energy your're talking about, one should also take into account another amount of energy that should actually be subtracted because of the gravitational waves which are always emitted by every accelerating body. HOTmag (talk) 22:59, 20 October 2024 (UTC)- The term Gravitational wave rather than gravity wave is used in article space.
- Energy (luminosity) carried away by gravitational waves is purportedly given by Einstein's Quadrupole formula
- As yet this has been only partially confirmed by an observation of a binary star combination of a neutron star and a pulsar (earning the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics). Research continues and I think we are far from the kind of laboratory demonstration that is needed to cement this theory to the same extent as, for example, the refined measurements of Gravitational constant G initiated (effectively but not deliberately) by Cavendish. Philvoids (talk) 02:11, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
The term Gravitational wave rather than gravity wave is used in article space
. Of course. Has anyone ever used the term "gravity wave", in this thread?Energy (luminosity) carried away by gravitational waves is purportedly given by Einstein's Quadrupole formula
. Now let's assume that Einstein was correct. So, regardless of the other kind of energy mentioned in your previous response, must every accelerating body lose the kind of energy you're mentioning in your last response, namely the energy of the gravitational waves emitted by that body while accelerating? HOTmag (talk) 09:42, 21 October 2024 (UTC)- According to the theory, a spherically symmetric pulsing body wouldn't emit gravitational waves. NadVolum (talk) 10:46, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- Does it mean that spherically asymmetric pulsing bodies would? HOTmag (talk) 14:37, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- The opposite of "spherically symmetric" is "not spherically symmetric". The pulsation of body needs to respect certain symmetries in order to keep its centre of mass at rest. As the formula says, the quadrupole of the mass distribution needs to change. Think of a wobbling drop of water. A rotating barbell emits gravitational waves, as does (in a similar way) a pair of orbiting black holes. All the detected gravitational wave events are of that type, occasionally with a neutron star in place of a black hole. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:12, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- I am content that the single counter-example provided by NadVolume answers the OP's question. Philvoids (talk) 16:41, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- Well, if you're content, I guess I'll just keep my mouth shut in the future. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:45, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for these examples. So, regardless of the kinetic energy added to an accelerating body, do the bodies in your examples also lose radiant energy - due to the emission of gravitational waves? HOTmag (talk) 19:30, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- The "bodies" as a whole (barbell, binary BH) are not accelerated (although parts of them are, e.g. the individual BHs), and no kinetic energy is added to them. Yet their rotation causes them to emit gravitational waves and they lose energy through them. The barbell's rotation slows down, the BHs approach each other and finally coalesce. Incidentally, I mentioned the barbell because Bernard Schutz uses that example (in Class. Quantum Grav. 16, A131 (1999)) to illustrate the strength of the emitted gravitational waves, which is tiny except for the most extreme cases. --Wrongfilter (talk) 05:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- If the rotating barbell is in vacuum, it's not supposed to slow down, is it? If it doesn't slow down, and it doesn't receive any kinetic energy, then this barbell will keep losing energy "for ever", or rather until it eventually "evaporates" (like a BH), am I right? HOTmag (talk) 12:49, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Emitting gravitational waves slows its rotation. If the reason it emits gravitational waves is that it's rotating, it should cease emitting them (and thus cease losing energy) when it's lost enough energy to stop rotating. Its mass won't evaporate. -- Avocado (talk) 22:40, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Why losing energy may make the body slow down or stop rotating? What about the conservation of angular momentum? HOTmag (talk) 23:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Emitting gravitational waves slows its rotation. If the reason it emits gravitational waves is that it's rotating, it should cease emitting them (and thus cease losing energy) when it's lost enough energy to stop rotating. Its mass won't evaporate. -- Avocado (talk) 22:40, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- You are not right, there is no reason for the barbell to evaporate. The rotation slows down because the GWs carry off energy (and angular momentum). If the thing is not in vacuum the GW effect is overwhelmed by friction. But this is a highly idealised example meant to illustrate the momentary emission of GWs. It does not occur as such in nature, and it is not worth thinking it through to the end. --Wrongfilter (talk) 13:02, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- I still think, Bernard schultz's example you've mentioned, is interesting, and worth thinking.
- I've asked about vacuum, in which no friction exists.
- Apparently, according to the conservation of angular momentum, this momentum is not supposed to change. So, I still wonder, what may prevent the rotating barbell from continuing to rotate "for ever". As long as it rotates, it emits GWs, thus loses energy, without changing the angular momentum, until the barbell loses all of its energy, i.e. until it "evaporates". I wonder where the mistake lies.
- Is it possible, that I'm wrong with the conservation of angular momentum, so that what I was taught in school about this conservation in vacuum was not that accurate? HOTmag (talk) 14:10, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Gravitational_wave#Energy,_momentum,_and_angular_momentum. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for this clarification. Consequently, all of the basic laws of conservation (i,.e. conservation of energy, of linear momentum and of angular momentum), are only true for spherical symmetric bodies, or bodies that don't rotate. All other bodies, emit GWs, so they can't satisfy those laws of conservation any more, at least according to the theory. Do you think we should mention this fact (an important one IMO) in the respective articles about those laws? HOTmag (talk) 17:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- No!!!!! Do you not understand how conservation laws work???? --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Our article Angular momentum indicates
"The symmetry associated with conservation of angular momentum is rotational invariance."
. Does this reservation exclude every non-spherical symmetric body? If it does then all is fine. But if it doesn't then: - AFAIK, if no external forces act, then the angular momentum must be conserved. Correct? However, non-spherical symmetric bodies that rotate, emit GWs, so the angular momentum of those bodies is not conserved. Correct?
- If I'm correct, then the conservation of angular momentum does not hold in all cases where no external forces act. What's wrong? HOTmag (talk) 18:26, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Our article Angular momentum indicates
- No!!!!! Do you not understand how conservation laws work???? --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:09, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you for this clarification. Consequently, all of the basic laws of conservation (i,.e. conservation of energy, of linear momentum and of angular momentum), are only true for spherical symmetric bodies, or bodies that don't rotate. All other bodies, emit GWs, so they can't satisfy those laws of conservation any more, at least according to the theory. Do you think we should mention this fact (an important one IMO) in the respective articles about those laws? HOTmag (talk) 17:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Gravitational_wave#Energy,_momentum,_and_angular_momentum. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- I still think, Bernard schultz's example you've mentioned, is interesting, and worth thinking.
- If the rotating barbell is in vacuum, it's not supposed to slow down, is it? If it doesn't slow down, and it doesn't receive any kinetic energy, then this barbell will keep losing energy "for ever", or rather until it eventually "evaporates" (like a BH), am I right? HOTmag (talk) 12:49, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- The "bodies" as a whole (barbell, binary BH) are not accelerated (although parts of them are, e.g. the individual BHs), and no kinetic energy is added to them. Yet their rotation causes them to emit gravitational waves and they lose energy through them. The barbell's rotation slows down, the BHs approach each other and finally coalesce. Incidentally, I mentioned the barbell because Bernard Schutz uses that example (in Class. Quantum Grav. 16, A131 (1999)) to illustrate the strength of the emitted gravitational waves, which is tiny except for the most extreme cases. --Wrongfilter (talk) 05:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- The single counter-example provided by NadVolume, only answers the question in the header, but I was waiting for an answer to my follow-up question addressed to NadVolume. It seems that Wrongfilter gives a positive answer, by two theoretical examples: the wobbling drop of water, and the rotating barbell (besides the empirical example of a pair of orbiting black holes). HOTmag (talk) 19:21, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- How is the center of mass of the rotating barbell not at rest? The distribution of mass in the volume it rotates within changes, but if it's rotating around the center of mass, isn't the center of mass stationary? -- Avocado (talk) 22:28, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- There may be a misunderstanding here about what a gravitational wave is like. It does not push and pull in the direction from which it comes - it is polarized and squishes and stretches at right angles to its path. If what the observer sees is symmetric then they won't see gravitational waves. NadVolum (talk) 23:47, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- I did not say (or at least tried not to say) that the CM of the barbell is not at rest, quite the opposite. The rotating barbell is not spherically symmetric but still has some symmetry. My comment was triggered by the word "asymmetric", which I think is not entirely appropriate, and then tried to illustrate systems with a varying quadrupole moment. --Wrongfilter (talk) 05:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Got it - thanks for the clarification, and sorry for misreading! -- Avocado (talk) 22:34, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- I did not say (or at least tried not to say) that the CM of the barbell is not at rest, quite the opposite. The rotating barbell is not spherically symmetric but still has some symmetry. My comment was triggered by the word "asymmetric", which I think is not entirely appropriate, and then tried to illustrate systems with a varying quadrupole moment. --Wrongfilter (talk) 05:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- There may be a misunderstanding here about what a gravitational wave is like. It does not push and pull in the direction from which it comes - it is polarized and squishes and stretches at right angles to its path. If what the observer sees is symmetric then they won't see gravitational waves. NadVolum (talk) 23:47, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- I am content that the single counter-example provided by NadVolume answers the OP's question. Philvoids (talk) 16:41, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- The opposite of "spherically symmetric" is "not spherically symmetric". The pulsation of body needs to respect certain symmetries in order to keep its centre of mass at rest. As the formula says, the quadrupole of the mass distribution needs to change. Think of a wobbling drop of water. A rotating barbell emits gravitational waves, as does (in a similar way) a pair of orbiting black holes. All the detected gravitational wave events are of that type, occasionally with a neutron star in place of a black hole. --Wrongfilter (talk) 16:12, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- Does it mean that spherically asymmetric pulsing bodies would? HOTmag (talk) 14:37, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- According to the theory, a spherically symmetric pulsing body wouldn't emit gravitational waves. NadVolum (talk) 10:46, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
October 21
[edit]datetime for cub birth
[edit][5] when did this happen. date? time? story out oct-21 but it doesn't say time of event. .... it's for news. -- Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 04:41, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- Such news articles are based on press releases put out by the organizations featured in the news, in this case Cotswold Wildlife Park. Large parts of it are taken from a "Park News" item on Cotswold's website. The latter also does not mention when the young was born. The release date of this news item was likely inspired by World Lemur Day being celebrated on the last Friday of October, this year 25 October, and a reasonable guess it was released just before the article in The Guardian was published, which has publication date 20 October. The "Park News" item features a photo whose caption reads, "The Greater Bamboo Lemur Baby bred at Cotswold Wildlife Park – aged 5 weeks", so the baby probably arrived near mid-September. Since the park has successfully bred more than 70 lemurs,[6] this is not Earth-shattering news that deserves careful attention. --Lambiam 06:10, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks for checking. The 5 weeks age helps. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 06:47, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
"successfully bred more than 70 lemurs"
Different species. As the linked article says, "Only 36 greater bamboo lemurs are in captivity globally". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:25, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Why do we use 12 o'clock to represent midnight and noon?
[edit]It occurred to me recently that the way we number and label hours is rather odd. We divide the day into two twelve-hour sections, starting at midnight and noon, but we number the hours starting an hour after that. This leads to various oddities: 11am is followed by 12pm, not 12am; likewise 11pm is followed by 12am (something that people often get confused about). 11:59pm and 12:01am are different days, despite the numbering logically implying that they are part of the same day. If the 12-hour clock was invented now, I suspect we would define midnight and noon as zero hours, but the concept of 12-hour semi-days predates the concept of zero. But given the way things were typically numbered in the absence of zero, and the way we still number dates, it occurred to me that it would be more sensible, and more expected, to use 1 o'clock to mark the start of the day, and the start of the afternoon. (That would give us a morning running from 1:00am to 12:59am, and an afternoon running from 1:00pm to 12:59pm. No weird flipping between am and pm at 12, all consecutive numbers are in the same semi-day). So I'm wondering: why was the modern notation adopted? I've looked at 12-hour clock and Hour but they don't explain why this system was adopted, only that it started to become common in the 14th century, displacing the earlier system of using twelve (seasonally-varying) hours for the period of sunrise to sunset. Iapetus (talk) 15:12, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- This doesn't answer your question, but in Japanese usage 午前12時 ("12am") means noon and 午後12時 ("12pm") means midnight. Also possible are 午前0時 ("0am") for midnight and 午後0時 ("0pm") for noon. :) Double sharp (talk) 15:17, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- Japanese time is high IQ! Not only does it do XX:XX to 24:00 like much of the world instead of XX:XX to 0:00 or 00:00 it also does things like this bar's open 16:00 to 28:00 or "trains run till 25:00". Mechanical clocks once had only hour hands and had to have their drift fixed every day with a glance at a sundial, it took a long time for people to stop thinking in Roman numerals and "this is the first hour" instead of "it's 12:27". If all civilizations had 0 clocks would probably not illogically have a 1 at the top instead of 0. Also am and pm mean ante and post meridian, they CAN'T change at 1:00. After the noon meridian not midnight cause the Sun's midnight meridian crossing is invisible unless midnight is in the day. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:15, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
- Time is measured continuously: it's now 8 hours plus 32 minutes plus 7 seconds past midnight and this is only the case for a single moment. Days are counted discretely: it's now the 22nd day of the 10th month of the 2024th year since the epoch and this is the case for the entire day. That's why time starts at 0 and dates at 1. It's also why time is in big endian order and date in little endian in most European languages. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
11am is followed by 12pm
It is not, it is followed by noon. And then by 12:01pm.11pm is followed by 12am
It is not, it is followed by midnight. And then by 12:01am.something that people often get confused about
Well, quite.- There are no such things as 12am or 12pm, by definition.
- It may help to clear your confusion if you consider what "am" and "pm" mean. "Before meridian" and "after meridian". In other words, before/after noon. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:49, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- "There are no such things as 12am or 12pm, by definition" - an exception being in the datetime libraires of programming languages where they are defined. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:55, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- My dictionary defines various gods. They don't exist either. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- There are probably some people out there that approach the whole 12am/12pm issue from a mathematical Platonist perspective. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:51, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- "Time is an illusion; lunchtime, doubly so."
- —Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- There are probably some people out there that approach the whole 12am/12pm issue from a mathematical Platonist perspective. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:51, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- My dictionary defines various gods. They don't exist either. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- "There are no such things as 12am or 12pm, by definition" - an exception being in the datetime libraires of programming languages where they are defined. Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:55, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Assistance is available at 12-hour clock#Confusion at noon and midnight. In some applications of the 24-hour clock, midnight is denoted as 0000 or 00:00, rather than 1200 or 12:00. There is a lot of logic in that! Dolphin (t) 10:49, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- In some applications of the 24-hour clock. Isn't this the case for all applications of the 24-hour clock? I've never seen one that doesn't use 00:00, and if there was an exception, I would expect it to be using 24:00. Iapetus (talk) 12:25, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Your typical digital clock will display non as 12:00PM, not 12:00. There is an infinitesimally short period of time at exact noon when it is neither AM nor PM. But for your typical digital clock (with minute-precision) there will be a whole minute (minus that infinitesimal) where it is showing 12:00 post meridian, so use of that PM is probably not unreasonable. Iapetus (talk) 12:23, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think the South Koreans used to say people were in their first year when they were born but the west has always said they were no years old until theiy were one year old. Clocks follow that western rule. NadVolum (talk) 11:52, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yup, see East Asian age reckoning. Double sharp (talk) 13:07, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- That system is the one used worldwide for horses, irrespective of whether they were foaled in the northern or southern hemisphere. All share a common birthday - 1 January. Lots of previous discussion Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 December 8#Afghanistan time and Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 September 18#Either the Calendar is wrong or the Clock is. It's that simple. 2A02:C7B:21A:700:AD1D:15C5:CE76:21CE (talk) 16:17, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yup, see East Asian age reckoning. Double sharp (talk) 13:07, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Timekeeping systems are all socially constructed human systems, defined by humans—though (usually) linked to one or more "real-world" physical referent(s). Which makes this more of a Humanities desk question. This is the thing that people are to some degree going in circles about here. The only stuff that's physically "real" as in, the consequences of underlying invariant physical laws existing outside of humans, time-wise, are spacetime and the things embedded in it, which we humans model and interpret using tools like Minkowski diagrams and four-vectors. (In Earth orbit time passes more quickly than stuck down here, b/c time is relative. So don't take a trip up to orbit if you really wanna "make every minute last"!)
- A "day" if defined as, one full spin of Earth about its major axis, never takes exactly 24 "hours" to complete; we just pretend it does for convenience (humans like nice simple round numbers) and occasionally arbitrarily adjust our major timekeeping systems to compensate for the accumulating measurement error. More starkly sometimes various places decide arbitrarily boom now it's a different time because we want it to be. In the past various human communities decided "okay now it's instantly like 2 weeks later. Japan used to use a calendar based on just, once in a while we change the current "era" and now it's a new one, and still does ceremonially though they cut back on the frequent "time-skips". Etc etc. --Slowking Man (talk) 16:45, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- A full spin of Earth about its major axis is a sidereal day, which is closer to 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds. Leap second adjustments are not made arbitrarily, but to keep our clocks in sync with solar time. --Lambiam 06:00, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
- Japan also had a year count that's approaching 2700 now but the Western year count's been more popular for awhile. The era system can cause cool names like calling a skilled sportsman Monster of the Reiwa Era. But also causes 1926-89 to be named for a semi-figurehead who didn't try to reduce evil till he sped up surrender when he was 44. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:15, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Apparent misunderstanding here. All clocks other than atomic clocks (including radio-controlled ones) tick mean solar time. That's because they are not capable of doing anything else. Your sundial, naturally enough, cannot show anything other than apparent solar time, but over the long term that's the same as mean solar time (that's why it's called mean solar time). Coordinated Universal Time is Atomic Time plus an offset (regulated by means of the leap second) which keeps it so close to mean solar time that nobody can tell the difference. This is why all countries (bar a handful that don't) use mean solar time. It avoids argument:
- Traffic warden: You are allowed to park for one hour. You overstayed by one second.
- Motorist: No I didn't. I parked at 12 midnight and left at 1 AM.
- Warden: Yes you did. There are sixty minutes in an hour. You parked at 12:00:00 and your time expired at 12:59:60. You left a second later.
As little as once or twice a month your radio-controlled clock is adjusted by means of a radio signal to show Coordinated Universal Time. Twice a year the signal adjusts it to show (or stop showing) what is in effect "Coordinated Universal Summer Time" (although nobody calls it that). 2A02:C7B:21A:700:6CF1:15C9:BDB3:F61A (talk) 11:19, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
October 22
[edit]Although neutrinos can't interact with photons, can photons deliver momentum to neutrinos, via electrons as intermediaries which receive it from photons and deliver it to neutrinos?
[edit]Something that reminds of Newton's cradle (yet not exactly of course). HOTmag (talk) 16:06, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- This is the kind of thing that Feynam diagrams were invented for. You can have a neutrino and a photon going in, a neutrino and a photon going out, and all kinds of other particles running around in a loop in the middle. See for example [7] (paywalled unfortunately). --Amble (talk) 17:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- I gotcha covered on the link there --Slowking Man (talk) 17:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- Why can't they interact? Both photons and neutrinos participate in the weak interaction. Difficulty: that cross-section is gonna be really small. Gamma ray cross section may be also of interest. But yes, the aforementioned besides, if you have a whole lot of photons and can make them go where you want and give them arbitrary energies, you can make the photons do all kinds of neat tricks with each other such as popping out other particles: see two-photon physics. The truly "high-energy physics" processes in our universe such as supernovas and neutron star collisions and gamma-ray bursts do plenty of this kind of stuff. (Another whopper is that we're now fairly sure type II supernovas are in essence "powered" mostly by the neutrino burst! The core collapse releases such a staggering amount of neutrinos that, if you somehow managed to get close enough and not have anything else kill you, you would be killed by the fatal neutrino radiation! As they say there, a phrase that just looks wrong if you know what it's talking about. Similarly: an "average supernova" releases about 1057 neutrinos, 10 followed by a mere 57 zeroes. Kind of like: a "modest planetary collision" will only disrupt the crust and some of the mantle. (And one hypothesis is, the reason half of Mars is really different from the other half is that an even bigger impact happened to it!) --Slowking Man (talk) 17:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Why can't they interact? Both photons and neutrinos participate in the weak interaction
It seems that your question is addressed (also) to yourself, i.e. to what you wrote in another thread. HOTmag (talk) 18:17, 22 October 2024 (UTC)- Is it true the Pacific's where the Mars-sized moonmaker hit non-head on splashing off lava and boiled lava? I thought only continental crust can survive that long. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- If so it's not mentioned at our giant-impact hypothesis article, nor the Theia (planet) one. I would have been surprised if that were true; I assumed that the Earth's entire surface was liquid for a while after the impact so there shouldn't be any remaining localized remnant. But I could be completely wrong about that. --Trovatore (talk) 22:56, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- That's where the Kaiju come from right? But seeing as >4 bil ybp, there was no such thing as "the Pacific Ocean"... I dunno? Is this based on some specific thing from somewhere? A mere 220 mya there was just the one ocean with no major landmasses apart from "the one place where all the land is". If I recall right the hypothesized Theia impact is predicted to maybe have re-liquified Earth's entire crust, even vaporizing some of it to produce a temporary "rock vapor atmosphere", another one of those "phrases that just sound crazy". (Excellent band name up for grabs there btw) --Slowking Man (talk) 23:02, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
- I heard that somewhere maybe whoever thought it was just ignorant? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:20, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
we can propose sending photons "this way" and neutrinos "that way", such that their worldlines at some point intersect, but we would expect to observe nothing (other than the extremely minute effects of their gravitational and weak interactions),
(emphasis added). Okay, I was being a tad pedantic, but, being precise can matter for Science Stuff. You're the one proposing hypothetical scenarious here—you could always say "here, we're gonna fire enough photons such that their weak interactions w/ matter start adding up" (like in a supernova). Alternately if you just want to ask, "can photons and neutrinos interact with each other at all, directly or indirectly" just ask that and skip the trouble of crafting undergrad physics textbook study problems. (Keep in mind, people here are volunteering to devote some of their own time to responding to questioners' queries.) --Slowking Man (talk) 23:02, 22 October 2024 (UTC)- Oh sorry, I did read what you had written in parentheses "other than the extremely minute effects of their gravitational... interactions", but for some unknown reason I didn't notice the crucial words "and weak interactions". So you're right, sorry.
- As for the two-photon physics you've mentioned: Well, AFAIK, two photons can turn into electron-positron (or muon-antimuon, tauon-anti-tauon), but never (directly) into neutrino-anti-neutrino. The same it true for the opposite direction: If a neutrino collides with its anti-particle, the direct result may be Z-boson, not photons (and with regard to what you wrote in your last parentheses: Of course, indeed you are always invited to remove my misunderstanding, but are never obligated to do that). HOTmag (talk) 00:24, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
- That makes my (new) list of most exotic way to shuffle off this mortal coil. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:07, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
- Victim [knocking on the Pearly gates]: Hello?
- St. Peter: Sorry, guy. There's no room at the inn for you. Have you tried the Other Place?
- Victim: But, but I'm high up on The List!
- St. Peter: That cuts no ice up here.
- Victim [in desperation]: Uh, I was struck down by neutrinos!
- St. Peter: Way cool, dude! Okay, I can make an exception for you. Just don't tell anyone. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:07, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
October 24
[edit]Default multiplication tables in schools worldwide
[edit]According to multiplication table, in the English-speaking world schools use 1-12 multiplication tables, or 1-9. Can this maybe be distinguished between countries? In German-speaking Europe, schools use 1-10 by default. For sure in many countries they start with 0. What's the situation in different countries worldwide? --KnightMove (talk) 08:37, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Wait, why would one start a multiplication table with zero? Remsense ‥ 论 08:43, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- I guess so that every possible product of two digits is included. Double sharp (talk) 09:36, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Why would one start multiplication tables with 1? We started with 2. Shantavira|feed me 09:00, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Ok, and where did you go to school, please? --KnightMove (talk) 11:02, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- The curriculum in the UK is devolved.
- The English curriculum includes multiplication tables up to 12 × 12 (no word on whether 0 or 1 are included as tables, but multiplying by 0 or 1 is included).
- Wales (at least partly English speaking), only has up to 10x10
- Scotland goes up to 12.
- Northern Ireland doesn't explicitly have multiplication tables, but does cover "multiplication facts up to 10 x 10".
- My understanding is that education is a state matter in the USA so maybe there are 50 different curricula?
- AlmostReadytoFly (talk) 11:31, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- US states generally delegate to school districts, so each county or township has its own standards (and then there are tons of non-public schools). But there are a few standard curricula or textbooks that many of them use, and regardless of approach many follow the same or similar broad standards. And finally, it's sometimes just a semantic difference whether it's called part of the "table" or just a loose fact. Some relevant articles:
- Mathematics education in the United States
- Common Core (3.OA.C.7 specifies "By the end of Grade 3, know from memory all products of two one-digit numbers.")
- Singapore math (popular in some parts of the US)
- Some lead refs:
- Olfos, Raimundo; Isoda, Masami (2021). "Teaching the Multiplication Table and Its Properties for Learning How to Learn". Teaching Multiplication with Lesson Study. pp. 133–154. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-28561-6_6. ISBN 978-3-030-28560-9.
- Dotan, Dror; Zviran-Ginat, Sharon (2022). "Elementary math in elementary school: The effect of interference on learning the multiplication table". Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. 7 (1): 101. doi:10.1186/s41235-022-00451-0. PMC 9716515. PMID 36459276.
- Isoda, Masami; Olfos, Raimundo, eds. (2021). Teaching Multiplication with Lesson Study. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-28561-6. ISBN 978-3-030-28560-9.
- DMacks (talk) 11:57, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- It's been a long time since I was at school but I dimly remember the multiplication tables in the booklet went up to 13x13 though we only had to learn up to 12x12. NadVolum (talk) 12:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- The 12 times table had a greater significance in my primary school days, since there were 12 pence in a shilling in those days. Alansplodge (talk) 14:10, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- Ditto. Learning the 13 and 17 times tables might be of some value; the others can be trivially derived mentally by doubling (e.g. 9x14 = (9x7)x2) and similar expedients, or for nx19 ((nx10)x2)-n. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 12:44, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- The 12 times table had a greater significance in my primary school days, since there were 12 pence in a shilling in those days. Alansplodge (talk) 14:10, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
- It's been a long time since I was at school but I dimly remember the multiplication tables in the booklet went up to 13x13 though we only had to learn up to 12x12. NadVolum (talk) 12:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
Doesn't this thread belong more to the reference desk of Mathematics? HOTmag (talk) 07:37, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
October 26
[edit]Launch site identification
[edit]I am currently on a bridge on the Florida State Road 528 facing north, getting ready to view the Spacex launch[8] later today.
But I am not sure which one is the launch site that I should be looking at. I spotted 5 points of interest[9] (labelled A to E), and I can only positively identify A as the kennedy space center (which is not today's launch site).
I would really appreciate it if someone can tell me whether I should be looking at BCD or E. And also I'm interested to learn what BCDE each are. Epideurus (talk) 20:09, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
- My exact location is 28.405476616667123, -80.65458604061091. Epideurus (talk) 20:31, 26 October 2024 (UTC)
- At a guess, I'd say that I'd agree with your identification of "A" as the Vehicle Assembly Building at the JFK Space Center. My tentative identification of C and D are the Titan Solid Motor Assembly And Readiness Facility and the Titan Solid Motor Assembly building. E is possibly Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 37. PianoDan (talk) 17:47, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
October 27
[edit]Can sterile neutrinos (if exist) decay, if there don't really exist virtual particles?
[edit]The background of my question is the following two facts:
Our artricle sterile neutrino states: The production and decay of sterile neutrinos could happen through the mixing with virtual ("off mass shell") neutrinos
.
While our article Virtual particles states: they are by no means a necessary feature of QFT, but rather are mathematical conveniences — as demonstrated by lattice field theory, which avoids using the concept altogether.
HOTmag (talk) 06:34, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- The statement that "x could happen if y" does not in itself exclude the possibilities that (absent y) x could also happen if z, or w, etc. Frankly, this is all so deep in the Jungles of Conjecture (that vast expanse beyond the Mountains of Hypotheses) that definitive answers probably don't yet exist, and Nobel prizes will probably be given for finding answers to such questions. Or so I think: perhaps some post-doctoral particle physicist will correct me. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 12:53, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- As for your first sentence: Of course. I didn't think otherwise. HOTmag (talk) 13:04, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- Does anything "really" exist? If we answer yes, what does it mean to "really" exist? We have models that make observable predictions. We say that atoms exist because the predictions of the atomic model were actually observed. One observable prediction of virtual particles is the Casimir effect, which was experimentally observed. They lack the stability of other particles, just like the waves that make the surf have no long-time stability. It may be possible to develop a form of hydrodynamic theory that accurately describes the observable effects of surf without introducing the concept of a wave. Does this then mean these waves do not "really" exist? --Lambiam 16:45, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- Are you responding to me, or (also?) to the quote I quoted from our article virtual particle? HOTmag (talk) 18:40, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- I am mainly responding to the question as formulated in the heading of this thread. The question is unanswerable if the meaning of "really exist" is not clear (which it isn't). --Lambiam 05:26, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- Let's put it this way: Do you agree to the content of the second quote under the header? IMO, it actually says that there don't necessarily exist virtual particles. This is what I meant by "don't really exist". But if you think it says something else, you're invited to tell what you think it says.
- (Re. Casimir effect, its article in Wikipedia states:
Although the Casimir effect can be expressed in terms of virtual particles interacting with the objects, it is best described and more easily calculated in terms of the zero-point energy of a quantized field in the intervening space between the objects
). - HOTmag (talk) 06:32, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think it is theoretically possible to develop QCD and QFT to such an extent that it successfully describes macroscopically observable events without introducing the concept of particle. However, this theory would be extremely unwieldy and in practice mathematically untractable – and therefore pretty useless. Particles are a mathematical convenience, but a convenience we cannot do without. It may be possible that some practical version of QFT avoids the concept of virtual particle, but lattice field theory is not an alternative to QFT but a collection of mathematical approaches for obtaining QFT predictions by computer simulation. It is itself a mathematical convenience. Therefore, in my opinion, the sentence relegating virtual particles to a status of mere mathematical conveniences is not so much false as misleading. --Lambiam 19:28, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- Let's put it this way: Do you agree to the content of the second quote under the header? IMO, it actually says that there don't necessarily exist virtual particles. This is what I meant by "don't really exist". But if you think it says something else, you're invited to tell what you think it says.
- I am mainly responding to the question as formulated in the heading of this thread. The question is unanswerable if the meaning of "really exist" is not clear (which it isn't). --Lambiam 05:26, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- Are you responding to me, or (also?) to the quote I quoted from our article virtual particle? HOTmag (talk) 18:40, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
According to this video: "It's an easier transition from sterile neutrino to electron-neutrino".
So indeed, perhaps a sterile neutrino doesn't decay (as reqiured in the header), but still, it can (apparently) oscillate - becoming an electron neutrino. HOTmag (talk) 12:07, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Global deforestation runoff
[edit]What is the global deforestation runoff in km3, which is part of the 40k km3 of global runoff* in general?
- Trenberth KE, Smith L, Qian T, Dai A, Fasulo J (2007). Estimates of Global Water Budget and Its Annual Cycle Using Observational and Model Data. Journal of Hydrometeorolgy 8(4):758-769. DOI: org/10.1175/JHM600.1.
Fred weiers (talk) 07:44, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- Please consult this article: "Deforestation-induced runoff changes dominated by forest-climate feedbacks". My layperson's summary: it's complicated. --Lambiam 16:20, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
Is Big Bang nucleosynthesis backwards?
[edit]The article says the universe started with electrons and protons then created neutrons through nucleosynthesis, but whataboutism those places in the current universe that are too dense for electrons to exist? Shouldn't the universe have started out with all sorts of exotic particles filling in every possible energy state that then phase changes to neutronium as soon as the density is low enough? The neutrons aren't bound together by the Strong Force and hence thermally scatter as the density drops to decay completely away over the next hour, with Lithium and Helium being the result of neutron capture, not fusion? Hcobb (talk) 14:01, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- In nucleosynthesis, including the Big Bang nucleosynthesis, neutrons and protons combine to form nuclei. In electron capture, a proton of a nucleus turns into a neutron. For example, a nickel nucleus with 28 protons may turn into a cobalt nucleus with 27 protons. In a sufficiently hot environment, nothing is stable; all reactions may go either way, as they certainly did in the first few seconds after the Big Bang. --Lambiam 15:56, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
1934–35 North American drought
[edit]The article on the 1934–35 North American drought appears to be erroneously dated. I only noticed this because I've been writing about Georgia O'Keeffe, who became widely known for collecting bones in the desert of New Mexico from late 1929 and into the 1930s. These bones are from wild horses and cows that died due to a drought. So when I discovered that this drought was described by Wikipedia as taking place in 1934, I could see something was wrong. Other sources indicate that the media of the time widely reported the drought in the general area as beginning in 1929, not 1934. Can anyone figure out why there is this discrepancy? I did make a comment on the talk page indicating one possible reason. Viriditas (talk) 21:21, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- The infamous Dust Bowl seems to cover a wider time period. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:54, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- Understood, but I'm wondering if our article on the 1934–35 North American drought should be widened in terms of the date range. Viriditas (talk) 21:59, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- The article is poorly written. If anything it should be just 1934 North American drought. The evidence is from tree rings which are incontrovertible, and the extent of the drought can be viewed in the North American Drought Atlas here. Abductive (reasoning) 10:42, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- It's very unlikely that this was the first and only drought in New Mexico – see Droughts in the United States#Events. In any case, cattle and horses in the wild die for other reasons than drought, and in a dry environment are slow to decay. The bones collected by O'Keefe could have been decades or even centuries old. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 12:49, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- It's important recognize that this drought was for nearly the whole of North America. Abductive (reasoning) 06:06, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, this 1934(–5?) drought was, but Viridas assumed that it was the same drought that was responsible for bones collected by Georgia O'Keefe in New Mexico from 1929 onwards, which is clearly unwarrented for the two reasons I have pointed out, over and above the date discrepancy. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 19:20, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- It's important recognize that this drought was for nearly the whole of North America. Abductive (reasoning) 06:06, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- This is about Alberta, Canada, rather than New Mexico, but:
- "Although the early years of the 19th century [presumably 20th century was intended] were wetter, drought returned [to the prairies] during the years of 1910, 1914, 1917, 1918 and 1919, and the drought between 1917-1926 was considered to be especially bad... The global stock market collapsed in 1929 and marked the beginning of the Great Depression. To make matters worse, a severe drought began in the prairies in 1929". [10]
- Alansplodge (talk) 12:50, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- Understood, but I'm wondering if our article on the 1934–35 North American drought should be widened in terms of the date range. Viriditas (talk) 21:59, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
- See also DROUGHTS OF 1930-34 from the US Department of the Interior. Alansplodge (talk) 12:56, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
October 28
[edit]According to the common theory, is the mechanical equilibrium a necessary sufficient condition, for not emitting gravitational waves?
[edit]By mechanical equilibrium I mean, both equilibrium of forces and equilibrium of torques (moments). HOTmag (talk) 09:00, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- A sufficient condition is that quadrupole moment (and all higher moments) of an isolated system is constant. Ruslik_Zero 20:23, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- Is a mechanical equilibrium a necessary condition?
- Do you think you can give a concrete example of a body which is in a mechanical equilibrium and which emits GWs? HOTmag (talk) 20:35, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
- 1: No. Take a cylindrically symmetric flywheel (i.e., solid, no spokes) and spin it on its axle. It won't emit gravitational waves, even when the rate of spin changes when you apply a torque. Its quadrupole moment is zero (or at least, the relevant components) and therefore doesn't change on rotation.
- 2: Yes. Take a flywheel with two masses attached to the rim, opposite to each other, and spin it. It will emit gravitational waves. Its quadrupole moment is non-zero and changes direction during rotation. The gravitational waves will carry away some angular momentum and thereby apply a torque, but with a small motor you can compensate for that and keep the flywheel in mechanical equilibrium. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:03, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thx. Now, let's assume we don't add the small motor, so the flywheell won't be in mechanical equilibrium, because as you say: "The gravitational waves will carry away some angular momentum and thereby apply a torque". However, since the natural source of this torque can't be any "real force" (namely: the electromagnetic force, the strong force, and the weak force), so: is it really reasonable to conclude, that the natural source of this torque is the gravitational (fictitious) "force", even when the system is isolated, i.e. not close to any other mass? It sounds a bit strange to my ears... HOTmag (talk) 11:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, the source of that torque is gravity, even when spacetime were flat if the flywheel hadn't been there. It's the effect of the flywheel itself on the surrounding spacetime, not depending on any disruptions from nearby objects. Just as a rotating electric or magnetic dipole looses angular momentum to electromagnetic radiation, even without an externally applied electromagnetic field. PiusImpavidus (talk) 13:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- So your flywheel example - but without the motor (along with any two-body system satisfying the same principle), seems to be an extremely rare case (isn't it?), in which a system being "both isolated and neutral", i.e both - not close to any other gravitational mass - and not influeced by any external real force, is not in mechanical equilibrium...
- When I was taught about mechanical equilibrium in school (not long ago), my teacher never mentioned this rare option... HOTmag (talk) 15:13, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Well, what's isolated? The object isn't isolated from spacetime.
- General relativity is hard. Most physics school teachers consider it hard for themselves (although they must have learned something about it) and don't want to go too deeply into it. Apart from some handwavy arguments, most students wouldn't understand it at all. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:31, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- I've explained what I mean by "isolated": not close to any other gravitational mass.
- I guess if Newton were asked what he thought about a body - not close to any other gravitational mass - and not influenced by any force other than the gravitational one, he would immediately determine: "The body is in mechanical equilibrium". This is a direct conclusion derived from the combination of his first two laws with his law of gravity.
- So Relativity theory seems to contradict, not only the Galilean transformations and the like, but also the above combination.
- Indeed, I knew General relativity was a bit different from the Newtonian theory of gravitation, but I didn't expect such a basic controversy bewteen Einstein and Newton over the necessary sufficient condition for mechanical equilibrium. Newton could define this condition as: "not close to any other gravitational mass and not influenced by any force other than the gravitational one", but Einstein would disagree. This surprises me... HOTmag (talk) 20:02, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- I've explained what I mean by "isolated": not close to any other gravitational mass.
- Yes, the source of that torque is gravity, even when spacetime were flat if the flywheel hadn't been there. It's the effect of the flywheel itself on the surrounding spacetime, not depending on any disruptions from nearby objects. Just as a rotating electric or magnetic dipole looses angular momentum to electromagnetic radiation, even without an externally applied electromagnetic field. PiusImpavidus (talk) 13:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thx. Now, let's assume we don't add the small motor, so the flywheell won't be in mechanical equilibrium, because as you say: "The gravitational waves will carry away some angular momentum and thereby apply a torque". However, since the natural source of this torque can't be any "real force" (namely: the electromagnetic force, the strong force, and the weak force), so: is it really reasonable to conclude, that the natural source of this torque is the gravitational (fictitious) "force", even when the system is isolated, i.e. not close to any other mass? It sounds a bit strange to my ears... HOTmag (talk) 11:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) A steadily rotating dumbbell in a zero-gravity environment consisting of a very thin and long bar connecting two extremely massive spheres will emit gravitational waves yet has constant linear and angular momentum. One can argue that this rotating system will actually loose angular momentum due to its rotational energy being transferred to energy dissipated by the gravitational waves. But this lack of rotational mechanical equilibrium is the result of the emission of the gravitational waves and not its cause. --Lambiam 10:47, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thx. Apparently, the natural source - of the torque applied on this system - can't be the gravitational (fictitious) "force", because you're referring to a "zero-gravity environment". Nor can the natural source of the torque be any other natural force (namely: the electromagnetic force, the strong force, and the weak force). Isn't this a bit bizzare? HOTmag (talk) 11:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
October 29
[edit]Which ones (if any) of the following seven bodies, have both a [mechanical] equilibrium and a varying quadrupole moment?
[edit]HOTmag (talk) 07:56, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- The four objects in the middle appear to be in equilibrium and have a constant quadrupole moment. The rod in the upper right has varying quadrupole moment, but is in equilibrium (apart from the torque resulting from the emission of gravitational waves). The rod on the lower right has a varying quadrupole moment and is not in mechanical equilibrium, as its centre of mass moves in a circle. I can't be sure about the teapot. It looks like its quadrupole moment varies, its centre of mass moves, so there's a net force, and it doesn't spin on a principal axis, so there's a net torque. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:16, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thx. By equilibrium I meant mechanical equilibrium, i e. both of forces and of torques (Sorry for not adding this from the beginning). So is your answer still valid after adding this addition? HOTmag (talk) 10:34, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, I already assumed that was what you meant by mechanical equilibrium. PiusImpavidus (talk) 13:53, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thx. By equilibrium I meant mechanical equilibrium, i e. both of forces and of torques (Sorry for not adding this from the beginning). So is your answer still valid after adding this addition? HOTmag (talk) 10:34, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
Aardvark cucumbers and Madagascar
[edit]in the article on aardvarks habitat and range it states that they are not found in Madagascar
the article on the aardvark cucumber states that it can be found in Madagascar
Yet. both articles make it clear that the aardvark is necessary for the cucumber to grow and thrive
So my question is, what animal assists the cucumber in madagascar where there are no aardvarks?140.147.160.225 (talk) 12:53, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- I find this interesting. I've found multiple sources for related information. The aardvark cucumber is only eaten by aardvarks (many sources state that, but surely SOMETHING will also eat it). Humans do not eat aardvark cucumbers, and therefore do not farm them. There are no aardvarks on Madagascar. A closely related animal was last noted in 1895. It is assumed extinct. The only source that claims there are aardvark cucumbers on Madagascar is Wikipedia. Every website I found that made that claim was simply a copy of the Wikipedia page. The claim on Wikipedia is unsourced, so it is most likely not true. Unless someone can find a reliable resource that is not a copy of the Wikipedia article, I suggest removing Madagascar from the aardvark cucumber article. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 13:51, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks 12.116! I have removed Madagascar from the cucumber article and left an edit summary explaining140.147.160.225 (talk) 16:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Because resources are very hard to find, I sent emails to a few organizations to ask for help including some nature reserves on Madagascar, a few large botanical gardens with African collections, and a few botanist instructors that I know. If we are lucky, one of them will respond. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 16:51, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks 12.116! I have removed Madagascar from the cucumber article and left an edit summary explaining140.147.160.225 (talk) 16:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
Why aren't bone balls big enough that they can't leave the socket without cracking bone?
[edit]Is this kind of ball-and-socket joint a local fitness maximum ? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:25, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
- Isn't the question its own answer? Abductive (reasoning) 01:20, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah, you're probably better off with a dislocated limb that might pop back in place, than a nasty fracture to a precise structure. In fact there's probably a name for this concept in engineering, something like redundancy (engineering). Except not that. Fault tolerance? Fail-safe? That general conceptual area. Apple's MagSafe system comes to mind. Card Zero (talk) 06:07, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- There is also the concept of
graceful degredation[11] (Wot? No article??)graceful degradation, which seems to have been engineered by evolution into the functioning of the brain. --Lambiam 12:10, 30 October 2024 (UTC)- There is a long-standing redirect from graceful degradation [sic] to fault tolerance. Mike Turnbull (talk) 16:22, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- Wouldn't the possibility of "overshooting the mark" and having the head become to big to move within the cavity also be relevant? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:20, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- It's been on Wikipedia over 241 months just not a similar-sounding typo of it. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:47, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- A generic engineering term is fail-safe: a feature of a design whose purpose is to reduce harm in the event of a failure of the design. An example are pressure relief valves; gradual release of possibly noxious gases is better than a catastrophic blowup. --Lambiam 12:32, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- The incidental Cam out feature of Phillips screwdrivers similarly reduces damage when stress exceeds a normal range. Philvoids (talk) 14:09, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- There is also the concept of
- Yeah, you're probably better off with a dislocated limb that might pop back in place, than a nasty fracture to a precise structure. In fact there's probably a name for this concept in engineering, something like redundancy (engineering). Except not that. Fault tolerance? Fail-safe? That general conceptual area. Apple's MagSafe system comes to mind. Card Zero (talk) 06:07, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- It would give you either a thin connection between the ball and the rest of the bone it belongs to, or a limited range of motion. PiusImpavidus (talk) 16:07, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- Is the shoulder socket even over a full hemisphere? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:50, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- Nowhere near – see the illustrations in Scapula, particularly Figure 1, and in Glenoid fossa, which is the actual 'socket'. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.6.86.81 (talk) 23:09, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
- Is the shoulder socket even over a full hemisphere? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:50, 30 October 2024 (UTC)