Astrology Opinions

BB4_intellect
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Astrology Opinions

I just wanted to hear everyone's opinion on astrology.

Do you believe people born on the same day of the year have similar personality traits??? etc.....


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If we want to make the

If we want to make the testing blind then he shouldn't know who the volunteers are.


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Desdenova wrote:Aquarium

Desdenova wrote:

Aquarium here, water holder. Or whatever you call it.

No no no, Des, that's Virgon. Or are you an Aquarinus? I think I'm something to do with centaurs who eat ice cream.

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Dracos wrote:How could twins

Dracos wrote:
How could twins have such different personalities?
I don't know if anyone mentioned twins in this  thread, not me.

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

Perhaps you misunderstood what I am asking for. I have no desire to waste either your time or that of your father. Nor do I see a point in trying to get a skype conversation going so that your father can be my expensive therapist. If I wanted to pay that kind of money for counseling, I can do that locally. Also, the “shits and giggles” comment was not meant in disrespect, which I think you interpreted it to be.

All right, I was just making it sure. No, I didn't necessarily interpret it as a disrespect, but my father works as an advisor, if you have no problems he could help with, he can't help you. You must tell what do you want from him, natal chart I guess, but don't you have any specific questions to ask, and problems to solve? His astrology also works to explain a sense of your life, a certain aspects which you need to improve, to become a better person. The purpose of astrology is not to make people believe, but to help them, and it's not a "who's there" game. Just show a bit of will for a self-development, so you'll have more benefit of the consultation.
 

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:
What I was suggesting would be that I give you the data that would be needed to make a chart for me. After that, I can review the chart,in this thread, and score it for accuracy. Compare that to your earlier point that the charts for your family tell you that you are pretty much in the same boat as I am.
What do you mean by 'making a chart'? Do you mean entering your data into a program and printing out your horoscope circle? (which I doubt anyone here can read) Or do you mean an interpretation of it by my father? Then you should provide some problem(s) of yours, which you want to understand, and let's see what my father writes about it. I think should contain all what we will need here on the forum for the judge to compare.
And now you know how much money he takes, so do you agree or do you have any other suggestions?
 


pablotar wrote:

 

 LUMINON WROTE.

 

"Just recently, a friend had read a book in Russian language from the scientists, who discovered, that our model of atom is unprecise."

 

Hey, Luminon, can you expand on this? With precise terms?

 

Yes... That was only a part of a chat on the New Year night. (I was sober, I had to drive) But the man I've got it from came today here on visit and he told me more, he showed me an english version of that book he had read in Russian language. (he's not very good at english) So, the scientist is one, he's called Prof. Ph. M. Kanarev and here is his homepage. There is the book, "The Foundations of Physchemistry of Micro World".

Shortly said, Deludedgod and any other educated person would LOVE it. There is a plenty of graphs, equations, symbols and very solid looking science. As for me, the ignorant laic, I flipped the pages reading just a few of paragraphs, looking mainly for pictures I was told about. I noticed two things.
1) It seems that the author claims, that electrons doesn't have an orbit around the atom, as we understand it.
2) My jaw dropped, when I saw the models of atomic nucleus. Remember the school models, the shapeless clusters of balls like that? Well, forget it. Download the book part called chapters 10-11 and scroll down for the pictures. Watch and scroll down, and you will see something surprising. No clusters of balls! The protons and neutrons forms together very complicated, beautiful structures!

 

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Quote:1) It seems that the

Quote:

1) It seems that the author claims, that electrons doesn't have an orbit around the atom, as we understand it.

Of course. The Bohr model was replaced by the Schrodinger model. Electrons don't orbit the nucleus at all. They occupy probability density functions which are described by quantum electrodynamics (which, to date, is the only physical theory which is complete. There are no cracks in QED.)

Quote:

My jaw dropped, when I saw the models of atomic nucleus. Remember the school models, the shapeless clusters of balls like that? Well, forget it.

Well, of course! Electrons are not particles. School models are called "school models" for a reason. The probability density functions correspond to harmonics which we normally associate with standing waves. The wavefunctions associated with electron orbitals have very distinct shapes:

 None of this is very new. We've known this since it was worked out by Schrodinger and Heisenberg in the 1920s and 30s.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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deludedgod wrote:Well, of

deludedgod wrote:

Well, of course! Electrons are not particles. School models are called "school models" for a reason. The probability density functions correspond to harmonics which we normally associate with standing waves. The wavefunctions associated with electron orbitals have very distinct shapes:

 None of this is very new. We've known this since it was worked out by Schrodinger and Heisenberg in the 1920s and 30s.

Have you actually seen the new (december 2008) models of atomic nucleus in the document linked above? These, which resembles a complex symmetric molecules, like DNA double helix? These are supposed to be protons and neutrons! They're not even spheric, but rather tube-shaped. Still no awe?


 

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Not really. It's hard for me

Not really. It's hard for me to follow the ideas presented because the English is virtually indecipherable. Anyway, if this model was new, it would have to be published in a journal first, then a book.

EDIT: Also, nobody ever said protons were sperical.  However, I know where the conceptualization comes from. Because of Coulomb forces, charged particles behave as if they were hard spheres, and that is why, in most applications in biology and non quantum chemistry, they are treated as such, although this conceptualized is flawed, it is useful for certain purposes.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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Luminon wrote:Have you

Luminon wrote:
Have you actually seen the new (december 2008) models of atomic nucleus in the document linked above? These, which resembles a complex symmetric molecules, like DNA double helix? These are supposed to be protons and neutrons! They're not even spheric, but rather tube-shaped. Still no awe?

Luminon, you're not discovering what's wrong with the scientific model, you're improving your understanding of it. In school textbooks, even into university physics, those diagrams are only conceptual. That's just to give you a kind of easy idea of what's happening. If you want to deepen your understanding, the picture will change dramatically. That happens with all learning, and the current body of scientific knowledge is massive.

If you're looking for awe, have you seen the math that describes this stuff? You could practically redefine awe! Some of that shit is like staring into the void the first time you see it (and follow it). That kind of math is the reason deludedgod and I (among many others here) have a hard time being impressed with "etheric" things. There's so much exciting work going on with regards to very specific things, that when you say "etheric", it strikes me, personally, as a ridiculous hand-wave.

When you've seen the kind of specific math that's applied to "the very small and the very large", and have gone through the work required to understand it, "awe" takes on a whole new meaning. Good for you, though, in taking the first steps toward understanding the world in a more precise way.

PS

here's an introduction to the math - maybe it'll help:

http://cph-theory.persiangig.com/1983-diraclanguage.pdf

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deludedgod wrote: Because

deludedgod wrote:
 Because of Coulomb forces, charged particles behave as if they were hard spheres, and that is why, in most applications in biology and non quantum chemistry, they are treated as such, although this conceptualized is flawed, it is useful for certain purposes.

Also, to say "flawed" is to be overly critical of an illustration's purpose. It really IS only possible (in my humble estimation) to understand the math first, and then to "understand" quantum mechanics. You know, understand as much as it can be said to be understood.

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I do not believe that the

I do not believe that the celestial bodies have an a measurable affect on the personal traits of an individual at the moment it leave the birth canal. 

 


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Luminon, every time you post

Luminon, every time you post some inane comment about scientists not having any imagination or sense of awe, I cannot help myself but think of This.

When you say it like that you make it sound so Sinister...


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Desdenova wrote:Heh, and how

Desdenova wrote:

Heh, and how 'bout you get someone born at an entirely different time to submit a bio as well, just to see if the charts match that person too. Hell, I'll volunteer my own for the experiment if Gene and I aren't the same sign.

Aquarium here, water holder. Or whatever you call it.

 

Personal profiles are highly subjective.  you'd need a format and a way of catagorizing them with minimal biased.  In addition to a very large sample population.


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Sinphanius wrote:Luminon,

Sinphanius wrote:
Luminon, every time you post some inane comment about scientists not having any imagination or sense of awe, I cannot help myself but think of This.
I don't deny that, I am just in awe from both scientifically known and unknown wonders. I have a personal direct sensoric access to a scientifically unknown form of matter with amazing physical properties. (which is in my opinion a kind of etheric matter, proven to exist by Silvertooth experiment) Ocassionally, I've seen a similarly awesome things. Trust me, the scientists should save some awe for future, they will need it. The scientific progress of 20th century was relatively small, compared to progress expected in 21th century.

No, I don't claim that I know in scientific terms what I'm talking about, I know it in esoteric terms, and these are old for millenia, thus a bit outdated. I don't understand the basis of such a phenomena, I just can observe them rather often. I don't know more, I just perceive more, and I know people who perceives a lot more than me. The extent of scientifically unknown areas of research is huge, a couple of times greater than our currently known world, at least. From my point of view, the science does only little steps towards this knowledge, and I'm impatient for it to finally get there. There is so much of mystery to be revealed, that I can hardly tolerate it with my mouth and keyboard shut. Yes, I'm an impatient and ungrateful complainer, but I have my reasons.

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Luminon wrote:I have a

Luminon wrote:
I have a personal direct sensoric access to a scientifically unknown form of matter with amazing physical properties.

I'm speechless. First, I was laughing, but now I'm speechless. Did you say you have "sensoric access"? What?

Luminon wrote:
(which is in my opinion a kind of etheric matter, proven to exist by Silvertooth experiment)

Whoa there - one experiment results in "proven"? We're talking about the most tested area in physics, and ONE experiment, which contradicts every other experiment that's been done in the 20th century, just cancels all that out? 

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The Silvertooth experiment

The Silvertooth experiment was over 20 years ago, and the only reference I could find was an old website, the page referring to it had a couple of comments, the latest dated 1999...

There is an Italian researcher, Maurizio Consoli, who in 2005 announced he was going to test what he saw as flaws in the MM experiment.

A recent experiment, which was kept running for over a year to cover all point in the Earth's orbit, confirmed (again) the MM result. Consoli argues that the problem was that the light was travelling in a vacuum. His claim is that there could be interactions between the light, the particles of the gas, and the 'ether', that have yet to be ruled out. He appears to have published a paper in May 08 on the idea, but I have yet to hear of any results overturning fundamental physics...

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Well, the Michelson

Well, the Michelson Morley experiment had error bars just like any experiment to check any idea. And having error bars, the result could allow for a non-zero result if one want to interpret the data that way. However, that would be wrong. What they did find in the data was a measurement that was so small that the “etheric wind” conjecture could not possibly be an accurate description of electromagnetic propagation.

 

That much having been said, science simply does not rely on a single run of one experiment and then say that matters have been decided. The fact is that after Michelson and Morely published their results, others then replicated the experiment and got matching results.

 

In fact, the experiment is still being done today and with ever greater precision and ever narrower error bars. The most recent one that I have found was from 2003 and the results are still not zero but they are many orders of magnitude smaller than they were a hundred years ago.

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HisWillness wrote:I'm

HisWillness wrote:
I'm speechless. First, I was laughing, but now I'm speechless. Did you say you have "sensoric access"? What?
It means, that my senses, and the sense of touch mainly, informs me about an existence of this mysterious form of matter. It gives me an access to it, my senses, I mean. So I can interact with this matter, like people can interact with any other piece of matter, which they get their hands on.  You understand the words, right? It's a significant thing, because this matter otherwise passes through the solid matter freely, but it's highly responsive to thoughts, both conscious and subconscious. It's a scientist's dream! I have met at least one person who was able to see this matter. To me, it's only tangible. A lifetime routine of that sensation prevents me from realizing fully, how strange, unbelievable and crazy this sounds. I can't really know, for me it's as natural, as breathing. I'd wish this feeling to every skeptic in the world! This profound experience can change anyone's worldview. But until there will be a technical means of detecting this matter, (which I'm all for) the only way is either to train this kind of perception for yourself (it's possible) or consider a people's testimony about it's existence, like mine.
I should write down some properties of this phenomenon in a scientific manner, to make more clear than my confused description. But many 'physical' properties and quantities of it are strongly affected by the observer himself.

HisWillness wrote:
Whoa there - one experiment results in "proven"? We're talking about the most tested area in physics, and ONE experiment, which contradicts every other experiment that's been done in the 20th century, just cancels all that out?
Eh, I'm sorry, I'm too quick to consider something proven, when my lifetime experience supports that Well, the link below says something about Sagnac experiment.


Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

Well, the Michelson Morley experiment had error bars just like any experiment to check any idea. And having error bars, the result could allow for a non-zero result if one want to interpret the data that way. However, that would be wrong. What they did find in the data was a measurement that was so small that the “etheric wind” conjecture could not possibly be an accurate description of electromagnetic propagation.  

That much having been said, science simply does not rely on a single run of one experiment and then say that matters have been decided. The fact is that after Michelson and Morely published their results, others then replicated the experiment and got matching results. 

In fact, the experiment is still being done today and with ever greater precision and ever narrower error bars. The most recent one that I have found was from 2003 and the results are still not zero but they are many orders of magnitude smaller than they were a hundred years ago.

 

It should depend on what device do they use. On this link there's a few words about the flaw of MM experiment and the S experiment. I hope this text is true, it should be, there's more pages like that (in my language, as this was featured in a local magazine of underground science) and some other attacking these results. They should be anyway all compared to an official description of the experiment, which interested people can download here:
silvertooth_experiment.pdf

The first sentences says:
Abstract: The Michelson-Morley type experiments are shown to be a non-sequiturs, because their logic fails to take into account the relationship between wavelength and propagation velocity. An experimental demonstration of anisotropy in wavelength is described.
 

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As others have pointed out,

As others have pointed out, science does not depend on the trial of one experiment, certainly not one done 90 years ago. It's results are periodically confirmed by continually improving experiments. I've written an instructional piece on the vacuum and aether. I'll see if I can find it.

Here it is:

Pages 1 and 2:

Pages 3 and 4:

Pages 5 and 6:

Pages 7 and 8:

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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DG: the parts I understood

DG: the parts I understood are interesting. I heard that the Silvertooth experiment supports the hypothesis of partially dragged aether, as the Fizezau's equations on your page 8 suggests. ( v, which is velocity as I hope, << which is something like < as I hope, and for c, which is the speed of light, which I'm sure of, giving together v<<c)

As for your hypothetical description of aether, (page 3) it seems that you're nearing the truth, as far as I can tell. Some points in your text reminds me of a properties of aetheric forms available to me. They're surely astounding. Translated from esoteric terms, it's a perfect conducting medium. Usually, a conducting medium can transmit only an energy similar to it's own quality, but etheric matter can transmit all known qualities of energy, even some of the highest possible in solar system. A practical implication of that is, that thoughts have a certain energy or causes an emission of it, and that the etheric matter reacts significantly.

(I suggest to skip the following block and read it as the last, if your patience allows, as I don't want to stretch it)
It most often behaves as a chunk of liquid in weightless state, but it never gets torn apart into pieces. Instead, it's elastic without known limits. It often stays in such a half-liquid state, but it can be easily transformed into forms more similar to jelly (but without shaking), rubber of various density, or keratin. There's a zero fragility, which is sometimes annoying, as it's nearly impossible for me to take one piece from another totally. The surface of an object is generally very soft. There seems to be often a microscopic softer layers on a more dense core. These layers can be a bit sticky.
Most of this work with such a material is done simply by mental concentration and visualization, which affects the aetheric object, let's say, in my hands or in front of me, or around, or whatever.
Also, I have never seen that it would ever be subjected to gravity and other mass-related effects, like acceleration or inertia. Maybe they're present, but completely subjected to the form I make it to be in. I have no sensoric perception of a 'raw' aether. There are two hypotheses, supported by multiple of my sources. One says, that etheric matter can be converted on an equivalent physical matter and vice versa. Also, etheric world is very similar to the solid-physical, as etheric life forms are expected to get born, live some time, and then die and decompose. The second hypothesis says, that the etheric matter allows some form of FTL travel, maybe an instantaneous movement. This is not impossible, as a certain scientific discovery suggests.

Unfortunately, there are some technical obstacles. For example, when I observe a transformation (of shape and quality) of the etheric object (which is almost continual, as it swirls with the tides of thoughts) I don't know, what to measure it against. From my point of view, the transformation is either immediate, or as fast as I expect and imagine. I can't differ a speed of 1000 km/h from c speed or from absolute (immediate) speed of movement or transformation. My reaction time is 0.4s at best.
Any suggestions? What would you try to measure and how, being in my place?
I guess you'd suggest to visit a psychiatrist Smiling Well that could be fun, but what about something else, serious and constructive?
 

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Actually, the aether has

Actually, the aether has been experimentaly disproved.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment

 

 


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Quote:It most often behaves

Quote:

It most often behaves as a chunk of liquid in weightless state, but it never gets torn apart into pieces. Instead, it's elastic without known limits. It often stays in such a half-liquid state, but it can be easily transformed into forms more similar to jelly (but without shaking), rubber of various density, or keratin. There's a zero fragility, which is sometimes annoying, as it's nearly impossible for me to take one piece from another totally. The surface of an object is generally very soft. There seems to be often a microscopic softer layers on a more dense core. These layers can be a bit sticky.

Any substance possessing such properties would be unable to propogate transverse waves whose oscillations were that fast if that wave actually required the oscillation of the medium to propogate. You clearly misunderstood me gravely. An elasticity modulus is a measure of the force required to deform an object by a displacement x. So when I say that if a light wave required a medium, and that medium would have to have an elasticity modulus exceeding that of steel by 1 million, it means that it would have to be 1 million times less deformable than steel. No liquid can posssibly meet that property, since liquids are not compressible.

Quote:

Also, I have never seen that it would ever be subjected to gravity and other mass-related effects, like acceleration or inertia.

The problem is that the mechanical properties of aether require it to be tremendously rigid, and completely solid, but it cannot have mass (because then it would interfere with planetry motion) and it cannot physically obstruct planets. This is contradictory to its required property of having an elasticity modulus. By definition, anything that deforms when force is applied to it (an oscillating medium must meet this criteria) has mass.

Quote:

I can't differ a speed of 1000 km/h from c speed or from absolute (immediate) speed of movement or transformation. My reaction time is 0.4s at best.
Any suggestions? What would you try to measure and how, being in my place?

You are joking, right? Why would you even try? Light travels at 300 million meters per second. To discuss such velocities requires sensitive instruments.

Quote:

I heard that the Silvertooth experiment supports the hypothesis of partially dragged aether, as the Fizezau's equations on your page 8 suggests. ( v, which is velocity as I hope, << which is something like < as I hope, and for c, which is the speed of light, which I'm sure of, giving together v<<c)

Gah! You completely misunderstood my post! The whole point of page 8 was that Fizeau's result was shown to be an approximation which is only valid in non-relativistic situations! It was originally inserted to make Snell's law work in the context of the fact that c is invariant under inertial frames. Only relativity can accurately account for a medium whose motion (wrt the light source) is not much different to light speed. In other words, the relativistic correction term means that for relativistic situations, the observed velocity will include a relativistic correction term (this is empirically confirmed) thus disproving the aether hypothesis. But you still missed the central point. The fact that light can propogate without a medium and that c is always invariant effectively seals the case that c is the speed of light in a vacuum. The speeds of light in various media are given by relativistic transforms. They are not invariant! 

Additionally, you and I are using the term transform in a totally different way. In my discussion of electrodynamics, every time I use the word transform, I am referring to a linear transform. A linear transform is one where a set of n output variables is a function of n input variables such that:

y1=y1(x1,x2)

y2=y2(x1,x2)

such that:

y1=ax1+bx2

y2=cx1+dx2

Where a,b,c and d are matrix coefficients.What makes this important is the fact that any switch in inertial coordinate systems can be represented by a linear transform, a fact which is the basis of the Lorentz transformation laws describing time dilation and length contraction.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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Even without the math,

Even without the math, surely an aether which is partially dragged by the Earth would be effectively a viscous fluid permeating space. Surely this would cause the planets to slow down and their orbits would degenerate which definitely does not seem to have happened...

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BobSpence1 wrote: Even

BobSpence1 wrote:
Even without the math, surely an aether which is partially dragged by the Earth would be effectively a viscous fluid permeating space. Surely this would cause the planets to slow down and their orbits would degenerate which definitely does not seem to have happened...
No, not necessarily, because aether doesn't collide with solid matter. (but surprisingly, it collides with another piece of aether) That's no wonder, as the matter is mostly empty. Does all these particles of cosmic radiation passing through us, slow our planets down? I guess not. But there is a relationship between aether and nuclear fission. One of my sources says, that the aetheric wind on this whole planet is instantaneously stormed, whenever a nuclear bomb is tested. But what this means for our problem here, I don't know yet.

Cpt_pineapple wrote:

Actually, the aether has been experimentaly disproved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment

I can't blame you for not reading it all, I'll just repeat that the MM experiment is a non-sequitur, as the light beam gets phase-locked between the mirrors, and thus moves with them and measures nothing. The device used for the Silvertooth experiment has this mistake corrected the experiment supported the existence of aether.


DG: Just a quick question. (before I'll drop to sleep) You say that the light can move through space without a medium. Excuse me, but isn't the vacuum a medium? It has it's specific permitivity, energy, and so on, there's a lot going on in there. Rather than an emptiness, it's a medium, and we can't remove the vacuum from anywhere, so we can't really verify, if the light propagates without a medium.

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Quote:Excuse me, but isn't

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Excuse me, but isn't the vacuum a medium?

No. A medium is constituted of matter. It must have a phase state and constituent particles. As I have just spent a long time discussing, if light did require the oscillation of a medium to support it, then that medium would have to have a group a impossible mechanical properties.

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It has it's specific permitivity, energy, and so on, there's a lot going on in there.

That is not the definition of a medium.

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so we can't really verify, if the light propagates without a medium.

Yes we can. It's velocity is invariant under linear transforms. Thus it's propogation is not measured with respect to anything. The vacuum doesn't contain any matter with respect to which we could measure c. Light is self-propogating. That's what I just spend 8 pages discussing!

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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Quote:What do you guys think

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What do you guys think of this video? Shermer seems to have failed at proving astrology is bullshit. Not that I think it isn't...

If I may, I found that video to be extremely interesting. I would point-out, however, that the 'accuracy level' tended to rise whenever the statements were more flattering.

The results of the double-blind trial were, however,  frankly shocking to me.

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"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

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Cpt_pineapple

Cpt_pineapple wrote:

Actually, the aether has been experimentaly disproved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment

Yeah, that's the short version. For Luminon, though, one experiment trumps several thousand. (Think science, but backwards.)

So the math has to make an appearance, and who better than our very own reigning math champion, deludedgod? Sometimes when you're the champ, you have to bring out the belt, get up on the ropes and point at it to keep bitches in line.

PS - inspectormustard is another math heavyweight to watch.

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I almost forgot. All the

I almost forgot. All the problems I discussed in the paper above were those that were formulated on the basis of discoveries in the 19th century. How could I forget the two most important discoveries of the 20th that rendered aether a useless notion, both discoveries by Einstein!

1. The quantization of photons

2. The formalization of the Lorentz transforms

The former result is especially important in this case. Light, having a particle nature, obviously does not need a medium to propogate. The first discovery led to the formulation of quantum mechanics. Neither modern quantum mechanics or relativity sees the need to incorporate any form of an aetheric theory of motion into their framework, and why would they? It doesn't make sense and the framekwork works perfectly well without it.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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BobSpence1 wrote:Even

BobSpence1 wrote:
Even without the math, surely an aether which is partially dragged by the Earth would be effectively a viscous fluid permeating space. Surely this would cause the planets to slow down and their orbits would degenerate which definitely does not seem to have happened...

 


I see what you are saying Bob. The only thing is that your idea requires a certain presumption on the nature of aether, specifically, that it interacts with normal matter. As it happens, that may not be quite right.

 

OK, we both know that aether was a really bad guess. However, it was more than one bad guess, it was several and each version has different properties.

 

I have been googling to find out what Luminon is on about, because frankly, I don't really follow what he is saying. With that in mind, I have found mentions of aether going back to the time of Plato.

 

The earliest version that I have found is based on the idea that there are five platonic solids but only four elements (earth, air, fire and water). Apparently, Plato and his contemporaries bristled at the very idea of the universe have such an obvious asymmetry. So they came up with an invisible, untouchable fifth element that can't ever be perceived. Yet it must be there.

 

Following that, there are three thousand years of inspired yet wrong guesses about some extra thing that might explain the universe in some way if only it was actually real. Each of those wrong guesses had some set of specific properties but they did not always have the same properties. Any of those could be thought of as aether and several of them were called aether specifically.

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

In view of that, I would consider a somewhat broader idea. Specifically that aether is not really a real thing but more of a possible concept that fills in the holes in what, at the time was the then best explanation of the nature of the universe.

 

Basically, it could be taken as scientific shorthand for “we don't really know but this fits what we think is going on”. Looked at in that light,the Higgs boson, dark matter/energy and the cosmological constant are all in about the same boat as aether. Best guesses that fit the data and we think that if we perform the right experiments, we might actually find one or more of them.

 

Even if we don't find one or more of them, the search will tell us new things about the universe and the lack of any of them will raise new questions. Should that come to pass, new questions demand answers and possible candidate answers will fill the role of the “new aether”.

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It seems that the idea of

It seems that the idea of aether as an universal medium is a misunderstanding. According to the esoteric theory, it's an alternative, finer form of matter, which works as a medium for finer-than-material (spiritual) energy between the worlds composed of even finer matter, and this, solid-material one. Aether isn't an universal background of the universe, if solid matter needs a medium, aether needs it as well. And so it would be with even finer forms of matter and energy, of which the rest of the universe is composed.
Generally, these principles underlies and supports the solid-physical world, rather than violates it's laws, this is why it's diffcult to find them, unless we know what we are looking for. According to the calculations of galaxy rotation, there should be much more matter and energy than there is, our visible universe is about 5% of the needed amount. And exactly this value gives a cosmologic scheme of Alice Bailey (+1949), where three first levels of matter are known to us (solid, liquid, gaseous) and an etheric counterpart (four levels of matter) are unknown. Even more finer than that is remaining six of sevenfold levels of material existence. But etheric matter is the first one to be discovered, because it's basically just a finer form of our dense-physical matter. Four forms, actually.

Well, then aetheric matter may have a mass. The samples I observed (even in this moment, it's almost automatical) probably have it's common material features (like mass) suppressed by my intervention. But it definitely exists, the lowest and the most easily trainable form of clairvoyance is aetheric vision, and there is a lot to see. Even I had my glimpses, in rare moments of concentration.

Aetheric matter, according to it's known properties, provides a (rational, I'm tempted to say) explanation for many 'miracles', where objects are seen to appear out of nowhere and/or disappear, usually with a lot of witnesses in close proximity. These 'miracles' became very frequent in the last two decades, most of them in relation with religional symbols, which are easy to dismiss. But there are more bizarre cases of that, where a scam is even more diffcult, like a Lebanese girl weeping razor sharp crystals without any pain, a man producing a gemstones out of his toe, or Sathya Sai Baba manifesting a heaps of holy ash, a symbolical cheap jewelry and other items on his hand. He of course rolls his sleeve up before the trick.
In my opinion, these cases are basically a demonstrations of advanced science and technology, capable of converting the aetheric matter on dense-physical, and vice versa, not a scam, and not a divine intervention. It will take a while before our scientists gets on it's track. Maybe a constructive approach would help, instead of researching the methods of how it can be fake, we should search for how such things are possible.

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Luminon

Luminon wrote:
Generally, these principles underlies and supports the solid-physical world, rather than violates it's laws, this is why it's diffcult to find them, unless we know what we are looking for. According to the calculations of galaxy rotation, there should be much more matter and energy than there is, our visible universe is about 5% of the needed amount.

 

You really don't understand why I introduced dark matter/energy to this thread, do you?

 

Basically to place the nineteenth century speculation called aether into a twenty-first century context. What the old idea of aether has in common with dark matter/energy is that it is a scientific placeholder for something that our current model suggests ought to exist.

 

We really are not confident to any great degree what dark matter/energy may be exactly but the current model of cosmology has a couple of obvious holes that need to be filled and dark matter/energy are the placeholder names that we are using until our understanding of the universe actually fills those holes.

 

Luminon wrote:
And exactly this value gives a cosmologic scheme of Alice Bailey (+1949), where three first levels of matter are known to us (solid, liquid, gaseous) and an etheric counterpart (four levels of matter) are unknown.

 

I hope that you realize that Alice Bailey was wrong on a great many things. She was an anti-semite and a white supremacist. She taught that the races ought not to mix and confusingly that racial mixing would solve all of the world's problems. I could go on but you should get the basic idea.

 

Luminon wrote:
Well, then aetheric matter may have a mass. The samples I observed (even in this moment, it's almost automatical) probably have it's common material features (like mass) suppressed by my intervention.

 

OK, I am not sure what you are on about here but if you can change mass at will, then you are not working with dark matter/energy. That belongs to a different set of scientific placeholders/guesses. The leading contender to fill that particular hole is the Higgs boson but there are a few “Higgsless” models out there as well.

 

If you are going to make a claim on something, I wish that you would take a bit more time to try and understand what science has to say on the matters that you want to refer to.

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Quote:where three first

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where three first levels of matter are known to us (solid, liquid, gaseous)

You know, if you're going to make shit up, at least try to make it sound accurate. You are (in the above) referring to phase changes. Phases have no effect on the individual constituent atoms and molecules of a substance. They indicate how much internal kinetic energy is present in a chemical system. Atoms and molecules can form  intermolecular forces (such as dipole-dipole hydrogen bonding, metallic bonding, or in the case of Group IV elements, covalent bonding, and van der waals forces). The temperature of a system is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecules (as represented by the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution). As temperature of a system increases, the forces that tend to cause molecules to move randomly (kinetic energy of heat) become stronger than those that hold them together (intermolecular forces). As temperature decreases, the kinetic energy decreases and so the intermolecular forces between molecules are stronger than the kinetic forces that cause them to move randomly. This has nothing to do with individual molecules. They are not affected by these phase changes in any way. When you freeze water or melt ice, you are still dealing with exactly the same molecules of H2O. Nothing about the individual molecules has changed, only the total internal energy of the system and hence the kinetic energy posessed by each molecule. There is therefore absolutely no difference in terms of fundamental constituency, between identical substances at different phase. It is a purely thermodynamic property.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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You really don't understand why I introduced dark matter/energy to this thread, do you?

 

Basically to place the nineteenth century speculation called aether into a twenty-first century context. What the old idea of aether has in common with dark matter/energy is that it is a scientific placeholder for something that our current model suggests ought to exist.

 

We really are not confident to any great degree what dark matter/energy may be exactly but the current model of cosmology has a couple of obvious holes that need to be filled and dark matter/energy are the placeholder names that we are using until our understanding of the universe actually fills those holes.

Yeah, I just mentioned that the ratio between known matter+energy and 'dark' matter+energy is the same as the ratio between dense-material parts of universe and etheric+higher parts of universe, described by A. Bailey's schemes. I just suggested a filling for the holes in theory, which fits there exactly.

 

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:
I hope that you realize that Alice Bailey was wrong on a great many things. She was an anti-semite and a white supremacist. She taught that the races ought not to mix and confusingly that racial mixing would solve all of the world's problems. I could go on but you should get the basic idea.
Yes, I know that people likes to explain their writings that way, taken out of context. Esotericists doesn't identify a people with their bodies, we consider the body as a vehicle for the consciousness. While the vehicles may be of a various quality, the individual and collective consciousness is more important than that and transcends any racial differences. So Mrs. Bailey basically described a properties of vehicles for living, while those who identify with the vehicles took it personally, which was not intended, I believe.


 

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:
  OK, I am not sure what you are on about here but if you can change mass at will, then you are not working with dark matter/energy. That belongs to a different set of scientific placeholders/guesses. The leading contender to fill that particular hole is the Higgs boson but there are a few “Higgsless” models out there as well.

If you are going to make a claim on something, I wish that you would take a bit more time to try and understand what science has to say on the matters that you want to refer to.

 

No, I don't mean changing the mass... It's like holding an object up the ground manually, it also doesn't make the mass or gravity disappear, just to work against it. This is what I mean by suppressing such an effect by someone's intervention. The aetheric object becomes perceivable to me, but in this process I interfere with it's properties and it's diffcult to differ which qualities are caused by me, and which are the innate qualities of aether. It's like to measure a physical properties of H2O, when you have only samples which contains 60% of ethanol.


Deludedgod: I know, I'm just searching for terms. The aether is usually described as a finer counterpart of physical matter, finer than gaseous phase, but we obviously don't get any by heating a gas. There must be some changeable physical value of matter, which allows the matter to shift it's phase from aetheric to dense-material.  Maybe it is the inner frequency of atoms, like the quartz or cesium has in the clocks and oscillators? I've got to search more about that later, but I'm in hurry now.


 

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There is a truth to

There is a truth to astrology but I think it's more on a suggestive level. To make my point, if one person grew up being constantly told that they were smart, and another person grew up being call stupid... chances are, the first would grow up to be a doctor and the second might grow up pumping gas. As for astrology, if a person goes through life believing that certain traits apply to them, then they will most likely follow suit.

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Having spent much of this

Having spent much of this thread talking about the incorrect notion of luminiferous aether, we should return to the topic at hand, namely the stupidity of astrology.

First things first. There is absolutely nothing magical or metaphysical about a star. A star is nothing more than a diffuse body of hydrogen gas that collected under the influence of gravity until the internal kinetic energy of the gaseous atoms present was sufficient to induce fusion,whereby a resulting radiation pressure equilibriated the inward collapse due to gravity. The reason these bodies are luminous is because of the black body principle. All objects above 0K will emit electromagnetic radiation as a consequence of the excitement and relaxation of electrons between quantized orbitals in their constituent atoms. Stars are hot enough that they emit visible light. Objects on Earth are in general, not hot enough to emit visible light and emit the bulk of their radiation in IR (as per Wein's Law). However, because of their comparatively low temperature, they do not emit very much radiation anyway.

Second: There is only one star which has a direct causal influence on Earth: Our star. The sun. Nor is there anything particularly magical about this influence. The sun supplies the Earth with light and heat, and keeps the Earth in orbit around it, and the gravitational force of the sun is what formed the Earth.

Third: It has been known for centuries that stars trace arcs around the night sky as observed. Ancient astronomers noted this and also noted that the relative position of stars did not change with this tracing. As a consequence they concluded that all the stars were located on a "celestrial sphere" which rotated around the Earth on which the constellations were fixed. They had it backwards. It's Earth that rotates. The idea of a "constellation" is completely arbitrary since it is just a pattern of stars that appears from Earth. It has no relation to the position of stars themselves. In a single constellation, some stars will be a 10-20 light years away, and others will be thousands of light years away. It is just what a set pattern "looks like" from Earth. None of these stars causally affect Earth, especially not those which are hundreds or even thousands of light years away (hell, those stars would be on a different spiral arm of this galaxy).

Fourth: Relative position of constellations is not fixed. Ancient astronomers thought they were fixed because observing them over periods of decades doesn't allow the detection of noticeable change. But of course, the Earth precesses in its orbit. The axis of rotation traces out a cone. As a consequence, all of the angular displacements of stars relative to the axis of Earth will shift. Right now the north star is Polaris. In 12,000 years time it will be Vega. The orientation of Earth with respect to the position of stars is different now than it was during the time when the first horoscopes were being created.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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