General > Biology

Crows are pretty damn smart

<< < (11/30) > >>

Numsgil:

--- Quote from: Peter ---
--- Quote from: Numsgil ---In science, a theory doesn't mean "educated guess", like it's used in everyday life (that's called a hypothesis in science).  Theory means "something that explains all known data on the subject."  And even after it's proven, it tends to keep the "theory" label (eg: Pythagorean Theorem).  Basically science doesn't deal in absolutes.  It doesn't say "this is the way the universe works", it says "if you use this model, you can predict outcomes to events within the tolerance of measuring instruments."  See Theory vs. Hypothesis.  A theory is like a best-fit polynomial.  You use it to fit the data you have, and make predictions about future data you will receive.  If those predictions are wrong, science (slowly) will revise the theory until it takes the new data in to account as well as the old data.  That way theories are rarely "wrong", they're usually just incomplete (ie: Newton's laws of motion under relativistic speeds).
--- End quote ---
I that a hypothesis is a speculation, I know a theory is well though out, it is not like there are theorys brurted out. But wait, it does not explain how the universe works?, it does not?

--- End quote ---

Science doesn't say that the universe exploded out from a singularity.  It says that observed data is consistent with that conclusion.  The difference is the difference between faith (this is the way it happened), and a weaselly sort of data based conclusion (it sure seems like this is the way it happened, based on things I observe with my telescope).  The idea of a big bang explained some facts that didn't fit in the previous model, and predicted some conclusions that have largely been validated over the years (background radiation for instance).  When facts come along that don't agree with the theory, there'll be some grumbling, but eventually they'll come up with a new model to explain all the facts.  But that's the only "scientific" way to dismiss a theory: it has to contradict some known fact.


--- Quote from: Testlund ---
--- Quote from: Numsgil ---Um, don't trust "scientists" that post on youtube.  You tube is for dogs on skateboards.  Here's another tip: if they say something like "what was before the big bang" or "why did the big bang happen then instead of before or later", they don't know what they're talking about.  Time itself started at the big bang.  There was no "before", because there was no time.  There also wasn't a "somewhere else", because space didn't exist either.
--- End quote ---
Dog.. skateboard.... , but why not. Why can't those scientists be trusted. You are posting links to wikipedia, well it isn't like that can be universal trusted, I have found some mistakes in it, just a few but still, can you trust wikipedia fully.

--- End quote ---

Wikipedia isn't perfect, but it strives for verifiability.  Meaning that editors don't invent new information, they just find existing information from reputable sources and put it in to encyclopedic formats.  Each article is (ideally) debated and pounded on by everyone with an interest, so the end result is very close to humanity's actual understanding of a subject.  On youtube, however, nothing has to be verified by independent sources.  So any crackpot with a computer can say absolutely whatever they want.  They can distort or ignore data, outright lie, pander, etc. etc.  Basically it's Propoganda.  So don't trust what you see on youtube anymore than you would trust the propoganda film reels from World War 2 (our boys in the trenches really stick it to those Nazis using superior American engineering and know how.  Go get 'em boys!)

For comparison, a well thought out theory will openly admit places where it falls apart and needs further work.  Darwin, for instance, discussed the idea of irreducible complexity in his Origin of the Species book: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case."  If you read actual science articles in reputable journals, you'll usually find a discussion at the end where they point out areas where their work is incomplete (usually as a way to build a bridge for future articles, I imagine.)

Numsgil:
Also, Skateboarding dog.  An its XTREME competitor.

gymsum:

--- Quote from: Peter ---
--- Quote from: gymsum ---If you lower pressure like in a vacum, you can boil water which releases its energy and thus freezes.
--- End quote ---
Just read this line a few times yourself, what is wrong?

--- End quote ---

If you do not believe me, you can check using either math (physics) or you can do the experiment I did in highschool to prove one of the laws of Boyle. Change in Pressure = Change in Temp, since temp is energy and pressure is work on the system. Take a vaccum, they sell them online at science supplies, and a petri (sp?) dish of water and place the water inside the vacum. If you lower the pressure, the water will begin to boil because as the pressure drops, the boil point of water drops (this is do to thermal exspansion). So if you know anything about energy and work, you would intuitively know that if the water boils, it will release energy to convert the water into steam. Without checking my notes; the amount of energy used to convert the liquid into vapor drops the temperature of the remaining water, and freezes it. I've done this experiment and know it works. DOnt believe me ask your local High School Physics teacher. Its one of the laws behind Boyle and Thermodynamics.

Peter: If I could explain something to you that told you millions about a specific tree in a forrest, but it did not explain how the forrest worked, would all that information about that one tree not be useful? The problem you have and Numsquil are discussing is known as the infinity; no matter how much time is spent understanding a specific function or idea, the resulting entirety known about the rest that is unknonw, is less than a billionth of a percentile. Thats because theres infitely much that is left unknown, by simply knowing a few facts. I may have only explained how the Spruce works to you (continuing the idea), but its not necessarly how the forrest works. So what do you assume about the forrest? Well spruce requrie intense heat to cut back overgrowths and help spread seed, so obviously thats how the forrest works. And you know that each spruce needs about 32 ft of space to take and last longer than a decade. So by only knowing everything you possibly could about this one species, you know absolutely nothing about the remaining 99% of total species remaining in the forrest, not to mention the facct that there could very well be civilization near or in it. Thats how the Big Bang Theory is relavant to the tree from the forrest idea. Its not that its completely right or completely wrong, its just an accumulation of all previously exsisting knowledge, which is how all theories are derived, one after the other in a logical progression.

Also youtube doesnt edit/audit posts that are inacurrate or wrong. WIki has a community of super nerds that do that I believe.

Finally, we come to Einsteins greatest Blunder: The exspansion of the Universe. Einsteins theory of Relativity could not be used to produce a model of the universe that was static, it would either expand or collapse. At first he was proven wrong, and as of recently we have began to understand where he left off. THe universe is expanding. Einsteins theory of relativity was unique because it treated the speed of light as the maximum, and was designed around the idea that time had no ether (or medium by which it progressed/moved). If you want to deny any of the facts I presented, you're denying thousands of years of human knowledge and hundreds of years of physics.

To answer your math questions, I took 4 tons, as standard weights (US), converted it into metric tons, and then checked my result with my physics notes (it sayed 4 mil metric tons as of 2006). SO I went with that. 4 tons is a horable inacurate count, considering  4 x 10^33 ergs/sec is the amount of energy produced by the sun, and energy = mc^2. Its simple algebra if you cant figure it out from there.. ergs is a unit of metric ton equivelance, the amount of energy to move one metric unit . So you divide the amount of energy produced by the sun (available from NASA) by its mass (again NASA) times the speed of light (take a guess). I have a graphing calc, so the numbers should be dead on. The 1% is realy easy dude, you take the total known mass of the sun, and divide it by the amount lost. I got 16 billionths of a percent a year, or 1% every 160 billion years. That fact alone has alot to say about how our solar system formed.

Numsgil:

--- Quote from: gymsum ---
--- Quote from: Peter ---
--- Quote from: gymsum ---If you lower pressure like in a vacum, you can boil water which releases its energy and thus freezes.
--- End quote ---
Just read this line a few times yourself, what is wrong?

--- End quote ---

If you do not believe me, you can check using either math (physics) or you can do the experiment I did in highschool to prove one of the laws of Boyle. Change in Pressure = Change in Temp, since temp is energy and pressure is work on the system. Take a vaccum, they sell them online at science supplies, and a petri (sp?) dish of water and place the water inside the vacum. If you lower the pressure, the water will begin to boil because as the pressure drops, the boil point of water drops (this is do to thermal exspansion). So if you know anything about energy and work, you would intuitively know that if the water boils, it will release energy to convert the water into steam. Without checking my notes; the amount of energy used to convert the liquid into vapor drops the temperature of the remaining water, and freezes it. I've done this experiment and know it works. DOnt believe me ask your local High School Physics teacher. Its one of the laws behind Boyle and Thermodynamics.

--- End quote ---

You can lower the atmospheric pressure and boil water at room temperature.  There's even a magical thing called a triple point, where you can get water to exist as a solid, liquid, and gas at the same time.  Ideal gas laws can be a lot of fun, and they're usually covered in high school physics.


--- Quote ---Peter: If I could explain something to you that told you millions about a specific tree in a forrest, but it did not explain how the forrest worked, would all that information about that one tree not be useful? The problem you have and Numsquil are discussing is known as the infinity; no matter how much time is spent understanding a specific function or idea, the resulting entirety known about the rest that is unknonw, is less than a billionth of a percentile.  
 Thats because theres infitely much that is left unknown, by simply knowing a few facts.
--- End quote ---

Is that a made up statistic? You know 99.567% of all claims involving percentages are made up on the spot

There's always an exponential growth in questions in regards to answers (that's how you know you have a good answer).  But we weren't looking for a whole rabbits hole worth of knowledge.  We just wanted to see if you had a vague understanding of what you're talking about.  When you say crazy things, people tend to treat you crazy.  If you can convince them your not crazy by saying something particularly lucid, they might re-evaluate their opinion of you (crazy is as crazy does...)

The sun converts something from matter to energy.  Apparently several tons of it a day.  What's the something?  And what's the process?  What sort of energy is produced?


--- Quote ---WIki has a community of super nerds that do that I believe.
--- End quote ---

As a wiki super nerd, I take offense to that!  


--- Quote ---Finally, we come to Einsteins greatest Blunder: The exspansion of the Universe. Einsteins theory of Relativity could not be used to produce a model of the universe that was static, it would either expand or collapse. At first he was proven wrong, and as of recently we have began to understand where he left off. THe universe is expanding. Einsteins theory of relativity was unique because it treated the speed of light as the maximum, and was designed around the idea that time had no ether (or medium by which it progressed/moved). If you want to deny any of the facts I presented, you're denying thousands of years of human knowledge and hundreds of years of physics.
--- End quote ---

Specifically he's referring to the consmological constant.

gymsum:
Nums, I derivered the infinity from the indea of the 1%. If you have 1% of something, you have 99% remainining not yours (or unknown). Ther rule of devision by nine means the remaining unknonw (or not yours) is 1/99 or .1 repeating into infinity. The same would hold treu if you knew 50% of all the universal knowledge, theres still an infinity of .5s to have learned before you can say I know 51% of everything. If you consider eacg digit a bit of knowledge, you realize how much information there truely is (since we're speaking in stats, the percentage represnents what humans currently know and wish to know). The energy is in photon, the chemical reactions of the sun relaese the photons as energy, the entire amount fo photons realesed is so great, it actually weights 4 million metric tons. Im not sure how or why, but I do known it is nuclear fusion. As all its reserves of fuel become hydrogen, the sun will eventually become colder and darker. (what is it nitrogen to hydrogen? idk I never took chemistry).

Infinity: If you can imagine a decimal place as a mirrored part of the whole. So .5 is a half mirror image of 1, and .05 is a half mirror image of .5 and so on. So .5 repeating indefinitely is a sefl mirror image of .5 continuously, meaning there is an infinite threshhold between the last .5 and the next. This threshhold comes from the Chaos THeory, and fractals. Google search a fractal if you're not sure. The amount of space between one area of color and where another color intersects, is inifinitely small, and no matter how much magnification is used, there will always be a gap between the two. This is why things like weather are impossible to predict. Now this may have is own named theory, but I say its easier to remember it as the theory of infinity. The real life example being money. Say you have 1 dollar. You buy a soda thats half what is in your wallet. So the next time you buy the soda it only costs half your wallet, and gives you equally as much halves as your wallet is from its starting ballance (meaning the second soda is half as large, and the third is half as large as the second, and so on). At no point did you run out of money, but the amount of liquid purchased equates to the total sum of all charges made on your wallet (meaning 1 + .5 + .05 and so on until some limit is reached, left for the masses to decide). This idea was also held true with the latest geometric proof. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/ This proof took him an entire lifetime to prove one concept; and beyond that it was something said to be common knowledge, but not yet proven. So inorder to gain 1 new proof from the thousnads in exsistance, it took one life time. As opposed to the first proof which may have very well taken a few hours to think up to produce 1 out of the entire known proofs. Its just an attempt to explain how difficult it is to continue to expand on anything using numbers.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page