For peter who likes WTF?? stuff

[Vraith]

heh.
This is just...flummoxeliciousous.

www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/absol ... 04666.html

[I'm Murrin]

I, uh, wait, uh, what?

This article says they're violating the second law of thermodynamics.

Edit: Different article that started putting it more into perspective for me.
www.nature.com/news/quantum-gas-goes-be ... ro-1.12146

The "negative temperature" is not a function of having less-than-zero energy (which it would require to be "below" absolute zero, if we considered it in the way we usually do linear scales) but a new energy state where the atoms behave in a manner that's the opposite of behaviour of normal postive-Kelvin matter, preferring to occupy higher energy states than lower ones, and to transfer energy out regardless of their own temperature (hence behaving as if always hotter). It's a state achieved by increasing the energy of the particles without allowing them to leave their stable, near-absolute-zero positions.

This second article doesn't bring up the "above 100% efficiency" stuff, but it does tell us that we might have just found a way to create anti gravity materials(!!!).

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Fascinating stuff, indeed. I was telling my coworkers, who were trying to understand the article, that temperature in that region is not based on atomic or molecular vibration but energy state, as the article states.

I know that atoms at near-absolute zero--I suppose we can't call it "absolute zero" anymore--have more wavelike properties than particle-like so I wonder how the negative temperature atoms will behave? Even though they are occupying only higher-energy states do they still have a more wavelike nature?

I will have to look into the whole "absorbing entropy" thing because it is completely counter-intuitive...but, then again, so is negative temperature.

The article also mentions negative pressure--they got the atoms to attract each other more than to repel. This, also, is highly unusual. Wouldn't "negative pressure" be akin to "infinite" gravity, so we could make stable yet atomic-sized black holes?

[Lefdmae Deemalr Effaeldm]

Looks quite promising, though I guess we'll have to see.

Thanks for the articles, and I fetched one more www.mpg.de/6776082/negative_absolute_temperature

By the way, I think I can question how it's said in one of the articles

one might think of temperature as existing on a scale that is actually a loop, not linear

as somewhat misleading, if I understand correctly myself - the energy flow does look like a loop in this case, but not entropy. But perhaps I'm picking at words a bit too much.

[peter]

Yeah, yeah, yeah - I'm lovin' that. I see perpetual motion macines poppin' out of the woodwork all over the place!

[Vraith]

These could have gone a number of places---but one is about explaining and one is about creativity, and one mentions mechanisms proving/discovering--- things that came up originally in peter-originated discussions, IIRC. [and spread to lots of stuff].
Nothing really deep or detailed---but with Implications.

fivethirtyeight.com/features/stop-trying-to-be-creative/


https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150723 ... planation/

[peter]

Damn that's odd. Temperature loops, machines of more than 100% efficiency (I'm gibbering with pm tension already) - tear up the rule book and throw it away!

[Vraith]

Not only for peter this time, but WTF?-worthy considering a bunch of talk that's gone on around here about the universe.

Just ended up at a site...and I've got some reading ahead.
The quote is from his blog, then the link to that post, then the link to his page where you can get to other stuff he's said/done. [emphasis mine in quote]

1.The expansion of the universe doesn’t have a “speed.” Really the discussion should begin and end right there. Comparing the expansion rate of the universe to the speed of light is like comparing the height of a building to your weight. You’re not doing good scientific explanation; you’ve had too much to drink and should just go home.The expansion of the universe is quantified by the Hubble constant, which is typically quoted in crazy units of kilometers per second per megaparsec. That’s (distance divided by time) divided by distance, or simply 1/time. Speed, meanwhile, is measured in distance/time. Not the same units! Comparing the two concepts is crazy.

Admittedly, you can construct a quantity with units of velocity from the Hubble constant, using Hubble’s law, v = Hd (the apparent velocity of a galaxy is given by the Hubble constant times its distance). Individual galaxies are indeed associated with recession velocities. But different galaxies, manifestly, have different velocities. The idea of even talking about “the expansion velocity of the universe” is bizarre and never should have been entertained in the first place.

www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/

www.preposterousuniverse.com/

And, just a note of surprise, unrelated to above---
Everyone knows the visible spectrum is just a small part of the whole spectrum.
But did you know how MUCH smaller? I didn't---and I was shocked.
The guy said it was one trillionth or one ten trillionth, wasn't listening that closely at first. But does it matter? Even with the smaller number:
If you colored in the visible spectrum on a line one inch long---the entire spectrum would require a line nearly 16000 MILES long.

[peter]

I at least had never fallen into the trap of thinking the inflation phase of the universe was occurring at speeds greater than that of light for the simple reason I'd never given it a moments thought , but I am struggling with the idea that distance can increase without it being possible to express its doing so in terms of a rate.......but I guess it's a relativity thing.

(That's a fine link to a smart man V.)

Re the spectrum thing - but what does it all do? We know what we can do with visible light, and x-rays, microwaves and radio waves etc, but the rest of it must do stuff as well mustn't it?

[Vraith]

, but the rest of it must do stuff as well mustn't it?

Mostly what it does is kill living things
[[well, a lot of it would, anyway, if it could get at us.]]

And I'm struggling with what the guy is saying, too. Gonna take numerous re-readings and connected other source readings.
One thing he said was obvious, I've been saying for years...though of course it is the easiest thing there. . Both the understanding and misunderstanding moving between deep science/math and normal human speak is because of analogy. [[even including the person performing the manuever]].
We can't be complete/accurate/precise with it---but without it, we can't learn/understand at all.

[peter]

Yes - physics requires the language of mathematics in the same way Shakespeare requires the language of English. Without it all you have is an approximation.

[Avatar]

Everyone knows the visible spectrum is just a small part of the whole spectrum.
But did you know how MUCH smaller? I didn't---and I was shocked.
The guy said it was one trillionth or one ten trillionth, wasn't listening that closely at first. But does it matter? Even with the smaller number:
If you colored in the visible spectrum on a line one inch long---the entire spectrum would require a line nearly 16000 MILES long.

What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?

--A

[Vraith]

What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?

--A

Love that. F-H was full of great quotes.
Honestly, one of the coolest things about being a cyborg [besides immortality and super-intelligence of course. Actually, and add-on to feed those things] is that we can/will expand the range of every sense we have [and we have a lot more than 5] and even invent new ones.
What will art/aesthetics be when THAT happens?
People think machine/electronic plug-ins will make us less human...
There is no reason that has to be the case...and since most people care more about sensations, experiences, beauty, etc. a helluva lot more than they care about thinking/understanding, it is far more likely that we'll make ourselves MORE "human."
[[in reality, a lot of both. People will realize fairly quickly that being smarter/understanding more enhances all the other stuff when the human machine is working properly]]

[peter]

But will there be more than one way for the human machine to work properly? More than five senses puzzles me; I can imagine it, but not what they could be. Once you have seen, touched, heard, smelled and tasted an object, what have you left?

[Vraith]

But will there be more than one way for the human machine to work properly?

More than five senses puzzles me; I can imagine it, but not what they could be. Once you have seen, touched, heard, smelled and tasted an object, what have you left?

Of course there will. Almost all our evolution [after we got to the brain we got now] has been inventing new human operations/functions.

On senses: a fair number of additional ones are subconscious [or even non-conscious] so you don't often notice them.
But let's start with the "quibbling" and move up:
Your sight has two completely different sensors...though the end product is merged in the brain.
What you call touch is at least 5 [maybe more] separate sensors and brain processes/centers.
Heat and cold aren't part of touch---and aren't part of each other.
Neither is pain. [there are 3 different kinds of pain sensors---they go to same brain intersection. Some of them are passed on to the touch-center afterwards.]
Almost everything you do when moving [or even standing, or knowing where you are when lying down] is non-conscious [mostly---though you sometimes feel symptoms like "holy shit, I'm falling!"] and a dynamic interplay between at nearly a dozen [maybe more] separate sensory cells and associated brain apps.

And lets not even get started with the "sense" of time, and all the things it can do, and things we wouldn't be able to do without it...
But that does bring me to this: that it isn't so much the "sense," or the receptor, it's what we do with it---the qualia in our heads.
We don't "see" yellow. A cell in our eye is stimulated by a wavelength, sends a signal to the brain, which processes it and CREATES [invents/imagines?] the colorness we label "yellow." There is no actual, physical, way in which yellow is yellow. The only physicality is that what we create in our heads and call yellow is our interpretation of a certain waveform.
[[you may wonder about that, but I think it is proven fairly convincingly and simply by the fact that synasthesia exists...you can't physically/materially "hear" yellow because ears don't detect light. But people DO "hear" colors---and lots of other interesting things. Because the colorness/soundness/qualia is purely mental. Association, analogy, construction creates the yellow ball. There is correlation/correspondence of various kinds, but not identity.

Someone might say it is "bad wiring" that sends the color input to the hearing center. I'd say that doesn't matter. The fact that a different bunch of cells doing the job, and thereby changing the "output"---the qualia---is only possible because the existence of qualia of ANY kind is just cells doing the job of changing the input to output/qualia.]]

I wonder what it would be like if a person had a full switching so they could ONLY "see" sound, and ONLY "hear" light.
I mean, just starting with the fact that eyes are not even able to detect a single octave of light [but have very fine gradations WITHIN the bounds]...but ears can separate many octaves of sound [with much less fine distinction within the bounds]
I don't know what that would mean---no one does or can, I don't think, not even the current synasthetics...because the two aren't fully swapped, they just overlap...and people don't have identical qualia crossover. Csharp may sound green to one person, purple to another.

From the architecture of the world, our minds transformed to the architecture of the pyramid, the cathedral, the city. The architecture of the brain that manufactures qualia, once understood, will create the same possibility. [[among all the other architectures in the brain...which will also allow unimaginable---quite literally, because we don't have the architecture to perceive them yet---possibilities.]]

[peter]

That's a very ineresting post V - and clearly correct, but in the broader sense ( ) of what we means when we refer to our 'five senses'. But what we are after here is not so much variations on existing themes - but entirely new ones. I (contend is to strong a word, but say) suspect that, directed as it was by the physics of the universe we live in - and the fact that not knowing anything about that universe in a sensory sense would kill you - evolution has kitted us up with means to construct all of the relevant qualia that pertain to our survival. Ie The reason we don't have more senses - and never will is that no other qualia are relevant - or to re-phrase, there are none.

(Edit: the immediately obvious flaw in the argument is the local manner in which we are kitted up by evolution: it shapes us upmto perceive our own niche and not much more!)

[Vraith]

(Edit: the immediately obvious flaw in the argument is the local manner in which we are kitted up by evolution: it shapes us upmto perceive our own niche and not much more!)

Our own niche [locally], and our survival temporarily.

There are things we're not adapted to detect [or broader/further-ranging spectra of things we are] that would be incredibly useful for a modern human that had little or no survival value in the past. Creatures exist right here that have senses we don't [and/or extensions/refinements fo those we do].
Many forms of detection would be highly useful in space that have little use here.
Not to mention a modification of our self-orientation/motor-control/awareness system to work more effectively in zero-[or multiple-]g areas and in a 3D motion space.
And there is no necessary reason I can think of that qualia aren't/can't be infinitely varied---and each variation having a particular value/use.

[peter]

Good points: I suppose homing pigeons and migratory birds (putative ?) ability to navigate via magnetic force line detection would have to qualify as use of a sense of a completely different types our own (though I believe even we still have latent capabilities in this direction).

[Vraith]

(though I believe even we still have latent capabilities in this direction).

I think that's so--pretty sure a small, but not insignificant, percentage of folk have it active [if not conscious]
And much extended possibility in people--some who can echo locate/navigate, super-taster/smellers know flavors and scents you cannot imagine/have no qualia for [unless you are one of them]. Apparently people with a 4th color cone---so they see something like 10 million colors instead of a mere 1mill [I think those are the numbers.]