🚀 go-pugleaf

When "WE make the laws of Nature", idiocy increases exponentially:

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/513
"In spite of its old age, the Second Law of Thermodynamics "is alive
and kicking," says Max Tegmark, stimulating research on "really,
really big puzzles." In Tegmark's case, "big" encompasses the cosmos,
and investigating the entropy of the universe offers one path into
understanding "how we started out." Tegmark frames his talk with
paradoxical questions: Why is entropy so low, and why is entropy so
high? The first question is "crucial to understanding the arrow of
time," and involves the microscopic definition of entropy. 13.7
billion years after the Big Bang, entropy in the observable universe
is in "the ballpark of 1089 bits -- crudely speaking, a google." This
is much lower than the theoretical limit to how much entropy our
cosmos could contain. Also, Tegmark wonders, why has our solar system
ended up so far from thermal equilibrium, since when the universe was
younger, the temperature was almost the same everywhere? It turns out
that in cosmology, unlike classical physics, atoms start out at
uniform density and end up, abetted by gravity, "clumpy," with gas
getting denser and forming stars. Tegmark shows a supercomputer
simulation of this process, which depicts the evolution of a universe
with galaxies and solar systems like our own. Different temperatures
in the universe aren’t due to magic, he says, just Einstein’s theory
of gravity and basic gas physics."

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0804/0804.0016v3.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PkLLXhONvQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pLCOizNSLI

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/space/2008/01/teleportation-fact-or-fiction.html
"Making someone vanish in New York and appear an instant later in
Tokyo is way beyond current technology but just might be possible in
the far future, physicists told an audience at MIT attending a preview
and panel discussion about the movie Jumper on Wednesday. Actor Hayden
Christensen and director Doug Liman were at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in Cambridge, US, to show scenes from the
upcoming movie and to discuss it with physicists Max Tegmark and
Edward Farhi.....I was expecting the physicists to say that trying to
teleport something as complex as a human being would be totally out of
the question. So I was surprised when they said they wouldn't rule it
out, even if it is way beyond current technology. Physicists have
teleported individual particles of light called photons across
distances of more than 3 kilometres, according to Farhi (below,
right), who heads MIT's Center for Theoretical Physics, and have also
teleported particles of matter such as electrons.....However, if it
were one day possible to teleport a person, down to the quantum state
of each of their atoms, he said the teleported person at point B
should have exactly the same thoughts and memories as the person whose
quantum state was destroyed at point A. The other physicist on the
panel, Max Tegmark (above, left), pointed out another possible way to
transport things quickly across space-time. The laws of physics allow
for the existence of "wormholes", which are distortions in the fabric
of space that can link two distant locations. If you could build and
take such a shortcut, you could go faster than the speed of light and
also time travel, Tegmark said."

http://www.ekkehard-friebe.de/wallace.htm
Bryan Wallace: "I expect that the scientists of the future will
consider the dominant abstract physics theories of our time in much
the same light as we now consider the Medieval theories of how many
angels can dance on the head of a pin or that the Earth stands still
and the Universe moves around it."

Pentcho Valev wrote:

http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/1984-21.html#twentyone
" But how can you control matter ? " he burst out. " You don't even
control the climate or the law of gravity. And there are disease,
pain, death - " O'Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. " We
control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the
skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we
could not do. Invisibility, levitation - anything. I could float off
this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because
the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-
century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature."

http://web.mit.edu/keenansymposium/overview/background/index.html
Arthur Eddington: "The law that entropy always increases, holds, I
think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone
points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in
disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for
Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation
- well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your
theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can
give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest
humiliation."

L. McGlashan, Chemical thermodynamics, Academic Press, London (1979),
pp. 72-73: "For an infinitesimal change in the state of a phase alpha
we write
dU = T dS - p dV + SUM mu_B dn_B (1)
We regard equation (1) as an axiom and call it the fundamental
equation for a change of the state of a phase alpha. It is one half of
the second law of thermodynamics. We do not ask where it comes from.
Indeed we do not admit the existence of any more fundamental relations
from which it might have been derived. Nor shall we here enquire into
the history of its formulation, though that is a subject of great
interest to the historian of science. It is a starting point ; it must
be learnt by heart."

http://www.bartleby.com/173/7.html
Albert Einstein: "THERE is hardly a simpler law in physics than that
according to which light is propagated in empty space. Every child at
school knows, or believes he knows, that this propagation takes place
in straight lines with a velocity c=300,000 km./sec. At all events we
know with great exactness that this velocity is the same for all
colours, because if this were not the case, the minimum of emission
would not be observed simultaneously for different colours during the
eclipse of a fixed star by its dark neighbour. By means of similar
considerations based on observations of double stars, the Dutch
astronomer De Sitter was also able to show that the velocity of
propagation of light cannot depend on the velocity of motion of the
body emitting the light. The assumption that this velocity of
propagation is dependent on the direction in space is in itself
improbable. In short, let us assume that the simple law of the
constancy of the velocity of light c (in vacuum) is justifiably
believed by the child at school. Who would imagine that this simple
law has plunged the conscientiously thoughtful physicist into the
greatest intellectual difficulties?"

http://www.bartleby.com/173/11.html
Albert Einstein: "The possibility presents itself that the law of the
propagation of light in vacuo may be compatible with the principle of
relativity, and the question arises: How have we to modify the
considerations of Section VI in order to remove the apparent
disagreement between these two fundamental results of experience? This
question leads to a general one. In the discussion of Section VI we
have to do with places and times relative both to the train and to the
embankment. How are we to find the place and time of an event in
relation to the train, when we know the place and time of the event
with respect to the railway embankment? Is there a thinkable answer to
this question of such a nature that the law of transmission of light
in vacuo does not contradict the principle of relativity? In other
words: Can we conceive of a relation between place and time of the
individual events relative to both reference-bodies, such that every
ray of light possesses the velocity of transmission c relative to the
embankment and relative to the train? This question leads to a quite
definite positive answer, and to a perfectly definite transformation
law for the space-time magnitudes of an event when changing over from
one body of reference to another."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com