Thread: Science vs Pseudoscience

Yes, I did read the article. They say they altered the speed of light in a BEC, not in a vacuum. Did you read the article?

Regardless of whether the speed of light is slowed within the Schwarzchild radius of a black hole, the term c refers to the speed of light in a vacuum, not in whatever envionment the equation is describing.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Ah, ah...what happened to peer review? Are you simply going to take them at their press release word?

No, actually things that simple I can do myself, and I don't need to rely on third party to form my opinion.

So, here's the quick calculation
Energy of a mosquito = mv^2/2=1e-4(kg) * (0.1(m/s))^2/2=5e-7J
Energy of a proton in LHC = 7TeV = 7e12 * 1.6e-19J = 10 e-7J

(I had to look up the mass of the mosquito and took the lower end of 1mg, I estimated the speed from my observations, the rest of the numbers are constants that I know off the top of my head). So yes, the energy is comparable to that of a mosquito.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

In summation, the statemant of energy being that of a mosquitoe in flight was most likely in reference to the protons themselves in an "inert" state, not at full acceleration,

Actually no, the energy of unaccelerated proton is about 1GeV which is 7000 times less than when in the LHC. There isn't really 'inert' state, not in any physical or chemical sense.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

and thus stating sucha low energy example was a PR slight of hand.

Since, as I just demonstrated the preceding clause was not only a speculation but wrong does this make this conclusion wrong? Come on the PR people at LHC are not morons, accept that you'll have to work a lot harder before finding something you can actually debunk. Go do the work, you're an engineer so it's not beyond your ability.

Originally Posted by gugi

No, actually things that simple I can do myself, and I don't need to rely on third party to form my opinion.

So, here's the quick calculation
Energy of a mosquito = mv^2/2=1e-4(kg) * (0.1(m/s))^2/2=5e-7J
Energy of a proton in LHC = 7TeV = 7e12 * 1.6e-19J = 10 e-7J

(I had to look up the mass of the mosquito and took the lower end of 1mg, I estimated the speed from my observations, the rest of the numbers are constants that I know off the top of my head). So yes, the energy is comparable to that of a mosquito.


Actually no, the energy of unaccelerated proton is about 1GeV which is 7000 times less than when in the LHC. There isn't really 'inert' state, not in any physical or chemical sense.


Since, as I just demonstrated the preceding clause was not only a speculation but wrong does this make this conclusion wrong? Come on the PR people at LHC are not morons, accept that you'll have to work a lot harder before finding something you can actually debunk. Go do the work, you're an engineer so it's not beyond your ability.

You are correct about the energy calculations, and I was mistaken. I do tip my hat .

However, that is not the entire story: You mention my engineering (I'm a hack), so let's go with that.

Ok, so I'm doing a press release on the safety of the lasers I build.(this is a true story, by the way).

The laser I build has an output of 1 watt.

So, I can make a truthful statement such as this:

That is much less than the average output of a child's nightlight, which is usually between 3-4 watts.

Nice, safe, low power laser....nothing to see here, nothing to be worried about. No safety concerns. It has less output power than a child's nightlight!

All of this is quite true.

But lasers are strange beasts.......(as are particle accelerators, no doubt)

1 Watt/second ouput power, one joule.

The laser runs at a repetition rate of 1 kHz, or a thousand pulses per second.

So, each pulse contains only one thousandth of the total average power, one milliwatt, one millijoule. Pretty pathetic.

However, this is a picosecond pulse laser (did I overlook mentioning that in the public safety press release? Oh dear....). That means that the pulses exist for only 1 x 10^-12 , a trillionth of a second. That is ridiculously short period of time. As an example: Light, traveling for one picosecond, would barely make it across the period at the end of this sentence.

The power measurement for Watts is a factor of energy over time.

So the actual peak power of my 1 watt laser is 0.001W/10^-12 seconds or 100,000,000 watt peak power.

And then you can also focus the laser beam to a tight spot size further increasing the energy per unit area.

Well, this particular laser can easily ablate stainless steel (and tungsten, sapphire, etc, etc).

Not melt, and then vaporize, but ablate the steel. It goes from a solid directly to plasma and is removed from the surface.


All this, and it doesn't even have the same power output as a kid's nightlight!

Does saying my laser has less output power than a nightlight tell the whole story? It certainly is not a lie. Or does it simply present one side of the information I want to reveal?

Originally Posted by holli4pirating

Yes, I did read the article. They say they altered the speed of light in a BEC, not in a vacuum. Did you read the article?

Regardless of whether the speed of light is slowed within the Schwarzchild radius of a black hole, the term c refers to the speed of light in a vacuum, not in whatever envionment the equation is describing.

The current measurements of the speed of light have all been made under earth spacetime observational conditions. Until they measure it within the Swarzchild radius of a purported black hole itself, they will not be able to realize my above stated stroke of genius in regards to the growth of astronomical black holes being formed out of microscopic ones, until probably well after I have shrugged off this mortal coil...alas...

I just wanna know who verified that vacuum is constant. And, is that supposedly total vacuum?

Originally Posted by Seraphim

The current measurements of the speed of light have all been made under earth spacetime observational conditions. Until they measure it within the Swarzchild radius of a purported black hole itself, they will not be able to realize my above stated stroke of genius in regards to the growth of astronomical black holes being formed out of microscopic ones, until probably well after I have shrugged off this mortal coil...alas...

I have no idea what you're saying here, nor if you are being serious or not. I'm going to assume you're not.

I also think your previous post was interesting. There are (at least) two pieces to that puzzle: those who present (or misrepresent) information to fit their agenda and those who listen and accept it without thinking critically and doing background research. Maybe there's something in there about science vs pseudoscience too. Wait, what's this thread supposed to be about?

Originally Posted by ControlFreak1

I just wanna know who verified that vacuum is constant. And, is that supposedly total vacuum?

That's what Google is for. There is a great article on the speed of light on wikipedia.

Originally Posted by holli4pirating

I have no idea what you're saying here, nor if you are being serious or not. I'm going to assume you're not.

I also think your previous post was interesting. There are (at least) two pieces to that puzzle: those who present (or misrepresent) information to fit their agenda and those who listen and accept it without thinking critically and doing background research. Maybe there's something in there about science vs pseudoscience too. Wait, what's this thread supposed to be about?



That's what Google is for. There is a great article on the speed of light on wikipedia.

No. Of course I have not been serious in regards to most of my black hole postulations. But it has been fun slinging the BS!

This should help.

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