On flying, the answer given in A-Levels is overly simplified to the point of error. It does help teach the idea of link between flow and internal pressure, but it does not explain how an aircraft wing generates lift. That doesn't mean that aerospace engineers don't understand the mechanism, though. The inaccuracy of the standard explanation appears to be what the Cambridge guys were explaining, rather than saying it isn't known how wings generate lift. I've had it explained to me as well, and it made sense, but that explanation was verbal so I can't remember much more than it's to do with the angle of the wing into the oncoming air.
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Originally posted by Artificial Hipster View PostHow does science tackle the question, why is there something rather than nothing?
In no more than fifteen words please.
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Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post"They" have a pretty good idea how anesthesia works, though there are some challenges to sorting it out on the molecular level
https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...esthesia-work/
The gastro guy I go to spent 15 years in the Mayo Clinic, and his unwillingness to prescribe me with a magic diet that will cure my Crohn's drives my mother insane (because that's how she wants medicine to work) but i take his unwillingness to be definite, as being a good sign given that we really really don't know very much about immune system diseases, and even when we learn more, we discover that everything is vastly more complicated than we thought before. I remember giving up on Neuroscience as a subject in college in the first 15 minutes when the Lecturer told us how many neurons there were, and how many connections between each neuron. The number is just too big.
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Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View PostAlthough if you read Lawrence Krauss's book about it, it was inevitable that something would happen.
I was actually half serious with the fifteen word request. I wondered whether there was something which went beyond the strong anthropic principle but which could similarly be expressed succinctly enough for a layman to understand.
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Originally posted by Janik View PostGravity is the bending of space-time. That is well understood.Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View PostThat's a description of what gravity does. it's not a description of what gravity is.
I'm more inclined to agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson on this one.
In general identifying an unanswered conundrum and then examining it to try and explain the situation, well that is science. So it shouldn't be any great surprise to find scientists being baffled on occasion. This need to identify seemingly commonplace things that scientist don't fully understand or may have got their explanation of wrong is an interesting cultural phenomenon in itself. I think it stems from an assumption in the wider public that scientists think they know everything, and a reaction against that trope. However such an attitude is simply an error; any good scientist knows she doesn't know it all or even close. She is aware of where the gaps in her knowledge lie and isn't particularly intimidated by those holes (indeed she may be inspired by them). Despite that she may know an awful lot more about her subject than anyone else in the room though, which gets misread as being omnipotent on it.
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Originally posted by Artificial Hipster View PostI've just done the next best thing to reading the book, I've read the Wiki page about it. "A cosmologist's version of Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker" is one presumably negative comment quoted about it, though taken simply as a work of popular science rather than as a part of his tiresome evangelising I enjoyed The Blind Watchmaker as I've enjoyed others by Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale in particular.
I was actually half serious with the fifteen word request. I wondered whether there was something which went beyond the strong anthropic principle but which could similarly be expressed succinctly enough for a layman to understand.
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Originally posted by Janik View PostThat is a misconception. Gravity does not warp space-time. It performs no actions. Gravity simply is warped space-time. And as with any equality it can be said the other way just as accurately; warped space-time is gravity. The Tyson stuff is saying much the same, having skipped initially over the metaphysics at little. The same hold one's hands up response is equally plausible to "why is matter?" and a host of similar seemingly deep but ultimately empty questions.
I think it stems from an assumption in the wider public that scientists think they know everything, and a reaction against that trope.
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Originally posted by hobbes View PostYeah, if that's one thing that modern biology, molecular biology and biochemistry demonstrates, it's the eternal truism "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that."
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Originally posted by Stumpy Pepys View PostSo what about quantum gravity? Where do gravitons fit into this worldview?
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Originally posted by Janik View PostFile alongside strings and other speculative ideas. Awaiting experimental confirmation that there is anything more than a hypothesis here before bothering to try to piece together how it fits with confirmed results.
Now there are situations, such as black holes, where gravity and quantum effects probably come together, but we don't fully understand black holes either and they come with all manner of potential paradoxes.
But this is tangent really. I'm still surprised something as seemingly mundane as a bicycle can't be modelled.
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No, what I would say is that gravity is well understood but there is some work to do on extreme and edge cases. Relativity collapses to Newtonian gravity for any v << c (which is most of them), as it has to do because Newtonian gravity makes accurate predictions (NASA still use it in most circumstances to calculate trajectories for their hideously expensive spacecraft). Any successful quantum theory of gravity will do something similar with both General Relativity and Quantum Electro Dynamics, but even more so because those theories make some of the most accurate predictions know to science.
Bicycles are clearly not as mundane as they appear, sure. However saying it can't be modeled is wrong - that is exactly what the group are doing to demonstrate the flaws! Their mathematical models predict bikes that don't fit with the previous theories of how bikes work, and then they build and tests those design and voila, their model is accurate. It does appear to be an empirical one, it has to be noted. There is definitely some science to be done in this area, which will hopefully provide not just answers but new insights and avenues for further exploration.
This is quite surprising, I grant you that. I find the language used to describe it odd and somewhat misleading, though. Rather than 'scientists baffled' I would go with 'scientists intrigued and excited'.Last edited by Janik; 25-07-2017, 22:34.
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