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 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I hear that learning the earth revolves around the sun was like, so shocking, that nothing was ever the same. Ever.

Except for the part where it really didn't matter for most people until 1969. Cause you know. Math and physics and stuff and stuff.

Yeah, what did CALENDARS ever do for humanity?

Are you for real? Please tell me my sarcasm-o-tron is broken.

Calenders existed before the sun-centric model of the solar system.

So they did, I'm an idiot.

In my defense though, how about navigation?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


In my defense though, how about navigation?

Don't be ridiculous. If all that navigation nonsense actually worked Columbus would have never found America!

(and yes that was sarcasm). Just because something seems unimportant to your daily life doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Yeah, what did CALENDARS ever do for humanity?

Remembering your SO's birthday!

 LordofHats wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


In my defense though, how about navigation?

Don't be ridiculous. If all that navigation nonsense actually worked Columbus would have never found America!

(and yes that was sarcasm). Just because something seems unimportant to your daily life doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

Faith in humanity restored. Still the same level as before though.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I hear that learning the earth revolves around the sun was like, so shocking, that nothing was ever the same. Ever.

Except for the part where it really didn't matter for most people until 1969. Cause you know. Math and physics and stuff and stuff.

Yeah, what did CALENDARS ever do for humanity?

Are you for real? Please tell me my sarcasm-o-tron is broken.

Calenders existed before the sun-centric model of the solar system.

So they did, I'm an idiot.

In my defense though, how about navigation?

Stars still work whether or not the earth is going round the sun or the other way round

 A Town Called Malus wrote:


Stars still work whether or not the earth is going round the sun or the other way round

Geometry! Turns out it does matter

I'm going to keep trying until I manage to get an example that isn't bad!

Microscopes? Finding out that bacteria exist has to count, no?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I'm going to keep trying until I manage to get an example that isn't bad!

Microscopes? Finding out that bacteria exist has to count, no?

Hey, Microscopes is just applied applied optics. Optics was just invented to explain the human eye. You know how many eyes Al-Hazen dissected to define how the human eye works?!

A lot of eyes.

 LordofHats wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I'm going to keep trying until I manage to get an example that isn't bad!

Microscopes? Finding out that bacteria exist has to count, no?

Hey, Microscopes is just applied applied optics. Optics was just invented to explain the human eye.

Exactly.

I think it's fairly certain that most people can perform an experiment that shows our universe is not 2-dimensional without more than a very basic education.

some of the statements in the article are misleading.

like the quantum theory uncertainty principle.

yes its impossible to know where a particle will be, but it is not impossible to predict where it may be given what people know about Brownian motion of particles.

They also have a large jump in that space behaves the same as matter, which is neither proven nor does it have a theory supporting it because most scientists do not believe space is the same as matter, which is what this experiment hinges on.

making this a giant waste of time and money most likely, but hey without funding they would have no paychex and nothing to do.

would be better to dump more money on dark matter as it pretty much showed most of the ideas behind the expansion of universe were completely wrong, including Einsteins theories of gravitation. It plus "dark energy" also supposedly makes up ~95% of our universe, which is kind of a bigger deal.

blaktoof wrote:
I think it's fairly certain that most people can perform an experiment that shows our universe is not 2-dimensional without more than a very basic education.

some of the statements in the article are misleading.

like the quantum theory uncertainty principle.

yes its impossible to know where a particle will be, but it is not impossible to predict where it may be given what people know about Brownian motion of particles.

They also have a large jump in that space behaves the same as matter, which is neither proven nor does it have a theory supporting it because most scientists do not believe space is the same as matter, which is what this experiment hinges on.

making this a giant waste of time and money most likely, but hey without funding they would have no paychex and nothing to do.

would be better to dump more money on dark matter as it pretty much showed most of the ideas behind the expansion of universe were completely wrong, including Einsteins theories of gravitation. It plus "dark energy" also supposedly makes up ~95% of our universe, which is kind of a bigger deal.

Brownian motion has no bearing on the uncertainty principle. The article is not misleading at all about the uncertainty principle as it specifies that we cannot know both the position and velocity of a particle with high accuracy. This is true.

The uncertainty principle is defined as the sum of uncertainties of pairs of complementary properties is always a constant.

One example of a pair of complementary properties is position and momentum. So, according to the uncertainty principle, if we were to make an experiment in which we could measure the position of a particle with a high degree of accuracy our measurement for the momentum of that particle would have a corresponding high degree of uncertainty. The products of these two uncertainties would be a constant.

This experiment is testing whether space-time is a quantum system. That is important to know as if space-time is a quantum system then it could potentially help to form a connection between quantum mechanics and gravitation as we know that gravity affects space-time.

Also, that these people are receiving funding does not mean that scientists intending to research dark matter missed out. If they weren't competing for this research grant then they didn't lose out and if they did lose then the scientists on the the board determined that this research had a greater chance of success.

So I would be a bit less quick to disregard their research based on your own faulty understandings of the physics involved and "common sense" interpretations of the world.

Common sense kept people believing that heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones for hundreds of years, after all.

I didn't understand that much of the article... just enough to realise that most of the people who posted here understood none of it, and probably didn't read past the word 'hologram'.

Seriously, 'hologram' wasn't used in some kind of Matrix sense, but in the sense that two dimensional images can give the appearance of three dimensions in some systems.

So are we saying we may be a hologram and that our lifespans are just a freaking sham?

Are we some giant alien kids ant farm?

Ever read the Steven King book Under the Dome?

I feel like the researchers are just trying to make sure EVERYONE has a existential crisis.

I read this book a long time ago

So it is all true!

 Asherian Command wrote:
So are we saying we may be a hologram and that our lifespans are just a freaking sham?

We don't perceive the universe how it really is. Things like the colours that we see and the sounds that we hear are just abstractions that only exist in our head. Many birds see the world with four primary colours, they see colours we can't even imagine in our three primary colour world. What makes you think that three dimensions is so different? Ultimately, the three dimensional world we suppose we all live in is just another abstraction created by our brain to help us survive. It doesn't tell the whole story, and it might not even be especially accurate.

There's a huge difference in perceptions of color and differences in the actual physical world we interact with though.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
we know that gravity affects space-time.

Holy crap, I had no idea that this had been proven already...

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2010/feb/17/gravitys-effect-on-time-confirmed

PhantomViper wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
we know that gravity affects space-time.

Holy crap, I had no idea that this had been proven already...

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2010/feb/17/gravitys-effect-on-time-confirmed

We live in interesting and exciting times

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
There's a huge difference in perceptions of color and differences in the actual physical world we interact with though.

Sure, but as an illustration of how our perception of reality is just a short hand for what’s really happening, it’s a good one. We’ve long known that the reality at the atomic and sub-atomic level is far different to the universe of solid, still objects that we perceive… so the idea that at an even deeper level things could be even weirder doesn’t seem that much of a stretch.

So we are really creatures from the planiversum who think they are 3D

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

blaktoof wrote:
I think it's fairly certain that most people can perform an experiment that shows our universe is not 2-dimensional without more than a very basic education.

some of the statements in the article are misleading.

like the quantum theory uncertainty principle.

yes its impossible to know where a particle will be, but it is not impossible to predict where it may be given what people know about Brownian motion of particles.

They also have a large jump in that space behaves the same as matter, which is neither proven nor does it have a theory supporting it because most scientists do not believe space is the same as matter, which is what this experiment hinges on.

making this a giant waste of time and money most likely, but hey without funding they would have no paychex and nothing to do.

would be better to dump more money on dark matter as it pretty much showed most of the ideas behind the expansion of universe were completely wrong, including Einsteins theories of gravitation. It plus "dark energy" also supposedly makes up ~95% of our universe, which is kind of a bigger deal.

Brownian motion has no bearing on the uncertainty principle. The article is not misleading at all about the uncertainty principle as it specifies that we cannot know both the position and velocity of a particle with high accuracy. This is true.

The uncertainty principle is defined as the sum of uncertainties of pairs of complementary properties is always a constant.

One example of a pair of complementary properties is position and momentum. So, according to the uncertainty principle, if we were to make an experiment in which we could measure the position of a particle with a high degree of accuracy our measurement for the momentum of that particle would have a corresponding high degree of uncertainty. The products of these two uncertainties would be a constant.

This experiment is testing whether space-time is a quantum system. That is important to know as if space-time is a quantum system then it could potentially help to form a connection between quantum mechanics and gravitation as we know that gravity affects space-time.

Also, that these people are receiving funding does not mean that scientists intending to research dark matter missed out. If they weren't competing for this research grant then they didn't lose out and if they did lose then the scientists on the the board determined that this research had a greater chance of success.

So I would be a bit less quick to disregard their research based on your own faulty understandings of the physics involved and "common sense" interpretations of the world.

Common sense kept people believing that heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones for hundreds of years, after all.

although your statements are well thought out that you disregarded that it has never been scientifically supported that there is a relationship between space and mass that has any relation on particles, subatomic or otherwise, is the basis for their experiment.

I also find it interesting you think Brownian motion has no bearing on the uncertainty principle, I suggest you try googling the two together, you can even throw in "Einstein" or "Feynman" if you want.

regardless, the money spent on this would be equally useful spent on anything else that was without any theoretical evidence for existing.

but thanks for saying I have a faulty understanding, I have a 20 year old son and recall being in my 20s, its awesome understanding everything.

I think it is important to recognise the distinction between illusion and interpretation. As difficult as it sounds there isn't a void of difference between colours and dimensions. Colours are one way to interpret electromagnetic waves, sounds are one way to interpret pressure waves, and three dimensions is one way to interpret space. There is nothing wrong with these interpretations, they all have a great deal of internal and mathematical consistency, which is why they have been so helpful to our survival. Colours and sounds for example correspond to wavelengths, which we can measure. The dimensions we perceive also correspond to real attributes of space. We have other senses such as memory which helps us perceive time, which we see as very one dimensional. And our sense of equilibrium helps us perceive gravity, which also seems quite one dimensional.

As I mentioned before, some birds (and other animals) have a different system of colours to ours. They have what is called tetrachromacy, which means they see the world as a combination of four primary colours. Their colour vision is actually sometimes called "four dimensional". This is impossible for us to understand within our own abstraction. My brain just doesn't have the hardware to perceive a four dimensional colour system. However, I can look at it mathematically and see that it is perfectly functional, and easy to understand. Just as you can look at four dimensional space mathematically and see that it works just fine. I can't personally envision it, but that is beside the point (or perhaps that is the point). Many of the following two dimensional analogies of spacetime actually depend on an extra (3rd) dimension, and our preconceptions about gravity, in order to work:


In a 3D universe the curve would be fourth dimensional.

There are lots of theories which suggest (or perhaps depend on) extra dimensions. Indeed I read one recently that proposed our universe might have formed when a massive four dimensional star collapsed into a blackhole, and we exist on the event horizon. I have no idea if that is true, or if it conflicts with the holographic principle. I think the important thing to take away from the holographic principle is the conjecture that "the maximal entropy in any region scales with the radius squared, and not cubed" (wiki). This is related to the mass of blackholes being proportional to their area and not their volume, which suggests all information in our 3D universe can be expressed in a two dimensional area.

I don't profess to know how many dimensions there are to space (or rather attributes that we call dimensions) , but I think its important to keep an open mind and be aware of what your preconceptions are. There could be many more than we are able to detect (as was the case with EM waves until recently), and there might also be none at all (which is the case with colours since they are just a 3D abstraction of two dimensional EM wavelengths).

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
If this bears true, what actual implications would this have?

Honestly, none at all.

Hence why its a silly experiment. Life will go on as it has regardless of the results.

So the only worthwhile experiments are ones which lead to an immediate change in how people live their lives?

How did finding the Higgs Boson change how life is going on? It didn't, unless you are a physicist, yet it was a very important discovery which provided another piece of the puzzle that is the universe. Now we understand more about how particles have mass and can move onto asking other questions.

While knowing the fermented otter of Malaysia hibernation cycle is seven years is nifty to know it dosent improve anyones Life.

While the knowledge of personal hygiene and washing yourself and properly prepare Foods helps prevent you from getting food posioned. Ill go with practical knowledge anyday over abstract knowledge.

Knowing the universe is a 2D cartoon might be of use to us in a thousand year or longer, but humanity might aswell be extinct in a hundred years or less.

Bishop F Gantry wrote:

While knowing the fermented otter of Malaysia hibernation cycle is seven years is nifty to know it dosent improve anyones Life.

While the knowledge of personal hygiene and washing yourself and properly prepare Foods helps prevent you from getting food posioned. Ill go with practical knowledge anyday over abstract knowledge.

How do we know what causes food poisoning? How do we know that illness is not caused by "miasma" and "night air"? What let us look at germs and microbes? Theoretical work and abstract knowledge. Without work by phisacists in to "abstract knowledge" we would have no electron microscopes and therefore no understanding of how viruses function or many mechanisms of infection. The understanding of the form of DNA and RNA was very "abstract knowledge" but now means we can prevent and cure diseases much more effectively.

The hibernation cycle of an animal or other seemingly abstract or distant information about wildlife may tell us something vital about habitat destruction or climate change. Bringing it closer to the original example, work on quantum theory brings us closer to quantum computing, which, if it works, will revolutionize research in many practical areas, bringing the power of a supercomputer to many more institutions.

What someone can see an immediate practical use for should not, and thankfully does not, constrain research funding.

So is it still safe to walk around? I won't fall through a hologram bit? The TV remore is on the other side of the room. I'm trying to reach it without touching the floor, just in case...

My bad trip is now science!