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blackholes dont have infinite gravity. They have infinite density because they have no volume. So even if they only weighed as much as a feather they would still have infinite density. Infinite density for this reason doesn't mean infinite gravity, since the amount of gravity given off by an object is a function of its mass not its density.

Infinite is just a way for mathematicians to say I give up.  ;D

Infinity is necessary to deal with unbounded sets.  So the question becomes, does nature contain any unbounded sets?  Unfortunately, even if we assume it does, I don't see a way to prove a natural set is unbounded.  Maybe we just haven't found the boundary conditions yet.  Such is the nature of mathematics in light of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

Exactly.

You can't have projective geometry without the points at infinity.

Infinity is a useful concept that has been very rigorously studied.  However, I do agree physicists do use it to throw their hands up.

before we get back on topic, someone needs to speak in defense of physics after all of this genuine nonsense.

black holes are not nonsense, they are observable. we can't fully explain these observations, mainly because they 'break' our theories (giving results like infinite gravity, etc.)

further -- mass, force, and gravity are all very, very real and observable things. conservation of energy and conservation of momentum, for instance, are laws that every single system in the universe obeys (or so we've seen so far). to say that these are 'nonsense words' that are merely 'theoretical' is laughable.

anyway, carry on. and it would behoove you to honestly learn about a topic before passing such judgments.

i'm sorry that you don't know high school physics. i'm not going to be pedantic and type out the basic definition of these quantities if you're not going to do the legwork to inform yourself.


you can start here (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FHSST_Physics).

Appeals to authority? All I asked for are definitions. Should be really, really simple.

how the hell is this an appeal to authority? i supplied you with the definitions (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FHSST_Physics), which you had to have intentionally removed from that quote... or do you not know how hyperlinks work, either? i simply asked you to do some legwork to inform yourself a little about the field you're commenting about before passing such judgments. i don't think that's unfair in the least.

i'm sorry for my impatience but holding a BS in physics, it causes a little personal offence when my entire field is written off as nonsense.

again, sorry for OT, but i can't let this go.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but although your source has little sections called "Definition," no actual definitions are given (I looked at "force" and "wave," specifically). Or if some kind of definition is given, it cannot be used consistently in the field. It cannot be used without equivocation. It cannot be used unless it is malleable enough for the physicist to speak out of both sides of his or her mouth, just like a theologian talking about God. This is the problem. Heisenberg and others simply doubled down on the inanity, enshrining it as a virtue.

I have my degree in pure mathematics, which is in many cases just as nonsensical as physics. I don't regret it, because I did learn some useful skills. Math and Physics are still two of the more useful degrees, just maybe not in the way you think ;)

that was easy.

as for force, the definition is not as rigorous or explicit, but it does have an entry for Newton's Second Law, which is the rigorous definition, so i'll give that:


otherwise formulated as:


so, it follows that:

a force is defined as the thing that causes a change in momentum (of a massive body), and is proportional to the magnitude of the resulting acceleration.

these are "not actual definitions"? ???

i think you need to double-check your own definitions, including the definition of 'definition', and that of 'nonsensical', too.

i'm sorry, but you've just shown me that you have little to no understanding of how science works.

if the quoted were true, then it wouldn't work at all, as its virtue comes directly from its consistent applicability and nowhere else -- and so we'd have no computers to even communicate with, or GPS, or satellites at all, or cars, or phones, or microwave ovens, demos like Newton's Cradle wouldn't work consistently, and if 'force'  and 'gravity' were something really so arbitrary, you'd best be afraid of arbitrarily floating off of the ground because clearly the maths involved are not consistent, are mere figments of human imagination, and are susceptible to dissolution at any time.

please, please, please obtain a better understanding of things before you project your malformed assessments. i hope this is the last word on this off-topic rant.

Remember I said that the definitions have be able to be used consistently? You cannot define a wave as a "phenomenon," then turn around and say, as your source does, "More than any other concept, physicists are finding that waves characterize the structure of the universe." This is speaking metaphorically. I'm asking for rigorous definitions that are applied consistently. Physics has few, if any. It will call light a wave phenomenon, but then speak of photons as "particles." What is a particle? No consistent definition. It's supposed to be a little ball? No? Infinitely small? "No size"? All of the above ;)


Unfortunately, "momentum" and "mass" are ill-defined, making this definition ill-defined as well.

Ah yes, the old "physics works" objection. No, engineering works. I actually anticipated this in my first post, though I edited it in later (though some hours before your wrote the above) so I can see why you missed it:


Do you think that the inventor of the wheel knew about geometry, coefficient of rolling friction, stress, shear, etc.?

Also, keep your eye on the ball: I never called "force" or "gravity" arbitrary. I said they were nonsense terms, or inconsistently used ones that make utterances using them nonsense - take your pic. Physics is thus rendered pseudoscience. If you ask a physicist why an apple falls to the ground, they'll tell you "gravity pulls it down." Might as well just cut to the chase and say "God did it." There is no educational value in such statements. We learn nothing we didn't know before.

Anyway, this is forum for real world practical endeavors, so I will cease making fun of those government-grant-fattened parasites known as physicists ;D

this is ridiculous. light is a wave phenomenon because it has the property that is given in the above definition and for no other reason. there is no metaphor, there is no equivocation. in fact, ANYTHING that has that property is considered a wave. this is the very definition of consistency.


they are, too! they are just as straightforwardly and rigorously defined as 'force' and 'wave'. you can add 'particle' to this list as well.

at this point you're simply posting demonstrably incorrect statements, and i'm not sure if i'm supposed to supply every single definition which you claim does not exist? can't you google these things yourself? instead of replying to me, please double-check your claims and identify a source that agrees with your assessments of physics, perhaps? it'll save us both time. or maybe just me. :P

again, you don't seem to have very much background in even high-school level physics, so i really don't understand why you feel so confident as to make all these grand proclamations about it in any sense?

you're doing the same thing as the people who write off bitcoin "because it is obviously a scam" or "because deflationary currency is idiotic", which, as a clearly avid bitcoin user, puts you firmly in the category of hypocrite.

good day, sir.


p.s. i'm not sure how you did it, but every single one of the following statements is categorically and demonstrably incorrect. please learn a god damned thing about what you're talking about, you're wasting everybody's time.

You need to keep your story straight. Is light what something IS, or is it what something DOES? It is a noun or a verb? See the problem?


If I quoted something, I could easily be accused of strawmanning. I have to at least give you a chance to defend your doctrines. I'm not going to be a jerk and put words in your mouth. Instead you simply say, "NO U!!!" Calling them "demonstrably incorrect statements" comes of as rather empty and authority-enamored when you seem completely incapable of refuting even a single one of the statements I've made.

However, your point that this can easily become a wild goose chase is well taken, so if we continue this we'd better focus on one simple term and just try to find a physicist to give a definition of that term that can be used consistently.

I propose the word "particle," which you claim is straightforwardly and rigorously defined. To save you some work defending your faith, I googled "particle definition" and found a bunch of physicists looking confused:

http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-41456.html (http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-41456.html)

But they might just be students for all we know. Instead I found the Wikipedia entry for particle, which, refreshingly, starts off with a definition: "a particle is a small localized object." OK, small object. Pretty straightforward, got it.

However, what then is a photon? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon) claims that a photon is a particle, which means a photon is a small object.

So far so good? Perhaps you are starting to see where this religion is going to inevitably run into problems :D

--

Now because I know people are going to come back and be upset we've filled this thread with off-topic stuff, I'm going to bring this back to investing.

In investing, making solid, clear, consistent definitions is just as important as it is in science. Clear definitions of bull, bear, trendline, support, correction, bubble, momentum, etc. These are paramount for clear reasoning leading to moneymaking.

Moreover, if you can reason clearly about something that is hard to reason clearly about you can take away money from those who fall into the trap. And one of the easiest traps for people to fall into are ones paved by semantic oddities. Just as Einstein confused himself into thinking space (nothingness? sometimes somethingness?) can be curved and ended up wasting most of his life on frivolities, investors confuse themselves into thinking that something being in a bubble (overbought? unsustainable? too much speculative value imputation versus usage value imputation?) means it should be sold.

"I don't even know what a bubble is." - Eugene Fama

"It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is." - Richard Feynmann

* sigh *

Applying linguistics to physics...

you make a good point, and it is entirely summed up here. i know that this distinction is confusing, but if you think about it, it is literally the only way we make sense of anything. "a particle is a small localized object" is not a rigorous definition, that is a laymans definition, and a bit of a strawman.

for example, if i asked "what is a mammal?" you could say "an animal that has fur and gives live birth".

ah-hah! but what is an animal? what is fur? what is an electron/photon/etc. catch my drift?

we don't know what a force, or energy, or anything really, what it is. but we can identify properties of things that can be consistently shown to be valid. this is the strength of science and is precisely what distinguishes it from pseudoscience. most of what you've said before this has been horribly off-target, and i'm not going to fault you for it because you simply do not have the background in physics, but you must at least concede to that point. the models are not simple. they do not seem rigorous when put in layman's terms. but they identify properties consistently, and that is what allows for science to work.

short answer -- light isn't a 'thing', it is what it does, i.e. how it behaves. light is an idea, just like 'bitcoin', like 'animal', like 'math'. it is a figment of our imagination. but don't tell me that we don't have consistent definitions.

also, a good counter-point to the 'oh it works that's engineering'. it was advances in particle/atomic physics that led directly to the development of the atomic bomb. it was our 'nonsense' models of the workings of an atom, which no one has ever seen, but whose properties we knew well enough to manipulate the system to our ends. if physics were not consistent, we would not have been able to do this.


p.s. no such assumptions have been made. most of what we're discussing (high school level physics), i have verified through the scientific process with my own hands. literally. no authority necessary. that being said, it is a safe bet that you are indeed speaking from a position of ignorance of these things, precisely because you needed me to supply to definition for something like a 'wave'. not faulting you at all for this ignorance, but i do fault you for refusing to concede that you are ignorant of the things you're talking about.

So I'm off to the gym before it closes. I'll continue with this if it looks worthwhile and if people don't get too upset about the disruption. Also: please don't assume I'm speaking from a position of ignorance just because I appear to disagree with you and your authority figures.

Sure no definition is perfect, but there is a difference between a perfect definition and one that is simply good enough that it doesn't have to be changed sentence by sentence to fill holes in the theory being presented.

Light is indeed what some thing does. "To wave" is what some thing or things do. Physics is the study of objects and their motion. So what is the object that "lights" or "waves"? These are questions physics has given up on answering. We can call the problem one of dealing in nonsense and inconsistent definitions, or we can call it one of avoiding doing science (rational explanation of phenomena) at all. Really it is both, one fronting for the other.

The grand sweep of what has happened in modern physics is that word games are played to obfuscate the fact that most of the original questions physics was meant to answer are not being addressed at all. In more modern physics, the esoteric math adds a nice heavy blanket of obfuscation on top of that for good measure. Since this relates to the quote below I'll continue down there.


Note that I never claimed that physicists do not know a lot about the "properties of matter" and such. You can build a motor without knowing the actual mechanism of magnetic attraction or electricity, and you can indeed do so while using highly confused terminology. You can even create useful equations based on incoherent terms and they may help you build your motor or bomb, as long as they are - as you implied - coherent enough.

But shall we really call making equations "science" or "physics"? Are you, as a physicist, satisfied with simply summarizing the observations into neat mathematically expressed packages? Have you no curiosity about hypothesizing objects and their movements (i.e., phenomena) that have not been observed/measured?

I don't mean to downplay this cataloging of quantitative relationships as "glorified stamp collecting" as Rutherford might have - it certainly has its uses in technology. But look, what made your eyes glow with wonder when you first saw two magnets being pulled together and pushed apart with no visible mechanism to attract or repel them? Isn't this the kind of thing that sparked your interest in science? It was for me.

Modern physics has nothing to say in the way of by what invisible mechanism this attraction and repulsion happens between magnets. It talks of field lines (and/or other mathematical entities) doing this or that, not of actual mechanics. It gives you equations that catalog the observed relations of the relevant quantities, such as how strong the magnets are and how far apart they are. This is really useful if you want to engineer something. However, this isn't what most people originally get into science for...is it?

Ptolemy's epicycles were used for many centuries to describe the motion of the planets. Would we say they explained the mechanism by which planets orbit the Sun? No, they merely cataloged the observations. It was useful, but was it science? Or as a deeper question, it was useful for predicting where planets would be at what times, but was it useful for figuring out how to alter their orbits or build an anti-gravity device? Even for engineering purposes, the Ptolemaic "explanations" of modern physics leave off most of the interesting questions.

I want to build an anti-gravity device! Modern physics is of only a little help here, much less than it would be if it used coherent terminology and actually tried to explain things again.

For instance, suppose you hear a rattling in your car at certain times. After a while, you notice that it gets louder with the square of how long you have had the car running at greater than 40 mph, and gets quieter in a similar way as you maintain lower speeds. You'd like to look under the hood, but for some weird reason it is absolutely impossible to open it or in any way view or measure inside it, and no information is available about its internal design.

Bearing with this improbable premise, a scientist studies the car, recording data on loudness, temperature, running speed, etc. He finally creates some graphs and equations that describe very accurately how these quantities relate.

What use is this? Well, it will indeed let you predict with remarkable accuracy how loud the rattling will get in which situations, and it will also be useful for mitigating the annoyance of the rattling because you'll be able to engineer workarounds, such as avoiding driving at high speeds for very long and maybe putting a block of ice on the hood.

The curious thing about this car scientist is that he seems totally uninterested in what is actually what is going on inside the hood, since it is not observable or measurable. He calls hypothesizing about what is "actually going on" a kind of "philosophy." To him, hard science involves data collection, measurement, and mathematical analysis. Since it is impossible in this case to view what is going on inside the car, all the measurements of heat, vibration, and so on are taken at the surface. The equations are collated into a "theory," perhaps with unique mathematical entities proposed, and that is science to him.

Now what would we say if a second scientist came along and posited that the heat generated by the engine at high speeds was causing Gasket X to expand, loosening some connection and causing the rattling. Suppose he made a 3D diagram of the hypothesized Gasket X and how it deformed under the heat and how it was positioned in relation to other hypothesized parts, and finally made a little video of how its deformation would cause Part Y to unhinge and swing around banging into Part Z, causing the rattling. Is this philosophy? It sure looks like science to me, far more than the other scientist's methodology of purely mathematical data analysis of observables.

The second scientist did something moderns physicists don't do much of, if they do it at all: he posited unobserved physical entities and used them to explain how the rattling occurred. To be fair, though, he did benefit from the first scientist's explorations and handy equations. These helped limit the possibility space for his mechanical theory of what was going on under the hood.

With this theory, many new possibilities are available. Since various parts of definite shape and size in a definite location under the hood were proposed, more enlightened engineering is possible. Perhaps placing a powerful magnet on the hood to help hold the wayward part in place would be tried successfully thanks to this physical theory. This is way, way more useful.

This is an actual theory, because it actually theorizes something physical happening, rather than just observing the physical happenings that are observable and cataloging them as a so-called "theory." (The only way the first scientist could be said to be theorizing is in the most mundane way of simply extrapolating his equations. "I theorize that this square law will hold even at 100 mph.")

But really both scientific exploration (collecting observed data, cataloging, summarizing the data into equations) and actual theorizing (hypothesizing unobserved objects and how their motion and mechanical interaction produces the observed phenomena) are necessary. Modern physics simply skirts around the latter, using wordplay to obscure this shirking of responsibilities by dressing up the exploration part in the garb of an actual theory, throwing a heavy blanket of math on top to be extra sure no one will see through the charade.

Now if asked how magnets attract and repel each other, the first scientist would catalog observations and summarize them in equations, perhaps with some mathematical entities like field lines thrown in to give some semblance of physicality to the presentation. If pressed, he'd admit that the field lines aren't physical at all and are just sort of layman metaphors, and if you want the real explanation, "It's in the equations." Give or take a few details, this is the modern scientific method as it is actually practiced and presented. The semantic obfuscation I mentioned is just there to hide the fact that no actual explanation has been given, just a summary of appearances.

The second scientist wouldn't be satisfied with that "explanation" at all. He'd imagine what was going on behind the scenes, where our instruments couldn't yet measure or observe. He'd think about what as yet undetectable physical objects and what motion of those invisible physical objects could be mediating that attraction and repulsion. He'd try to imagine a movie featuring some of these objects (made visible in the movie of course, for communication purposes) where the objects interacted in such a way that the final net result was a pull or a push between the two magnets.

It may be that there are no such physical objects mediating attraction and repulsion; maybe they "just happen" and all we can ever do is note the pattern of what happens. If so, though, further scientific investigation is limited entirely by the sophistication of our measuring instruments and otherwise just by refinement of the accuracy of our cataloging of the patterns of observations. Does that really seem right? Since there's no way to know that magnetic attraction "just happens," physicists refusing to hypothesize physical mechanisms for that attraction can only be interpreted as giving up.


Well this should now be moot, but for completeness of argument the whole reason I needed YOU to supply a definition of "wave" is because physicists use it in multiple ways as is convenient for them - sometimes as a verb and sometimes as a noun/object or quasi-object. You've probably heard of a wave packet, for example. I needed to know which definition you thought could be used consistently before I could show that this was not the case. If I had been the one to supply the definition and then later showed that it needed to be modified for the purposes of QM, etc., I would risk being accused of strawmanning. I'm sure you see my dilemma.

Now, though this is also mentioned only for completeness, you obviously cannot have verified with your own hands that the terms used in physics are not nonsense. What you have verified is a certain set of facts that I am probably not disputing at all. I never said that physics is "wrong," as in F is not equal to ma, but that it answers the wrong questions and uses semantic obfuscation to cover up this fact. It's a serious problem, and every scientist should lament it.

ROTFL.

This is a compliment, I have used it perhaps once during my 1000+ posts in this forum so far  ;D

Nerd wank fest! Big nerd wank fest over here!

Sorry I spun (multiple puns intended) this thread so far off topic with my black hole comment. Whatever the original topic was ...

the only problem here is that you're conflating philosophy and science. no scientist ever claimed that they could tell you what light is, only how it behaves. you also continue to use layman's terms and non-rigorous definitions, and then claim that those definitions suck. this is called strawmanning.

the 'wave-packet' (or wave-particle duality) model is just as consistent as the wave model itself. it's incredibly hard for anybody, even scientists, to 'imagine what that means', because nobody said that the universe is supposed to be intuitive and easy-to-understand.

we will never be able to tell you what matter is, what gravity is, et cetera. the words themselves refer to models, which are just brainstuff (memes, if you're familiar with the scientific meaning of that term). but the models reflect reality, and anyone can check this, and that is science. between the questions of "WHY" and "HOW", science answers the latter, intentionally (and not dishonestly) ignores the first, and demonstrates that we really do not have to know WHY forces exist in the first place in order to manipulate them. nor may science ever be able to answer that question, and this is a limitation that is well-known. would an answer to that even be useful in the way an answer to 'how' is? and you claim that it's useless altogether, because it's missing this? all science is pseudoscience based on this ridiculous definition, and we 'know' nothing, really.

also, you are entirely incapable of holding this argument without strawmanning because of your lack of knowledge of the subject matter. this will be my last comment on this point. you seem to think that physics is just magic, and we'll "never be able to fully understand it", but you probably think computers and combustion engines are magic, too.

physics satisfies any workable definition of 'science', and it really astounds me that you believe otherwise..

again, i ask you to use the perspective of someone who doesn't understand bitcoin, and see that you are making an analogous argument to 'bitcoin is not money', or any other argument-from-ignorance that we've seen across the years.

back to topic...

Hahahaha ;D

Alright Zangelbert...

Here it is. 

You just don't understand physics.  The concepts are not easy and cannot easily be explained well with words.  When they are described strange words like 'want' and 'feel' or 'see' are used to explain phenomena that formula explain better and more completely.  What you are doing is called misapplying.

You also shat on physics saying that engineering is what actually accomplishes things like cell phones, gps, etc etc.  I am an engineer--an electrical engineer in fact--who is very much involved in the creation of electronic devices.  Electrons, like light, also have a wave-particle duality (as do all things).  Take for example a tunneling diode.  In this device, electrons wavefunction (as described by Schrodingers equation) extends through an impenetrable barrier.  Here, electrons will behave like waves and sometimes, miraculously, show up at the other side of the barrier and create a current.  These are used ALL THE TIME and are INCREDIBLY PREDICTABLE.  Those nonsense equations from physics? Yeah they predicted it.

Or take Carbon Nanotube Transistors.  Here, electrons travel via ballistic transport.  This means they are like bullets, and much more particle like. 

This seemingly opposite behavior does not mean physics are wrong--engineers make things everyday using these equations.

What it means is that you do not have a good enough grasp of the concept.

I should also say that I don't think a B.S. in physics gives you anywhere near what is required to develop fractal or Fibonacci or whatever analysis on bitcoins.

To do this well, in my opinion, you would need a PhD in Finance with a background heavy in algorithmic techniques.

A B.S. in physics means that you know a little bit about all of physics but nothing very well.

After throwing into question the concept of infinite, lets fall deeper down the rabbit hole.

"Who needs physics when you have metaphysics."

while what you say is true, i can't tell if this is a stab at my credentials or what?

a B.S. in physics is what taught me how to model previously unknown things within a mathematical framework stepwise, through a process of hypothesize --> test --> hypothesize -- > test --> etc --> conclude.

a PhD in finance with a specialization in stochastic calculus would definitely be more impressive :P but it's not a two-way relation.

but thanks for the backup ;)

--arepo

I am too tired for this philosophical debate. :-]

Not at all a stab at your credentials.  I don't think any B.S. will prepare you for it. 

appreciated. nothing but diving in -- not even forex trading -- prepares you for bitcoin :D

In computer science we call that type of analysis data mining.  It is the process of modeling data using a variety of methods in order to make accurate predictions.  And no, you don' t need a PhD in finance to do analysis like that.  Physicists developed the mathematical basis of most data mining techniques, as they needed it to extract models from piles of experimental data.  Mendelbrot's fractals and Fibonacci's sequences (and many other contributions) we developed by mathematicians studying nature and are widely applied mathematics techniques that finance has adopted.

Data mining and signal processing techniques are well known and understood by many more people than the dollar jockeys.


A wise man doesn't stop learning once he stops attending classes.  You shouldn't make assumptions about strangers, they give away your ideals.

No a wise man doesn't (and since I am working on my graduate degree now that 'ideal' you hint at me having has not yet taken root).  However most people do.  And trusting in something with a complicated name that YOU don't understand because someone says they got a B.S. in physics is a sure way to get burned (as proven today).  Especially when a physics degree does not directly prepare you for that complicated thing.

Good points.

However, if you admit you don't understand what he is talking about, so you don't really have much to add besides reminding people not to take internet forums as gospel.

Well understanding the concept and correctly implementing it are different things.  Stop making assumptions about me that I did not say.  I said YOU.  Because 99% of the people on this forum do not understand it.

Oh, so you're making assumptions about me ::).  Get a life dude.  We don't need you to babysit us.