The Science Thread

[Louanne Learning]

I haven't mentioned "humanity" at all. I'm talking about concepts applicable to all species.

Sorry, like what?

 

[CatrionaGrace]

He is unlikely to have felt compelled to feed a dog whenever he heard the stimulus.

The stimulus to feed the dog around here comes when 95 pounds of said dog creeps into the chair next to me and moans because it is 5 minutes after 5. How he tells time...

 

[Naomasa298]

The stimulus to feed the dog around here comes when 95 pounds of said dog creeps into the chair next to me and moans because it is 5 minutes after 5. How he tells time...

It's like when the cat makes it abundantly clear that permission to cease petting has not been granted.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

It's like when the cat makes it abundantly clear that permission to cease petting has not been granted.

You mean, when it digs its claws into your leg and gives you that insistent look?

Evolution? What can't we put down to that?

Sigh. Just the "E" word is enough to make me rant about one of my pet peeves: people who distrust evolution to such an extent that they declare it to be the so-called "TOOL OF THE DEVIL(TM)", and call it "Evil-ution" (sic), among other things.

Evolutionary biology doesn't care what you think. *shrug* Sorry!

 

[Louanne Learning]

Are spacetime and matter fundamental, or are they rather emergent phenomena arising from deeper, non-spatiotemporal structures?

 

[CatrionaGrace]

If I've got five seconds to throw a brick at an attacker to save myself or someone else, I'd say spacetime and matter are fundamental.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Are spacetime and matter fundamental, or are they rather emergent phenomena arising from deeper, non-spatiotemporal structures?

Huh?

 

[Stuart Dren]

non-spatiotemporal structures?

Like what?

 

[Homer Potvin]

Like what?

Something that is neither matter nor the space between matter? Doesn't seem like there would be much left.

 

[Stuart Dren]

Something that is neither matter nor the space between matter? Doesn't seem like there would be much left.

Uh, wait, what about antimatter? I assume, given the name, that you people don't classify it as matter. Or maybe you do, which would be kind of confusing.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Uh, wait, what about antimatter? I assume, given the name, that you people don't classify it as matter. Or maybe you do, which would be kind of confusing.

I don't know. Aside from Star Trek, all I know is that matter and antimatter fought in the first nanoseconds after the Big Bang and matter won. Allegedly. Sources from that time period are murky.

 

[Naomasa298]

Uh, wait, what about antimatter? I assume, given the name, that you people don't classify it as matter. Or maybe you do, which would be kind of confusing.

No, anti-matter is just matter with the opposite charge, so composed of, say, positrons instead of electrons, and anti-protons instead of protons. It is still baryonic matter.

There are strings, which are one-dimensional objects that are part of string theory, and I've seen theories that say there is only one quantum particle, and all other particles are actually that one particle at different points in the fabric of the universe (whose name I forget).

Then there are imaginary particles, that pop into existence in pairs, and usually immediately eliminate one another, except when they form near the surface of a black hole, and one of them is captured, and the other particle becomes real.

 

[Schism]

Are spacetime and matter fundamental, or are they rather emergent phenomena arising from deeper, non-spatiotemporal structures?

Heck, this could go in either the science or philosophy thread.

 

[Heartlet Happer]

Are spacetime and matter fundamental, or are they rather emergent phenomena arising from deeper, non-spatiotemporal structures?

Unknown. Impossible to know, see, reproduce or prove. Wild field of speculations like string theory, branes, holographic universe, solipsism, reality being computational simulacrum, dream of a butterfly, etc.

Though the spacetime and matter together make more than sum of parts. (holism, etc. etc.) Both are the cause of frame of reference in Mach's principle. In that sense they are fundamentals, as the inertial and rotational effects emerge from them. I could be wrong though, since my knowledge is from science class of 6-8th grades.

Also, there is a controversy, I discovered in about 3-4th grades, that I am true and only center of the universe. Every consequent information was able to stick to my tree of knowledge only if it passed the centrism check. There is inner debate however, thus a controversy.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Huh?

Did something exist before time and space which presumably created time and space?

 

[Louanne Learning]

Like what?

The most common answer is "some divine source" but there could have been something else

 

[Louanne Learning]

Unknown. Impossible to know, see, reproduce or prove.

yes, we cannot have direct knowledge of it. But can we make an extrapolation based on what we know about reality, now?

 

[Louanne Learning]

emergent phenomena

Does everything have to emerge from something else? I'm thinking about the human mind, too, that emerges from the function of the brain.

We've got a plot thread in our roleplay that mentions the recycling of universes - that the end of one is not "the end" but the beginning of another one. I think that is a fascinating hypothesis. But where did it all start? Fascinating that we can even ask questions like this.

 

[Naomasa298]

It is entirely possible that time and space existed before the Big Bang, certainly.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Let's ask Keith Richards. Maybe he remembers.