Antineutrinos: Fact, or a Myth Perpetrated by the Right?

[Shapley]

Analog,

Magnetic forces at the center of the galaxy have twisted a nebula into the shape of DNA, a new study reveals.

The double helix shape is commonly seen inside living organisms, but this is the first time it has been observed in the cosmos.

"Nobody has ever seen anything like that before in the cosmic realm," said the study's lead author Mark Morris of UCLA. "Most nebulae are either spiral galaxies full of stars or formless amorphous conglomerations of dust and gas-space weather. What we see indicates a high degree of order."

That is interesting. One of the curious things about the Universe, to me at least, is that galaxies, solar systems, and other bodies seem to always assume a more-or-less two-dimensional form. The orbits of the planets in our solar system are more or less in the same plane. The Milky Way looks like a large-scale version of the solar system, and Saturns rings form the same way.

I had always assumed it was because God drew up his plans on paper, or slabs of rock, and thus was limited to 2-D drawing for the first few millenia. Perhaps he's now gotten a computer?

V/R
Shapley

[navneeth]

That is interesting. One of the curious things about the Universe, to me at least, is that galaxies, solar systems, and other bodies seem to always assume a more-or-less two-dimensional form. The orbits of the planets in our solar system are more or less in the same plane. The Milky Way looks like a large-scale version of the solar system, and Saturns rings form the same way.

I had always assumed it was because God drew up his plans on paper, or slabs of rock, and thus was limited to 2-D drawing for the first few millenia. Perhaps he's now gotten a computer?

V/R
Shapley

God just paid attention in physics class.

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/questi ... number=205
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/questi ... number=662
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/questi ... number=420
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=124790

[Shapley]

Yes, but don't forget, God wrote those laws.

I suppose Plane Geography made his calculations simpler, as opposed to the more complicated mathematics of Spherical Geometry. Being God, of course, he could easily do the math, but he had a lot to do, creating and expanding the Universe, dealing with rebelious angels, etc., much of which was complicated by the continually misbehaving creatures down on Earth. He got so fed up with the Dinosaurs he wiped them out and started over thinking that, by using creatures in his own image, he'd have less trouble. Of course, we all know what happened...


BTW, the Mozart String Quartet is a nice selection!

[analog]

One of the curious things about the Universe, to me at least, is that galaxies, solar systems, and other bodies seem to always assume a more-or-less two-dimensional form.

I think the disc-like appearance of the solar system (and galaxies) is pretty straightforward if we assume each condensed out of big rotating gas cloud. Centripetal force (gravity) would pull the particles into a plane perpendicular to the axis of the cloud's rotation. You see this effect in the skirt of a lady figure skater, which drapes at rest but flattens out to look like a disc once spinning commences.. of course the centripetal force there is tension in the fabric, not gravity.

As you say, God made the physical laws. Whatever God is.

How many more of His laws are out there, as yet unperceived ? As others have asked here, what is a thought, what is life? Five hundred years ago algebra was somewhat of a parlor game, as was electricity two hundred, as seances and psychic readings remain today. The universe's state of reduced entropy remains a mystery. There's more out there than electromagnetic fields and mc^2.

[navneeth]

Yes, but don't forget, God wrote those laws.

I guess then that God also wrote the law concerning the existence of anti-particles. No wonder Dirac said that God is a mathematician.

[Shapley]

I think the disc-like appearance of the solar system (and galaxies) is pretty straightforward if we assume each condensed out of big rotating gas cloud. Centripetal force (gravity) would pull the particles into a plane perpendicular to the axis of the cloud's rotation. You see this effect in the skirt of a lady figure skater, which drapes at rest but flattens out to look like a disc once spinning commences.. of course the centripetal force there is tension in the fabric, not gravity.

In the case of centripetal force, however, the rotation of the satelite (in this case, the skirt) is dependent for motion on the rotation of the body it orbits. This would not be the case with bodies in space. Also, this deals only with a single body, not a group of orbiting bodies. Our Moon does not have a very two-dimensional orbit. This, I'm told, is because the Moon has a relatively new orbit around the Earth and that, if it remains in orbit for millions more years, it will eventually 'flatten out' into a roughly two dimensional path. That path, presumably, will be in a plane roughly aligned with the Earths' obit around the Sun, which is roughly in the same plane as the orbits of the other planets around the Sun.

My point dealt with the varieties of objects in orbit. Comets, for instance, have orbits that are not in the same plane as the rest of the solar system, but the planets are, more or less, in a single plane. The disc theory makes sense if they are all formed from the same original disc matter, but is this necessarily so? Satelites that are 'captures' of passing bodies would be expected to retain an orbit in a plane roughly tangent to their original trajectory, which would likely as not be at some angle other than the orbit of the body they are captured by. Jupiter's moons, for instance, are primarily captures, not bodies formed from a disc of matter surrounding the planet (although there are such discs in orbit around the planet).

The traditional view of the atom shows the electrons orbiting in planar orbits, but each electron orbit is oblique to the orbit of its' partner. This arrangement does not appear to occur in space with regularity, as roughly concentric planar orbits seems to be the norm.

Of course, our observation point is limited, so it is entirely possible that thousands of such objects exist and, just as we find new comets every decade or so, we'll find them during that rare period when our paths cross and we happen to be observing that narrow band of sky they pass through. There's a lot of sky out there, and a lot of unknowns moving around. If a planet were to be orbiting in a plane oblique to our own, and at an distance somewhere between Mars and Saturn, what is the probability that we would see it and recognize it for what it is? I'm not proficient enough a mathematician to figure that one out.

V/R
Shapley

[barfle]

It is the creationists that criticize evolution, and the evolutionists that criticize creationism, for the most part.

The issues as I have seen them are primarily from the "Young Earth Creationists" or the biblical literalists. They happen to believe Genesis is the Word of God, and any evidence to the contrary was planted by Satan (or some other reason for disregarding it). They follow the genealogies of Christ as written in the NT and calculate a universe some 6,000 years old, and no further discussion or inquiry is required.

Many very devout Christians understand that evolution does the best job of explaining the observed facts. Pope John Paul II even acknowledged this.

I've never heard an evolutionist's explanation of the origin of life, only how life evolves from other life.

At the moment, the origin of "life" (whatever definition you care to use for the term) is unknown, although there are several promising paths being pursued. Cell structure can be explained by Tensegrity. We've already seen that double helical structures seem to be naturally forming. We know amino acids can be formed from our best guess of the "primordial soup." The big problem with attempting to create life from non-living matter in a laboratory is that we don't really know what the actual conditions and ingredients were. There wasn't anyone there to write them down, so we have to take our best guesses, figure out what was wrong with them, try again, fix a few more parameters, and on and on. I'm glad it's not my project, because I have no idea if it will succeed in my lifetime or not.

I do consider that a problem if one is trying to say that one exists to the exclusion of the other.

I don't expect my auto mechanic, who works with iron, to be a miner or a refiner. The disciplines are very different.

The article refers to the helixes 'evolving', not changing or modifying, but evolving, indicating an attribute of life, since non-life does not evolve.

There are many definitions of the word "evolve," and one of them is simply that an object such as this structure changes over time. We use the same term when we describe the formation of galaxies, for example, without any concern as to whether or not that galaxy harbors life as we might recognize it.

I really think the more difficult problem will be to determine an origin for self-awareness or consciousness.

[barfle]

The disc theory makes sense if they are all formed from the same original disc matter, but is this necessarily so?

Apparently it is, since Pluto has been downgraded, in part because its orbital plane is skewed relative to those of the rest of the planets.

The traditional view of the atom shows the electrons orbiting in planar orbits, but each electron orbit is oblique to the orbit of its' partner.

The atom as conceived by Bohr was an early attempt to make the atoms roughly spherical. The more recent view (from when I was in college) doesn't even show the atoms in orbits, but rather as probabilities in a shell.

If a planet were to be orbiting in a plane oblique to our own, and at an distance somewhere between Mars and Saturn, what is the probability that we would see it and recognize it for what it is?

I suspect it would be quite high (assuming it reflected enough light to be seen), since star maps have been around for quite a while. The planets gave early cosmologists quite a stir, coming up with "celestial spheres" in an attempt to explain their apparently strange motion.

[analog]

Shapley wrote:

Satelites that are 'captures' of passing bodies would be expected to retain an orbit in a plane roughly tangent to their original trajectory, which would likely as not be at some angle other than the orbit of the body they are captured by.

Absolutely true. Captured satellites come into the system with their own initial momentum which can be at any angle, while those spots that condense out of the initial rotating gas sphere are aleady moving around its axis.

I first formed that mental picture as a kid, tossing oranges out the back of a stationwagon going up the Florida Turnpike. They bounce, start to spin then explode into a vertical disc of orange juice and pulp, not a sphere. We remarked how it resembled the solar system. Running that sequence backward as a thought experiment gave me my simplistic conceptualization. I was young enough then to be not distracted by short skirts.

Years later I read Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" wherein he makes a case for Venus being a recent capture and Mars once having crossed Earth's orbit. At first it was baffling because we'd been taught as kids the solar system was stable and here was this heretic writing crazy stuff..... but catastrophism has made inroads, and we've since found hundreds of meanderers through the solar system... no reason one of them couldn't be huge.
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/, click orbit diagrams, 2007HA is a good one..

[Shapley]

Thanks for the link, Analog. The site clearly shows that the orbits of the planets through Jupiter are roughly coplanar, and shows a variety of objects in orbits that are not.

If Mars and Venus were captures, I find myself wondering if they originally established orbits outside the plane of the 'disc fragment' planets, and were eventually pulled into a coplanar orbit by the laws of physics or the hand of God or whatever force mandates such orbital requirements. It does seem conceivable that the gravitational forces of larger orbiting objects would influence them as they passed, pulling them into a coplanar orbit over the course of many millions of years. Whether this is the result of natural phenomenae or simply to make God's math easier is debatable (which is why it's here, in the 'Debate Team' forum).

V/R
Shapley

[analog]

Antineutrinos?? Well! Somebody's figured out a practical use for the little fellows!!!

http://www.llnl.gov/str/JanFeb06/Bernstein.html

A team from Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national laboratories has designed a detector that uses an elusive elementary particle—the antineutrino—to make real-time measurements of plutonium as it is created in the heart of a nuclear reactor. This antineutrino detector can potentially help the IAEA and other agencies achieve the important goal of tracking global inventories of fissile materials, such as plutonium, to ensure these materials are not being diverted into weapons.

Now if they can figure out how to track the enrichment process from afar...

[Shapley]

Now if they can figure out how to track the enrichment process from afar...

I believe that is the idea, in the long run. Antineutrinos are not attenuated (at least not significantly) by time and space. Therefore, once you learn how to spot the little devils (or angels, or God-particles), you just have to set your sights on picking them up from greater and greater distances.

Once perfected, the antineutrino detectors could monitor nuclear operation from satelites, as well as being one component of a nuclear weapon detection device, ala Star Wars, that will detect and track nuclear weapons. I believe one proposal for the Star Wars system of the '80s called for a series of monitoring satelites (using then-unknown technology) for locating and tracking nuclear weapons, and a number of satelite-based or terrestrial-based (or both) weapons to shoot them down if they were perceived as threatening nations within the protective shield.

Could this technology be a by-product of '80s Star Wars funding?

V/R
Shapley

[Shapley]

Hackers Infiltrate Large Hadron Collider, Mock IT Security

[Shapley]

If a star collapses in the Universe, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

[navneeth]

If a star collapses in the Universe, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Yep.

[Shapley]

The beginning of the end delayed.

The Large Hardon Collider has developed a fault, delaying the experiments that, according to some, will end up destroying the Earth....

[Serenity]

Shapley, are you part dislexic?

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Shapley, are you part dislexic?

I just figured it was a personal issue. But you're right, it might be dyslexia. Or one of those Freudian thingies...

[Shapley]

Shapley, are you part dislexic?

No, I just type to fast.

[Serenity]

It's a good thing that the LHC's chick magnets are cooled; I would not want to be collided at higher temperature! So the "Head of Communications" said no collisions on Monday, maybe Wednesday we'll get lucky.