57 Replies to “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star”

  3. We are destroying the Universe by looking at it?
    What’s next from these eggheads, having your picture taken steals your soul. Cue the twilight zone music.

  4. And I am supposed to worry about this stuff?
    Do those guys get paid for coming up with this crap?
    I would prefer they work on warp drive so we can go take a closer look and maybe hit Rhysa on the way.

  5. My God, spot the idiot journalist’s analogy in this muddled moronic piece:
    …..we could stop it decaying due what is what is called the “quantum Zeno effect,” which suggests that if an “observer” makes repeated, quick observations of a microscopic object undergoing change, the object can stop changing – just as a watched kettle never boils.
    Oh. My. God.

  6. We’ve got to tighten up the criteria for Ph.D.’s – REALLY tighten them up – REALLY REALLY tighten them up. This is the most half-baked idea that I’ve seen come out of quantum measurement theory, and that’s really saying something.
    The New Scientist is an amusing magazine – right up there with the National Enquirer – we subscribe, and it’s a good read, and usually a good laugh – but really!
    If someone takes these idiots seriously then there will be lengthy ethical reviews of their work. Serious impediments to astronomical research will be put in place.
    Anyway, it’s another reason not to worry about global warming.

  7. Yes, but are we warming the universe? Their comment about the “beginning” was interesting. What was going on before the beginning or was there no such thing as time back then?

  8. “Anyway, it’s another reason not to worry about global warming.”
    Brilliant!!
    Quantum physics has always ticked me off, mostly because I never had the time to take the required courses or read the required material to provide an in-depth understanding of many of the theories.
    dammit.

  9. …on a sort of related note, I think that giant inter-European country $6billion electron smashing mini big-bang experiment is set to happen on Nov. 26th isn’t it? Heard a Physics Prof. mention it a while back and then saw a video/news story on it recently… hold on… will try to find a link…

  11. Like “Schrodinger’s cat in which, thanks to a fancy experimental set up, the moggy is both alive and dead until someone decides to look, when it either carries on living, or dies. That is, by one interpretation (by another, the universe splits into two, one with a live cat and one with a dead one.”
    If the split universe theory is correct then the Peta types with their shorts in knots over Kate bagging that ‘buck’ can relax, because in the split universe the ‘buck’ would still be alive ( unless of course we peeked in which case it’s quite dead).
    Let’s hear a cheer for Professors Krauss and Dent and their parallel universe theory and perhaps an “oops” for the ‘buck’.

  12. The Telegraph? I mean, the Telegraph? May I remind y’all of the nature of newspapers, as explained by Prime Minister Hacker here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M
    Meanwhile, speaking as a house skeptic, I’m skeptical about science too when it gets too big for its britches. For a more serious consideration of things metaphysical & epistemological than the pap at the Telegraph, New Scientist, Scientific American, &c, y’all may be interested in this:
    Modern Cosmology: Science or Folktale?
    by Michael J. Disney
    American Scientist Magazine
    September-October 2007
    tinyurl.com/2jexkv

  13. So, what the guy is saying is… there are two universes, one with me wearing pants and in the other I’m starkers? Who wants to sneak a look and destroy an entire universe?
    I’m so glad my job deals with three knowns: Velocity, Time, and Distance. All of those exist in the universe with the pants, thanks very much.

  14. TWINKLE TWINKLE UFO. WHERE YOU COME FROM WHERE YOU GO.OUR CAPITAL IS FULL OF SLEAZE.TAKE ONE TO YOUR PLANET PLEASE. and leave him on the planet of TUARUS II where the only inhabitants are a bunch of big big ape things with big honkin spears

  16. Theodor von Karman said, “The scientist seeks to understand what is; the engineer seeks to create what never was”. What matters is not whether or not we actually know what’s metaphysically what (though I do like gas on about it as much as the next person), what matters is what we can do with the epistemological insights into the nature of metaphysics provided by science well done.
    On the one hand, perhaps science can’t actually do metaphysics. I mean, science is part of epistemology, not metaphysics, and epistemology is subordinate to metaphysics, so I’m skeptical.
    Nevertheless, on the other hand, the tens-of-nanometer scales upon which the integrated circuits that are running in the computer you are now using are built do, indeed, appear to depend on some epistemologically interesting metaphysical effects known as “quantum mechanics” and stuff like that. So the whole issue isn’t trivial even if only from an engineering perspective.
    Just remember that Bertrand Russell said, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts”.

  17. @Vitrivius (12:37 AM):
    This may seem odd, but the Bertrand Russell quote you supplied looks more profound as I grow older. Had I been half my present age, I would have just shrugged at it.

  18. Me too, Daniel. I guess what one shrugs at is a kind of a measure of one’s axiological perspective. I’ve got a few more aphorisms like Russel’s collected over here – tinyurl.com/s4dlp – if you’re interested.

  19. So if we split the universe in two, and we land on the side that gets the bum deal, what then? Can we blame Bush? Will the lefties stuck there with us accept fate and just live out their lives quietly, never bothering us again? After all, they could be held equally responsible for the universe’s demise if they had ever looked up at night.

  20. I think the proposed “theory” was more philosophical in nature rather then scientific.
    PS GO BLUE GO!

  21. I can understand their concern. If they keep looking hard enough, they will discover “On the seventh day, God rested”.
    That sure shrinks the time-line, lol.

  22. If they keep looking hard enough, John, they will continue the discoveries alluded to by Matt Ridley when he wrote, in 2003, “For the past century the world has got steadily better for most people. You do not believe that? I am not surprised. You are fed such a strong diet of news about how bad things are that it must be hard to believe they were once worse. But choose any statistic you like and it will show that the lot of even the poorest is better today than it was in 1903. […] All this has been achieved primarily by that most hated of tricks, the technical fix. By invention, not legislation.”

  24. I’m not so sure it does, Syncro. The original reference is to an MSM article pontificating profusely, while serious scientists are quite skeptical, at least as I understand it. And that’s where the note in the upper-left corner of SDA comes into play: “This is just the voice of an ordinary Canadian yelling back at the radio – ‘You don’t speak for me.'”
    Context is a many splendored thing, eh what?

  26. While we’re on the topic of the ability of our little old species to affect the nature of the universe, I would like to urge those of you who haven’t recently viewed the canonical video on the tens of thousands of galaxies discovered, in a little tiny sector of the sky, by the Hubble Deep Field telescope, to do so, it’s available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgg2tpUVbXQ
    Just remember that as Stephen Hawking said:
    “Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.”

  27. Vit
    I watched that and found it to be a cursory explanation of what is…the truth….to be found on many levels and in different ways…individual and collective experiences have touched and clued me in to the possibilities…..the universal truths that we find during the journey are the ones I cherish.
    Syncro

  28. Ok, now that we’ve got the Ultra Deep Field under our belt, consider this. There are likely to be other species who have achieved what we have. Maybe not more than we have, maybe more than we have, who knows? Yet unless we are the only species like us on any planet orbiting any of the tens of millions of stars in any of the bazillions of galaxies we have observed, then what we are potentially observing cosmoquantologically has been observed before. Ergo, if observing it caused it to crash, it would have already crashed, and it hasen’t, so it doesn’t.

  29. Vit
    Bullshit…..no-observation is no observation at all…empirically speaking…I’ll go on my own crapulent data….such as it is.
    Syncro

  30. No it isn’t. Observation of nothing is not no observation. If you put an indicator in a solution and it does not change colour, it is a valid observation of nothing, that is to say, something. If Kate goes hunting and observes no harvestable critters, it is a valid observation of no harvestable critters. Nothing is something, except nothing doesn’t exist. And anyway, I though we were talking about philosophy, not something important 😉
    G’night y’all, take care; Vitruvius out.

  31. Vit
    I stand corrected again…nothing is the absence of something.. Mind you buck sausage is more filling than track soup.
    Syncro
    p.s. that was fun 🙂

  32. That reminded me of a nerdish T-shirt I wear on casual Fridays sometimes (from thinkgeek).
    The front has an image of the galaxy with a pointer: “You are here”.
    Alas, the Swedish Bikini Team (nor any other booblalicious babes in bikinis) have never got in line to have sex with me or even chat me up.
    All the smart, cute girls are taken already.

  34. Imagine that. Every time I fart, I bring the entire universe closer to its undoing.
    Or at least the earth, according to Al Gore, who next will declare that he’s God and that he invented all existence…

  36. “Britain’s No.1 quality newspaper website ”
    This says it all.Next they will be telling us Bush has sent killer rockets to Alpha Centuri 2 just to blow up some algae and start an inter-galactic war. This is a newspaper??? Cripes.The Enquirer has them beat by a mile.

  37. Fear not earthlings! For a negotiable fee, I shall seal the intergalactic rift using my Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator!

  38. So…We are destroying the Universe by looking at it, eh?
    Anyone here old enough to remember when the science we worried about wasn’t improbable Theory?
    Anyone remember a day when scientists were not running funding cons?
    This latest startling revelation by funding-hungry science, would be totally laughable were it not for one thing:
    It reveals the mindset science funding plays to. In this case we again see them playing to the humankind-are-a-blight-on-the-earth-(and universe)-which-must-be-eradicated-to-bring-celestial-balance cultists. This anti-human cult seem to be in “earth politics” these days but it seems these cosmosologists are giving them opportunity to expand into saving the universe from the human blight.
    I find this attitude that there is chaos if everything in nature isn’t left unchanged hilarious…particularly if it’s mankind doing the changing, then this is big time voo doo. It is positively Druidic thinking that submits to some “earth spirit entity” which must not be tampered with. This ignores the fact that nature IS change..adaption, survival, extinction…the cosmos are in motion…or changing…many things and creature change it…I think it just bothers these earth cultists that it is man doing any of the changing…which is totally anti-humanitarian and of course sociopathic….but don’t tell the fruit fly cult…they’re too busy loving up the planet to give a damn about humanity.

  39. Bush snuck a peek. It’s all his fault!!!
    Seriously, though, the really scary thought is that these scientists might actually believe this crap. Further more, they get to do this on funding paid for by people who actually have to work for a living.
    Imagine how YOUR life would be if you could get paid high five or low six figure salaries for just publishing end-of-the-earth/universe/time theories.

  40. So if we are to believe the theory that we can destroy something simply by “looking” at it or perhaps “thinking about it” then it goes without saying that all this “focus” and “thinking” and “looking” at the environment is actually destroying it.
    My god, The Fruit Fly Guy and the Failed Presidential Candidate have actually CAUSED global warming!
    Off With Their Heads (oh, oh – that statement might land me in Hot Water with the CRTC/Richard Warman)!!
    Oh well – I will just “think” myself into a warm and fuzzy place.

  41. Not again!
    Vitruvius said “… while serious scientists are quite skeptical…”
    Some are, some aren’t. The problem goes back initially to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which when beyond the postulates necessary for a self-consistent functional theory.
    Collapsing wavefunctions and many-worlds “interpretations” derive from philosophic positions, not scientific ones. They can be completely ignored without affecting the operational validity of quantum mechanics.
    Oh, and quantum mechanics is the best tested of all the physical theories, seemingly perfect in its description of every situation to which it has been employed. It also apparently requires no “tweaking” to make it fit with theries of everything (TOE).
    For those of you interested in TOE, google toe and surfer dude)

  42. So let me get this straight: If I look at the NDP long enough they will disappear or cease to exist?

  44. the UN should do something, you know, form a Committee, have meetings, issue reports with special non-scientific summaries for policy makers.
    The usual.

  45. I agree, Fred. Countries with a larger population do more looking than ones with fewer people — they should pay for the damage they’re doing to the universe. The major countries of the world should pay Looking Credits to the lesser ones.
    We need celebrities to get on board and promote the closing of eyes, or, if you have to, looking only through squinted eyes. (We’ll ignore the fact that celebrities do more looking than the population fo a small town, combined.)
    I’ll have some failed politician write a book called “An Inconvenient Peek” to scare the bejeebers out of school kids.
    Let me know of a city that is willing to host a conference on this as soon as possible, please. Stephane Dion just bought a cat and needs to name it.

  46. Tenebris:
    regardless of the presumed infallibility of TOE…if you expect me to feel guilt, or submit myself to regulatory control abuses because my simple “being” causes some cosmic decay/disruption (as the theory at hand is positing) well….it just ain’t gonna happen….I stand unrepentant in my “being”.
    There is a counter theory that would hold every “being” has a purpose regardless if the ultimate “purpose of being” escapes the scientific community or not…in this regard I will never yield to science.

  47. Looking forward to he day when these GW fear mongers are listed in Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
    In the meantime, pardon me for breathing.

  49. I find this attitude that there is chaos if everything in nature isn’t left unchanged hilarious
    But what if a butterfly flaps its wings in Bumf*ckistan? That’d prove you wrong, idiot! [g]
    On the one hand we’re told that we can control the weather by paying a trizgillion dollars to a money-trading outfit but on the other hand we’re told that an insect could determine where a hurricane happens. So which is it?
    Perhaps we weak-minded, real-world people that actually DO stuff to keep the economy going are too dumb to understand such lofty thoughts.
    [PS I’m no luddite and I beleive that legitimate research has a purpose. Chaos theory as applied to the real world is, uh, “questionable” at best – that won’t stop the looney left from using it though]

  50. I think once the MSM has looked at an issue for about 2 years it disappears.
    global warming is now exiting from the pages as tazers( which do not create greenhouse gases like guns) make their way to centre stage.
    and Mssr.Dion after one year has all but exited from the headlines.
    All hail the MSM observations.

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