• JhonnyTheJeccer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Also light is not sentient, i knows when it is being measured and does different things, but its not sentient DO NOT WORRY!!!1!1!!!1!

      • MajorHavoc@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And the high powered laser itself is behaving strangely.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

        If we setup to disprove that light is particles, no luck, it’s a particle. If we setup to disprove that light is a wave, no luck, it’s a wave.

        I understand there’s some reasonable quantum explanations, but many of those have some very weird implications. Last time I tried to wrap my head around it, we were still working on disproving whichever of the quantum theories we can disprove. That’ll be nice because it’ll likely rule out a lot of silly theories, while leaving an equally silly but probably true, theory standing.

  • Venicon@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Okay imma need an explanation for the middle bottom and bottom right panels, what are they?

    Also love the idea that magic is just science we haven’t explained yet. Most of us would be burned s as witches in the past based on our current knowledge

    • cybervseas@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean, I’m relieved I recognize that one since I actually studied electrical engineering and I should remember these kinds of things.

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      It’s something I’ve been proud to recognise and when electroBOOM did his piece on it, I was glowing with pride.

      But the basic FBR there creates pulsating DC, for steady DC, you need capacitors, to trim the peak voltage and fill in the dips.

      Though, if you have three phase, with each phase on a FBR, and combine the DC output, it’s pretty steady on the output because of how three phase works (no capacitors needed), and I think that’s pretty cool…

      Seriously though, three phase AC is really interesting in how it functions.

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Weird how magic and mystery stops being magic when scientists have words for it.

    One day we’ll discover the afterlife, but we’ll just call them “Post-Human Conciousness Wells” or something, and insist it totally isn’t the same thing as that ancient superstition.

    Cmon, you wanna tell me the world is purely material when our math literally uses imaginary numbers to make sense of things?

      • monotrox@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        Up to the introduction of quantum mechanics imaginary numbers where only ever a theoretical tool and any calculation in electromagnetism, mechanics or even relativity can be done without them.

        Also, any measurement you can make will always result in real numbers because there is no logical interpretation for imaginary measurements (a speed of 2+i m/s doesnt really make sense)

          • monotrox@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            I said that any calculation in electrodynamics CAN be done without imaginary numbers, I never said that it would be the most common or convenient way of doing things.

            If you use a different form of solution to maxwells equations, electrical impedance can totally be expressed as just another real property. Fourier transform also is not necessary to solve maxwells equations or any other physical systems. It just might make it significantly easier and more convenient.

            Obviously imaginary numbers existed and where used way before quantum mechanics was a thing but they werent technically necessary in physics because they never appeared in the equations of fundamental theories (Maxwells equations, general relativity, newtonian mechanics)

            • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              Well, in AC circuits, having √3̅+√-̅1̅ A of current makes as much sense as having 2 amps with a 30° phase shift. It’s just easier notation for calculations - Cartesian coordinates for what would otherwise be polar.

              • jarfil@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                That’s BS notation. If you want Cartesian, just use 3i+1j, no need for some impossible √-1 that you then redefine some operations for, just so it becomes orthogonal to R.

                • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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                  1 year ago

                  The nice thing about 𝑖 = √-̅1̅ is that you don’t need to redefine any operations for it, ℐ𝓂 is “automatically” orthogonal to ℛℯ.

                • dyen49k@kbin.socialOP
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                  1 year ago

                  You might want to look up geometric algebra for a better geometric interpretation of complex numbers than the complex plane with a “real” and “imaginary” axis

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      1 year ago

      There’s a really good science fiction novel by Robert Sheckley called Immortality, Inc. where scientists in the future have discovered that there is an afterlife, but the only way to ensure you get there is a medical procedure and you can only do that if you can afford it. That’s just the beginning, there’s a huge amount of worldbuilding, but that’s the main theme of the book.

    • dyen49k@kbin.socialOP
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      1 year ago

      actual theoretical physicist here: “imaginary numbers” are just poorly named, there’s nothing imaginary about them. You might as well use 2D geometric algebra to do the exact same job (treating real numbers as scalars and imaginary numbers as pseudoscalars)

    • walkercricket@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Math is a tool of the mind to describe our world, imaginary numbers is only a extension of that tool to allow us to go beyond what mathematical logic prevents us to do, while still getting in the end a real number. Math, despite being powerful, is a flawed tool, so getting around its flaws by creating things like imaginary numbers isn’t absurd and doesn’t make the result any less real at the end.

      On the other hand, I don’t think calling everything we don’t understand “magic” or the new trending words “supernatural” and “a miracle” and give god or anything else (like karma) credit for it would be more clever. Back then, we didn’t understood the concept of thunder and interpreted it as god’s wrath. Now, we understand it’s a transmission of electricity from the negatively charged clouds to the neutral ground through ionized particles in the air. I don’t think that scientists now, despite referring to the same phenomena, are talking about the same thing as we did a long time ago.

      So no, no scientist will discover the afterlife “but we’ll just call them “Post-Human Conciousness Wells” or something, and insist it totally isn’t the same thing as that ancient superstition.” as it won’t be.

        • walkercricket@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Stating mathematics is a tool doesn’t answer if mathematics are real or not. But I would say, from my humble experience, that mathematics is both unreal and perfectly tangible. Mathematics is totally a real thing as it obeys strict rule in logic that are true in our real world, axioms, on which everything else is based so that it can’t be used to state things as being true out of the blue, without any justification before using those axioms, which you can translate into our real world. But math also has its limits and has been used to demonstrate that it itself is incomplete, undecidable and inconsistant (mathematically, of course, it’s not our common definition here). Meaning, as mathematics are imperfect, it can’t describe our world perfectly and therefore isn’t real.

          There is an excellent video from Veritasium on the subject of the limits of math: https://piped.video/HeQX2HjkcNo

        • dyen49k@kbin.socialOP
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          1 year ago

          nope, they’re just one mathematical construct out of many (e.g. 2D vector calculus or geometric algebra), and they just happened to stick

              • biddy@feddit.nl
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                1 year ago

                Are you interested in proving me wrong, or figuring out the right answer? If you actually read that article instead of just the title, you would have noticed at the end it says

                This leads us to say a few words about the widely held opinion that, because complex numbers are fundamental to quantum mechanics, it is desirable to “complexify” every bit of physics, including spacetime itself. It will be apparent that we disagree with this view, and hope earnestly that it is quite wrong, and that complex numbers (as mystical uninterpreted scalars) will prove to be unnecessary even in quantum mechanics

                They literally say that “complex numbers are fundamental to quantum mechanics”. In other fields of physics complex numbers are just a convenient tool, but in quantum mechanics they are(as far as we know) fundamental, even if the author hopes that to be proved wrong at some point.

                You seem like you know a bit about alternatives to complex numbers in other areas of physics, so it would be interesting to have a further conversation, as long as you stop being so defensive.

                Complex numbers seem to be used either as 2d vectors or as representation of waves/circles in exponentials, is there an alternative that combines both of those uses?

                • dyen49k@kbin.socialOP
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                  1 year ago

                  Yep, there’s an alternative, i.e. equivalent mathematical formulation that does everything complex numbers do: the geometric algebra introduced in the article I posted earlier.

                  The fundamental object of GA is the “multivector”, which is essentially a sum of scalars, vectors, bivectors and higher grade elements. For instance, you could take the unit x-vector and add it onto some number, say 2, to get the multivector M = 2 + e_x. (To be precise, the space of multivectors is the direct sum over the n-th wedge of the base vector space, n = 0 to dim V).
                  Another important concept is k-vectors, which are essentially k-dimensional volume elements. For instance, a bivector is an area with a direction, and a trivector is a volume with a direction (in 3D there is only one possible “direction” for the volume, but in 4D spacetime volumes itself can be oriented like surfaces can be in 3D).

                  Then, you introduce the “geometric product” for two vectors a and b:
                  ab = a·b + a ∧ b
                  where a · b is the normal scalar product between the two vectors, and a ∧ b is the wedge product between them. The wedge product essentially is the plane spanned by the two vectors, and is antisymmetric (a ∧ b = - b ∧ a, because the orientation of the plane is reversed when exchanging the vector). For instance, the unit bivector in the x-y plane is given by
                  B_xy = e_x e_y = e_x ∧ e_y
                  Notice how the scalar product part of the geometric product is zero, and only the wedge (i.e. bivector part) remains

                  In 3D, there are four types (“grades”) of objects: scalars, vectors, bivectors (also known as 3D pseudovectors) and trivectors (or also known as 3D pseudoscalars). It’s already a very rich subject and has many advantages over classical vector calculus, but for replacing complex numbers, we’re mainly concerned with the 2D case.

                  In the 2D case, there are three types of objects: Scalars, 2D vectors, and bivectors/2D pseudoscalars. There is only one possible orientation for a 2D plane in 2D, so we just denote a bivector with area A as B = A I, where I = e_x ∧ e_y is the only unit bivector/2D pseudoscalar.

                  A nice thing we notice about the I is that it squares to -1 with the geometric product:
                  I^2 = (e_x ∧ e_y)^2 = (e_x e_y)^2 = e_x e_y e_x e_y = - e_x e_y e_y e_x = -e_x e_x = -1
                  The first step works because the scalar product part between e_x and e_y is zero. The second step is just writing out the square. The third step is e_y e_x = e_y ∧ e_x = - e_x ∧ e_y = -e_x e_y, which again works because e_x · e_y = 0. We see that the 2d pseudoscalar I behaves just like the “classic” imaginary unit i.

                  Because the geometric product is associative, and commutative if only scalars and bivectors are involved, the geometric notion of scalars and 2D pseudoscalars can fully replace the notion of complex numbers by making the substitution a + bi -> a + bI.

                  If you want to learn more about GA, I can recommend Doran, Lasenby: Geometric Algebra for Physicsists :)

      • affiliate@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        On the other hand, I don’t think calling everything we don’t understand “magic” … and give god or anything else (like karma) credit for it would be more clever.

        i think quite a few theologians would agree with that point

        • walkercricket@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          And it’s great. Though, as a religious person, thinking this way is no more than shooting yourself in the foot, which is quite sad because religion has only two choice: either cultivating the ignorance but going against science, which is wrong, or cultivating knowledge but overtime, disappearing as a religion. Either way, nowadays it’s doomed.

          • affiliate@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            i don’t see how it’s shooting yourself in the foot. one of the ideas behind the argument i linked to is that pitting god against science isn’t good theology. science will offer more compelling explanations for material phenomena, but that doesn’t necessarily exclude the existence of a god. the idea is to see god as more of an architect: something that made a world that has all these wonderful scientific rules and complex systems that we can discover.

            i should mention that i’m not a religious person but i do think it’s an interesting thing to think about.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Friend of mine (who is dead now ironically enough, and damn, I miss him), wrote a story about this. Where the dead show up on some random planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, in their prime, one that’s infinitely large and does the minecraft thing where it generates as you go, and contains the means to do pretty much anything except for leave… with them just showing up in the Capital City of the planet if they die again, which cannot be done of natural causes here.

        The dead initially think it’s Heaven, but then they notice “Heaven” is being powered by a Dyson Sphere, eventually they connect enough of the dots to realize that their world is a simulation.

        The protagonist is the grandchild of one of the deceased who wound up here after testing experimental teleportation technology, turns out the simulation brought him there to inform him why teleportation technology shouldn’t be invented.

        Eventually the grandchild goes back to Earth, agreeing to keep this a secret, for fear that if people knew about this it would create “Dyson Sphere cults” and would encourage people to commit mass suicide, just “dying to get there”

  • Hexagon@feddit.it
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    1 year ago

    We have cats that can be alive and dead at the same time. Perfectly normal, no magic involved.

    And we can make you age slower than your twin brother, just go on a very fast space trip. Still no magic needed. It’s totally legit

    • jarfil@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We can make a single ray of light hit a wall and go through two or more windows at the same time, then interfere with itself. No magic, just don’t look too closely at the windows or it stops working.

      We can also make two perpendicular polarizers stop blocking all light by adding more polarizers in between them. Also not magic, but the brightening is not linear, don’t ask why.

  • fidodo@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    We can totally explain how the universe works. It’s random! But it’s also not random! We can explain why, but you won’t understand it. Not magic!

    • jarfil@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s not random, you can’t simulate the universe with a 1d10… you need ∞d10 to get the right probability distribution for each throw. Luckily it adds up to a 1d10 when you throw an actual 1d10, just don’t ask why.

  • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Magic is just what you don’t understand. Everything is a mechanism. Even if there was magic, a human soul, the afterlife, God, it would still operate under certain logical rules and principles. Eventually, unless there was something keeping us from obtaining knowledge, we would be able to apply science to magical forces. Science will eventually understand everything it is possible to understand, which might honestly be everything.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Stop!!! Get those partial derivatives and upside down triangles away from me! I don’t want to see those abominations I learned in my electrical studies.

  • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    My favorite is: we know how old the fucking universe is just by looking up at the night sky.

    Or even better: we somehow know our planet got popped by another planet 4.5 billion years ago because reasons.

    • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We know that the universe was much denser and close together based on measurements, but cannot truly see the beginning. We think it’s most likely that the big moon in the sky most likely came from another planet hitting ours, but we don’t know exactly how the collision went down. Science is our best understanding, not some absolute source of knowledge. Our interpretations are often incorrect and updated accordingly, and even the most accurate theories are known to be an incomplete understanding. Until we understand everything, science is the search for knowledge, rather than knowledge itself.