Thread: What are your favourite simple things that science just cannot explain?

Originally Posted by moskowfreak1111

"F***ing magnets, how do they work?"

How they work is simple. Why they work... That's a whole other story.

To be honest the basis of magnets is pretty close to the fundamentals of physics. Magnetism is just something that happens; it's a law, or axiom, like the constancy of the speed of light. It can't be explained.

Originally Posted by Xei

To be honest the basis of magnets is pretty close to the fundamentals of physics. Magnetism is just something that happens; it's a law, or axiom, like the constancy of the speed of light. It can't be explained.

Not ever? Not even someday?

Originally Posted by Xei

Hi there. You're basically living in a continuation of Ancient Greece that started with the Renaissance. Enjoy your stay.

And the Greek culture and philosophy was basically a continuation of the Indo/European fertile crescent/Egyptian and Indian Buddhist philosophies.

I'm not aware of that. Can you give some good examples of those cultures emphasising intellectual autonomy and questioning the basis of the wisdom of authority as Socrates did? Or appealing to rigorous proof, and building up systems of indubitable knowledge, as Euclid did? These are two of the most important ideas that the Renaissance rediscovered.

With respects to magnetism: just think about it. Any explanation is just a reduction to (more general) observed but unexplained facts; nothing is ever explained a priori. If you ever did 'explain' magnetism it would just be in terms of some even more general unexplained formula of which magnetism is a special case. When you conceptualise an explanation of magnetism, what is it exactly that you are hoping to receive? An explanation that is tactile and intuitive to you as a human, like the explanation of perceived air pressure in terms of lots of tiny billiard balls constantly slamming against your skin? Billiard balls are not really a desirable explanatory mechanism; they are not fundamental, just familiar. The entire concept of objects with volume and solidity only exists on a human scale; on a more fundamental (smaller/more detailed) level these ideas are not real, so to go on explaining things in terms of even more general things we must give up the desire I'm assuming you posses to get tactile explanations, but just accept whatever it is we see down there as fact. Obviously we will never get back to intuitive - that is to say, commonly experienced - ideas as we go deeper and deeper, and further from what is prosaic to us. The current type of explanation for magnetism that you're given now is the only type you'll ever get: an observation. An assertion. Perhaps one day we'll receive an even wider assertion that contains the assertion of magnetism within it. I don't think that's what you're after when you ask how it is that I'm sure you'll never get an 'explanation', but that's just the reality of the situation when you analyse it.

I think that's true in a way. Like you could say "There are these things called Torsons which cause magnets to attract" or whatever but if they don't relate to anything you already know of, like some common thing, you won't understand it anyway. You would have to figure out what Torsons do/their rules etc.

It always leads to more questions and you just have to accept that those Torsons cause magnetism. Maybe one day everything will be proven, but you still just have to learn that these are the rules of these new things you've found.

Is that pretty much what you're saying Xei?

Couldn't you say fields and charges "explain" the observation of magnetism? Couldn't you say the relativity of space and time "explain" the constancy of light? You could define magnetism as the pure observation itself, but isn't the point of science the attempt to look beyond that and seek hidden relationships with other seemingly separate observations and explain them in terms of better pictures and ideas for whats actually going on? Sure, all we have to work with is what we experience, but does that really devalue the explanatory power of science?

Originally Posted by Wayfaerer

Couldn't you say fields and charges "explain" the observation of magnetism? Couldn't you say the relativity of space and time "explain" the constancy of light? You could define magnetism as the pure observation itself, but isn't the point of science the attempt to look beyond that and seek hidden relationships with other seemingly separate observations and explain them in terms of better pictures and ideas for whats actually going on? Sure, all we have to work with is what we experience, but does that really devalue the explanatory power of science?

Yeah that's what I'm thinking too. It's just another thing you have to accept. Like the sky is blue (most of the time). So you accept that the oppositely charged metals have an attraction to each other.
I don't think there's a lot more you need to know to explain it.

Originally Posted by Xei

With respects to magnetism: just think about it. Any explanation is just a reduction to (more general) observed but unexplained facts; nothing is ever explained a priori. If you ever did 'explain' magnetism it would just be in terms of some even more general unexplained formula of which magnetism is a special case. When you conceptualise an explanation of magnetism, what is it exactly that you are hoping to receive? An explanation that is tactile and intuitive to you as a human, like the explanation of perceived air pressure in terms of lots of tiny billiard balls constantly slamming against your skin? Billiard balls are not really a desirable explanatory mechanism; they are not fundamental, just familiar. The entire concept of objects with volume and solidity only exists on a human scale; on a more fundamental (smaller/more detailed) level these ideas are not real, so to go on explaining things in terms of even more general things we must give up the desire I'm assuming you posses to get tactile explanations, but just accept whatever it is we see down there as fact. Obviously we will never get back to intuitive - that is to say, commonly experienced - ideas as we go deeper and deeper, and further from what is prosaic to us. The current type of explanation for magnetism that you're given now is the only type you'll ever get: an observation. An assertion. Perhaps one day we'll receive an even wider assertion that contains the assertion of magnetism within it. I don't think that's what you're after when you ask how it is that I'm sure you'll never get an 'explanation', but that's just the reality of the situation when you analyse it.

Jupp. That was kinda my point

Originally Posted by tommo

I think that's true in a way. Like you could say "There are these things called Torsons which cause magnets to attract" or whatever but if they don't relate to anything you already know of, like some common thing, you won't understand it anyway. You would have to figure out what Torsons do/their rules etc.

It always leads to more questions and you just have to accept that those Torsons cause magnetism. Maybe one day everything will be proven, but you still just have to learn that these are the rules of these new things you've found.

Is that pretty much what you're saying Xei?

Yes, pretty much.

It's interesting you bring up action at a distance. Many philosophers and scientists think this inherently absurd. I do not. I do not see the difference between the assertion 'a particle moves away from a body due to the torsive force acting on the particle' and 'the body constantly sends out a steam of meso-torsive particles. Some of these particles hit the particle in question and cause it to recoil'. I think the latter is just billiard balls again; humans don't ever see action at a distance on their scale, there are always intermediaries. This doesn't mean we should make a general principle out of this and apply it to everything in the universe. There is no a priori argument that makes action at a distance impossible; it's just intuition, and I think intuition just means 'prejudice from expose solely to a certain set of circumstances'. We just have one hypothetical assertion on one hand (the body 'just does' make the particle move away) and another hypothetical assertion on the other (the body 'just does' emit meso-torsives; these cause particles to recoil).

I think you can find parallels here with people who reject quantum physics.

Originally Posted by Wayfaerer

Couldn't you say fields and charges "explain" the observation of magnetism? Couldn't you say the relativity of space and time "explain" the constancy of light? You could define magnetism as the pure observation itself, but isn't the point of science the attempt to look beyond that and seek hidden relationships with other seemingly separate observations and explain them in terms of better pictures and ideas for whats actually going on? Sure, all we have to work with is what we experience, but does that really devalue the explanatory power of science?

I never said the explanatory power is devalued. I just said what it is, take it or leave it. I'm a man of science myself; I think science is extremely valuable, and if we take explanation to mean showing that complex phenomena have some small, simple set of rules behind them, then science is the very pinnacle of explanation. Science has many different 'points'. The pertinent one to this discussion is explaining a phenomenon via reduction to simpler, more general observations. We just have to accept that with any such explanation, it is going to rest on assertions; the act of explanation cannot go on forever, and nothing can explain itself. There are no 'ultimate explanations' of any particular phenomenon where a human is going to say 'ah yes, I see', and that thing will be completely explained in itself. It just seemed to me that this common assumption was contained within Dannon's question.

Originally Posted by Xei

Yes, pretty much.

It's interesting you bring up action at a distance. Many philosophers and scientists think this inherently absurd. I do not. I do not see the difference between the assertion 'a particle moves away from a body due to the torsive force acting on the particle' and 'the body constantly sends out a steam of meso-torsive particles. Some of these particles hit the particle in question and cause it to recoil'. I think the latter is just billiard balls again; humans don't ever see action at a distance on their scale, there are always intermediaries. This doesn't mean we should make a general principle out of this and apply it to everything in the universe. There is no a priori argument that makes action at a distance impossible; it's just intuition, and I think intuition just means 'prejudice from expose solely to a certain set of circumstances'. We just have one hypothetical assertion on one hand (the body 'just does' make the particle move away) and another hypothetical assertion on the other (the body 'just does' emit meso-torsives; these cause particles to recoil).

Well, there is a difference. One is like an electrical circuit where the charge won't even go through the wire until it is connected to the opposite -ode.
The other would be where like a current of electricity going through the wire constantly, ready to be attracted to something else.

I dunno, kind of not much to say about that lol
Neither is absurd though.

Well ya they are objectively different, I just meant not different with respects to the fact that the former isn't any more absurd.

The speed of light was proven to not be constant. They have slowed it down in a laboratory to 45 miles per hour.

Consciousness, awareness, existence, etc. Blows my mind.

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

The speed of light was proven to not be constant. They have slowed it down in a laboratory to 45 miles per hour.

Yeah, I thought it wasn't constant either. Even outside a lab. It's just that it's 299,792,458 metres a second in a vacuum.

That's a pointless tangent, Dannon. The speed of light colloquially means 'the speed of light in a vacuum', and as I say, it's constant. This is the fundamental, and extremely important fact. That light slows down in glass and other transparent media is an irrelevant sideshow. The entire meaning of my post is unchanged.

Also you didn't respond to my asking you to back up what you said about philosophy. If it was just another baseless assertion like the Mayans thing (don't take this as an indication I want to start talking about Mayans, I don't), I'm gonna start getting a bit exasperated.

Here's what Xei said only it's Dick Feynman saying it instead. He's sorta one of the dudes that contributed to our modern understanding of electromagnetic phenomena.



Here's one more video that seems appropriate. Don't know why.

Actually, they slowed down light to 40 something mph IN A VACUUM at near absolute zero temperatures. They are developing ways to incorporate this into computer technology.

As far as Greek philosophy goes, it was so much influenced by Buddhism (but not Hinduism). The Greeks settled in India, but they couldn't incorporate into the Hindu society because of the caste system but the Buddhists welcomed them. The first images and statues of the Buddha were made by Greek artists. Anyway, most of the Greek philosophies were influenced by Buddhists culture, including logic and stoicism and pyrrohism, etc. Buddha's middle way became Aristotle's Golden mean. Google Greco-Bactria. Greek thought and art also influenced Buddhist thought. Greco-Buddhism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Here is a link regarding Greco-Buddhism.

When Alexander conquered the Bactrian and Gandharan regions, these areas may already have been under Buddhist or Jainist influence. According to a legend preserved in Pali, the language of the Theravada canon, two merchant brothers from Bactria, named Tapassu and Bhallika, visited the Buddha and became his disciples. The legend states that they then returned to Bactria and spread the Buddha's teaching.[2]

In 326 BCE, Alexander invaded India. King Ambhi, ruler of Taxila, surrendered his city, a notable center of Buddhist faith, to Alexander. Alexander fought an epic battle against Porus, a ruler of a region in the Punjab in the Battle of Hydaspes in 326 BCE.

Several philosophers, such as Pyrrho, Anaxarchus and Onesicritus, are said to have been selected by Alexander to accompany him in his eastern campaigns. During the 18 months they were in India, they were able to interact with Indian ascetics, generally described as Gymnosophists ("naked philosophers"). Pyrrho (360-270 BCE) returned to Greece and became the first Skeptic and the founder of the school named Pyrrhonism. The Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius explained that Pyrrho's equanimity and detachment from the world were acquired in India.[3] Few of his sayings are directly known, but they are clearly reminiscent of eastern, possibly Buddhist, thought:

"Nothing really exists, but human life is governed by convention"
"Nothing is in itself more this than that" (Diogenes Laertius IX.61)
Another of these philosophers, Onesicritus, a Cynic, is said by Strabo to have learnt in India the following precepts:

"That nothing that happens to a man is bad or good, opinions being merely dreams"
"That the best philosophy [is] that which liberates the mind from [both] pleasure and grief" (Strabo, XV.I.65[4])
Sir William Tarn wrote that the Brahmans who were the party opposed to the Buddhists always fought with Alexander.

These contacts initiated the first direct interactions between Greek and Indian philosophy, which were to continue and expand for several more centuries.

It's all there. Eastern Philosophies, unlike American Indian or Mayan teachings, are not only passed down orally, but recorded.


Regarding things that science cannot explain: when one puts a candle in a large polished crystal bowl, a holographic image of the flame is projected to hover near the top center of the bowl. When two or more (preferably 4) people place their finger so that the projected flame has the illusion of sitting on their fingers we find that the flame is in a different spot for each observer. As each observer moves so that each person sees the flame in the same spot and their fingers are touching, the image of the flame actually becomes very hot. Now here is the part that I wonder if science can explain: 4 people all observing the image of the flame in the same spot. But if an outside person who is passing by glances over at this group of people around the crystal bowl, and if his eyes fall on the image of the flame, the image of the flame actually moves off center from the perspective of the four around the bowl. In order to keep this from happening, the four need to forbid other people who are not participating in this experiment to stay away and not look, even out of curiosity.

How can this happen? How can the observation of a passer-by influence the appearance of the flame to the four who are conducting the experiment, often even unaware that a passer-by is observing?

Originally Posted by Xei

Can you give some good examples of those cultures emphasising intellectual autonomy and questioning the basis of the wisdom of authority as Socrates did? Or appealing to rigorous proof, and building up systems of indubitable knowledge, as Euclid did?

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many, even by me. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.” - Buddha

This is one of the most important quotes of the Buddha that revolutionized culture and keeps Buddhism in check and undermines even the Buddha's words.

That's very interesting, thanks Dannon. Although, the Greeks still were the most important contributors, it seems to me. It sounds like Eastern philosophy inspired a state of total doubt and no real solution to it; the Greeks as a whole incorporated the idea of dogma as an incorrect source of knowledge, but the Renaissance wouldn't have gotten very far with that idea alone; the Greeks also appealed to rationality of oneself as a way of creating new knowledge, embodied by Euclid's elements.

I'd like you to cite this slow light in a vacuum thing, I'm sceptical (as the Buddha instructs me).

Google

This one is interesting: IBM Research - Zurich

This one is the most relevant: Slow Light

But it seems that you are right, that it wasn't in a vacuum.

EDIT: regarding article 'slow light', that was copyrighted in 1999. I believe that since then they have figured out a way to do this in a vacuum and even to stop it. I will keep looking.

Any luck finding a reference for the speed of light in vacuum having been modified?

Were you wrong?

Originally Posted by tommo

I think that's true in a way. Like you could say "There are these things called Torsons which cause magnets to attract" or whatever but if they don't relate to anything you already know of, like some common thing, you won't understand it anyway. You would have to figure out what Torsons do/their rules etc.

It always leads to more questions and you just have to accept that those Torsons cause magnetism. Maybe one day everything will be proven, but you still just have to learn that these are the rules of these new things you've found.

Is that pretty much what you're saying Xei?

Your explanation is almost exactly what the current explanation actually is, except instead of torsons, its electrons. Just sayin....

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

Your explanation is almost exactly what the current explanation actually is, except instead of torsons, its electrons photons. Just sayin....

fixd.

I highly recommend the book "Symmetry" by Leon Lederman. It has the best non-technical explanation of gauge fields and their associated gauge bosons (e.g. photons) that I've ever seen.

Oh I honestly didn't know there was any theory. Int'resting....

Kind of cool still that the photons/electrons, whichever one, has a pulling effect on the others. When the distance between them, if you go down to the microscopic level, is like the distance between planets almost. And when it's separate objects, it's an even bigger gap.

EDIT: Fuck! I just realised we were talking about magnets. Yeah I already knew that theory lol
Hadn't been in this thread for a while lol