Wow, do I dread parsing what it going on in those science fields I follow. Not incidental fields, either.
Not that any specifically involved will read this. For which I am thankful. Yet my dread in what I am about to type conjures up a precious rewording of that famous Kipling poem about charging into a losing battle.
Egos to the right of them,
Egos to left of them,
Science sites in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly the fool heretics rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
About the universe they still wondered.
After that, the poem mentions flashing sabers, gunners, and battery-smoke. In parallel today we have sites like LiveScience, and institutions like NOAA, LIGO, the LHC. These latter fight in the Thought War, not Kipling’s war. In such a struggle, they are of such fierceness never before seen on this Earth.
But are they winning? What the f*** is going on? Do all of them really believe QCD? How many virtual particles and forces and contradictions can be created before Physics grad students go mad? Answer probably a lot more, as there are always a way to take a break. They read ‘string theory’ to that end, I suppose. Like watching TV,
For me it’s sites like Universe Today . It’s like the sincere priest who brings scripture to a gun battle – so honest, a bit looney … I could go on, but won’t.
The souls of this battle in the wider war are, what do they call them? Oh, yes, “photons” or “waves”. Shouldn’t they be calling them ‘wotons’?
Let’s pretend I typed all that in my sleep.
“Excuse me, Mr. Tater. There is nautical dawn at the Eastern horizon. Time to get up. Time for battle.”
“Right you are.” He rises to his feet, weariness in his bones. He wants to ask two questions. ‘At what speed, in tenth of microseconds, is the big sphere turning’ and ‘Is the rotational energy really use pi, or 4, like that half-fake lunatic claims oh so well and so subtly?’, yet remains silent. He knows the other man neither knows nor cares.
For his dawn meal he eats his regulation RME brick. Which is a tough chew; he plans his charge up the valley.
8am
This is D.M. Calls his Youtube channel by the funky & clever name Veritasium, while almost never mentioning his own. So I guess I shouldn’t mention it, either. Happens to be a great presenter, seems to be a nice person, very hard worker and promotes Science like no one ever. Justifiably is the most influential person in Science today. Yet not 100% pure, either (don’t get me wrong I am grateful he exists). This latest, produced amidst a symptomatic brouhaha about E/M 4 days ago. It apparently has 3.5 million views – which is possible, due to homework clicks.
This is the same presenter who in an earlier video reported brilliantly but opaquely the clever theory that magnetism was orthogonal to electricity (via the ‘right hand rule’ which he ducked) because of Special Relativity, because of Time Dilation of electrons moving at the speed of light relative to nearby protons. But in this ‘actually’ video he explains electrons barely move. What’s up, D?
Meanwhile famous website Wikipedia has a page whose first words are “A Birkeland current (also known as field-aligned current ) is a set of currents that flow along geomagnetic field lines“
But currents flow at right angles to Geomagnetic field lines. What’s up, W.K.?
I got that from Miles Mathis (please avoid his other site, the one with the initial). PDF, At least he gives an explanation for ‘the right hand rule’, true or false. a second PDF. He also gets a lot of hits. But very few mentions. Sometime he does not come across as a real person.
Why am I posting this now? Because of the global warming issue, why else? /sardonic
N-K and Tallbloke are continuing (I am grateful for them, too). They have arrived at the subtle question of Earth’s brightness. Also, they are sticking to ‘adiabatic compression’ (something I think they get wrong. But, hey, maybe I am the one who is wrong).
FWIW Mathis, among his hundreds of uniquely-styled papers chats about brighness. PDF
That’s enough for the day.
carbontater 