Welcome to the Grex Science conference, first edition.

My vision of this conference is to provide a gathering place
for discussions and information about the natural sciences
(including physics, biology, chemistry and astronomy),
mathematics, engineering, skeptical inquiry, and related
subjects.  Pointers to information sources, including URL's,
are welcome and may be condensed for reference.

We start with the discussions about Mars and space technology.
Have at it!

86 responses total.

Don't tell me I'm actually the first one here...  =)

Well, I'm an English major, but I'll *try* to keep up.  Maybe I'll actually
learn something.  <g>  Biology and Astronomy are my areas, so I'll see you
there!

We're glad you're heer. Keep us honest.
I'm interested in all of the above, and also Geology, Meteorology, 
Paleontology, and Cosmology. I'll be ubiquitous in this conference, I'm sure.
thanks, Russ, for pressing for it.
..

This response has been erased.

Russ, would you please link the "other" cloning item, and the asteroid
impact item, from agora to here?  Thanks! 

You'll have to give me the item numbers, I have no time to go looking.

Cloning is agora 86, and Asteroids is agora 87.

I am interested in Astrology , Thanks Russ ..

Astrology? Science? There is a Pseudo item that would be good for astrology.

Re #7:  Astrology is not a science.  We could discuss the reasons why
at considerable length, but chief among them is that the predictions
made using, e.g. horoscopes are no better than chance.  Even astrologers
don't agree what various configurations of planets and stars mean; just
compare a few newspaper astrologers and see.
 
The use of astrology is to give people some nice words from a kindly
authority figure and make them feel better, but those with real troubles
would be better served by spending the time and money on sessions with
trained and certified therapists.  The claimed influence of the stars
does have one effect, I'm sure.  It even has a name:  placebo.

The "various configurations of planets and stars" mean that Newtonian
physics is pretty good, since it is able to predict them all with great
accuracy. THrow in relativety, and the predictions are even better.

Astrology is generally inexpensive, harmless, and entertaining.  If not
taken too seriously, it's reliably good in those respects.  The only thing
that certified therapists are reliably good at is draining their patient's
wallets.

Which is not to say that consulting the stars is a good way to deal with
manic-depressive disorders, just that clinical psychology is a primitive and
unreliable technology.  Reading the horoscopes is certainly healthier than
reading the sports section of the paper.

Well, I don't know. The sports section puts me to sleep; the horoscopes
make me nauseated at people's gullibility. 

I'd have to agree with that.  I prefer the comic section, poor as it is.

Amen to that.
 
When you consider that a belly laugh is supposed to be good medicine,
the comics are certainly better for one than the astrology columns.

That's great idea, Russ. I was kneely interested
[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D[D
in astro-physics  and i think i have got the right one.

I agree with Rane that relativity coupled with Inertial Physics gives good
predictions. But it is  NOT conclusive. As even these are approximations,
which we find correct in practice. BUT relativity theory fails at the
Black hole! This is called singularity. So there is no science which is
perfect. To discard Astrology (you may call it a science or not!) will
mean that we are shutting doors on ourself. A good scientist always 
keeps all avenues for information open. Because what we know so far is really

far from absolute truth. It's just relative to oneself.
For e.g.: We use  Zero everyday but never find it's existance in nature.
So can we have a broader outlook towards science? &  Non-science?

Relativity still produces answers close enough to observation to be useful,
in situations which it addresses. Astrology produces vague answers at best,
and often answers not in agreement with observation.

I don't "discard" astrology - I ignore it. It is not worthy of even study
UNTIL it produces an unexpected prediction new to science that is subsequently
confirmed and shown to have arisen in astrological precepts.

What's wrong with "zero"? It arises in nature in exactly the same manner any
other number arises in nature. 

Well, Curl (if I may call you so?) can you give me an example of "zero""
found in nature? Like you can se there is "one" tree with 'two" branches.

If humans had never studied something not worthy of study UNTIL it produced
something which they could undestand given the knowledge of their times,
then we won't have reached where we are now! As the history confirms,
the guy who got something to show the people which they could understand
got acclaim, as opposed to the one  who couldn't explain his ideas as
effectively
to the public. But basically both were dreamers at some stage.
So the point I want to make is that we shouldn't let our prejudices
decide the information flowing into us.
Finally , I am not a pro-astrology kinda guy or something. I hold just mild
curiosity about it. The idea is not to let inflow of data be hampered by
previously constituted ideosyncrises.
I'm game even if you add astrology or don't!

This response has been erased.

I didn't say don't study astrology. I said *I* won't study astrology. There
are thousands of (misguided, imo) folks studying astrology. When *they* come
up with something that fits my criteria, I'll look at it. I'm not biased
against astrology - it just strikes me as stupid as (say) reading tea leaves.

Cut down that one tree, and you have zero tree. One can certainly "see" an
absence. After all, you see that one tree by also "seeing" the absence of a
second tree.

Hi, Guys
I couldn't help but noticing this intresting topic of "zero"
If you have zero tree , what do we mean by nothing?
Why is it that there is zero tree ? Why not zero bird?
So actually zerocan't be associated with anything.[B
Becouse zero does not mean nothing.
So zero can't be associated to trees or birds etc. the way we can associate
other numbers.
It does not point to a definative identity.
What does pur space contain , ZERO or NOTHING?

You are confused. An "identity" excludes zero by definition. But you
can still have zero of anything (except death and taxes....).

Are you asserting that zero trees is different than zero birds?
It seemd that kamdhenu is implicitly assuming that they are different.
I also question the distinction between zero and nothing.

Me too. Somebody or other - the Greeks I think - also did not have zero
in their counting. That made algebra impossible. But zero is as good a
number as any other integer, and obviously it is expressed in nature too.

(Re:  #23 - zero is the additive identity, no?  :)

Numbers - whether 1, 0, or 2.718281828459045... - have no real, "concrete"
existence in the natural world.  They are mental abstractions.  The fact
that there's one tree on a hill does not prove that the number 1 is a part
of the natural world, it proves that the concept of "one" is deeply imbedded
in your language and way of thinking. 

I have just read that besides conceptual problems with "zero", Classical
math (i.e., ancient) also had trouble with "one". The argument went that,
since the *unit* of counting is "one", one itself cannot be a number that
is counted. They really had hangups back then, didn't they? I sduppose,
though, it was necesary to work one's way through all such ideas before
mathematics could be established on a firm basis. 

Mathematics had trouble with infinity as late as the 19th Century.
The German mathematician, Georg Cantor, was persecuted by his
colleagues for his innovative ideas about infinity.  It turns out
that it can be proven that there are different types of infinity!

Does anyone really understand P-Brane theory? All those dualities confused
me.

help resp.

What does i stand for and when was it invented?

The letter  i  is usually used to represent the square root of -1 (sqrt(-1)).
It is called the unit "imaginary" (hence, i). Complex numbers are a
sum of a real number, say A, and an imaginary number, say iB (a product),
so you get Z = A + iB. There is an arithmetic of complex numbers, which
isn't much difference from ordinary arithmetic except for ii = -1 

The notation i for sqrt(-1) was introduced by Euler in 1777.  I believe
that the idea first received serious treatment in Cardan's _Ars Magna_,
but, given Cardan's reputation, i would certainly not credit him with
anything more than being able to recognize something worth stealing.

It might be worth mentioning that the utility of the imaginary numbers
and complex numbers comes in part from the identity exp(iA) = cosA +
isinA, and A can represent a phase angle of a sinusoidal function. This
relation also gives the rather famous identity, also due to Euler

                        exp(i pi) = -1

which connects the imaginaries, pi (3.14159...), and the negatives. 

I figured i would know the date of this, and Rane would know the rest.  Did
anyone mentioned when infinity was invented?

It dates at least back to the Babylonians, but the modern theory of
infinity dates from Cantor from between 1871-1884. 

The "lazy 8" symbol for infinity dates from 1655, when Wallis used it in
his _Arithmetica Infinitorum_, but the Romans sometimes used it to denote
1000, so i'd only give Wallis credit for finalizing the notation.  

yoohoo, anybody there. I just wanted to know if there is a conf here for
amateur astronomy or radio astronomy proper, or maybe astrophy or something
like that. Maybe we should have something dedicated to that, huh? just a
suggestion.

You could start an item here, or in some other conference, and see if it
develops. If it does, the impetus may come for a separate conference.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss