I heard on the news just tonight that E=mc2 has been agreed on by some other highly important experts.

They announced this as if to say that Einstein was right about E=mc2 after all.

I thought this had been "agreed upon" a long time ago. Apparently not. Apparently there were those who doubted it. Apparently their doubt cast a bad light on the idea.

Why would they just now come out and declare it to be a "fact" because some other people agreed with him who had once disagreed?

This is a perfect example of what we have been saying about "facts" being "agreements" and has been demonstrated by this announcement.

Well La dee da.



How will this announcement effect the scientific community?

You know....before, I thought you were full of horse hooey. But now that you use this example...I totally get what you were saying.

Interesting.

It is very much a very bad relationship between philosophy and physics....one that just doesn't work. You know....the kind of relationship where they keep arguing and philosophy says "honey, you know damn well that if I don't hear you split atoms, then you just didn't do it". And then physics says, "You b!tch. It happened, alright? Pretending it didn't happen doesn't mean it didn't happen. Sheesh, you're so pig headed". Then they sleep in separate rooms.

But seriously. You're right. A physical law is either valid because the physics say so....or because everyone agrees that it is the way it is. I suppose it should naturally be both. But it isn't always.

Hmmm.

The popular reporting of this important scientific accomplishment misrepresents the work.

What really happened is that a group of researchers
successfully calculated the nucleon mass for the first
time using Quantum Chromo-Dynamics and report they
have correctly accounted for vacuum fluctuations using
discrete 4 dimensional techniques and a monumental amount
of supercomputer time.

I posted a link to the announcement on the other thread
with this name.

http://mingle2.com/topic/show/180518?page=3

The effort is noteworthy in that it does not disagree
with Einstein's formulation and it is a direct calculation
from first principles using the quantum field theory QCD.



of course you can never PROVE a theory is true...only
that it is false, but the authors do show that the nucleon
mass is correctly calculable (for the first time ever) using lattice QCD and taking into account the energy fluctuations!

way to go for the research team!

If you want to understand how this affects the scientific community, then watch these Feynman clips!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozF5Cwbt6RY
AND
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1ZtRN-iGdQ

watch them....only a couple of minutes...

There is no conflict. A physical "Law" is merely valid because it agrees with experiment. As soon as we have a disagreement, a new law must be found. This IS Physics. There is no absolute law. Only an ever evolving deeper understanding that leads to a better, more accurate understanding of nature. (see the Feynman lecture excerpts referenced in my previous post)

Of course people have to agree on the experimental results otherwise we are merely a collection of non-communicating lunatics in an asylum!

But such physical "laws" CAN be agreed upon by healthy rational people. Theories CAN in fact be tested by experiment. A beautiful deeper understanding of our world gradually emerges - fromThales to Archimedes to Aristotle to Galileo to Newton to Einstein to Feynman ... etc ... etc ... and eventually we see that each was correct in their description of the world within the confines of the limit of understanding of experiments during their lifetimes. We can and do use their theories each and every day knowing all the while these theories are not absolute laws and will be refined in the future. This in no way invalidates their usefulness nor their beauty.

And so, this is a way humankind can understand nature. This is the nature of reality. A reality which can and is agreed upon by those who sincerely seek to understand it. A reality that is continually probed and elucidated as we learn more about our world.

Very interesting s1owhand. Of course the way the idiot news casters worded it, it was almost tongue in cheek and they did not give any scientific details or even mention any names.

You gave a great explanation of science.

The one area I am not so sure of is the true definition of healthy rational people and "lunatics" is often abused and is often an opinion.

Great video's man this world lost a great mind when Feynman died.

Cheers Slowhand!

Dang, I thought E=IR

I love P=IE.

This is a great example of how in statistics giving just part of the information can lead one to a very different conclusion than was initially intended. Some times its even intentional to sway an audience of a falsehood. Very interesting.

This happens a lot.

I don't get the comparison. Sighting statistics and plain old lousy reporting are two different things.

Your report on the news item was an intelligent one. Probably viewed too intelligent for the general "dumbed down" viewing public. I wish there was a news station that would report the news as if people were more intelligent. But it is all about ratings.

jb

If you dont understand the study and all data that went into a statistic then you can be lead to believe a different conclusion.

If you don't understand the study and all the data that went into a scientific discovery, or verification of a previous scientific study, then you can be lead to a conclusion like the one made above, that scientists just agree on this **** and that is all that makes it science which is false.

I see the correlation . . .

The problem is that the reporters themselves, even on new scientist many times do not understand the research, this is getting more and more common as the fields of science becomes increasingly complex. Don't feel bad Quantum Chromodynamics is some tough stuff.


What is important to know, is that science is not one big field. Each field works pretty well independent of the other fields as far as research goes, not all, but most.

And when a discovery is made in one, like Einsteins equations, this discovery can be made theoretically long before other fields are fully developed. But when those other fields, such as QCD have developed, and they end up verifying another fields discovery, we in the scientific community just check off another box of parallel validation.

This is a great thing in science, not something to hooohaa about!

Jeremy

I am honestly confused.

What, exactly is "science"? Is it a methodology? Is it peer review? Is it reproducibility? Is it logic? What are the exact criteria for a claim to being "scientific"?

So far as I can tell, it seems almost to be simply the complement to the definition of "reality"...

reality = "that which can be demonstrated or described by science"

science = "that which demonstrates or describes reality"

Is this right?

I liked Mc-hammer, what ever happened to him?

Science is the methodology for the process of discovery.

Something is considered to be scientific if its reproducible, verifiable, and falsifiable or can be accurately extrapolated from existing data that is reproducible, verifiable, and falsifiable.

And generally if it works, then its real, if its real it can be studied and worked out via science eventually.