GMO update

[callmeslick]

Washington state retains sensibility:
http://www.delawareonline.com/usatoday/article/3450705

[Tunnelcat]

It WAS winning UNTIL big business dumped in wads of cash in an effort to defeat it, which worked. Bow down to your corporate food masters Washingtonians.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/2 ... 23719.html

[callmeslick]

yup, I was waiting for you to point that out. Apparently, the exact same thing happened in California. Still, I think common sense and basic biology prevailed, but it did take a massive pile of cash to get that money out, and DuPont and Monsanto have LOTS of cash.

[Tunnelcat]

Really? Corporations and scientists know best? It's taken since the early 1900's to finally figure out something we created specifically for grower, manufacturer and consumer convenience, AND as an alternative to natural food fats they thought were the most dangerous foods on the planet, is actually WORSE for us to eat!!! Now they finally want to ban it. Took them long enough. Will the other shoe drop for GMO's a hundred years in the future, and would there be no going back even if we wanted to get rid of it by then?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-0 ... s-fda.html

[callmeslick]

GMO is one of those goofy far-left boogeymen, in my opinion. There is no, exactly ZERO, science behind the fear of GMO foodstuffs. NONE.

[Spidey]

Wow…that is just a little too extreme even for a GMO supporter like me.

[Tunnelcat]

GMO is one of those goofy far-left boogeymen, in my opinion. There is no, exactly ZERO, science behind the fear of GMO foodstuffs. NONE.

Never say never.

[vision]

It's taken since the early 1900's ...

That 100+ year span is one of the most amazing periods of time for scientific advancement. We didn't even know the universe was expanding until Hubble discovered it in the 50's. Medical science is doing things that were science fiction only 25 years ago. And here is the real kicker: the way use medicine today will look like witchcraft by the end of this century. So yeah, scientists today know better than they did 100 years ago. Much, much better. Scientists 100 years from now will seem like gods (but then again, so will everyone else). It's fun to look at the Dark Ages and laugh at our ignorance. But everything we know today will seem just as foolish at the end of this millennia. Of course, that doesn't mean everything we do is stupid, not by a long-shot.

[Heretic]

What horrible education you must of had seeing it was 1929 the Edwin Hubble discovered the universe was expanding.

[Tunnelcat]

It's taken since the early 1900's ...

That 100+ year span is one of the most amazing periods of time for scientific advancement. We didn't even know the universe was expanding until Hubble discovered it in the 50's. Medical science is doing things that were science fiction only 25 years ago. And here is the real kicker: the way use medicine today will look like witchcraft by the end of this century. So yeah, scientists today know better than they did 100 years ago. Much, much better. Scientists 100 years from now will seem like gods (but then again, so will everyone else). It's fun to look at the Dark Ages and laugh at our ignorance. But everything we know today will seem just as foolish at the end of this millennia. Of course, that doesn't mean everything we do is stupid, not by a long-shot.

If we haven't poisoned or nuked ourselves by then.

[flip]

Heh, I was just thinking the same thing TC when I read your post. It does parallel nuclear science in that the theory and math was sound, but no one could determine if an out of control chain reaction would happen or not. At the time, it was a distinct possibility. Kinda makes you wonder where we would be right now if Einstein had kept his mouth shut.

[woodchip]

It's taken since the early 1900's ...

That 100+ year span is one of the most amazing periods of time for scientific advancement. We didn't even know the universe was expanding until Hubble discovered it in the 50's.

Hang on now. The expanding universe concept is getting trashed:

(Phys.org) —Cosmologist Christof Wetterich of the University of Heidelberg has uploaded a paper to the arXiv server in which he claims it's possible that the theory of expansion of the universe might be incorrect. He suggests instead that the redshift observed by researchers here on Earth might be caused by an increase in the mass in the universe.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-08-cosmologis ... e.html#jCp

[flip]

How about it's spinning and we can only observe one branch?

[vision]

What horrible education you must of had seeing it was 1929 the Edwin Hubble discovered the universe was expanding.

My education was horrible in the fact that Hubble and the expanding universe was never once discussed. You see, I went to a catholic school. I learned about science on my own after I graduated. Thanks for pointing out my mistake. I had a lot of ideas in my head while I was posting and got the date confused with another event. I did not fact check because I was in a rush, my apologies. But even being off by a 25 years does not take away from my argument that the amount of knowledge and discovery is grwoing exponentially.

Hang on now. The expanding universe concept is getting trashed:

Heh, that hardly constitutes "getting trashed." This is a paper which has not been peer reviewed and no experiments have been done to test the idea. For now it is just "interesting." Personally I don't like the idea of an expanding universe, especially one that is expanding faster and faster. A contracting universe is much more attractive because it means we might be able to visit another galaxy in the future. As it stands now, we will be lucky to get from one side to the other of our own. (Of course, we can "visit" the Andromeda galaxy as it smashed into the Milky Way, haha...)

[woodchip]

Looking at that statement, where does the extra mass come from?

[Tunnelcat]

Heh, I was just thinking the same thing TC when I read your post. It does parallel nuclear science in that the theory and math was sound, but no one could determine if an out of control chain reaction would happen or not. At the time, it was a distinct possibility. Kinda makes you wonder where we would be right now if Einstein had kept his mouth shut.

There were other smart physicists who would have eventually figured it out. Knowledge always grows and evolves because we humans strive to keep learning and figuring things out, good or bad. And what would have happened if Nazi Germany had developed nuclear weaponry before the U.S. did? Scary thought.

[vision]

Looking at that statement, where does the extra mass come from?

Prove there is extra mass first before trying to answer that question.

[callmeslick]

It's taken since the early 1900's ...

That 100+ year span is one of the most amazing periods of time for scientific advancement. We didn't even know the universe was expanding until Hubble discovered it in the 50's.

Hang on now. The expanding universe concept is getting trashed:

(Phys.org) —Cosmologist Christof Wetterich of the University of Heidelberg has uploaded a paper to the arXiv server in which he claims it's possible that the theory of expansion of the universe might be incorrect. He suggests instead that the redshift observed by researchers here on Earth might be caused by an increase in the mass in the universe.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-08-cosmologis ... e.html#jCp

wouldn't that violate a core law of physics that matter(mass) cannot be either created or destroyed within a system?

[woodchip]

Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Matter can be turned into energy and energy can be turned into matter. So perhaps what the good professor was saying is the universe is losing energy and turning it into mass.

[callmeslick]

matter is matter, and mass is a measure of matter. You cannot destroy, nor can you create matter(your energy description is wrong, the matter does not turn into energy, the energy within one form of matter is transferred to another form). The professor should know that, but it may explain why no submission for peer review......

[woodchip]

Not sure what you are saying slick but:

"In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system cannot change—it is said to be conserved over time. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but can change form, for instance chemical energy can be converted to kinetic energy in the explosion of a stick of dynamite."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy

"First law of thermodynamics: The first law establishes a notion of internal energy for a thermodynamic system. Heat and work are forms of energy transfer. The internal energy of a thermodynamic system may change as heat or matter are transferred into or out of the system or work is done on or by the system. All the energy transfers must be accounted for to see that there is strict conservation of the total energy of a thermodynamic system and its surroundings."

[callmeslick]

all true, but the overall matter in the closed system stays constant. In fact, that is a core element in the expanding/contracting model of the universe, the concentration of mass/energy into very small volumes('black holes'), as I understand it. Far be it from me to go too deep into this stuff......hell, I barely passed Physics in the second semester(Red Sox afternoon games played a role), although I was able to grasp enough Physics to ace Physical Chem and Biophysics.

[woodchip]

Closed system yes but is our universe not open to incoming matter from the surrounding space?

[Krom]

The common view of the universe is that it is a closed system.

[woodchip]

Does our universe have a wall around it to prevent stuff from filtering in? Is not the common theory there are other universes beyond ours ?

"Interactions with the bulk, and possibly with other branes, can influence our brane and thus introduce effects not seen in more standard cosmological models."

[Tunnelcat]

If there is some wall, what's on the other side?

[Spidey]

Another Universe.

Or perhaps Woody's brane...

[Top Gun]

The "brane" stuff, which is kind of an extension of string theory as I see it, is very far out there right now, and certainly isn't accepted as a near-universal working model at this point. I know there's been quite a bit of debate on whether string theory and its further derivations are even testable in the first place, and I saw reference to some of the Large Hadron Collider experiments putting some pretty strict limits on the potential existence of "branes." This is all pretty far out of my league, though, so I'm not anywhere close to an authoritative source on it.

As for the paper woody linked, it's certainly an interesting thought experiment, but as the article noted, even if this is submitted for peer review, it doesn't really seem as though it's provable in any real sense, which doesn't make it a "theory" by the scientific definition. The issue is that mass is a comparative scale: we measure the mass of objects by comparing them to other objects, which is why the basic SI mass unit of the kilogram is (at least for now) defined as one particular lump of metal in a lab in France. If the mass of every particle in the universe was increasing over time, there'd be no way to tell, because the masses we'd be comparing them to would also be increasing. It doesn't seem to mesh very well with certain other pieces of observational evidence, either.

[callmeslick]

Does our universe have a wall around it to prevent stuff from filtering in? Is not the common theory there are other universes beyond ours ?

"Interactions with the bulk, and possibly with other branes, can influence our brane and thus introduce effects not seen in more standard cosmological models."

well, if you hold to 'multiple universe' theories of the cosmos, you are correct. For those that view(traditional wisdom) the universe as a single entity, it would be considered a closed system.

[snoopy]

The issue is that mass is a comparative scale: we measure the mass of objects by comparing them to other objects, which is why the basic SI mass unit of the kilogram is (at least for now) defined as one particular lump of metal in a lab in France. If the mass of every particle in the universe was increasing over time, there'd be no way to tell, because the masses we'd be comparing them to would also be increasing. It doesn't seem to mesh very well with certain other pieces of observational evidence, either.

Hrm. I think we measure mass by comparison, but I don't think mass is considered a relative unit, in the same way that energy isn't a relative unit but is measured also by relative means. I reach this conclusion by thinking about gravitational forces (at least my knowledge of Newtonian theory) - the attraction between bodies doesn't depend on the ratio of their masses, it depends on the product of them - thus you can measure absolute mass if you can measure gravitational forces. You have to express that absolute mass relative to some standard, but it doesn't make changes undetectable. I think.... Maybe the gravitational constant throws the theory off if it isn't really constant either...

[woodchip]

Does our universe have a wall around it to prevent stuff from filtering in? Is not the common theory there are other universes beyond ours ?

"Interactions with the bulk, and possibly with other branes, can influence our brane and thus introduce effects not seen in more standard cosmological models."

well, if you hold to 'multiple universe' theories of the cosmos, you are correct. For those that view(traditional wisdom) the universe as a single entity, it would be considered a closed system.

Not so long ago the traditional view used to be that due to the Big Bang, our universe was expanding but slowing down and would then stop and start collapsing into another Big Bang. Then we we found the galaxies were actually speeding up. So how long until we find out something different?

[vision]

So how long until we find out something different?

Hopefully soon! But keep in mind when major changes in cosmological happen we rarely go backward to old ideas. In fact I can't think of any examples off the top of my head (but I'm sure there are some). For instance, it would be crazy to go back to a geocentric view with Ptolemaic epicycles to explain the heavens. I think rather than answer if the universe is expanding or contracting we might discover something that makes the whole question meaningless.

[Spidey]

I don’t know about that, some time ago a theory was around that space was actually some kind of “ether”

Most people said PooPoo no it must be a pure vacuum…then Einstein gave us relativity where it was proven that space has to be “something”.

[Tunnelcat]

Then we find even weirder stuff in our universe like this thing.

http://news.psu.edu/story/294606/2013/1 ... ole-quasar

[vision]

I don’t know about that, some time ago a theory was around that space was actually some kind of “ether”

Most people said PooPoo no it must be a pure vacuum…then Einstein gave us relativity where it was proven that space has to be “something”.

Yeah I remember the ether talk several year ago. There is a lecture by Lawrence Krauss I posted in flip's last wacky thread and it talks a little about how our definition of space and time have changed over the last 100 years (55minutes long, well worth it). Here he is describing a short version of some of the new ideas. I cannot begin to understand the math behind it and unfortunately I have to take his word for it. And I'm Ok doing that because knowing the universe is fundamentally one way or another doesn't affect my day-to-day life, heh.

[Top Gun]

Yeah, the concept of aether is one that's been used to refer to a few different things over the history of science. Probably the most common usage was the idea of some "luminiferous aether," which was the supposed medium through which light moved through space. A few very important experiments at the start of the 20th century proved that this "aether" didn't exist, and that electromagnetic waves were able to propagate through an empty vacuum on their own. More recently, the term has sometimes been used to refer to the idea that the empty vacuum of space isn't really "empty," at all, but instead has this this crazy sort of "quantum foam" of particles generating and annihilating all the time. Though as the one quote in that Wiki article notes, most scientists don't really like to use the term "aether" anymore, because of its past associations.

[callmeslick]

amazing that I could get to this from a post about GMO labelling referenda.......

[woodchip]

amazing that I could get to this from a post about GMO labelling referenda.......

You're new here, right?

[woodchip]

More recently, the term has sometimes been used to refer to the idea that the empty vacuum of space isn't really "empty," at all, but instead has this this crazy sort of "quantum foam" of particles generating and annihilating all the time.

Isn't this what is referred to as Dark Matter?

[callmeslick]

amazing that I could get to this from a post about GMO labelling referenda.......

You're new here, right?

nah, but frequently, still amazed!