New efforts!

[Felderburg]

The proton beams are not intended to contain the ghosts, but weaken them to the point where the containment traps can effectively catch them with magnetic fields.  The proton beams supposedly weaken the ghosts by firing streams of protons and associated plasma at the ghosts with interact with their own magnetic field to partially dissipate their physical energy.  That's why their plasma streams rapidly encircle targeted ghosts, they are following the magnetic field lines of the ectoplasmic energy fields.

Just don't cross the plasma streams.

I clearly jumped in way over my head.

I didn't want to have to be the one to tell you that ghost-busters isn't real. that kinda thing can ruin a childhood.

It's worth noting that I didn't see Ghostbusters until a few years ago, well into adulthood.

[OzonePrime]

Dark/negative energy does exist. A portion has personified itself, and is disguised as the our company's  purchasing agent.  :)

[Arcana]

Negative energy is just code for "we don't really know WHY the universe is expanding".  It's not a literal form of energy.

You have to be careful here.  "Form of energy" is a phrase with very ill-defined meaning when we are talking about these specific matters.  Not all energy has a "form" as such: potential energy doesn't have a form, it represents an energy differential capable of doing work.  Because it doesn't have a genuine "physical form" it can easily be positive or negative.  Gravitiational potential energy is usually calculated to be negative given the way it works. 

The question of whether its possible for negative energy to exist in anything other than that kind of situation is an unanswered question of physics.

Also, as Codewalker already stated, dark energy isn't the same thing as negative energy: its a proposed energy field that has positive energy but negative gravitational pressure.  That's not the same thing, but here we are drifting into areas difficult to split the hairs for without a lot of technical background.

We also have to be careful about pursuing the why of things.  Science is always looking for reducible explanations for things, but when we start reaching the fundamentals of the nature of the universe why starts to become a dangerous question to ask.  We still ask why, but we also have to recognize some whys may not have actual answers.  Why time has an apparent arrow might have an answer.  Why does time exist at all might not.  Why the universe is expanding might not have an ultimate answer: if its the result of a fundamental property of spacetime and gravity, that may be the ultimate answer of why.

[MWRuger]

Even in history, the WHY of things is often impossible to discern. Even when you have people willing to discuss why they did this or that it can be difficult for a number of reasons.

1. They may not know themselves exactly why they did something. This is especially true when you must make a decision quickly.
2. They may be lying.
4. They may not want to remember it the way it actually happened. Even the best of us will rationalize a poor choice. Do it long enough and that is the way you will remember it.
4. They may not remember. Especially with complicated decisions, the exact chain of reasoning that you used may not be reconstructable.
5. It could be a consensus decision. In that case all of the above could involved.

[ivanhedgehog]

You don't say.

Obviously ghosts are portrayed in Ghostbusters as far different than in reality. Ectoplasm is derived from the word plasma, which as we all know can be contained by magnetism (http://www.fusion-eur.org/fusion_cd/magnetic.htm). So really, shooting protons at a ghost wouldn't do much - you just need giant magnets (or very powerful small ones).

Of course, some of the entities in the documentary are demons (or whatever) which raises even more issues for containment. Given that science hasn't really devoted itself to ghost and demon containment since the film's release, you'd be better off with a holy person exorcising things than trying to find someone to build miniature nuclear reactors (or powerful magnets) to blast ghosts.

Jack LaLanne with a proton pack!!!!!!

[Codewalker]

You have to be careful here.  "Form of energy" is a phrase with very ill-defined meaning when we are talking about these specific matters.  Not all energy has a "form" as such: potential energy doesn't have a form, it represents an energy differential capable of doing work.  Because it doesn't have a genuine "physical form" it can easily be positive or negative.  Gravitiational potential energy is usually calculated to be negative given the way it works.

That reminds me, 'potential energy' is another beef that I have with the current state of cosmological theory. Most of the popular theories of gravity justify its ability to seemingly create kinetic energy out of nowhere by saying that it's just transitioning from potential energy and therefore doesn't violate the conservation of energy. Potential energy that can't be seen, detected, or analyzed in any way but is a property of an object's location in space relative to bodies that could exhibit a gravitational force on it.

However, for that to work, every particle in the universe would have to have near-infinite reserves of potential energy in order to cover every possible interaction with a gravity-producing body (i.e. every other particle in the universe) that it might happen to drift across someday. If you don't restrict it to a specific time, then potential energy would be infinity. At that point, with such limitless reserves that can't be accurately determined without a full universe simulator, I have to question if the law of conservation of energy is even a useful scientific construct.

Right now I prefer some alternate ideas based around gravity always producing equal and opposite forces (zero sum universe, directionality of kinetic energy is important in the equation), but I recognize that I'm not in the same league as the people working on these theories every day and there is a helluva lot to keep straight. Then again, that's probably why we haven't had a workable grand unified theory... ever.

[Feign]

Just gotta say it, the "Wake me up when there's news" thread was the best idea that anybody anywhere has had in a while.

And that being said, I will retire now to my couch of perpetual indulgence.

[LaughingAlex]

You have to be careful here.  "Form of energy" is a phrase with very ill-defined meaning when we are talking about these specific matters.  Not all energy has a "form" as such: potential energy doesn't have a form, it represents an energy differential capable of doing work.  Because it doesn't have a genuine "physical form" it can easily be positive or negative.  Gravitiational potential energy is usually calculated to be negative given the way it works. 

The question of whether its possible for negative energy to exist in anything other than that kind of situation is an unanswered question of physics.

Also, as Codewalker already stated, dark energy isn't the same thing as negative energy: its a proposed energy field that has positive energy but negative gravitational pressure.  That's not the same thing, but here we are drifting into areas difficult to split the hairs for without a lot of technical background.

We also have to be careful about pursuing the why of things.  Science is always looking for reducible explanations for things, but when we start reaching the fundamentals of the nature of the universe why starts to become a dangerous question to ask.  We still ask why, but we also have to recognize some whys may not have actual answers.  Why time has an apparent arrow might have an answer.  Why does time exist at all might not.  Why the universe is expanding might not have an ultimate answer: if its the result of a fundamental property of spacetime and gravity, that may be the ultimate answer of why.

Thats why I said it's not a "literal form of energy".  It's a term physicists use for now until they have a much better answer for why the universe is expanding, heck one of the biggest difficulties we face is that we are only really able to look into the PAST of the universe, not the present, we cannot see that.  But observations can still be made.  Honestly the reason science is interesting is to me, the fact that we do discover new facts and that science does not need all the answers.  It is indeed the proven method, honestly only the hopelessly arrogant say they have all the answers in any one topic, because things change all the time.

It's known the universe is expanding, but the why is probably something that'll take a lot of time to answer that.

[Arcana]

That reminds me, 'potential energy' is another beef that I have with the current state of cosmological theory. Most of the popular theories of gravity justify its ability to seemingly create kinetic energy out of nowhere by saying that it's just transitioning from potential energy and therefore doesn't violate the conservation of energy. Potential energy that can't be seen, detected, or analyzed in any way but is a property of an object's location in space relative to bodies that could exhibit a gravitational force on it.

However, for that to work, every particle in the universe would have to have near-infinite reserves of potential energy in order to cover every possible interaction with a gravity-producing body (i.e. every other particle in the universe) that it might happen to drift across someday. If you don't restrict it to a specific time, then potential energy would be infinity. At that point, with such limitless reserves that can't be accurately determined without a full universe simulator, I have to question if the law of conservation of energy is even a useful scientific construct.

Right now I prefer some alternate ideas based around gravity always producing equal and opposite forces (zero sum universe, directionality of kinetic energy is important in the equation), but I recognize that I'm not in the same league as the people working on these theories every day and there is a helluva lot to keep straight. Then again, that's probably why we haven't had a workable grand unified theory... ever.

If the universe is a closed manifold, then the potential energy contained within the entire universe is finite, and the problem you specify doesn't exist.  If the universe is infinite and open, then the potential energy within the universe is infinite because space is infinite.

To put it another way, the issue of potential energy needing to be infinite to consider all possible gravitational interactions doesn't really exist, because for any fixed set of masses within a fixed amount of space, the maximum possible kinetic energy of the masses is bounded by the net total gravitational potential of the system (plus its current kinetic energy).  You don't get the ability to slingshot point masses to unlimited speed because of cosmological censorship: trying to do that creates event horizons if you bring the masses too close together.

The law of conservation of energy presumes a closed environment with no inputs or outputs.  In an expanding universe, there are no closed environments just close approximations.  The energy input due to expanding space is something that needs to be addressed for any analysis of energy within the universe itself.  The law of conservation of energy doesn't have to apply to the totality of spacetime itself.

The notion of energy being a vector instead of a scalar comes up from time to time.  The problem is that while it might look like it works for gravity, as I understand it its actually incompatible with general relativity.  However, I have heard of theories of cosmological expansion that presume the creation of a positive energy universe and negative energy universe expanding in different dimension canceling each other out in total, or even weird duality theories where one universe expands in normal spacial dimensions and the other pseudo-expands in a reverse manifold that exists in an inverted geometry smaller than planck scale.  However, I'm unqualified to determine if those manifold theories are speculative but plausible, or simply fanciful word play.

[Arcana]

Thats why I said it's not a "literal form of energy".  It's a term physicists use for now until they have a much better answer for why the universe is expanding, heck one of the biggest difficulties we face is that we are only really able to look into the PAST of the universe, not the present, we cannot see that.  But observations can still be made.  Honestly the reason science is interesting is to me, the fact that we do discover new facts and that science does not need all the answers.  It is indeed the proven method, honestly only the hopelessly arrogant say they have all the answers in any one topic, because things change all the time.

It's known the universe is expanding, but the why is probably something that'll take a lot of time to answer that.

I was apparently not clear.  As theorized, the inflation field is, explicitly, literally energy.  Its the word "form" that is colloquial and not a part of the physics understanding of energy as a concept.  What we call "forms of energy" is a purely colloquial idea, and has no actual bearing on the physics understanding of energy.  Saying the inflation field is not a "form of energy" is analogous to saying something is not one of the four classical Greek elements.

It seems unlikely we'd ever be able to detect dark energy directly, making it susceptible to being declared just a mathematical construct.  But that was also once said of atoms; that we'd never be able to observe them directly making them just a mathematical construct for describing how matter works.  We now have ways of observing atoms directly through appropriate instrumentation.  Dark energy might be something that has properties we don't yet know, and those properties may make dark energy observable as something other than a mathematical construct.

More recently, in my lifetime we've gone from thinking that the theory of inflation would never make measurable predictions and that therefore cosmological expansion prior to photon decoupling would forever be something Science would never be able to determine, to something people are now performing real experiments to try to measure not just in cosmological scales but also by looking for the imprints inflation could have made on the cosmic microwave background and primordial gravitational waves.  To me, that's extremely amazing.

[LaughingAlex]

I was apparently not clear.  As theorized, the inflation field is, explicitly, literally energy.  Its the word "form" that is colloquial and not a part of the physics understanding of energy as a concept.  What we call "forms of energy" is a purely colloquial idea, and has no actual bearing on the physics understanding of energy.  Saying the inflation field is not a "form of energy" is analogous to saying something is not one of the four classical Greek elements.

It seems unlikely we'd ever be able to detect dark energy directly, making it susceptible to being declared just a mathematical construct.  But that was also once said of atoms; that we'd never be able to observe them directly making them just a mathematical construct for describing how matter works.  We now have ways of observing atoms directly through appropriate instrumentation.  Dark energy might be something that has properties we don't yet know, and those properties may make dark energy observable as something other than a mathematical construct.

More recently, in my lifetime we've gone from thinking that the theory of inflation would never make measurable predictions and that therefore cosmological expansion prior to photon decoupling would forever be something Science would never be able to determine, to something people are now performing real experiments to try to measure not just in cosmological scales but also by looking for the imprints inflation could have made on the cosmic microwave background and primordial gravitational waves.  To me, that's extremely amazing.

Hmmm, ok so i'll change what I'm saying, dark energy is a term, not "energy", it's code for "we don't yet know why the universe is expanding, we know it is and there must be a reason for it and why it's accelerating, but we do not yet have the answer for that".

Could dark energy actually exist as a literal energy?  Maybe, but for now it is what it is in our dictionary, which is actually fine for now.  As for recent scientific experiments?  Hey, I love it when something new comes up, it shows we are still making the effort we as a species started so long ago even before we officially came up with the scientific method :).

[Tubbius]

I know we all know that santa claus is actually a tanker in paragon in the off-season, but I didn't want to have to be the one to tell you that ghost-busters isn't real. that kinda thing can ruin a childhood.

CONTROLLER.  See my avatar?  :)

[Ohioknight]

More recently, in my lifetime we've gone from thinking that the theory of inflation would never make measurable predictions and that therefore cosmological expansion prior to photon decoupling would forever be something Science would never be able to determine, to something people are now performing real experiments to try to measure not just in cosmological scales but also by looking for the imprints inflation could have made on the cosmic microwave background and primordial gravitational waves.  To me, that's extremely amazing.

I'm kind-of stunned at the idea that somebody thought hyper-inflation would not produce measurable effects -- I mean the theory was proposed because of observation, not because it was derived from a model.

[Arcana]

I'm kind-of stunned at the idea that somebody thought hyper-inflation would not produce measurable effects -- I mean the theory was proposed because of observation, not because it was derived from a model.

Originally, the only effect theoretical inflation produced was literally that - spacial inflation.  Since we can't directly observe the inflation of space we can only induce it from the motions of mass on cosmological scales, and since we can't directly observe anything about the matter distribution of the early cosmos prior to photon decoupling (the moment when the free energy of the universe dropped below the point where hydrogen gets ionized - which is the source of the cosmic microwave background: they are the first photons in the universe that were capable of flying freely without being immediately scattered by the early universe and thus they are relics of that exact moment in time) it was thought that if inflation occurred the evidence of it would have been erased by the early universe.  Even speculations that there might be *some* way to detect it couldn't actually suggest a potential one until much later.

The notion that *some* versions of inflation produce cosmological gravity waves means not only can we theoretically detect evidence of inflation, those observations could even potentially provide information about what kind of inflation the early universe experienced (there are multiple theories of inflation) if any.  The idea that the very thing that obscures our observations of the early universe (the CMB) could have also preserved fingerprints of what happened behind that curtain is a non-trivial and fascination realization.

Inflation was originally proposed to explain an observation, but that observation was the relative flatness of the geometry of the universe.  But lots of other things could potentially explain that besides inflation.  The question was whether inflation produced an observable effect that was unique to inflation alone.  Gravitational wave induced CMB polarization is something that is (for the most part) unique to certain theories of inflation and aren't produced by most other theories of cosmological expansion.

[Arcana]

Hmmm, ok so i'll change what I'm saying, dark energy is a term, not "energy", it's code for "we don't yet know why the universe is expanding, we know it is and there must be a reason for it and why it's accelerating, but we do not yet have the answer for that".

Just to be complete, dark energy is not specifically proposed to solve the question of cosmological expansion by itself.  Dark energy is the energy deficit encountered when CMB measurements suggest that the geometry of the universe is approximately flat.  General relativity then states that the energy density of the universe must be close to some specific value for the CMB measurements to conclude the geometry of the universe is approximately flat.  When astronomers estimate the total amount of normal mass accounted for through galactic surveys, they can only account for about 5% of that mass.  The rest has to be basically "dark" - i.e. energy astronomers can't detect.  Even accounting for non-luminous matter (not just invisible, but matter that doesn't emit radiation of any kind), there's still a deficit.

When galaxies are observed, their rotation provides a way to measure the amount of mass contained within them because that mass affects the gravitational forces that account for galactic rotation.  Even if the mass was in black holes or dead stars or invisible unicorns, galactic rotation would account for it.  When galactic rotational measurements are performed to estimate the mass of galaxies, you discover that galaxies are about 6 times more massive than astronomers can detect through visible (and non-visible radiation) observation.  That means five times as much mass as we can see is "dark mass" that nevertheless has the same gravitational effects.

But when you add that all up, you still get only 30% of the energy necessary to explain the flatness measurements.  The conclusion is that if the CMB measurements are correct and general relativity is correct, 70% of the energy in the universe is not visible, and doesn't even show up in galactic gravitational surveys.  Its dark, because we can't see it.  Its dark energy because it doesn't behave like normal (dark) mass that clumps up in galactic halos and influences their motion.  That's dark energy.  Its energy we know is there because general relativity says its there, but we can't see it and it doesn't clump up locally and show gravitational effects on galactic scales.

A *completely separate* line of thinking starts with observations that suggest cosmological expansion is accelerating.  If the universe were approximately flat and also dark energy had the same gravitational effect on cosmological scales (just not on galactic scales because it doesn't clump to galaxies) then cosmic expansion would slowly decrease over time as gravity would act as a brake to decelerate expansion.  However, acceleration requires a force of some kind acting on the expansion, and the theories to explain that revolve around the universe being filled with a constant energy density field of some time, meaning as the universe expands it doesn't get thinner, it expands in energy with the universe keeping its effects constant over time.  This energy field would have a repulsive effect on cosmological scales and would act as an accelerator rather than a brake on expansion.

We now have two different lines of observation and analysis - cosmological flatness and cosmological acceleration - both theoretically explainable by proposing an energy field in the universe with certain properties.  That's the sort of thing that makes people believe Dark Energy is not just an ad hoc way to say "we don't know" but is likely to be a real thing.  When you calculate the properties required for the dark energy field capable of explaining flatness and you do the same calculations to determine the properties the field must have to explain acceleration, you end up with both calculations converging on very similar numbers.  That could be coincidence, but most astronomers believe that to be unlikely.

On top of that, there's a third independent line of analysis that suggests the large scale distribution of matter in the universe implies that the gravitational mass observed in galaxies and clusters is only about 30% of that necessary for galactic superclusters and superstructures to be as "clumpy" as they are observed to be.  That *also* suggests that 70% of the energy in the universe is unaccounted for in galactic surveys, which points to the very same dark energy field with similar energy density properties.  That's still not conclusive, but the odds of all three separate lines of investigation just happening to be resolvable by the same proposition - that there is a dark energy field in the universe that is not accounted for in galactic surveys - is low enough for the conjecture of dark energy to be considered a strong one, and not just a guess or an admission of a simple gap in knowledge.

[Ultimate15]

...Has anyone tried the strawberry Fig Newtons? SO good. I highly recommend them.

[Abraxus]

Just gotta say it, the "Wake me up when there's news" thread was the best idea that anybody anywhere has had in a while.

And that being said, I will retire now to my couch of perpetual indulgence.

Agreed.  I know that if I come to the "Task Force Hail Mary" section, and see that the "Replies" counter on the "Wake me up when there's news" thread had been incremented to "2", then I will know there is either really good news, or really bad news to be seen here (doubt if there will be anything in between).  Anything else I peruse, and post on is just me being social.

[Ohioknight]

Inflation was originally proposed to explain an observation, but that observation was the relative flatness of the geometry of the universe.  But lots of other things could potentially explain that besides inflation.  The question was whether inflation produced an observable effect that was unique to inflation alone.  Gravitational wave induced CMB polarization is something that is (for the most part) unique to certain theories of inflation and aren't produced by most other theories of cosmological expansion.

I've often wondered if the degree of "flatness" was the condition that triggered the phase change from hyperinflation

[Kaos Arcanna]

I found this link interesting in light of the recent conversations here. :D



http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/13/5806104/nasas-warp-drive-spaceship-concept-enterprise

[Remaugen]

...Has anyone tried the strawberry Fig Newtons? SO good. I highly recommend them.

They're not bad really, but I had some of the Blueberry ones the other day and I think they were better!