[Keith_McClary]

Could MQ please explain what he means by "degeneracy of the ground state".

In plain ordinary language that could be understood by people with Nobel Prizes.

[emailking]

I think you mean without nobel prizes??

I don't know who MQ is, but I am a physicist. Degeneracy refers to a situation where multiple states are at the same energy level. So if we are talking about an atom, if an atom is in one of two states which are degenerate, then it will have the same energy in both of those states. The ground state of an atom is the state(s) of lowest energy (which may not be zero). So "degeneracy of the ground state" is referring to some system in which the lowest energy can be achieved by multiple states, configurations, what have you.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('emailking', 'I') think you mean without nobel prizes??

I don't know who MQ is, but I am a physicist. Degeneracy refers to a situation where multiple states are at the same energy level. So if we are talking about an atom, if an atom is in one of two states which are degenerate, then it will have the same energy in both of those states. The ground state of an atom is the state(s) of lowest energy (which may not be zero). So "degeneracy of the ground state" is referring to some system in which the lowest energy can be achieved by multiple states, configurations, what have you.

[emailking]

Ahh! Ok. I see.

[gg3]

In all fairness there are at least two uses of "entropy," one in the strict physics sense, the other in the information theory sense. When people from those respective backgrounds try to have a conversation, it often gets hung over the differences in uses of "entropy" and other terms that each field uses differently.

One can also use "entropy" to refer to an increasing measure of disorder in an ecosystem. Strictly speaking this is a derivative definition, or a "bastardization" if you will, but it's linguistically permissible.

On balance it's better for laypeople to at least attempt to integrate their own worldviews with those that come from science, even if they get it wrong from time to time. Surely you wouldn't prefer the opposite case, of know-nothing obscurantism, often going hand-in-hand with religious absolutism.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'S')urely you wouldn't prefer the opposite case, of know-nothing obscurantism, often going hand-in-hand with religious absolutism.

[Antimatter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', 'C')ould MQ please explain what he means by "degeneracy of the ground state".

In plain ordinary language that could be understood by people with Nobel Prizes.

[bobcousins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Antimatter', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', 'C')ould MQ please explain what he means by "degeneracy of the ground state".

In plain ordinary language that could be understood by people with Nobel Prizes.

[Ingenuity_Gap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bobcousins', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Antimatter', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', 'C')ould MQ please explain what he means by "degeneracy of the ground state".

In plain ordinary language that could be understood by people with Nobel Prizes.

[Ingenuity_Gap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('emailking', 'I') think you mean without nobel prizes??

I don't know who MQ is, but I am a physicist. Degeneracy refers to a situation where multiple states are at the same energy level. So if we are talking about an atom, if an atom is in one of two states which are degenerate, then it will have the same energy in both of those states. The ground state of an atom is the state(s) of lowest energy (which may not be zero). So "degeneracy of the ground state" is referring to some system in which the lowest energy can be achieved by multiple states, configurations, what have you.

[Ingenuity_Gap]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'S')urely you wouldn't prefer the opposite case, of know-nothing obscurantism, often going hand-in-hand with religious absolutism.

[bobcousins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ingenuity_Gap', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', 'S')urely you wouldn't prefer the opposite case, of know-nothing obscurantism, often going hand-in-hand with religious absolutism.

[grabby]

If they would have listened to remowned phycicists in 1900 the wright brothers would never have flown.

Another case:
Farmer in michigan in 1945 digs up an elephant in michigan, and calls the michigan (Real story, its in the Lansing paper) and calls university of so-n-so scientists, they come and excavate and after a few weeks declare this is an amazing mastodon find!
Farmers grandfather comes to visit and recalls the circus in 1890 that came through when an elephant died of illness and they asked permission to bury it on the farm, this made the news.
.
These are scientists.

But here is the best one,
This proves you cannot trust a group of scientists just because there is a gfoup of them and then they all agree. In fact that is a good reason to doubt something is up..

They all are trained and tenured depending on if other scientists like them or vote for them, if you make waves you never get tenure...

Here is the best one.

You know, there are scientists out there that actually believe (the majority) that we will be able to find alternate energy sources to run society by the time oil runs out.

Isn't this stupid? This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that they don't have a clue as to the real world.

They do not understand how much a billion barrels really is in terms of releasable energy.

(Does it fit in my refrigerator?)

Some may privately know , cause they actually got bored and figured it out on their calculators and decided that, hey, wait a minute, we are in trouble here. But yo can bet they don't purport to teach it.

Even some people writing books on peak oil never come out and say DON'T wrroy about conservation...
but it makes no difference of any noticeable degree.


I read in popular Mechanics(my kids get it) The cover this month said CAN AMERICA SURVIVE ON ALTERNATE FUELS?

SO I go OK here's my chance to get the kids calculators out and show them - NO.

I read part of the article, and it is talking about an ethanol plant in Iowa running on corn that is just HUGE and they make THOUSANDS OF BARRRELS and how it will help our fuel problem.. it makes 55, THOUSAND barrels a year!

WOW

I said to the kids, YOU KNOW HOW MUCH OIL AMERICA USES PER DAY?

and they ask no?
I say 21 million.

and they say well, build a few more of thos plants.

and I say OK

(HERE IS THE KEY! LEARN THIS!)

HMY QUESTION WAS HOW MANY OF THOSE PLANTS WILL BE NEEDED TO REPLACE OUR OIL HABIT?

they guessed 100? 200?

I said FIGURE IT OUT.

when I came back they said

DAD it aint gonna happen,

Then I asked HOW MANY OF THESE HUGE ETHANOL PLANTS WILL WE NEED PER STATE?

and they told me..
THEY told ME the same number that I found out myself.

I am not going to tell you, you can figure it out.

the plant makes 55,000 barrels a YEAR

and we need 21 MILION barrels. per DAY!


Physicists, scientists and others can do this in their head yet they never TELL us.

This article NEVER TOLD US how manynplants would be needed, and the readers never BOTHERED to figure it out.

thus we all remain ignorant.

NO way alternates plus nuclear plus solar plus wind plus mice in a treadmill can ever come remotely close to what we are burning now.

no way no how, and yet they are shoving money into all this.

and there will be a hundred posters ready to tear me up for this because-
They sell ethanol or build plants- or work in government- or in some other way get benefitted.

The hydrogen people (live on Jupier?) trying to develop a car never sat down to figure it out hydrogen is not going to cut it, I mean even Bush says it should be endoresed, it is not a source of energy, it uses energy.
and it is not possible with anything less than ten complete new electric grids.

so when you tell me scientists all agree, I laugh.

talk to Einstein, Wright brothers Edison, and many others who had common sense.

It is commonnsense that entropy increases.

Pulling PHd's is just a red herring, I will just bring up the bumble bee.
it cant fly they said.


Ok I know you didn't figure it out and you never will...

so Here is a parallel.

A city builds a 140,000 gallon olympic swimming pool donated by a rich old dude, but the condition is that it needs to be completely emptied and filled every day so he can have clean water, 140,000 gallons worth.

now to do this job they send in one man with a 1 gallon bucket, and his union contract says he can only move one bucket full a day.

this is the exact equivalent of the giant ethanol plant compared to the worlds needs,

I mean we evaporate this much daily just filling up the fuel tanks.

Yet scientists with their degreees will tell us it is possible.
So much for credibility.

[Antimatter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ingenuity_Gap', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('emailking', 'I') think you mean without nobel prizes??

I don't know who MQ is, but I am a physicist. Degeneracy refers to a situation where multiple states are at the same energy level. So if we are talking about an atom, if an atom is in one of two states which are degenerate, then it will have the same energy in both of those states. The ground state of an atom is the state(s) of lowest energy (which may not be zero). So "degeneracy of the ground state" is referring to some system in which the lowest energy can be achieved by multiple states, configurations, what have you.

[ThunderChunky]

LOL you say scientists have no credibility as you sit in a chair, in your house, in front of you computer, posting on the internet.