The Ascent of Mankind

[Killtech]

ehmm... the zero point energy does break the rule of energy consevation but only for a very short period of time. and it creates energy and subtracts it again. it can't be controlled as this means to eliminate probabilities from quantum theory and thus make it a classic theory again.

and other than that the deepest energy level of vacuum is in theory infinite. but that's just theory that required it due to the construct of the theory itself. it's not really a characteristic of reality but a characteristic of the theory.

 

[Dado94]

ehmm... the zero point energy does break the rule of energy consevation but only for a very short period of time. and it creates energy and subtracts it again. it can't be controlled as this means to eliminate probabilities from quantum theory and thus make it a classic theory again.

and other than that the deepest energy level of vacuum is in theory infinite. but that's just theory that required it due to the construct of the theory itself. it's not really a characteristic of reality but a characteristic of the theory.

I'm not an expert and I don't know if what I'm saying is true or not but, from what i read, it is real and there are studies to find a way to "extract" this energy.
I remember there was a "machine" that work with this energy: MEG was his nane.


Howewer,in my opinion, real or not, it can be a good technology for this mod.

 

[Killtech]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy#Proposed_free_energy_devices

it's not science but pseudo-science. the zero point energy is real as a theoretic quantity, true. and it is INFINITE. however it doesn't even matter how high the energy of the vacuum state is (zero-point energy) as every process is the difference of two energy states... so the vacuum energy will always drop. this is why it's solely a theoretic quantity as it takes no part in real physic process anyway. you can even build a theory without it and nothing even changes.

vacuum energy is somewhat different and represents the permanent random fluctuation of energy. but the energies here are very low anyway.

i just wanted to inform you that this is fantasy and not science. i've no problem if it's added to the mod or not. i rather think direct energy-matter conversion is a much more fitting tech for energy generation. doesn't sound that cool, but if it's more something physics can provide and it would be a nearly infinite source of energy (just keep E=mc^2 in mind).

 

[Dado94]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy#Proposed_free_energy_devices

it's not science but pseudo-science. the zero point energy is real as a theoretic quantity, true. and it is INFINITE. however it doesn't even matter how high the energy of the vacuum state is (zero-point energy) as every process is the difference of two energy states... so the vacuum energy will always drop. this is why it's solely a theoretic quantity as it takes no part in real physic process anyway. you can even build a theory without it and nothing even changes.

vacuum energy is somewhat different and represents the permanent random fluctuation of energy. but the energies here are very low anyway.

i just wanted to inform you that this is fantasy and not science. i've no problem if it's added to the mod or not. i rather think direct energy-matter conversion is a much more fitting tech for energy generation. doesn't sound that cool, but if it's more something physics can provide and it would be a nearly infinite source of energy (just keep E=mc^2 in mind).

You probably know this argument better than me but when you say "i just wanted to inform you that this is fantasy and not science." you have to be sure of this.

This energy is theorically accepted and predicted by a large amount of physic theories, such as QFT, and is important for the cosmological constant problem. This is science.
Now, it can't be extracted, but in the future things may change.
Many scientist are trying to find a way, because no one has proved that IT CAN'T BE EXTRACTED.

I told you my idea but it doesn't matter if it is fantasy or reality, I think this tech (or fanta-tech) is PERFERCT for this mod.

PS: The energy-matter (total: 100%) conversion can be added as last "stage" of nuclear power.

 

[Arakhor]

I'm not disagreeing that it isn't a good idea, but it's super-science (breaking the laws of physics as we know them) and is thus up there with contra-gravity, FTL travel and annular confinement beams

 

[Dado94]

I'm not disagreeing that it isn't a good idea, but it's super-science (breaking the laws of physics as we know them) and is thus up there with contra-gravity, FTL travel and annular confinement beams

I'm sure that Newton would say the same for the Einstein relativity theory.


PS: the third laws of Thermodynamics (Conservation of energy) has not been dimostrated.

It was ricaveted by the observation. All the physic phenomenons seems to confirm this law, and because therisn't (yet) a phenomenon that contraddict it, it is considered true.

But it isn't dimostrated that it is true. Because of this for many years scientist have reasearched Perpetual motion (also now) to contraddict the law, yet without success.

 

[Killtech]

what does dimonstrated mean? i can't find it in the english dictionary.

not sure what you mean. the conservation of energy is the experimentally best verified law of all. which means only that there has been any kind of process that gave an indication it could be false. and there is no possibility to yield a better result then that - for every law of physics.

except for that there is a theoretical concept called the Noether Theorem that makes conservation of energy nessessary for the specifiec symmetries of space-time to be true.

 

[Dado94]

what does dimonstrated mean? i can't find it in the english dictionary.

not sure what you mean. the conservation of energy is the experimentally best verified law of all. which means only that there has been any kind of process that gave an indication it could be false. and there is no possibility to yield a better result then that - for every law of physics.

except for that there is a theoretical concept called the Noether Theorem that makes conservation of energy nessessary for the specifiec symmetries of space-time to be true.

Sorry, i'm not english. I have been studying english at school for some years.

dimonstrated = demonstrated.

IMHO:
What i'm saying is that we can't say "This can't be true because contradict the third law".

Tha third law is experimentally verfied, yes, it is true for the physic phenomenoms we know.
But is possible that someone will discover an exception to the law because isn't (MATHEMATICALLY) proved that is always true.

A principle mathematically proved is, for example, the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

 

[Killtech]

no you can't understand this that way. though the heisenberg uncertainty can be derived mathematically from the schrödinger equation (and other QM equations) the proof is not fundamental because it is only true if schrödinger is true. but the schrödinger equation is only proved experimentally.

so no matter how you view it there can't be a fundamental proof of any physical law as the basic laws must be obtained experimentally, written down in mathematical terms and then mathematical theorems can derive further consequences of these laws

e.g.
particle-wave duality observed in experiments with electrons -> formulation of schrödinger equations (that reflact experimental data) -> math. derived heisenberg uncertain priciple

experimentally obtained: symmetries of space-time -> mathematic theorem of noether derives the conservation of energy

amperes law, induction law of faraday -> derived with mathematics: maxwell laws of electromagnetics


all mathematically derived proofs no longer work if the needed prerequisites of the theorems are not true. in the case of physics the prerequisites are the assumed laws that are obtained through experiments. sorry to disappoint you but with mathematics alone we can't prove any laws of this work. we always need a set of axioms (set of true statements, that are true by definition or assumption and cannot be proved) to start with any mathematics.

 

[Dado94]

no you can't understand this that way. though the heisenberg uncertainty can be derived mathematically from the schrödinger equation (and other QM equations) the proof is not fundamental because it is only true if schrödinger is true. but the schrödinger equation is only proved experimentally.

so no matter how you view it there can't be a fundamental proof of any physical law as the basic laws must be obtained experimentally, written down in mathematical terms and then mathematical theorems can derive further consequences of these laws

e.g.
particle-wave duality observed in experiments with electrons -> formulation of schrödinger equations (that reflact experimental data) -> math. derived heisenberg uncertain priciple

experimentally obtained: symmetries of space-time -> mathematic theorem of noether derives the conservation of energy

amperes law, induction law of faraday -> derived with mathematics: maxwell laws of electromagnetics


all mathematically derived proofs no longer work if the needed prerequisites of the theorems are not true. in the case of physics the prerequisites are the assumed laws that are obtained through experiments. sorry to disappoint you but with mathematics alone we can't prove any laws of this work. we always need a set of axioms (set of true statements, that are true by definition or assumption and cannot be proved) to start with any mathematics.

OK, you are right and you certainly know physics better than me (i'm serious).

 

[iontom]

I've heard of Noether before, but haven't formally learned it in classes yet; but I do know about the symmetry between momentum and mass/energy. Conservation of energy is very conceptually and experimentally sound.

The ZPE as I understand it is just the ground state of a harmonic oscillator which describes a point in vacuum. It is responsible for the Casimir effect and might have importance to dark energy in cosmology. I don't really think the ZPE can be identified as "free energy."

Then again... This mod also assumes FTL, which breaks a lot of rules too.

 

[Killtech]

conservation of energy can be derived in most theories like electrodynamics and classic mechanics. it's a bit more complicated in QM but it can be derived in a similar form too. for thermodynamics it is just postulated to be true.

zero point energy term is used in many contexts. basically it just means the energy of the lowest energy state (so exactly what you said in case of the harmonic oscillator). in case of quantum field theory which can describe up to infinity of particles the ground state of the vacuum is infinity (it's like having infinitely many harmonic oscillators in the ground state - so the energy goes up to infinity. for calculations though you need to get rid of it). that is what i was referring to when i wrote that vacuum state has infinite ground state energy.

for all who seek further knowledge of physics i can give a tip: search for "peskin schroeder torrent" with google and find a library full of enlightenment

as for the mod.. i don't have problems with any techs like FTL or ZPE. just wanted to say that from our current knowledge these things don't seem to be the discoveries of our future but just terms that sounds cool and be misunderstood easily.

 

[iontom]

From what I'd guess, deriving energy conservation laws in QM involves mass, spin, isospin, charge, lepton number, and so on. I took a non mandatory class on 'particles and symmetries' but wasn't able to keep up. Half of the class covered Lorentz transformations and boost matrices. So I haven't seen any QED or QCD.

So there is no limit to the number of 'particles' in an area of vacuum imposed by the planck area? Or a limit on the energy by the planck energy?

Is peskin schroeder's stuff based on feynman?

As far as fictional physics goes, I feel like a time travel mod would be the most entertaining.

 

[Hashishim]

for a moment here i thought i was in a university physics class in a debate :s

 

[Killtech]

So there is no limit to the number of 'particles' in an area of vacuum imposed by the planck area? Or a limit on the energy by the planck energy?

calculations in QFT or the more special QED and QCD are via perturbation theory. the nth term of the series are (more or less) feynman graphs of nth order. the higher the oder the more particle they involve. since the series is infinite in principle there are contributions from all these higher order terms which go to zero with the order going to infinity. so in theory each QFT calculation implies infinitively many particles though one usually calculates only the first and second oder term.

Is peskin schroeder's stuff based on feynman?

yeah, it's QFT. the book explains what a feyman graph really is: visual representation of an integral core of a perturbation series term.

for a moment here i thought i was in a university physics class in a debate :s

sorry, i better quit here

 

[Hashishim]

@killtech its cool carry on, it is interesting

 

[Dado94]

@killtech its cool carry on, it is interesting

Have you undestood anything?

 

[mgsmuhammad]

I certainly haven't.

Well, not much, anyway.

 

[Hashishim]

well nope but if anyone ever wanted to argue with me on a subject like this i can just quote and atleast can say i know a tiny bit of it

 

[Killtech]

funny thing about quantum physics is that even physicist say they don't really understand it. indeed academics stopped debating about how to understand all the strange random nature of particles in the theory a long time ago. the last time it was debated was in the time einstein was alive and strongly opposed the probability in quantum mechanics with his well none quote "god does not play dice". when he died physicist ceased to bother what their calculation meant as long as the values they computed fitted to the experiments.

since that time theoretical physics developed slowly and there was no major breakthrough. the derived superstring theory turned out to be an epic fail yielding no new results. QFT helped to get more precise results then original QM but for the trade-off extremely complicated calculus computers can't even handle. attempts of quantum gravity are totally broken. so all we have are small improvements to the basic QM but nothing revolutionary. the situation reminds me somewhat on the year 1900 where physics stagnated until relativity and QM came. personally i think they won't progress much further until someone resolves the core problem of randomness in the theory... and this time seems close.