How Do You Deal With Impossible Things?

[Mintaka]

You probably noticed how freaked out i got recently by the fact, proven in here, that a standard glass of water contains more water molecules than there are grains of sand on the planet.

 

For a while, my 'rational'mind fought it. It must have been hard for Galileo's contempraries to accept that the earth spins around the sun and for Newton's contemporaries to accept that

 

things of different weights fall to the ground at the same speed.

 

Are our scientific discoveries going faster than our minds / imaginations can actually cope with?

 

When I drank water from a glass, after this fact was revealed to me, my rational mind refused to accept it.

 

How is it possible for things to be that small?

 

Is the leap to 'quantum thinking' about losing our visual mind and acquiring a new one which can simply 'let go' and accept things that we can't see?

 

How do you deal with quantum facts like the one above? Is it hard for your rational mind to accept it too?

 

Is being a scientist as much about humility and faith as being a priest? You just have to accept some things?

[joekgamer]

Why is it so hard to believe? Molecules are tiny. I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.

 

Quantum Mechanics is a mathemetically derived theory. You don't need to 'believe' in it, like you don't need to 'believe' that 2 = 2, or 1 + 1 = 2.

[Mintaka]

Why is it so hard to believe? Molecules are tiny. I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.

 

Quantum Mechanics is a mathemetically derived theory. You don't need to 'believe' in it, like you don't need to 'believe' that 2 = 2, or 1 + 1 = 2.

 

why? because I can picture in my mind how many beaches and deserts they are , and in my everyday life, sand grains are just about the tiniest things I come across. I don't know for sure, but I guess I can hold about a million of them in one hand?

 

So, my mind can visualize and feel how small sand is, I can see the grains.

 

With atoms and molecules we have to use our imaginations because we can't see or feel in the usual way, the way we have evolved to deal with reality.

 

I read in a secondary school textbook yesterday that there are more atoms in a speck of dust than sand grains on a whole beach.

 

When I hear such facts, I can't (unlike you) grasp them unquestioningly and unbelievingly, I'm just filled with a helpless sense of wonder.

 

I am interested in materials and how things are made , but once we go down to the quantum scale of things, we are down to an abstract world that very few people can understand.

[sanctus]

Mintaka then you will like this:Cesars last breath

 

Read it til the end, but I tell you already now there is a almost negligible change that you do NOT have a molecule from Cesar's last breath ;-). Big numbers are cool ;-)

[LaurieAG]

Hi Mintaka,

 

I saw a similar dissertation about the very high probability of breathing oxygen atoms that had also been breathed by any people who lived 2000 years or longer ago.

 

Is being a scientist as much about humility and faith as being a priest? You just have to accept some things?

 

Not really, when science and blind faith get blended true science loses out, even religion loses out.

 

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

 

Twenty-seven-year-old Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin returns to Russia after spending several years at a Swiss sanatorium. Scorned by the society of St. Petersburgh for his idiocy (epilepsy) and being too generous and innocent, he finds himself at the centre of a struggle between a rich, kept woman and a gorgeous, virtuous girl who both wish to win his affection. Unfortunately, Myshkin's very goodness seems to bring disaster to all he meets, leading to a climax that tragically reveals how, in a world obsessed with money, power, and sexual conquest, a sanatorium is the only place for a saint.

 

I consider myself as an idiot, a thinking Dostoyevskian idiot if you like, and relate the struggle between a 'rich, kept woman' and 'gorgeous, virtuous girl' as the dilemma many scientists have been facing for the past 20 years or so.

 

The 'rich, kept woman' is the blind faith that the BB, religion and financial atomic science insists on while the 'gorgeous, virtuous girl' is the result of actually thinking through the process and the facts to make the decision that satisfies your conscience and your heart.

 

Going back 100 years or so on the religious side I share a common paternal ancestor with 2 late great aunts who each passed away, one 96 the other 104, in the mid 1990's in Ireland and the US. One had a sibling who was the popes private secretary in the year of my birth while the other was a presentation nun called Sister St Anthony who resided at San Antonio, Texas. In my paternal line it is always the mother who determines the religion of any children.

 

The 'rich, kept woman' and blind faith led to an explosion of child molestation in the religious sphere while the combination of blind faith and BB or financial atomic science will soon lead to an explosion of the molestations of our childrens financial futures as well as our own.

 

The 'gorgeous, virtuous girl' and independent thought can lead to the satisfaction that your integrity is intact because you have thought out every step from the beginning to the end with your conscience and your heart. A thinking idiot doesn't like falling into honour traps or sanitoriums.

 

Mintaka, if you'd like me to continue back 1000-1500 years ago down my paternal line just ask because that line leads back to the pagan (rural cow lord) kings of the Irish Type III genetic signature.

 

Here's an update Polymath.

 

We have advance notice that on March 4, 2011, there is a very high probability that there will be a power outage in one of the major control panels for the global financial reactor core cooling system that is producing massively disproportional output (2/3) from 1-10% of the rods under its control. It has been decided to observe the interractions between the malfunctioning control component and the offending rods during this outage to see if the control works at all or if operator error is the original cause.

[joekgamer]

That update is for the other thread, correct? No offence, but it would probably be best to keep discussions in their respective threads. But who/where is that quote from? Could you provide a link (preferrably on the other thread)?

[LaurieAG]

Hi Polymath,

 

But who/where is that quote from? Could you provide a link (preferrably on the other thread)?

 

Why, will it make any difference to your boondoogling?

[joekgamer]

Hi Polymath,

 

 

 

Why, will it make any difference to your boondoogling?

If you give me a link, then I could find that quote in context. Also, I would then have the source of the quote, which would help me to determine the context further.

[belovelife]

i like to think long and deeply on topics of this status, the geometrical patterns and magnetic fields epanded by energy, make harmony where the world is full of other things

 

i imagine things so small that a universe is squashed by putting a cup on the table, or things so large, a galaxy is but a grain of sand

things so strange as a univese filled with gas, or a universe filled with liquid with gas bubbles

 

or mabe we spike aether with conciousness alone

or a computer spiking aether with complex algarythems

 

most notably, i like to share the space of thought with people,

when having a conversation everyone states their truth, and then when everyone is flowing, new conclutions can be drawn

 

imagine having to crack the atmoshere on earth, just to do something,

then you have to ask why crack it

then you have a new vector where all the matter in that vactor is compacted,

then what if you take that compacted matter and put it in a super strong shell

then its still compacted

where the original question was why do you have to crack the atmosphere

 

then it loops and thought process occurs

 

anyway, thats how i rap my head around it

 

reminds me of a friend named angel, in sd

[Mintaka]

i like to think long and deeply on topics of this status, the geometrical patterns and magnetic fields epanded by energy, make harmony where the world is full of other things

 

i imagine things so small that a universe is squashed by putting a cup on the table, or things so large, a galaxy is but a grain of sand

things so strange as a univese filled with gas, or a universe filled with liquid with gas bubbles

 

or mabe we spike aether with conciousness alone

or a computer spiking aether with complex algarythems

 

most notably, i like to share the space of thought with people,

when having a conversation everyone states their truth, and then when everyone is flowing, new conclutions can be drawn

 

imagine having to crack the atmoshere on earth, just to do something,

then you have to ask why crack it

then you have a new vector where all the matter in that vactor is compacted,

then what if you take that compacted matter and put it in a super strong shell

then its still compacted

where the original question was why do you have to crack the atmosphere

 

then it loops and thought process occurs

 

anyway, thats how i rap my head around it

 

reminds me of a friend named angel, in sd

 

 

wow, interesting stuff. I will definitely look out for that book. Thank you!