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The Aether
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==AfD nomination of Space archaeology==
==AfD nomination of Space archaeology==
<div class="floatleft" style="margin-bottom:0">[[File:Ambox warning pn.svg|42px]]</div>I have nominated [[Space archaeology]], an article that you created, for [[Wikipedia:Deletion policy|deletion]]. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Space archaeology]]. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.{{-}}Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. <!-- Template:AFDWarning --> [[User:ScienceApologist|ScienceApologist]] ([[User talk:ScienceApologist|talk]]) 18:08, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
<div class="floatleft" style="margin-bottom:0">[[File:Ambox warning pn.svg|42px]]</div>I have nominated [[Space archaeology]], an article that you created, for [[Wikipedia:Deletion policy|deletion]]. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Space archaeology]]. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.{{-}}Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. <!-- Template:AFDWarning --> [[User:ScienceApologist|ScienceApologist]] ([[User talk:ScienceApologist|talk]]) 18:08, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

== The Aether ==

Brews, I have been involved in this field since the 1970's. I have my own views on the matter. As far as I am concerned, the aether is alive and well. But the aether needs to be rendered into a sea of tiny whirlpools in order to act as the luminiferous medium. I got most of my inspiration from Maxwell's 1861 paper which accounts for my determination to point out that centrifugal force is a real force that is associated with pure aether pressure.

I am aware that there have been many attempts by dissidents to re-introduce the luminiferous medium. Often these attempts are very confused in my opinion. I began with displacement current. My realization that the textbook explanation was unsatisfactory led me to look up how Maxwell himself did it. It was then that I realized that we need to have a dielectric medium pervading what is commonly believed to be the vacuum. Later I realized that the dipoles need to be rotating and that magnetic repulsion is caused by centrifugal pressure between adjacent dipoles in their mutual equatorial planes. You can have a look at my article 'The Double Helix Theory of the Magnetic Field at [http://www.wbabin.net/science/tombe.pdf]. However it has been extended by many follow up papers. One that you might be particularly interested in is the 'The Cause of Coriolis Force' at [http://www.wbabin.net/science/tombe55.pdf]. You will find papers at that last web link address for all numbers up to 60 with the exception of 1,2,10,34, and 46. The ones that you might find the most interesting are 11, 12, 14, 43,44, 48,49,54, and the last six. [[User:David Tombe|David Tombe]] ([[User talk:David Tombe|talk]]) 15:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Revision as of 15:29, 5 March 2009

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History of science section in centrifugal force

I've now started a section on the historical development of the modern conception of centrifugal force in that article. I am by no means an expert in the history of science, and I'm unsure about how the references I've cited hold together: I'd greatly appreciate it if you could please review the material I have added so far? There appears to be significant work on this topic by Domenico Bertoloni Meli (for example, [1], [2]), however, most of the interesting papers on this subject are behind a paywall and inaccessible to me. -- The Anome (talk) 12:30, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fictitious force wiki is wrong about planetary motion and Euler forces

Euler forces are tangential forces causing α = dω/dt? These don't go away in a constantly rotating frame-- they stay the same, since the acceleration of the particle is the same in either frame (just as in the linear case where acceleration is the same if you switch to a different inertial frame at a different linear velocity). Euler forces only appear as ficticious forces if you're in a frame with accelerated rotation rate where α = non-zero. But that's not the setup we carefully made for the centrifugal and Coriolis forces where ω is constant and dω/dt = α = 0. So in a way, the Euler forces are a different animal, and we really have to decide if we're going to stay fixed to a coordinate system or fixed on a rotating object which may not be rotating with a fixed rate. The planetary case is interesting: the Euler force is zero there, NOT because of the fact that the revolution rate doesn't change (as it states falsely in the fictious force Wiki)-- because the revolution rate of a planet DOES change for eliptical orbits! Instead, Mr. Tombe's "law of areal velocity" per Kepler kicks in (a consequence of angular momentum preservation) which causes r to decrease as ω increases, so the product stays constant and thus the Euler term stays zero even IF dω/dt is not zero: this is perhaps what confused Mr. Tombe (he as thinking about Euler forces and calling them Coriolis forces; most of what he said about one was true for the other!). Euler force = 0 even with variable rotation, and this happens any time the force is purely central, as with planets and no drag, or (say) when a skater pulls in her arms, etc. All again because of conservation of angular momentum in a system with no external angular momentum-changing influences. SBHarris 21:01, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Steven: I find your remarks confusing. Marsden provides a formula for the Euler force for a rotating frame as m r × dω / dt, which certainly vanishes for a constant rate of rotation, not supporting your lead sentence. Then a sentence or so later, you seem to agree with this remark. What are you trying to say here? Brews ohare (talk) 15:48, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Articles about Dynamics

I've noticed that you are working a lot on the Kinematics article. A few months ago I compiled a list of all (maybe there are more) articles related to Dynamics. This list is located in the talk page of the Dynamics article. I thought this list would be useful for you if you are planning on working on more articles related to Kinematics. Some of those articles need to be merged. I would like to work on some of these articles but my focus right now is on other topics. Cheers!!! Sanpaz (talk) 23:53, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

coriolis diagram

I reverted again. Diagram is wrong. Best not to advise others to "take time to think about the issue" -- it assumes bad faith. Rracecarr (talk) 15:22, 19 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Improved simulation methods for loop gain (return ratio)

I noticed your interest in electronic feedback, so I thought you might be interested to learn about two improved simulation methods for loop gain (or return ratio, as you prefer to call it), which I present on my webpage http://www.geocities.com/frank_wiedmann/loopgain.html. The method developed by Michael Tian is basically an improved version of Middlebrook's method from 1975. Middlebrook's General Feedback Theorem is very closely related to the "Asymptotic gain model" entry on Wikipedia. Regarding the issue of loop gain versus return ratio, you can find some comments from me at http://www.designers-guide.org/Forum/YaBB.pl?num=1124688329.

Frank —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.144.154.169 (talk) 17:41, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Talk: Centrifugal force

In this[3] edit, are you sincerely asking whether you should do some math, or is your intent to be sarcastic and insulting to the other editors? Please beware that it is very easily interpreted as the latter, and people may take offense. --PeR (talk) 21:05, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've done the math; it's time some others did too. Brews ohare (talk) 21:45, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK, but please be civil. Besides, I think the issue at hand can be easily resolved without doing any math. See my entry on Talk: Centrifugal force

Answering your question:

Wikipedia:Summary style is the guideline.
Definition has examples.

Awesome illustrations on your user page, BTW.

--Jtir (talk) 14:05, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Lab centrifuge

Hi there

I was wondering about your latest edits. Is a 10 m centrifuge accurately described as a "laboratory centrifuge"? --Rifleman 82 (talk) 17:44, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know: it is for lab experiments and simulations. Is a cyclotron lab equipment? I guess the real question is whether this material fits best here, or would be more easily found elsewhere. Any suggestions? Brews ohare (talk) 17:49, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think Centrifuge might be a better spot for it. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 17:56, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have moved this material to Centrifuge. Brews ohare (talk) 18:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tide

I reverted your edit to Tide. Possibly I was too impulsive, so I'll just explain myself and you can rerevert if you really know what you're talking about. The centrifugal force explanation has been debated extensively on the Talk page. I was not involved in that discussion, but it appears that the centrifugal-version lost out. The only other mention of centrifugal in the article is a link explaining why its the wrong way to explain tides. As the intro is supposed to be a summary of the article, it should be consistent with the main body. Spiel496 (talk) 03:00, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh... you edit faster than I do. I understand your point; the article is not so well referenced. Please do what you can to make the article self-consistent, though. Spiel496 (talk) 03:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience, when centrifugal force is used to explain a phenomenon then there is also a valid alternative which does not use centrifugal force. Sometimes, one is much clearer than the other. I'm kind of on the fence as far as tides are concerned. Best of luck... Spiel496 (talk) 03:20, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Centrifugal force and precession

Brews, I do know that precession can be (and typically is) a rotation about a rotating axis. Sorry for my ambiguous edit summary. But the picture you added showed a rotation about a fixed vertical axis (i.e. a precession with same angular velocity as the rotation about the "south-north" axis of the object). Besides that, the example about precession is too difficult to understand for an introduction about centrifugal force (because people thinks that the instantaneous axis of rotation is the "south-north" axis, which is never true). A much better example about rotation about a non-fixed axis was about the "particle along S-shaped trajectory".

However, I fail to understand the reason why you want to talk about rigid bodies and Newton-Euler equations in the introduction. I suggest to open a new section at the end of the article about this topic. But it would just say that:

  1. either you study the motion of the body CM, and in this case centrifugal force is computed as if the body were a point mass, or
  2. you study the motion of a particle in the rigid body which does not coincide with the CM; then you just compute the kinematics of that particle, then you again use the formula for particles.

I mean, the same formulas for centrifugal force as those you use for particles can be applied to rigid bodies. IMO, this is not something worth mention in the introduction. By the way, I guess you agree that inertial couples (appearing together with fictitious forces in adjusted Newton-Euler equations used within non-inertial frames) definitely do not belong in this article! Paolo.dL (talk) 09:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please answer in this page, if you want to answer. Paolo.dL (talk) 10:47, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Misunderstandings

Brews, believe me, I have a high esteem for you. I only think that you should clean up your edits on A-class articles, before saving or immediately after saving, and should read with more attention comments on talk pages before answering.

Please read with attention our discussion. I will do the same. It will take some time. Let's both take some time before engulfing the discussion with other useless statements. Paolo.dL (talk) 14:55, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moon article image size

Are you are aware that personal image preferences can be set under "my preferences" at the top of this page? Your forced image sizes were causing the image to go over the top of writing in the article from my persepective.Asher196 (talk) 19:29, 18 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Inertial frame of reference

Congratulations for your work in Inertial frame of reference :-)

...is defined as: An inertial frame of reference is one in which the motion of a particle not subject to forces is a straight line.

Isn't "constant speed" missing? 189.6.140.252 (talk) 09:46, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question about parabolic dish and coriolis effect

Hi Brews,

about a month and a half ago you posted a question on my talk page. I rarely visit wikipedia anymore, I just happened to notice the posting. Please visit my talk page to read my response. --Cleonis | Talk 18:03, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Frame of reference

Hi Paolo: It appears that you have drifted away from Frame of reference to discuss other articles. Maybe it's too much to say you are satisfied with Frame of reference, but are going to let matters rest? Brews ohare (talk) 18:26, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am too busy right now to read an article with attention. I just quickly edited some articles that I browsed to find information, not with the intention to edit. But I hope I'll find the time in the future to edit frame of reference and centrifugal force. Just one suggestion for you: remove the note about frame of reference from centrifugal force. It is not needed there, and it makes the article messy and unfocused. Paolo.dL (talk) 20:23, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I'm wondering where you came up with this definition. 60 years of space travel do rarely justify the term archaeology, do they? Also, what is there to find other than space junk that is already known? De728631 (talk) 22:25, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there: This is a work in progress. Please allow a little time for it to flesh out. Brews ohare (talk) 22:27, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. Still, I find the term a bit weird. Can you provide references to read up on this? Because from scratch, I'd rather associate remote sensing with this. De728631 (talk) 22:39, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi: I am working with an expert in this field, who will provide the meat of the article. My role here is just to introduce Wikipedia and get them started. 22:49, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Now, that should become interesting. I moved the page to Space archaeology though, with the correct spelling. This "archeology" was merely a typo in the Hopkins newsletter heading - and later on they also used the right spelling. Cheers, De728631 (talk) 23:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Groups

Hi,

thanks for your recent interesting edit to Group (mathematics) (which I moved to the text body). As you also seem to be an image professional, could you think of a way that shows graphically the effect/presence of a group in this band structure stuff you mentioned? In the b.s. article, there are some images, but none of them jumps right into my eye w.r.t. to groups ( is something, but without knowing what goes on, it is hard to grasp). Having something in this direction would be a nice addition to the groups article (we could replace one of the symmetric molecules by this, for this is a bit repetitive). Thank you for your help, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 17:48, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, it's me again. I'm impressed by your contributions to the group article. However, I'm not sure whether the length and level of explanation is appropriate in an article like this. Pieces like "accompanied by a so-called soft phonon mode, a vibrational lattice mode that goes to zero frequency at the transition" are on the one hand difficult to understand, and, as far as I can tell from reading just this, unrelated to groups. Perhaps you might consider putting most of the explanation to the symmetry or molecular symmetry pages? Otherwise I may do so at some point. Thanks, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 15:14, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work on Kinetics

Thanks for the rework. It's so much more readable now. Can you lend a hand on Dynamics page, too? Even though the word "dynamics" is still used widely, it's no longer a branch of study, just like kinetics. I'm thinking that after clean-up, it makes sense to merge them. Sillyvalley (talk) 04:05, 17 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Analytical dynamics, and it appears to be very similar to another wikipedia page: Dynamics (physics). It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case.

This message was placed automatically, and it is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article and it would be appreciated if you could drop a note on the maintainer's talk page. CorenSearchBot (talk) 15:52, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You feel for it to review me, if you got the time to do so. It might be just a bold question, and I am not expecting a positive reaction, but I really need someone to do so. Thanks in advanche, -The Bold Guy- (talk) 17:41, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Centrifugal Force

Brews, first I'd like to thank you for supporting my unblock request. But since I won't be coming back in again, I want to take this opportunity to explain to you where I think that you are going wrong. Centrifugal force is one single topic. It can be described in the most simple terms as the outward radial force that is associated with rotation. It crops up in many scenarios. The classical mechanics topic 'rotating frames of reference' is only one such scenario. I don't see how you can see it any differently. You showed a much greater ability to comprehend matters on the electromagnetism articles. I don't know what happened to you when you came over to the centrifugal force page. One big difference of course was that there were no biased referees on the electromagnetism pages. My own belief is that you were swayed by this factor and that you were hence too willing to buy into the philosophy that centrifugal force is something that only occurs in rotating frames of reference. I know that you were genuinely trying to learn about the subject. But you were writing as you were learning. It's been as if you were learning on the job. And in my opinion you were being taught very badly by those around you. My advice to you is to try and listen more carefully to what Fugal is telling you. He knows what he is talking about. 81.152.111.182 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 00:01, 27 September 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Vector space graphic

Hi Brews, thanks for your work on vector space. I will also join in now with more content. Since you seem to be a graphic expert (among other things), I wonder whether you could help with the following (I'm a bloody idiot with Inkscape and so on, which is why I ask you): I think a graphic showing a vector bundle would be nice. More concretely I have in mind the Möbius strip, which is a line bundle over the circle. The image should show the circle along with the M. str. and, this would be great, "zooming" in a small region and exhibiting the product structure of a little piece of the circle times the line. Could you do that? Cheers Jakob.scholbach (talk) 19:38, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Centrifugal force (planar motion)

I think it may be a good idea to save the article on your hard disk and then rewrite it a bit to make it slightly more general. The title could be changed, you don't have to mention "centrifugal force", you could perhaps call it "Classical mechanics in general coordinates".

Anyway, I think you have done a lot of positive work here on Wikipedia. Don't waste time fighting stupid disputes :) Count Iblis (talk) 20:19, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have moved the article, see here:

Classical mechanics in planar curvilinear coordinates


I think we need to put less emphasis on centrifugal force and just focus on classical mechanics. Count Iblis (talk) 22:22, 13 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Opinion

Looks good! I redirected the article I mentioned above to your article "Mechanics of planar particle motion".

In the Lagrangian methods section, one could also write about imposing the constraint that a particle move along some curve using (time dependent) Lagrange multipliers and then mention the relation between the Lagrange multiplier and the normal force. Count Iblis (talk) 01:48, 14 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Lagrange multiplier and the normal force

I think this can be found in most textbooks. I learned it from college notes at university, so I can't give you a specific ref. right now. This is not so important if a derivation from first principles is given. What matters is that statements in Wikipedia are verifiable. So, a mathematical derivation can serve as the verification of a statement.

Making the derivation itself verifiable by giving a ref. to the literature is then besides the point because we are aiming at readers who can understand the derivation so they would be able to see that it is correct or false. Of course, when we take a derivation from a book, then we should give the ref. to that book.

Then, because we don't need to closely follow any textbooks, we have a lot of freedom to adapt the derivation to the needs of the reader of the wiki article. I have contributed to some thermodynamics articles in this style, see e.g. Fundamental thermodynamic relation and Helmholtz free energy. The derivations there are similar to what you can find in books like the one by F. Reif, my old college notes and my own notes.

The thermodynamics articles contained many elementary mistakes before I started to edit them. I still don't understand how such elementary errors could have remained in these articles for many years. I think that the wiki practice of sourcing statements could be have contributed to this. Erroneous statements were attributed to some source (in some case the source was a clone of the same wiki article) and then no one bothered to check. So, I decided that it may be better to give derivatons from first principles and not even bother to source them so that they will be scrutinized more. Count Iblis (talk) 23:31, 14 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Derivations and verifiability

This seems to be an ongoing discussion at the policy pages, see e.g. here.

I also think that different wiki editors may disagree because they take a different view about what Wikipedia is supposed to be. There are people who take a very narrow view, who say that wiki articles should describe what can be found in sources in pretty much the same way as is written down in the sources. But I think that we then miss a great opportunity. With some effort we can write articles about physics that are accessible to people with less knowledge than is assumed in university textbooks.

If you think of a (physics) textbook as a linear sequence of text, then wikipedia is a multidimensional sequence. The wikilinks allow you to move in many different directions. So, in principle, it could be superior to a textbook. Count Iblis (talk) 17:09, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Derivations

Hey Brews. Glad to see you doing more work on the transistor articles. I notice you're adding derivations for the different characteristics - do you really think that's necessary? I think it might be better to omit them and just refer readers to textbooks to see the derivations. Or perhaps show all the derivations in a separate article to keep the main one concise and less intimidating. What do you think? -Roger (talk) 01:14, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it's clear I like some derivation, particularly if it's not too involved. There are a couple of reasons: (i) I don't find textbooks a great source of derivations. (ii) I do find a derivation adds to credibility, which Wiki can use a lot of. Simple statements that such-and-such is so, even when cited, is subject to abuse that simple logic may avoid. (iii) I find writing on the circuit diagram a great way to do it, and texts don't do it that way much; it makes the derivations very straightforward. (iv) A derivation provides insight into the material. Brews ohare (talk) 06:23, 5 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Vector space

Hi Brews, I remember you made a number of physics-related edits to vector space. I'm currently trying to get the article to GA standard. The last step for this, I think, is providing references for various statements. I'm trying my best to cover the mathematical aspects, but could I ask you to help out with physical facts? I marked the facts/paragraphs where I think we need some references with a [citation needed]-tag. If you could help out, I'd be grateful, since I don't have readily access to a physics library. Thank you, and see you over there, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 21:24, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

nu to theta

Hi. Please don't forget talk:Kepler's laws of planetary motion#Symbol for Angular Displacement. Bo Jacoby (talk) 10:10, 8 November 2008 (UTC).[reply]

I changed the figure. It is not mathematically exact, but I hope it will do. Brews ohare (talk) 12:27, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for you drawing.

See however Talk:Kepler's_laws_of_planetary_motion#Image:Anomalies.PNG. Bo Jacoby (talk) 23:53, 8 November 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Continuation behind the scenes

Brews, I've just activated the e-mail user option. I've decided that this debate would best be carried out on a one-to-one behind the scenes. It is about trying to master an overall comprehension of the topic. I wouldn't have stayed here so long if I hadn't believed that you were genuinely trying to understand the topic. But wikipedia is not the right medium for that purpose. When you were on the EM articles, I saw that you were interested in the A vector. Basically the -(partial)dA/dt in the Lorentz force is the Euler force. But we can't discuss that here. I had a difficult time even trying to get the third term of the Lorentz force overtly recognized even though it is in modern literature, so there'd be no point in quoting Maxwell to get the fourth term mentioned. The fourth term is centrifugal force grad(A.v). Try and e-mail me. If it doesn't work, let me know on my talk page. There is no point in carrying on on the centrifugal force talk page because there are too many people working at cross purposes. There is a very simple pattern to all this. It is four Lorentz force terms. Two tangential and two radial. In EM, the tangential terms are Faraday's law (and also the radial terms which give zero curl). In Gravity, Kepler's second law balances them to zero. David Tombe (talk) 19:45, 13 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mediation requested

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Displacement Current

Brews, the important thing is to realize that Maxwell's method for obtaining displacement current bore no similarity to the modern 'conservation of charge' method. Maxwell seemed to settle on a linear polarization method, even though the preamble in part III of his 1861 paper indicated that he may have been toying with a magnetization approach. Maxwell did not involve capacitors in his derivation of displacement current. But the subsequent identification of displacement current with linear polarization must have caused future generations to link it to capacitor circuits. The new 'conservation of charge' method must have arisen in the 20th century post-aether era, because there was then no longer any dielectric in space to be polarized, yet they couldn't get rid of the displacement current in the vacuum because it was essential for EM radiation. The problem is that the 'conservation of charge' method doesn't fit with EM radiation because it is the wrong E vector. Interestingly, Maxwell's method still applies in relation to dielectric materials. David Tombe (talk) 05:05, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've just removed a chunk of apparent original research from the Absolute time and space article. However, what remains could do with some improvement; I'd greatly appreciate it if you could you take a look at it. -- The Anome (talk) 16:46, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I modified this article somewhat, adding some historical context. That led to modification of mass; it never ends. Brews ohare (talk) 21:12, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Definition of free space

Hi Brews,

You seem to believe both of the following:

[A] Free space is by definition a medium in which the speed of light is c0, the permittivity is ε0, etc.

[B] c0 is by definition the speed of light in free space. ε0 is by definition the permittivity in free space. Etc.

This is a circular definition, isn't it? You haven't defined anything at all.

How do you measure a meter? Well, it's how far light travels in 1/299,792,458 seconds in free space. How do you know that your measurement is actually in something close to free space, and not in a far-from-free-space-medium? Well, you could check that the speed of light is close to 299,792,458 meters per second, except that you don't know what a meter is. You could check that ε0 is close to 9 pF/meter, but again, you don't know what a meter, amp, or coulomb is. So there's no way to know whether your medium is anywhere close to free space. It could be 100 orders of magnitude off. Right??? :-) --Steve (talk) 03:04, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Steve: I've taken a while to respond. I had to think about it. Here is my take - tell me what you think of it.
Free space has defined properties and so is beyond experiment. It is a hypothetical medium.
However, measurements of the meter do not take place in free space. To measure the meter, one first sets up an elaborate clock to obtain a second (within a few Herz). Then one sets up a light source and detector in a gas, say, and separates them so time from emission to detection takes 1/c0 seconds. Then either (i) one measures at several gas pressures and fits some curve to the points and extrapolates to zero pressure, or (ii) one calculates the refractive index of your gas from formula using measured gas pressure (the advantage is NIST does the extrapolation, saving you the trouble); then your measured meter is corrected accordingly using n.
It seems to me there is nothing circular here because there are two definitions involved: the definition of free space and the definition of the procedure used to approximate free space in the lab. If we defined c0 differently, we'd get a different length for the meter, but who cares: if everybody adopted the same c0 , everybody would have the same meter.
If extrapolation does not consistently produce the same meter, that is an error in either the theory used for extrapolation, or in the assessment of gas pressure. If the procedure consistently produces different meters for linearly and circularly polarized light, then we'd have to specify the polarization used to measure the meter, but it wouldn't matter whether we picked the speed of one polarization or the other to set the parameters of free space. We probably would ask why dichroism occurred even in the limit of zero pressure, but that is a real-world question, not a question about free space. Brews ohare (talk) 21:52, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Brews, thanks for bringing that paper to my attention. I will not be getting too involved in the aether debate here on wikipedia, because it is guaranteed to lead to an edit war, with people arguing over the legitimacy of sources. Have a look at this article meanwhile [4]. I did however want to bring your attention to the links between density and magnetic permeability, and between elasticity and dielectric constant in regard to how Maxwell calculated the speed of light using Newton's equation for the speed of sound. Even if we can't write too much about that in main articles, I saw that you were curious enough about the topic to want to know more.

I've now been able to open the link which you supplied. Yes, I am familiar with this paper already. I have communicated with both the authors. They in turn refer to a paper which was written in 1998 by the brother of one of the authors. Here is a direct link to that paper. [5] David Tombe (talk) 17:27, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Martin, what are you up to?

I would prefer to have any discussion on the article talk page. Martin Hogbin (talk) 22:11, 13 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

AfD nomination of Space archaeology

I have nominated Space archaeology, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Space archaeology. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:08, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Aether

Brews, I have been involved in this field since the 1970's. I have my own views on the matter. As far as I am concerned, the aether is alive and well. But the aether needs to be rendered into a sea of tiny whirlpools in order to act as the luminiferous medium. I got most of my inspiration from Maxwell's 1861 paper which accounts for my determination to point out that centrifugal force is a real force that is associated with pure aether pressure.

I am aware that there have been many attempts by dissidents to re-introduce the luminiferous medium. Often these attempts are very confused in my opinion. I began with displacement current. My realization that the textbook explanation was unsatisfactory led me to look up how Maxwell himself did it. It was then that I realized that we need to have a dielectric medium pervading what is commonly believed to be the vacuum. Later I realized that the dipoles need to be rotating and that magnetic repulsion is caused by centrifugal pressure between adjacent dipoles in their mutual equatorial planes. You can have a look at my article 'The Double Helix Theory of the Magnetic Field at [6]. However it has been extended by many follow up papers. One that you might be particularly interested in is the 'The Cause of Coriolis Force' at [7]. You will find papers at that last web link address for all numbers up to 60 with the exception of 1,2,10,34, and 46. The ones that you might find the most interesting are 11, 12, 14, 43,44, 48,49,54, and the last six. David Tombe (talk) 15:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]