Astrobayes

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Welcome From David D.

Welcome to wikipedia. i have noticed you edits appearing on my watch list. I look forward to your contibutions as your comments on the entropy talk page were interesting. If you need any editing pointers feel free to ask on my talk page. David D. (Talk) 08:24, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Note i did change the reference you added to the evolution page. This new cite is probably a more stable source for the same information. Also note the wiki code I added so that the cite is added to the notes at the bottom of the page. David D. (Talk) 08:47, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

David, thanks for the helpful comments. I've loved Wiki for years now but I'm only just now finding the time and energy to make positive contributions. The most obvious obstacle is providing NPOV article contributions that are of *quality* and which *add* educational information to the discussion - and both take time, which as a 40+ hr/wk engineer, I sometimes have trouble finding. Any feedback you might wish to suggest for me, feel free to put it on my talk page, or you can also email me at astrobayes @ aol.com Cheers! Astrobayes 02:38, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure will. I understand the time crunch. Hopefully see you around. David D. (Talk) 04:49, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

License tagging for Image:SLACKlysGallery.gif

(This has been fixed now.) Astrobayes 08:38, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

License tagging for Image:PSTR.jpg

(This has been fixed now.) Astrobayes 17:14, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Evolution and entropy

You've added a very useful link to a rather old discussion at talk:Entropy#Kinds. It's cleared up the entropy/disorder confusion for me, and Disorder — A Cracked Crutch helped with more detail, but unfortunately is rather vague on the Information entropy angle. The best refutation of the creationist claim on that I've found is at TalkOrigins, but trying to find out more about information entropy and its equivalent to the second law has left me a bit baffled. When tackling this earlier at evolution#Self-organization and entropy the first paragraph there ended "The claim mistakenly assumes that this "disorder" applies at a larger scale, creating the misconception that a system that is left to itself will tend to descend into chaos.", but this gives a newer better approach, and the first part of the paragraph could probably do with the simpler definition from the briar patch article. I'd like to deal with the information entropy issue at the same time, and would welcome any information you have on that misconception. Not too mathematical please - I'm just an architect! ...dave souza, talk 19:56, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you!!

I can't tell you adequately how much I appreciate what you have just written -- not just your overly kind words to me (I've just been incredibly lucky to live long enough to wonder why I was so dumb as a youngster and mature adult... and happen on the most obvious intrepretation that anyone could have hit since 1865)-- but also thank you for your superbly worded call for 'let's focus on the Wik article on Entropy'! (Terrible sentence, but I'm hurrying :-) )

Several of these guys are very sharp in their area, (and undoubtedly should have a few or a lot of lines about their pet specialty (set off from the main article) but they do NOT get the point we both believe in - Wikipedia should be accessible for (almost) ALL levels of naivete.

I'm going to be a bit harsh re "Authority" and then, later today, do some summarizing. I didn't dare put anything up for the main article until I had sounded out others on the Discussion page, but I certainly have been awakened to the power of just a few obsessive guys in this enterprise!

Again, my thanks. Can't we dig up some chemists to get in here?! My good young colleagues are too busy to bother with anything that is a tar baby like this. (I like a (fair, though this is not)scientific fight and have time, being very aged, although my wife is not at all happy with the non-productive results!) Again, my deep thanks. FrankLambert 14:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

(earlier comments moved from main page to talk page here...)

Don't know if this is the right place, and don't know if this will just lie here for a month or two, but I hope not :-) I'm new to Wikipedia. I've been shocked by the vacuity and language without logic in the few participants in creating the Entropy chapter.

First, thanks for your good comment re my most-for-laypeople-not-for-scientists site ( www.entropysimple.com )! Others in the Entropy group were surprising in their reactions...

Second, PLEASE consider spending a few minutes in giving me some support in the discussion on the 'Talk/Entropy' page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Entropy .

(My background is on my User page, and support for those credentials, you can gain by 2 minutes in glancing at the list of chemistry texts that have deleted 'disorder' and adopted my approach at "December 2005" in "what's new" of http://www.entropysite.com/#whatsnew )

The inmates have taken over the asylum! Obsessed with retaining 'disorder' and 'loss of information', they continue to resist most argument, but in recent days -- I've only been on Wikipedia a week -- they have grown silent as I swamped them with a 'full monty' of my successful approach to entropy. (It has caused nothing less than a revolution in chem texts -- NOT because of my brilliance or fame, but simply because 'disorder' was a big dead cat whose death all the other mice were afraid to be the first to announce!

I think just a general jumping on the physicists who are adamant to stay they way they were taught, and the info specialist who will never agree that thermo entropy and info "entropy" are not identical-- stupido, might be enough to convince them to think they are as backward as they are!

Thanks!! FrankLambert 05:17, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Collaboration on scientific predictions

Hi, I saw your note at talk:Scientific predictions. I like the outline you propose. Do you mind if I try to produce a first draft? --Uncle Ed 15:07, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Ed, I've made a note on your talk page. Go for it! Astrobayes 17:51, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Big Bang

Astrobayes, quite right about hubris - I should parse my writing before hitting SAVE. Competence and aptitude, I am afraid, are not sufficient qualities to vouchsafe a scientist. In all my years of working with and in the scientific community, I have come to realise that there are vapid people sheltering behind the protective mantle of PhD's and the security of tenure. These same people are regarded as competent in their field. What they lack is quite simply curiosity about any other areas of life. To me, this curiosity is the only redeeming quality that we have and supersedes altruism, charity, love and of course faith and hope. I could happily share a desert isle with Adolf Hitler or Gengis Khan, because I think they would be truly interesting people and not the thorough villains which society has brainwashed us into believing. I digress....

To return, one of the necessary marks of the scientist (to my mind, obviously) is a curiosity about all things, and this desire to know can crop up in the most unexpected places. I have taught the basics of science to all sorts of people, and once in a while that golden moment arrives when you can sense the excitement and awe of someone's understanding a difficult concept for the first time - these occasions are precious. Somewhere in Wikipedia I wrote some rules for volunteers working on the reference desk to bear in mind before dismissing a question as frivolous or idiotic. Part of it was a reminder that potential scientists can come from the most unpromising backgrounds and that the treatment they receive, can douse the spark or turn it into a raging fire. Therefor, watch out for the facile use of labels like AMATEUR or INCOMPETENT, because they very easily turn into blinkers that can blind one to the truth. To life!!! Paul venter 12:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Paul thank you for the open and honest discussion about our comments on the talk pages. You and I share the same passion for learning so we're really here for the same reasons. I put further comments on your talk page and I look forward to our contributions in the future. Cheers, Astrobayes 21:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Non-standard cosmology

Thanks for the kind words. I was just stunned to come across the same dogmatic adherence to a personal truth that I have only found in some (only a very few) on the religious pages. The work required to deal with these people is phonomenal and I have learned it's best to back off and slowly collect refs and data over time and then come back afresh and try a new approach in a few weeks or months. You are right of course that these areas are much debated but I did expect an honest data based discussion and was disappointed to find otherwise.

It's probably a good thing as I need a break from this so I can go back to Howard Grubb, Thomas Grubb and Grubb Parsons which desparately need fleshing out and Mars which really should be an FA. I do fear for the long term health of wiki however as I can't see any way under the current set up to resolve this friction between factions. Sophia 06:59, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Observable universe

Hi Astrobayes,

I couldn't follow your reasoning for the change to the lead paragraph at observable universe, and I have restored it to the version before 20 June. Please see my reasoning on the talk page. No offense is intended, and I am happy to consider your counter-arguments. --Trovatore 05:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

No hard feelings whatsoever, as bold edits are part of Wikipedia. I checked a comparative history and our edits in the opening paragraph are only different by a single phrase, the "...causally connected" bit. After a bit of reflection, I see what you're getting across here, but from a physics standpoint my comments in my own edit already mention the causally connected bit, since the space-time radius of curvature, by its very definition, refers not to the "actual" physical extent of the Universe but rather the causally connected edges of the "sphere" formed. I had considered putting some language in like you did but since it would have been redundant, I chose not to do so. I instead inserted a link to the space-time radius of curvature so that others could read that article to get a complete picture. I still think the wording is redundant but it doesn't change the nature of the article, nor does it detract from the actual science used in the article (and for a scientific encyclopedic entry that should be the focus), so I'm not going to revert it. Thanks for the edit! Cheers, Astrobayes 17:44, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I think you missed that I made two edits. The second one was after thinking about it a bit and looking up your references (or at least their abstracts), which I couldn't see had much to do with the text they were footnoted from. Perhaps you could provide an exact quote or two from those references that explain their relevance to the text.

Now, I may be missing some relevant facts that you can explain to me, but it seems to me that you have not addressed the points I raised on the talk page, which led me to revert the lead section to the version prior to 20 June 2006. Specifically:

• The problem with "spatial extent of the universe", or even "spatial extent of the causally connected portion of the universe", is that it makes it seem like the observable universe is one well-defined thing, when in fact it depends on where you (the observer) are. This is part of what I was getting at, on the talk page, about causal connectedness not being a transitive relation.
• The bit about the radius of curvature seems misleading to me. We don't even know if the average curvature of the universe is positive or negative.

I suggest that this discussion should continue on the talk page of the article. --Trovatore 18:43, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

First, it does not in fact matter where you are in the Universe because there are no preferred reference frames due to the law of Special Relativity. To say that what you observe in the Universe matters from where in the Universe you observe is to violate a law of physics that has stood the test of time, mathematics, and observation. On the second note, your comment about curvature is worth noting, however we can only make models based upon our best available data and the current data available is reflected in the Wikipedia articles on WMAP, Big Bang, and Age of the Universe. From the scientific consensus on these astrophysical data (with which I agree based upon the weight of observation as I have seen it, as a member of the scientific community), the radius of curvature is not solely spatial, it is a space-time radius of curvature and its maximum possible extent within the framework of the Big Bang (which is our best model for the formation of the Universe so far) is the maximum possible distance that light could have traveled since the Big Bang. Since science cannot know or describe whatever may be outside the observable universe, it is therefore relevant for the sake of consistency with the articles linked above, as well as with current scientific consensus of those of us who have done this research, to speak of the space-time extent of the Universe within the context of the Big Bang. The abstracts of the two papers I originally referenced in the opening paragraph give examples of how astrophysical data are taken that impact our understanding and determination of the observable universe. Cheers, Astrobayes 08:36, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

To be honest, the above isn't helping much. The bit about "preferred reference frames" is a non-sequitur; there is no issue of preferred reference frames in noting that A can see something that B can't, simply because A happens to be closer to it. As for the papers, one of them was talking about the topology of the observable universe, not its size; the other was investigating some technical issue about the de Sitter metric or some such thing. Neither makes sense as a reference for the text to which they were applied. Or rather, one or both of them might, but you'd have to show me the specific quote that did. --Trovatore 15:14, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Your edit "a ball-shaped region of space surrounding the Earth that is close enough that we might observe objects in it" refers to the Celestial Sphere, and not the Observable Universe. look here at a NASA-published image of the observable Universe. What about this looks spherical? If you don't cite a source for the "ball-shaped... surrounding the Earth" bit I'm going to revert it again because you're talking about geocentrism, which is not scientifically or pedagogically correct and the correctness and quality of this article is my primary concern. Cheers, Astrobayes 05:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not talking about geocentrism at all. Of course there isn't one observable universe for all observers; the notion of "observable universe" depends on the observer. The observers reading this article just happen to be on the Earth. Anyway I'm going to raise the topic at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics because I admit there are a couple of things I'm confused about here. --Trovatore 07:26, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Trovatore, I see the direction from which you're coming at the problem, considering your background in set theory. My background is as a grad student in physics, while you have been a grad student in mathematics. The language that we use to describe the same physical problem is therefore going to be different to a degree sufficient to possibly pose a semantic barrier, so I think it is a great idea for you to post the problem on the WikiProject:Physics page, where hopefully your mathematics peers and others within physics can give a range of feedback.

As for my own education and experience in astronomy and astrophysics, I can tell you that the problems with concepts such as these always stem from matters of scale. When on small scales (solar systems or within a galaxy say), your statement that different observation points yield different observations is true. However, on large scales (superclusters, etc.) the observable Universe looks the same regardless where you are: the expansion is the same, and the basic filament structure is the same. However, to the general Wiki reader, this is splitting hairs since it is uncommon for an average person to spend hours thinking about translating their small-scale local Earth perspective to a large scale sufficient that any preferential reference is lost. For the purposes of a basic encyclopedia article, perhaps the concepts you describe are sufficient for a general readership but they are not quite physically accurate. As a physicist I cringe at any definition of a physical system that hinges on the Earth being at the center. Unless of course you wish to argue against the expansion of space-time itself, my physics instincts rebel against the "ball shaped region... [with] Earth at the center" comment. And that would be a whole other can of worms. Your thoughts? Cheers, Astrobayes 06:12, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Look, it may well be the case the case that the observable universes of different observers look the same in terms of their macroscopic properties. But what they are not is literally the same expanse of space, unless of course the observable universe is in fact the whole universe (which I suppose has not been ruled out). There is likely a planet somewhere whose observable universe does not even include the Earth, so it obviously can't be the same as Earth's observable universe. --Trovatore 05:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Mets501, Welcome to the Wikipedia: Physics Project

Mets501, welcome to the WP: Physics Project... Cheers, Astrobayes 06:22, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome Astrobayes! I'm just starting to learn physics in high school, but I love it and will try to help out as much as possible :-) —Mets501 (talk) 10:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Total re-write of the main Physics page is in progess

You might like to join us at Physics/wip where a total re-write of the main Physics page is in progess. At present we're discussing the lead paragraphs for the new version, and how Physics should be defined. I've posted here because you are on the Physics Project participant list. --MichaelMaggs 08:04, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Image:PSTR.jpg

I've retagged this image as {{logo}} due to the fact that it is a derivative work of the image found at [1]. Since it is not used on any main namespace articles, it is also orphaned and subject to deletion if it is not used on any main namespace articles within seven days. If you have any questions about this, I'd be happy to answer. --Durin 22:11, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

• Got it. Thanks. :) Astrobayes 09:20, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

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