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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the einstein-dismisses-india-scientists dept.

BBC:

Some academics at the annual Indian Science Congress dismissed the findings of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.

Hindu mythology and religion-based theories have increasingly become part of the Indian Science Congress agenda.

But experts said remarks at this year's summit were especially ludicrous.

[...] The head of a southern Indian university cited an old Hindu text as proof that stem cell research was discovered in India thousands of years ago.

G Nageshwar Rao, vice chancellor of Andhra University, also said a demon king from the Hindu religious epic, Ramayana, had 24 types of aircraft and a network of landing strips in modern day Sri Lanka.

Another scientist from a university in the southern state of Tamil Nadu told conference attendees that Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were both wrong and that gravitational waves should be renamed "Narendra Modi Waves" [Narendra Modi is the current Prime Minister of India].


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:11AM (20 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:11AM (#783960) Journal

    photons from the Big Bang are ... well known phenomena

    photons [wikipedia.org] (1) aren't dark, and (2) aren't matter.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:44AM (19 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:44AM (#783995) Journal

    (1) aren't dark

    They are, if they aren't pointed at you.

    (2) aren't matter

    Hence the use of the phrase mass-energy.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:54AM (13 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:54AM (#783996)

      Mass isnt synonymous with matter, matter has volume too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter [wikipedia.org]

      Basically matter is ponderable, you can weigh it on a scale.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:11AM (12 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:11AM (#784001) Journal

        Mass isnt synonymous with matter, matter has volume too

        You won't find mass that doesn't have volume due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (there's a lower bound on the product of the uncertainties of momentum and position, the latter being a generator of a volume) and black hole limits (which can't have a surface area less than a factor times the mass of the black hole).

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:24AM (11 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:24AM (#784004)

          So if you shine some light into a bathtub you can displace the water since the photons have volume? Can we measure the mass of the photon this way?

          I dont think so since you can have as many photons as you want in the same place:

          Particles with an integer spin, or bosons, are not subject to the Pauli exclusion principle: any number of identical bosons can occupy the same quantum state, as with, for instance, photons

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_exclusion_principle [wikipedia.org]

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:27AM (10 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:27AM (#784005) Journal

            So if you shine some light into a bathtub you can displace the water since the photons have volume?

            Well, the temperature of the water would increase and that would increase the volume of the water. But volume of photons is a red herring. It's not required in order for them to have energy and curve space-time.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:45AM (9 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:45AM (#784008)

              Heating the water increases the volume the water takes up where the photon hits, this is the opposite of what would happen if you hit it with matter (the water would move away from that spot).

              Im just saying photons arent matter and have no volume, not arguing about the mass. Its in the intro to that wikipedia matter page.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:10PM (8 children)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:10PM (#784126) Journal

                Heating the water increases the volume the water takes up where the photon hits, this is the opposite of what would happen if you hit it with matter (the water would move away from that spot).

                You are inaccurate. The water does indeed move away from the spot as energy is imparted to it from the photon. What is different is that water can fully absorb the energy of the photon.

                Im just saying photons arent matter and have no volume, not arguing about the mass. Its in the intro to that wikipedia matter page.

                Wave/particle duality is as much a thing for photons too. The whole issue is a red herring. Dark matter is just a label like dark energy. What generates the observed effect described by the label need not be matter any more than the latter need be energy.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:59PM (7 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:59PM (#784150)

                  No, in the usual context dark matter means some sort of exotic matter at this point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda-CDM_model [wikipedia.org]

                  And you have chosen to have your own definition of "matter" different from everyone else, whatever, but stop pushing it like it is standard

                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:01PM

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:01PM (#784151) Journal
                    Only because they don't have enough of the rest of the dark matter to cover the perceived gap.
                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:37PM (5 children)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @04:37PM (#784160)

                    khallow is using 'matter' where he should be using 'mass', but other than that minor difference in terminology, he is pretty much entirely correct.

                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @07:13PM (4 children)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @07:13PM (#784231)

                      Yes, I know. That is the topic of discussion. Here is what I said above:

                      Mass isnt synonymous with matter

                      Khallow dont agree.

                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @06:53AM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 14 2019, @06:53AM (#786325)

                        Khallow dont agree.

                        That amounts to less than nothing, since khallow is not a scientist, or astrophysicist, or meretrician or opthamologist. Khallow is just, khallow, a teenager who has read Ayn Rand, and can't get her out of his pants. So sad, too bad. Poor khallow. Sometimes, suicide is the only honorable way out. That, or accepting that as an non-communalist, you still have to accept Medicare and Social Security, because the Commies prevented you from having a pony at your twelve birthday, so something like that.

                      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 21 2019, @06:17AM (2 children)

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 21 2019, @06:17AM (#789424) Journal

                        Mass isnt synonymous with matter

                        Khallow dont agree.

                        And I don't agree because the distinction is meaningless. Everything with mass has volume (and hence, checks off all the boxes for "matter")? Nor when we actually look at cosmological scales does the actual volume of would-be matter become relevant. For example, global clusters, large clumps of stars, which sometimes have billions of stars in them, can orbit for long periods of time without a collision occurring (for example, we have yet to observe such a collision in the globular clusters that we can see with the human eye, which is several centuries worth of observation over several dozen huge clusters). The volume of the matter in the global clusters from the stars is a minuscule portion of the volume of the globular cluster.

                        I don't believe in paying lip service to pedantic semantics when it's irrelevant to the topic.

                        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:42AM (1 child)

                          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:42AM (#789953)

                          Everything with mass has volume. Photons have volume. Therefore, photons have mass.

                          Corollary: interstellar space has volume. Therefore, interstellar space has mass. No need for dark matter.

                          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:48AM

                            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:48AM (#789954) Journal
                            A implies B, doesn't mean B implies A, much less some non sequitur C.
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:05AM (4 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @06:05AM (#783998) Journal
      On the "darkness" of photons, baryonic matter and associated electrons (in other words, normal matter) interacts with and scatters photons readily. You can see baryonic matter via EM sensors just from the thermal photons it emits. Photons that aren't traveling right into your detectors can primarily scatter photons in your direction if they interact either with charged particle matter (which is thought to be scarce outside of galaxies) or if they interact with another photon via virtual charged particles (which is rare unless the photons have a very high energy, typically in the gamma ray range). The end result is that photons are very dark relative to baryonic matter.
      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 09 2019, @11:19AM (3 children)

        by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday January 09 2019, @11:19AM (#784060) Journal

        "The end result is that photons are very dark relative to baryonic matter."

        Doesn't make them 'dark matter'.

        "The end result is black people are very dark compared to white people."
        Doesn't make them hockey pucks.

        Citation still needed.

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:12PM (2 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 09 2019, @03:12PM (#784128) Journal

          Doesn't make them 'dark matter'.

          Actually it does. Dark matter is a label for an effect. Things like those photons contribute to the effect.

          Citation still needed.

          For what?

          • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:07PM (1 child)

            by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday January 09 2019, @05:07PM (#784179) Journal

            Dark matter has NOT been found: dark matter is a kludge 'discovered' JUST JUST JUST to make GR still work.

            Some matter has been found. Is it 'dark matter'? No. Dark matter is a magic kludge. GR does not work without it and we can't allow that so we wave our hands and we come up with 'dark matter'.

            There is no dark matter. The scientific method has pushed it aside. Dark matter is not real.

            *Citation is STILL needed for
            "Actually, dark matter has been found"
            because no where can i find that it has.

            --
            --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:51AM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 10 2019, @12:51AM (#784373) Journal

              Some matter has been found. Is it 'dark matter'?

              I already gave three examples to the contrary. It is "dark matter", but it's not enough dark matter.