Large Hardon Collider

[Eliseos]

Y'know, when I was a little kid I thought that maybe things like aliens were here, ghosts were real, and comic book characters were possible. Once I actually started taking advanced science classes in high school and college, I realized shit like that can't happen. Once you start taking some big boy classes, you'll feel the same way.

Also, since Wikipedia is just a starting point, and my starting point says parapsychology is a pseudo-science, I'm not going to look any further. You also missed my point on conclusive evidence. There isn't a shred of conclusive evidence, and no, the article you posted isn't at all conclusive, so it's going to remain a pseudo-science. Crying about people not listening to you isn't helping your case either.

[Psion]

Why do people think conclusive evidence magically appears full grown out of thin air? of course it's not conclusive evidence yet, but there's more than enough evidence to warrant further study. quantum physics didn't exactly start off as "oh hay guys, we're ditching standard physics, its all quantum now. Instead, it starts with discovery, examining of data, and further testing. The problem is, most people don't even want to look at the data, and just blow it off as pseudo-science because "it's not possible". Well jeez, I had no clue we knew every single thing in the universe and how it works, and how they work together. Stop the presses, the theory of everything is already here!

Are you a fucking dumbass or something? You know nothing of my education, haven't examined all the evidence of parapsychology, do not know all the variables of the universe, and you have the audacity to say there's no evidence and resort to ad hominem attacks? You're not a scientist, you're just a cynic who thinks he's a scientist.

[Kuya]

Conclusive evidence about what? That the object of study even exists?

[Eliseos]

Yeah, I'm the dumbass who believes people can move shit with their mind. You're the one who posted he was in trig, which is not a very advanced math class. That means your science classes will also not be that advanced. Stay mad bro.

[Psion]

And yet you still have not actually examined the data and used credible arguments as to why people can't.

It's laughable that people keep saying we can't do something. 500 years ago if I had told you we would have invisibility cloaks, the ability to make a bomb capable of annihilating large cities, the ability to cut through objects using only light, mechanical servants that can do all sorts of work, the ability to tinker with life itself, to create artificial life, and move things with our minds, you would've thought I was crazy and talking shit.

Guess what, all of those are either here now or about to be here, moving things with our mind included. (what, you haven't heard of the monkey moving a robotic arm using it's thoughts? :3 )

Science isn't about proving what's impossible or immoral to do, it's about showing that anything is possible, given the right tools. Every time we think we hit the border of knowledge and reached our limits, someone gets lucky with a discovery that completely blows away said limitations and starts vast amounts of new technology.

Jeez, even though I haven't taken advanced science classes, as you say, I know better than to claim things aren't possible simply because it doesn't fit our current models. If something is showing credible evidence of existing, you don't dismiss it simply because it doesn't fit with existing data. You change your models to explain the behavior.

Get the thought out of your head right now that something isn't possible. If that's what you think, then things really will be impossible for you, simply because you don't see the possibilities in the first place.

[Ferion]

Except it's not showing credible evidence of existing. Granted I've only read the paper you've linked, but if you're stating that this is what credible evidence looks like I'm assuming most papers look like the one you showed us. A 3.4% deviation from the population mean with 100 people isn't something to go crazy about. Not to mention that you're criticizing us for not giving it a chance, but this:

While the results of parapsychologists' experiments are regarded by the Parapsychological Association as having demonstrated the existence of some forms of psychic abilities,[18] critics argue that methodological flaws can explain the apparent experimental successes

shows that experts in the field have reviewed the methods used and are criticizing the experiments. So it seems like people who actually have the expertise to criticize are giving it a shot and not liking the results they're finding.

[Psion]

Except it's not showing credible evidence of existing. Granted I've only read the paper you've linked, but if you're stating that this is what credible evidence looks like I'm assuming most papers look like the one you showed us. A 3.4% deviation from the population mean with 100 people isn't something to go crazy about. Not to mention that you're criticizing us for not giving it a chance, but this:



shows that experts in the field have reviewed the methods used and are criticizing the experiments. So it seems like people who actually have the expertise to criticize are giving it a shot and not liking the results they're finding.

Except this is wikipedia, the "critic" it cites the paper from is 28 years old, and you guys keep getting hung up on the number of subjects, rather than the number of trials. I don't know the actual number of trials myself per person since I'd wind up spending hours reading those papers instead of studying for a test tonight, but the typical subject in these experiments does dozens, sometimes hundreds or thousands of attempts. It's not just one trial per person. The sample size might actually be in the tens of thousands, and is almost likely in the thousands. 3.4% deviation in 100 attempts is nothing special, I'm not a dumbass. 3.4% when the trials number from thousands to tens of thousands or more, however, is something completely different.

For fucks sake people, don't just look at wikipedia, look at the actual experiments. If we judged all experiments to be credible or not based on wikipedia, we'd all be a bunch of Max's claiming that global warming isn't a threat.

[Ferion]

I looked at the actual experiment. The trial I read talked about showing people different random images and gauging their level of arousal. In the group of random images they would throw in an erotic picture (I don't know what this guys deal with porn is). They stated that in certain cases that a person would become more aroused a split second before the erotic picture came up, as if they knew it was coming. This test had a sample size of 100 people, 50 men and 50 women. They don't explicitly state this, but it would be impossible for them to have a person do this test more than once since if the person in the experiment knows that an erotic picture is coming up at some point this would mess with the data. So yes I have looked at the experiments, yes there is only one trial per person with only 100 people, and there was only a 3% deviation which means nothing.

[Kuya]

I can't believe a guy who is arguing in favour of parapsychology is dismissing wikipedia articles.

edit: if i were you i wouldn't take a shot at Max, since you're lower on the totem pole than he is, by far

[Max™]

There's a totem pole?

Ooh, dibs on being a big scary eagle!
http://www.cob.org/services/arts/pub...otem-large.jpg

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

I can't believe a guy who is arguing in favour of parapsychology is dismissing wikipedia articles.

edit: if i were you i wouldn't take a shot at Max, since you're lower on the totem pole than he is, by far

No his shot stands, you can take the big gums crush elsewhere. Don't pull a Kuya and be selective about the context to dismiss an entire argument. You're too sassy to be in a science thread anyways what is this.

[Kaylia]

Psion, it's not the first time you try to open our mind about parapsychology, but you're wasting your time. We are all bigots who refuse to give serious evidence a fair chance.

[Psion]

Not to mention ones who can't spell bigot properly. :D

At least Ferion is making an attempt to look at the data though.

[Kaylia]

Reading large amount of bullshit at 5 am take a while. Give me a break.


This document is a fucking mess. 60 pages of useless statistics mixed with retarded analysis not remotely related to the experiments. "Neutral image to reset the erotic stimulus"? What the fuck is this shit?

If you want to write a paper, you stick to a simple experiment and make it work. You don't make 10 billions unrelated experiments that prove nothing invidivually. Why do you think the guy made 10 experiments with 100 person instead of one with 1000?

-The sequencing of the pictures and their left/right positions were randomly determined by the programming language’s
internal random function

Internal random function are terrible. I'm not even using them when I simulate complex physics problem if I want to get decent result.

Across all 100 sessions, participants correctly identified the future position of the erotic
pictures significantly more frequently than the 50% hit rate expected by chance: 53.1%, t(99) =
2.51, p = .01, d = 0.25.3 In contrast, their hit rate on the nonerotic pictures did not differ
significantly from chance: 49.8%, t(99) = -0.15, p = .56. This was true across all types of
nonerotic pictures: neutral pictures, 49.6%; negative pictures, 51.3%; positive pictures, 49.4%;
and romantic but nonerotic pictures, 50.2%.

Go flip a coin 1000 times and tell me the result. It won't be 50%..it will never be 50%.

As an example, I used excel to generate 1000 0 and 1 and I summed the whole column to get the average (you can do it as well, it takes 2minutes). It took only 20 attempts to score 466/1000 (and many were around 480 or 520). It's not likely, but it's far from impossible to get such deviation from the average.

Lastly, I seriously believe this guy pick his statistics. Since he was all over the place the whole time, his experiment was probably all over the place as well. When no one know what you're doing, not even yourself, it's very easy to pick your subject thesis after you receive the result. This kind of behavior is very common, but almost impossible to prove wrong with a single text

[edit]
This is not a serious experiment. The protocole was bad, and the number were probably tampered. If you believe this guy has any credibility, feel free to defend him, but no one sane is ever going to bother giving this particular study any attention.

[BerenTebogo]

lol pseudo-science advocates.

[Obev]

I thought this was the real science thread. So today real scientists trapped antihydrogen atoms in weal magnetic fields. Science is fucking badass.

Edit: oh yeah, someone mentioned it two pages back but you yahoos have wasted precious internets arguing over whether we're psychic or not, or whether we're statistics or not. Short answer: we're not psychic, there's no magic, real men are busy trapping antimatter in a bottle. Hush while the grown-ups are talking.

[Kaylia]

That why I came to this thread earlier (wanted to link the news), but got sidetracked.


Also, there is no argument over whether we're psychic or not (we are not), we are simply trying to find out how to get ride of pseudo-sciences. People making false scientific claims is an issue that sciences has to deal with, and it's not a bad argument to have..

[Acturus]

SPACE BUBBLES!

THE GIST
*Astronomers discover new type of object -- huge bubbles of gamma rays stemming from the heart of the galaxy.

*The two bubbles could have been inflated by a past eruption from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

*The bubbles span 50,000 light-years across the sky.

http://news.discovery.com/space/gamm...lack-hole.html

Spoiler: show

Giant Bubbles Found in Space
An ancient eruption of a supermassive black hole may have inflated the mysteriously huge bubbles that span 50,000 light-years.

http://news.discovery.com/space/2010...le-278x225.jpg

An ancient eruption of a supermassive black hole in the Milky Way may have inflated two huge bubbles of gamma rays which were just now discovered and are considered a new type of astronomical object.

"It shows, once again, that the universe is full of surprises," said Jon Morse, director of astrophysics at NASA headquarters.

Combined, the bubbles, which are aligned at the center of the Milky Way, span a vast distance of about 50,000 light-years. The structures are very distinct, with defined edges, and have as much energy in them as 100,000 supernova.

They were found with NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope, which surveys the sky every three hours for the highest-energy light.

Among the 1,500 sources of gamma rays Fermi has mapped so far, nothing resembles the bubble-shaped structures, which stretch across more than half of the visible sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus.

"You have to ask where could energy like that come from," said astronomer Doug Finkbeiner, with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Hints of the bubbles appeared years earlier in X-ray surveys and in maps of the cosmic microwave background radiation stemming from the Big Bang explosion.

"We had a hypothesis before Fermi launched that there should be some gamma ray emission in this part of the sky. We were thinking something a bit more modest, maybe something within 10 or 20 or 30 degrees of the center, not these giant structures reaching all the way up to 50 degrees," Finkbeiner said.

Scientists have two possible explanations for the Fermi bubbles. Theory one: a burst of star-formation at the center of the galaxy generated short-lived massive stars with energetic winds that blasted high-energy particles out into space.

Finkbeiner points out that it would take some time to accumulate as much energy as what's inside the bubbles, however. He favors an alternative theory: an outburst from the supermassive black hole lurking in the center of the galaxy.

In other galaxies, astronomers have seen evidence for jets of particles triggered by matter that is being pulled into a black hole, objects that have so much gravitational pull that not even light can escape their grasp.

There's no evidence that the Milky Way's central black hole, which is about 400 million times more massive than our sun, has jets, but astronomers suspect it might have in the past.

"We know it didn't get to be that big by sitting there quietly all the time. It certainly has had big accretion events in the past, where material falls on it and then some of that material comes back out as high-energy particles blasted out in the form of a jet," Finkbeiner said.

"We've never really seen very good evidence of it. This might be the first evidence for a major outburst of the black hole at the center of the galaxy. When it's going full-blast … it would not actually take an enormous amount of time -- maybe 10,000 or 100,000 years -- for it to produce enough energy to create these structures," Finkbeiner said.

"This result is very exciting," added Fermi scientist Simona Murgia, with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif. "These features could reveal unexpected and very important physical processes in our galaxy that until now we knew nothing about despite the fact that these features could possibly be almost as large as the Milky Way and might have been around for millions of years."

The discovery was unveiled during a teleconference with reporters on Tuesday and is the subject of an upcoming paper in The Astrophysical Journal.

[Eliseos]

I thought this was the real science thread. So today real scientists trapped antihydrogen atoms in weal magnetic fields. Science is fucking badass.

I'm pretty interested in how they are planning to keep anti-hydrogen around longer. It doesn't seem like they'll be able to do much for the time being until they can fine-tune the magnetic field a bit better at least.

[Mizango]

Gah! Back finally, I missed you guys. Sath and Eliseos, are right on the money and lol @ basically calling Eliseos an uneducated cynic, talk about having pie in your face

Kaylia is also right in saying this is the first time you've tried to cram this down our throats, but I had forgotten it until I got back and played catch up. To each his own but you cant get defensive and start throwing daggers every time someone disagrees with you.