Originally posted by Budapest
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No one anywhere has yet explained anything at all! -
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Re. flies and flying, they dont need as much brainpower as you may imagine. As well as a very small brain, they have a very elaborately evolved physical structure: millions of years have gone into producing precise arrangements of cuticle, muscles, wings and articulating joints. One simple command from the brain "FLY!" and the body does the rest, its the only thing it can do. It doesnt have to think about it.
Which reminds me of the story about the aerodynamics expert who calculated that bumble bees could not fly. When it was pointed out that they do, none the less, he went back and checked the sums and announced that yes, after all, they could fly, but only backwards.
And this question, beloved of entomologists. Q: what is the last thing that goes through a fly's mind as it hits your windscreen? A: its a*se.Comment
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#119
Marvellous VC, many thanks for your patience, it was very helpful and I am a lot clearer now –but whether I will be as clear tomorrow morning remains to be seen. There is still much to think about though.
Having worked with shadow mask cathode ray display tubes for many years I should have seen the business about the hole size in a screen affecting the nature of electrons passing through. Your explanation of how the screen works in your detector makes good sense. I think I also now better understand the “hidden variables” business.
The part I still haven’t quite grasped is the spatial dimensions aspect and what the limits of measurement mean in this respect. How does the granularity of space affect things, assuming it does? How is it expressed in experiments? I will plod on and read some more of the texts I have. Thank you for being so candid that even your knowledge has its uncertainties.
I remember that when I was a student two lecture series in particular had rapidly diminishing attendances: quantum physics and electromagnetism. I think people just prayed for enough choice in exams. I passed them both but in retrospect goodness knows how. I’ll never forget the day we got to Maxwell’s equations and the speed of light coming out as the reciprocal of the square root of the product of permeability and permittivity. So unexpected, at least it was to me then. How could such a momentous thing be so simply expressed?Comment
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#120
Well, because no human has actually done it unaided [except by falling off a high place and they don’t do as well as cats do they?] the best thing to ask maybe is a Fly? No fly is going to tell you on this board until they get a computer and broadband. Those funny eyes and the little legs will have a bit of a problem with the keyboard though.No one here has yet explained how a fly can 'fly'. I believe someone said earlier that it is 'instinct', which is not very scientific, but might well have to do.
So I suggest that you hail the next fly that passes you and seek a meaningful dialogue. Maybe that buzzing is actually the fly attempting to communicate his aeronautical theory? He might even be saying, in buzz speak, “look at me, I bet you can’t do this even with that big brain of yours, anyway where’s yer wings”. And all that darting around is coded illustration of how to do it? You know, “look, this is all you have to do, a flick of a wing here and a dip of the tail there”. You never know. Then again maybe that is just my flight of fancy?
Only humans think it’s hard because they can’t and so they conceive the problem as huge. Humans are like that about a lot of things. Flies do it from the egg.(for those who haven't been following this thread, the point about a fly is that its aerial acrobatics take an incredible amount of computation, yet a fly has a very small brain)
How do you know it’s 200 Gigs then? While you’re at it perhaps we can have an estimate of the MIPS? Oh, and which version of Windows it runs too. I’d be worried about the virus attacks if I were a fly, and all that update stuff, new algorithms that aren’t compatible with my hardware [I’ve only got Mark I wings ye see and the old undercarriage isn’t what it was], a bit risky really.To try and put it into some kind of context, modern computers have about 4 Gigabytes of RAM (Random Access Memory). A fly must have about 200 Gigs of RAM in order to do what it does - buzzing around and driving everyone mad.
I’m with Umsie on this one. The fly hasn’t a b***** clue how it does it.When you put the memory against the speed of computation, folks like me will tell you that it can only work at a quantum level. There's no other known way that it can work.
D’ye know Buddy, I’m beginning to think that you are just winding us all up.
Last edited by Gordon; 16-07-12, 18:01.Comment
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Is that known to you ? or known to everyone ?Originally posted by Budapest View Post
and there is the obvious answer that if this is true (which I have no idea whether it is or not) that it's simply working in an unknown way ...........for the moment
Don't confuse knowing with articulating (we spent a lot of time on this at a seminar a couple of weeks ago talking about music curricula !), we all know more than we can articulate and the ways in which we articulate things varies enormously ................Comment
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But what happens if it's a*** is larger than its brain? The brain will just go through the motions I supposeOriginally posted by umslopogaas View Post.
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To be honest, it is quite enjoyable getting my own understanding into a clear enough state to be able to explain it.Originally posted by Gordon View Post
The granularity of space, if there is any, is postulated to be at about the Planck length which is 10E-33cm from memory. I think somebody once said that is as much smaller than an atom as a badger is smaller than the galaxy.Originally posted by Gordon View Post
I seem to remember our quantum and electromagnetism (and magnetohydrodynamics) lectures were very well attended. They were certainly what interested me. Mind you I was doing a maths degree, not physics. There were some gob-smacking moments, for example, where E=mc2 was derived quite quickly in Special Relativity, how the electron structure of atoms came from solving Schroedinger's equation with spherical symmetry and the relationship between conservation laws and the symmetry of the Lagrangian (i.e. Noether's Theorem).Originally posted by Gordon View PostComment
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Phew, Lagrangian Theorem, Einstein and Schroedinger's Equation (s) all in one sentence? I need to go and lie down. In the interim, here is another view of flies.
The last thought that goes through a fly's mind as it hits your window?
"Oh, shi*!"Comment
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You can't even explain how a right-angled triangle with 2 sides of length 1 works. I recommend learning to walk.Originally posted by Budapest View PostComment
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I will accept a change to "exists".Comment
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#129:
Marvellous stuff science, isn't it! Oh, and Maths of course
I did Electronic Engineeering when solid state was just beginning to be taught at undergraduate level. The first integrated circuits had not long been available:
I've still got a lab book with an experiment with a pentode valve amplifier in it!! Only got a B for it
It was also a 4 year course when I started with lots of Physics and Maths - we spent almost as much time in the Maths and Physics buildings as in Engineering! In the middle they changed the course to 3 years and lopped off a lot of the fundamentals. Shame really.
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If I had been taking my degree then I might have been lectured by Dirac. If I had, I would probably have understood a lot less!Comment
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