7 ms·

> based on their current understanding rather than testing the claim. The point is that there is no claim. It is very very straight forward to identify an unkn

by Osmium 9y ago

> based on their current understanding rather than testing the claim. The point is that there is no claim. It is very very straight forward to identify an unknown material (figuring out how it was made, what it's for, etc., is the difficult task). If you want to claim there's an 'unknown' material, show us your XRD patterns, your EELS/XPS/NMR/EDX/PL/SIMS spectra, your AFM surfaces, your electron micrographs, atom probe tomography, any number of a hundred other characterization techniques ... then you'd actually have a claim we could have an intelligent conversation about. At this point, there isn't even a claim that needs an expert opinion to respond to, it's all just BS.

colordrops 9y ago
Right, so if they have no idea what the material is then what's the point of their comments claiming that they are impossible?
- Osmium 9y ago
  I read it as saying it was impossible that there were materials being stored that we couldn't identify[0], not that the existence of the materials themselves was impossible. The point being that if these materials exist it should be quite straight forward to identify them, and if they're 'unknown' then that's simply because no one's taken the time in a lab to figure it out. [0] To be charitable, I have no doubt that there exist substances in the universe we can't currently characterize. But if you restrict it to objects that you can physically store in a warehouse (that is, they're stable under ambient conditions), I have little doubt we can figure out what they are without much trouble.
  - colordrops 9y ago
    I think your interpretation of the article is incorrect, but to address your point: > I have little doubt we can figure out what they are without much trouble. How can you be so sure of that? Have we learned pretty much all there is to know about material science and physics at this point? Do you think someone from 500 years ago could analyze a microchip or some superconducting ceramic? Do you think we could figure out a material designed by a being a million years in advance of us? The physics as we understand it in 200 years is certainly going to be magic and "impossible" by today's standards, let alone alien tech. Of course the materials could not actually exist, or not be of alien origin. But given the premise that they are of alien origin, it's not absurd at all to think that we can't figure out the nature of the materials.
    - Osmium 9y ago
      > How can you be so sure of that? ... Do you think we could figure out a material designed by a being a million years in advance of us? It's a fair question, but I'm pretty sure we could. We have constraints: we know the object can be stored in a warehouse, we presumably can infer it can be touched, and can be seen. Even if it were of alien origin, wondrously advanced, made of some kind of matter that fits outside our standard model of the universe, we would at least know it interacts with light, with the electromagnetic force. We understand that force very well, so we could still characterize it. And that's if it's something deeply weird; deeply strange. (And if it were really that bizarre, it'd be the discovery of the century and obscene to keep it locked up in a warehouse somewhere.) Far more likely, it's just made up of atoms (which is what we'd expect, given its temperature and density are within the realm of 'objects that can exist on earth in a warehouse'), and then we can use all our normal techniques just fine and it's not a problem. > Do you think someone from 500 years ago could analyze a microchip or some superconducting ceramic? Again, to emphasize, this is a valid question -- but we've already gone past that threshold. We can see individual atoms now, so there's not much further to go when it comes to the question of what things are made of, at least to a rough approximation. However, the next question would be "can we make it?" and the answer to that is very different. If someone gave us some electronics from the future, we could still find out what it's made from quite easily. Understanding how it works and how to re-create it would be vastly more difficult, and possibly beyond us. But this is true of the past too; there were ways of making steel and concrete in the distant past that we've long lost the knowledge of how to make.
      - colordrops 9y ago
        > We can see individual atoms now, so there's not much further to go when it comes to the question of what things are made of. That may be true but also seems like a strong assumption and doesn't fit with our current trajectory of understanding. A paradigm shift in physics which replaces fundamental notions, such as the nature of fields, could make the current understanding become seem a rough approximation just like relativity did to Newtonian mechanics.
- deleted 9y ago
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by Osmium 9y ago

colordrops 9y ago

Right, so if they have no idea what the material is then what's the point of their comments claiming that they are impossible?

Osmium 9y ago
I read it as saying it was impossible that there were materials being stored that we couldn't identify[0], not that the existence of the materials themselves was impossible. The point being that if these materials exist it should be quite straight forward to identify them, and if they're 'unknown' then that's simply because no one's taken the time in a lab to figure it out. [0] To be charitable, I have no doubt that there exist substances in the universe we can't currently characterize. But if you restrict it to objects that you can physically store in a warehouse (that is, they're stable under ambient conditions), I have little doubt we can figure out what they are without much trouble.
- colordrops 9y ago
  I think your interpretation of the article is incorrect, but to address your point: > I have little doubt we can figure out what they are without much trouble. How can you be so sure of that? Have we learned pretty much all there is to know about material science and physics at this point? Do you think someone from 500 years ago could analyze a microchip or some superconducting ceramic? Do you think we could figure out a material designed by a being a million years in advance of us? The physics as we understand it in 200 years is certainly going to be magic and "impossible" by today's standards, let alone alien tech. Of course the materials could not actually exist, or not be of alien origin. But given the premise that they are of alien origin, it's not absurd at all to think that we can't figure out the nature of the materials.
  - Osmium 9y ago
    > How can you be so sure of that? ... Do you think we could figure out a material designed by a being a million years in advance of us? It's a fair question, but I'm pretty sure we could. We have constraints: we know the object can be stored in a warehouse, we presumably can infer it can be touched, and can be seen. Even if it were of alien origin, wondrously advanced, made of some kind of matter that fits outside our standard model of the universe, we would at least know it interacts with light, with the electromagnetic force. We understand that force very well, so we could still characterize it. And that's if it's something deeply weird; deeply strange. (And if it were really that bizarre, it'd be the discovery of the century and obscene to keep it locked up in a warehouse somewhere.) Far more likely, it's just made up of atoms (which is what we'd expect, given its temperature and density are within the realm of 'objects that can exist on earth in a warehouse'), and then we can use all our normal techniques just fine and it's not a problem. > Do you think someone from 500 years ago could analyze a microchip or some superconducting ceramic? Again, to emphasize, this is a valid question -- but we've already gone past that threshold. We can see individual atoms now, so there's not much further to go when it comes to the question of what things are made of, at least to a rough approximation. However, the next question would be "can we make it?" and the answer to that is very different. If someone gave us some electronics from the future, we could still find out what it's made from quite easily. Understanding how it works and how to re-create it would be vastly more difficult, and possibly beyond us. But this is true of the past too; there were ways of making steel and concrete in the distant past that we've long lost the knowledge of how to make.
    - colordrops 9y ago
      > We can see individual atoms now, so there's not much further to go when it comes to the question of what things are made of. That may be true but also seems like a strong assumption and doesn't fit with our current trajectory of understanding. A paradigm shift in physics which replaces fundamental notions, such as the nature of fields, could make the current understanding become seem a rough approximation just like relativity did to Newtonian mechanics.
deleted 9y ago
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