4 ms·
"no one knows why it happens" What is the state of the art knowledge on this in 2022?
by SemanticStrengh 4y ago
"no one knows why it happens" What is the state of the art knowledge on this in 2022?
- TimSchumann 4y agoI'm not even positive that was the 'state of the art knowledge' on this even then. I think it was just the news doing news things. I highly doubt the chemists and physicists who built that precision engine would have been able to do it without a fairly decent understanding of what was actually going on at the materials level, at least something better than 'nobody knows!'.
- NullPrefix 4y agoI would just like to point out that there's a difference between knowing what something does and knowing why it does what it does.
- genewitch 4y agothere are a lot of unanswered (or poorly, or incorrectly) answered questions in materials science specifically, but science in general. For a recent example, Mould and Medhi recently had a youtube battle about how and why the Mould Effect happens - that is, if you have a string or chain with beads evenly distributed and fairly close together in a container, and start one end "spilling out" of the container, the part of the chain that is changing direction (from up to down) raises above the rim of the container. I can't remember the youtuber offhand, but there was another question about the "speed of electrons" in a long wire, with actual experimentation to determine the speed. It gets dangerously close to faster than light communication for my tastes so i don't really remember the thesis and arguments offhand, my brain just gets warm.
- SemanticStrengh 4y agogoing faster than light is sometimes a possibility! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation It is not possible to go faster than light only in an absolute vacuum medium.