Has the Mythical Unicorn of Materials Science Finally Been Found? 238
gbrumfiel writes "For years, physicists have been on the hunt for a material so weird, it might as well be what unicorn horns are made of. Topological insulators are special types of material that conduct electricity, but only on their outermost surface. If they exist, and that's a real IF, then they would play host to all sorts of bizarre phenomenon: virtual particles that are their own anti-particles, strange quantum effects, dogs and cats living together, that sort of thing. Now three independent teams think they've finally found the stuff that the dreams of theoretical physicists are made of: samarium hexaboride."
So would it be (Score:5, Funny)
Unicornium, or Monohornium?
Re:So would it be (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Boring (Score:5, Informative)
How about Trilithium Nitrate?
http://www.chemspider.com/Chemical-Structure.19054984.html [chemspider.com]
Or
Trilithium borate
http://www.chemspider.com/Chemical-Structure.13208905.html [chemspider.com]
I am not sure that three lithium atoms will bond on there own with out something else in the structure. ;P
are there any (Score:3)
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practical interesting applications for such a material ?
Patents. Patents. More Patents. Lawsuits.
You know, the usual stuff.
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On the face of it, it might not seem huge, but look how significant the invention of semiconductor material was.
Indeed, I never want to go back to a time before we had invented the 8th most common element in the universe.
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If only there was a link in the article to some sort of collaborative information source put together through a system of networks and computers.
Re:are there any (Score:5, Interesting)
practical interesting applications for such a material ?
Spintronics will probably be a key practical application area. The basic idea as I understand it is that a material that exhibits strong topological insulator properties will allow for spin transport. One of the properties of topological insulators is that even in the presence of minor impurities, spin currents can be propogated quite a distance. This is apparently due to the 2d nature of the electron wavefunction on the conducting surface, the spin and the linear momentum are tightly corrolated. AFAIK, currently spintronics devices use ferromagnetic materials to create spin-coherent electric current, but apparently currents created this way have limited coherence lifetimes and thus propagation distance which limit the practical deployment.
Another reason that this is so exciting, is that it was previously assumed that graphene conductors would be needed for spin coherent transport (graphene also have a similar 2d electron wavefunction restriction to a conducting surface), but it may turn out that manufacture of these topological insulators can be done similar to today's planar circuit fabrication techniques (which to date haven't been very applicable to creating circuits of graphene wires).
There is also some possiblity that topological insulators this could be used in some quantum computing applications, but I haven't read any easy to digest papers on that yet.
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Re:are there any (Score:5, Informative)
This post is clearly extremely informative despite the fact that I did not understand any of it. But to the OP's question, though, what would some practical applications actually be?
Well, let's see if I can be a bit more specific for the typical /. user. Although there are other uses for spintronics, the current "killer" app for spintronics is high density non-volatile storage.
The most popular user application for spintronics has been the Giant MagnetoResistive (aka GMR) read-heads used in modern disc drives to allow them to have much higher bit-density than previous generation technology. A less popular uses that may not be as familiar to the typcial /. user is the MRAM (or magneto-resistive RAM), or some magneto-resistive sensors (used in solid state compasses inside devices like cellphones and GPS car navigators).
The underlying physics of the GMR technology is complicated, but is the result of the QM effects related to the thin layers of alternating feromagnetic materials in the read-head resulting in certain spin-statistics of the electrons in those layers. Without getting into details, the net result is that a small magnetic field can cause a giant change in resistance which can be measured (hence the name GMR) allowing much smaller magnetic domains to be used resulting in increased storage density. This is a basic application of spintronics.
For this specific advance, it probably wouldn't be directly applicable to GMR heads, but possibly advanced spintronic based storage beyond MRAMs and racetrack memory [wikipedia.org]. Having chip interconnect that can reliably transport electron spin information will allow for much more efficient devices.
The reason that people are looking at spintronics based storage is that in addition to the density and the non-volatile nature, the access time and durability is potentially much better than flash memory [slashdot.org]. Doing things to approach the theoretical density would be a great advance.
Does that help?
slashdot disappoints.. (Score:3, Interesting)
this sounds like an interesting article.. so why does the summary read like an april fools joke. is this the way /. encourages intelligent discussion?
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Clearly this was intended to create MASS HYSTERIA
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this sounds like an interesting article.. so why does the summary read like an april fools joke. is this the way /. encourages intelligent discussion?
The quality of summaries have always varied widely depending on the submitter and editor.
Unfortunately trying to figure out if Slashdot is dying is like trying to assess global warming by taking random temperature measurements.
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I would add to this comment that the entry on wikipedia, which is mentioned in TFA, seems so opaque to me that it might have been randomly generated and I wouldn't know any better. :(
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Why do you assume /. was ever intended to encourage intelligent discussion?
Conductive on the outside - simple! (Score:2)
So it would be like steel coated porcelaine?
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Sure, if steel and the porcelain core were not different elements/compounds?
Topological insulator a misnomer? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't help feeling that "topological conductor" would be a better name for a material that behaves as an insulator in its interior but whose surface can conduct.
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As far as I can tell, the insulating behaviour of the material arises for reasons that are related to ideas in the theory of topology. Ergo, "topological insulator". The interesting edge effects at the surface are an additional anomaly.
Re:Topological insulator a misnomer? (Score:5, Informative)
There is actually a good reason for using "insulator" instead of "conductor". The conducting surface is a just consequence of the kind of insulating phase in the bulk rather than the central feature; it really is an kind of insulator that has conducting surface state.
Until pretty recently most phase transitions could be traced to a breaking of symmetry, and described using something called an order parameter. Superconductivity, for example, is a consequence of breaking gauge symmetry. Topological phases, on the other hand, do *not* have an associated order parameter. They are, as you might guess from the name, distinct from trivial phases in a discrete way(and as such are robust under perturbation), and can be classified by an integer parameter.
Topological insulators are an insulating phase that is distinct from normal insulating phases in that you cannot change to one from the other without changing it to a metal first. In a very (very) vague sense, in a topological insulator these electronic states are twisted around one another such that in order to unwind them you have to break them by making it a metal first.
This is why the surface states are metallic. At the surface you are going from the topological phase to the trivial phase, and in order for the electronic states to unwind they have to become metallic at some point. You cannot get rid of the metallic states without destroying the topological insulating bulk phase. Furthermore, this metallic surface state will be a Dirac cone, like in graphene. So these aren't just any metallic states, they are very special ones.
In any event, the summary is wrong. This is not the first topological insulator experimentally verified. It's just a particularly clean example, and has additional interesting wrinkles making it worth study.
Also, if you don't like the name, it's way, way too late to hope for a change. It's been around for five years, and many thousands of papers have been written about it. Phys Rev has an RSS feed for papers on just this topic.
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Until pretty recently most phase transitions could be traced to a breaking of symmetry
Laminar flow versus turbulent flow? Open cell versus closed cell foam? Birth and death? Solid to liquid to gas? Rough versus smooth seas? The breaking of a branch? What symmetries are being broken here?
Parent is an obnoxious troll, but... (Score:2)
So this question is, on the surface, pretty retarded. It's obvious that the terms 'phase transition' and 'symmetry' are being used as scientific jargon; your question is based on a completely different set of semantic meanings and so ultimately attempts to answer it will boil down to telling you the definition of the term and how none of your examples have anything to do with the actual subject matter.
On the other hand, you just got a bunch of physics geeks to explain the concepts as applied to a variety of
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*Shrug* Still better than unicorn horn.
Atrocious, factually incorrect summary (Score:5, Informative)
The summary includes the caveat: "If they exist, and that's a real IF".
This is baffling, as the first topological insulators were experimentally confirmed several years ago(the family Bi2Se3, Bi2Te3, Sb2Te3, Zhang, et al. Nat Phys 5, 438 (2009)). While samarium hexaboride has some unique wrinkles in terms of physics at play, the major reason for interest is chemical. The materials above are prone the oxidation and vacancies, which shifts the fermi energy into the bulk. This means that the bulk is not fully insulating, even though the topological insulator hallmarks are still readily observable using the right experimental techniques. Samarium hexaboride appears to have a much more strongly insulating bulk, making it in some sense a much "cleaner" example.
IEEE July 2011 (Score:5, Informative)
This is a better description of Topological Insulators [ieee.org] from IEEE in July 2011. Not real sure what can be done with these things in practice. They have interesting properties, though.
No (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines [wikipedia.org]
Yaaay! (Score:2)
Patented! (Score:2)
I'm guessing no one noticed the bitten-apple logo laser etched on the bottom of each crystal?
One of these isn't so special... (Score:2)
You mean "bosons"? Like phonons, photons, and helium 4?
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mmm unicorn rolls. I think that would go well with dolphin maki.
Re:Don't tell the Japanese (Score:4, Funny)
Bah, wake me up when they have something close to Kentucky Fried Panda.
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mmm panda tempura /HomerDrool
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Actually most animals that are going to extinction aren't allowed to be hunted or raised for food. If we allowed people to hunt or eat pandas maybe they wouldn't be endangered... I mean bison haven't been endangered since they have started being raised on farms. Deer sure aren't hurting either.
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Dolphin?
Courtesy of Wiki: "The mahi-mahi or common dolphinfish (Coryphaena hippurus) is a surface-dwelling ray-finned fish found in off-shore temperate, tropical and subtropical waters worldwide. Also known widely as dorado, it is one of only two members of the Coryphaenidae family, the other being the pompano dolphinfish."
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Dolphin?
Courtesy of Wiki: "The mahi-mahi or common dolphinfish (Coryphaena hippurus) is a surface-dwelling ray-finned fish found in off-shore temperate, tropical and subtropical waters worldwide. Also known widely as dorado, it is one of only two members of the Coryphaenidae family, the other being the pompano dolphinfish."
So they chase el dorado?
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mmm unicorn rolls. I think that would go well with dolphin maki.
Yum, make mine rare!
Get it?
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Re:Don't tell the Japanese (Score:4, Funny)
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Wouldn't that be Chinese?
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Yeah, pretty much. There is some Chinese medicine in Japan, but it's called kanpou [google.com] or Han-style medicine.
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Science may, however, sufficiently advanced, make us Gods. Or extinct.
The older I get, the more positive I am that it will be one of the two.
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so that is the signal embedded in the cosmic background microwave radiation the ancients sent the destiny to investigate was.
on a more serious not even if you could encode your intellect into some cosmic game save that would survive the end of the universe and the creation of another there would need to be something on the other side capable of decoding and executing your consciousness program. So unless you plan on building a computer outside of space time itself like Asimov wrote of in "the last
god is irrelevent (Score:2, Insightful)
it doesn't matter whether or not god exists
the real question is do we alter our behavior because of people who claim to know his/her/its will tell us to do so?
do we allow religion as an excuse for some people to avoid paying taxes that support civilized society?
do we allow cultists to harm their children by denying the children medical attention because that is their belief system?
do we allow believers to control the education curriculum, the legal system, the reigns of power?
do we allow believers to say wh
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Parent forgot FSM. Other than that, RAmen!
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you are postulating the possibility that something can create itself, which is... impossible (in my opinion)
Then where did your god come from?
It works both ways. It's far more likely that something simple and relatively unstructured has always existed, and has come to order itself gradually, than some human-like god has always existing. A god could have evolved, but an intelligent god just happening to exist is as likely as that whole watchmaker thingy that theists love to talk about.
Re:The Invisible Unicorn Argument. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then where did your god come from?
It works both ways. It's far more likely that something simple and relatively unstructured has always existed, and has come to order itself gradually, than some human-like god has always existing. A god could have evolved, but an intelligent god just happening to exist is as likely as that whole watchmaker thingy that theists love to talk about.
The argument there gets a bit more complex, but you can get the basic point by looking at entropy. An unordered system is not likely to become ordered over time, and it cannot do so over an infinite time, which it would need to (it would eventually degenerate into a final stable state, unlike the universe we see around us with non-homogeneous elements). That, however, is an argument that you can (and people have) written books about, so I won't go into it further.
But, to your first point, God didn't create himself, he simply always was. Eternal uncreated existence is required. You can then argue that that thing has to be what theologians call "god" (which isn't particularly "human-like" except is certain very limited ways), but like I say, that is an argument in philosophy. The problem there is two-fold: first of all, if the atheist and the theist don't hold certain common principles, they're arguments will always assume and be based on completely different things, and since you can't prove principles (especially metaphysical principles, the principles of other fields can be shown but not within their own area of study), only argue over them, you can't reach a definitive conclusion. Secondly, most atheists (most people in general) don't know nearly enough philosophy to understand the actual arguments. That goes for religious and non-religious people: most people rely on the authority of the arguments of others. You need to look at the credentials of the authority figure you are trusting to know if they have a reasonable position or not.
I would argue that most of the scientists you hear arguing for atheism have absolutely no clue what they are talking about, because they assume that if it exists in any way, it can be reached scientifically, and that anything that cannot be reached scientifically, cannot exist (that combined with their reluctance to trust the authority of anyone or anything they can't understand tends to lead them to atheism). That doesn't follow. Mind you, anything that occurs in the natural world does (so magic is right out), but you cannot rule out the possibility of supernatural beings existing. You can put conditions on them: for example, they cannot have mass or speed or heat or be visible (otherwise they would fall under physics... part of the reason people attempting magic are foolish), but none of those things are required to actually exist. You can't prove they do (except God, or at least some "supernatural" thing that follows the conditions required to create our universe) but that would be where the whole "faith" thing comes into play.
Re:The Invisible Unicorn Argument. (Score:5, Insightful)
But, to your first point, God didn't create himself, he simply always was
Okay, then to your point: the big bang wasn't the start of reality, reality simply always was, and there happened to be a big bang.
An unordered system is not likely to become ordered over time
That may not be true on a global scale (ie our Universe will likely eventually succumb to heat death), but simple molecules can aggregate, and become self replicating, and thus create order. We have observed these molecules forming in gas clouds in space. There is evidence supporting order arising from "disorder", but absolutely none for a god that is anything like a human (ie the bible says we were made in god's image). All religions are man made.
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There's no transformation in a second molecule based on the first molecule sitting in some space nearby without some kind of impetus or outwards force creating that change. That change is caused by the system of
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but simple molecules can aggregate, and become self replicating
Does not imply that the act of becoming self-replicating needs to be part of their nature. For example, a car CAN drive off the edge of a cliff, but it's not a fundamental part of it's nature, it's intended purpose, or what most cars do. On the flip-side, moving forward, transporting, and that stop-go activity ARE part of the nature of a car. That's what they do. Do cars drive off cliffs? Well, occasionally. Can cars drive off cliffs? Yes. Are molecules se
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For starters: Kudos for keeping it civil; that seems to be a rarity in any discussion of this sort.
Okay, then to your point: the big bang wasn't the start of reality, reality simply always was, and there happened to be a big bang.
Fair enough, but we still have a ball of stuff from whence everything came, and the cosmic accountants demand an explanation.
At the end of the day (as Baloroth noted above) we're dealing with a scenario for which neither of us can furnish what would be considered "definitive proof". But I would assert that I could show how a God COULD exist as a creator, while you could not show how the universe could either
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You're not playing fair.
You assert that any possible mundane explanation would break all the existing rules, despite that something as fantastic as the starting point of reality probably doesn't follow the rules anyway. Meanwhile, you get to defend your own premise by basically making up whatever rules you want in defiance of the same principles you use against other explanations: God just always was (is time infinitely old? how does that make sense? why did God wait infinitely long to create the univers
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The point that the GP was attempting to make here is that your entire thesis is predicated on the assumption of God's existence without ever dealing with why this is a valid assumption to make.
The assumption, in and of itself, is not problematic to me, but it's an a priori assumption; that is to say that it can never be validated by our experience of this universe. So it could be correct, or it could be incorrect. You have faith to guide you, but I, and many others like me on /., do not possess your faith
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Excuse me, but I don't believe that you have justified the existence of ANY creator god, much less any particular one.
As for how the universe could come into existence. there are several consistent answers, and we can't yet choose between them. Your "God" isn't one of them. It could, in principle, be made consistent by severely modifying it, but it could not be made probable. Nothing requiring self-aware intelligence could be made probable in isolation. (Now if you were to consider the universe to be a
Re:The Invisible Unicorn Argument. (Score:5, Interesting)
Your tone and post has made me go back and read fully your original, which I apologise for not doing before. I was expecting the usual Christian nonsense, and so I didn't even read it because certain attitudes really wind me up these days. I used to be a Christian myself due to my upbringing, and I believed it all fervently for a couple of decades, but now I don't.
I see you don't subscribe to a human-like god, and I consider that reasonable. I agree that it's just as absurd to state that a god definitely doesn't exist as it does to state that one does. If there is no evidence either way, then to make an irrefutable assumption about it is dumb, on both sides. As you pointed out though, there are certain things that we can rule out, like a visible god, or one making Christians better off than other people, etc.
If you say that those laws came in with the Big Bang, you must acknowledge that the laws may in fact be dynamic, and all science which relies on the assumption that they are static (ie, viewing distant stars with the assumption that speed of light=c) gets thrown into question; and you still havent accounted for the ball of stuff.
I admit I haven't looked a whole lot into the supposed conditions for the big bang, not for a few years at least. I have read about what you're saying about the universal constants and so forth. I have no problem with the concept of the Universe collapsing and re-banging, the rules changing each time, countless other universes/dimensions/whatever. I wasn't saying that the ball of stuff is necessary stable as in it stays inert, I'm just saying that I find it more likely that stuff with no particular order eventually comes to order itself. I believe in the idea of a "god" coming to exist via that type of mechanism, but I find specifically the Abramic notions of a god with human traits that has always existed and is unchanging (that's what the bible claims) rather absurd.
We definitely can't account for the stuff. All we can say is that it's here. We can make up stories about gods and creators too, but it's patently obvious that at least 99.99999% of the stories we make up have no bearing on what really happened. Probably more like 100%. Even when it comes to science we do basically have to guess what happened beyond what we can measure, but to simply say that we can't exist without a god is making a massive recursive assumption - you then have to explain how that god can exist without another god. It's completely circular. So is saying "stuff always existed" in a way, but it's not quite as bizarre as claiming that life must have a creator rather than it being possibly for life/order to emerge from disorder.
It is all kind of absurd if you think about it. We are the Universe arguing about its own existence.. and eventually it will all be gone/meaningless/reset.
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Do you have a reason for supposing that nothing is a default state instead of something?
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I don't believe that the "heat death" of the universe is considered likely anymore. Currently the question seems to be how strong dark energy is likely to make the expansion. If it gets strong enough, then each atom will end up being alone in it's own light cone. Not much better than the "heat death", but not the same thing, either.
For that matter, this could be the explanation of the big bang. Perhaps this isn't the first time this has happened, and when the observable universe consists of only one ato
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"you cannot rule out the possibility of supernatural beings existing" is an absurdity because you cannot rule out the possibility of anything existing
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I believe it's possible to mathematically prove that there will never be any sequels to The Matrix.
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Well Cypher stands for 0, and Neo stands for 1. Between them is the love triangle of Trinity. Markov chains, Mandelbrot sets, Cantor's proof of the existence of transcendental numbers is constructive, post hoc ergo propter hoc, cogito ergo sum, quid pro quo: there will be no more Matrix sequels.
Re:The Invisible Unicorn Argument (off topic) (Score:2)
Re:The Invisible Unicorn Argument (off topic) (Score:5, Interesting)
According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law. -- Stephen Hawking
Then the question becomes, is it possible that physical law was "written" by some super-entity with some idea of "sentience" (colloquially, a "god")? Or, perhaps, that what we know as physical law is merely a subset of some other set of laws written by some higher being? Of course, this would lead us back to the "is the universe a simulation?" question.
Consider, for instance, the SimCity series. For all intents and purposes, the game is a high-level simulation of a city. The "laws" of how the city functions (how traffic works, when and why people move in, etc), as well as some limited laws of physics (how fire spreads, how air pollution dissipates over time, etc) were all written into that simulation as a representation of a loose subset of similar laws in the world of the game designer. The "people" in the city, though abstracted, must obey the simulated laws of physics and city functions, as well as their respective places in the simulation.
Perhaps that is a considerably nonacademic example, but in that case, would the software engineer who wrote these simplified concepts of our reality as rules of SimCity be considered "god" to the simulated population? And, what would stop this universe from being a similar simulation? Could our laws of physics be an oversimplification of something far beyond our comprehension, but still conforming to the "host" universe's "physics"? Maybe even self-awareness as we know it is the ultimate form of being only in our own universe. It could simply be an abstraction of a much higher level of meta-being created by a meta-software-engineer, for a lack of a better term. If so, could that entity be considered "god"?
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I would argue that most of the scientists you hear arguing for atheism have absolutely no clue what they are talking about, because they assume that if it exists in any way, it can be reached scientifically, and that anything that cannot be reached scientifically, cannot exist (that combined with their reluctance to trust the authority of anyone or anything they can't understand tends to lead them to atheism).
I would argue that you have absolutely no interest in how actual scientists and/or atheists view religion, and prefer beating up on elaborately constructed straw men.
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That doesn't follow. Mind you, anything that occurs in the natural world does (so magic is right out), but you cannot rule out the possibility of supernatural beings existing. You can put conditions on them: for example, they cannot have mass or speed or heat or be visible (otherwise they would fall under physics... part of the reason people attempting magic are foolish), but none of those things are required to actually exist. You can't prove they do (except God, or at least some "supernatural" thing that follows the conditions required to create our universe) but that would be where the whole "faith" thing comes into play.
Why does an omniscient and omnipotent being have to exist outside of the laws of physics? Would not such an omniscient being understand all the laws of physics, and perhaps be able to do things that we cannot, due to their understanding of such laws? I don't see why god and science have to be mutually exclusive, at least with our current understanding of both. I understand why many scientists do not believe in god, but I think they are being just as obstinate in people that deny science in the name of go
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I would argue that most of the scientists you hear arguing for atheism have absolutely no clue what they are talking about, because they assume that if it exists in any way, it can be reached scientifically, and that anything that cannot be reached scientifically, cannot exist (that combined with their reluctance to trust the authority of anyone or anything they can't understand tends to lead them to atheism). That doesn't follow.
It's true that it doesn't follow, but an entity that does not in any way interact with reality may as well not exist for all I care. If on the other hand it does interact with reality, that interaction should be observable - and hence part of scientific inquiry. So while it's strictly speaking true that non-existence does not follow from non-observability, you seem to be attacking a strawman argument by shifting from practical non-existence (i.e. having the same effect as not existing at all) to actual non-
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I would argue that most of the scientists you hear arguing for atheism have absolutely no clue what they are talking about, because they assume that if it exists in any way, it can be reached scientifically, and that anything that cannot be reached scientifically, cannot exist (that combined with their reluctance to trust the authority of anyone or anything they can't understand tends to lead them to atheism). That doesn't follow. Mind you, anything that occurs in the natural world does (so magic is right out), but you cannot rule out the possibility of supernatural beings existing. You can put conditions on them: for example, they cannot have mass or speed or heat or be visible (otherwise they would fall under physics... part of the reason people attempting magic are foolish), but none of those things are required to actually exist. You can't prove they do (except God, or at least some "supernatural" thing that follows the conditions required to create our universe) but that would be where the whole "faith" thing comes into play.
I would argue that you have no clue what the majority of scientists think unless you can provide some evidence to back up this belief. I think most scientists acknowledge that things exist that cannot currently be proved/disproved. That part is easy to test. You can ask all sorts of scientific questions that are impossible to prove. Most scientists that argue for Atheism don't rule out the possibility of gods existing. They just don't see sufficient evidence to support that theory. If someone suggests
Re:The Invisible Unicorn Argument. (Score:4, Insightful)
You've got to be kidding me.
you can get the basic point by looking at entropy. An unordered system is not likely to become ordered over time
Entropy can globally increase while decreasing locally without any violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. You don't need to write a book about it, it's that simple.
Eternal uncreated existence is required.
This is solved equally by presuming the existence of a "void" just as well as presuming an all powerful creator. Occam's razor prefers the void.
Secondly, most atheists (most people in general) don't know nearly enough philosophy to understand the actual arguments
Atheists know more about religion than religious people do. The real problem is that theologians don't know enough about science to understand that they're spouting nonsense.
You need to look at the credentials of the authority figure you are trusting to know if they have a reasonable position or not.
Seriously? What sort of credentials are valid? Is the pope credentialed enough? What about the Dalai Lama? What happens when they disagree? Do you have anything to offer other than a fallacious argument from authority?
No, short of actual being an acutal first hand witness to the big bang, the only sorts of credentials that matter are scientific. If philosophy actually worked in order to figure out how the world works, we would have invented quantum physics in ancient greece. No, we had to wait until the scientific method was invented, because it's the ONLY method that can actually tell us whether something is true or not.
they assume that if it exists in any way, it can be reached scientifically, and that anything that cannot be reached scientifically, cannot exist
That's not an assumption. That's practically the definition of existence. If if affects this universe, it must be detectable by science. If it doesn't affect this universe, then whether it exists or not is entirely moot.
You can't prove they do (except God, or at least some "supernatural" thing that follows the conditions required to create our universe) but that would be where the whole "faith" thing comes into play.
Which is exactly why "faith" is a really bad idea. There are infinitely many things that cannot be proven to exist, and cannot be proven not to exist. If you're intellectually honest, you have to either believe in all of them or none of them.
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Any system of logic sufficiently complicated to express anything self referential, or even 'interesting' falls under the basic rules and consequences of the incompleteness theorem.
Yes, there are true statements that cannot be logically proven. But that doesn't make every undecideable proposition true. What it makes them is unknowable, and it makes everyone who claims to know the truth about an undecideable proposition a liar.
You equate intellectual honesty with consistency. Let's just settle for honest a
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Why go with The Flying Spaghetti Monster, when you have Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy, The Easter Bunny, Unicorns, Big Foot, The Loch Ness Monster, Verruca Gnomes, The Hair Loss Fairy and the Eater of Socks.
Re:The Invisible Unicorn Argument. (Score:4, Insightful)
The argument there gets a bit more complex, but you can get the basic point by looking at entropy. An unordered system is not likely to become ordered over time, and it cannot do so over an infinite time, which it would need to (it would eventually degenerate into a final stable state, unlike the universe we see around us with non-homogeneous elements).
You've already noted the primary problem with this argument: over time. Outside of this particular time-space bubble, please explain what entropy would even mean.
But, to your first point, God didn't create himself, he simply always was. Eternal uncreated existence is required.
Non sequitur. You haven't demonstrated that "eternal uncreated existence is required." Before you can make the claim "X always was," you first have to establish that "X is," or at the very least that "X was." Moreover, you are applying a loaded term("god") to a state about which you can generate no useful inference. I'll go into this more in the next section.
You can then argue that that thing has to be what theologians call "god" (which isn't particularly "human-like" except is certain very limited ways), but like I say, that is an argument in philosophy.
And this is where the cosmological proofs fail. It is simply a bad attempt at a bit of rhetorical slight of hand. There is no data to support the idea that anything which exists outside of our universe is in any way linked to the human concepts of "god." To attempt to link the two(or more, depending on intent) concepts is another non sequitur, when it is not downright deceptive
I would argue that most of the scientists you hear arguing for atheism have absolutely no clue what they are talking about, because they assume that if it exists in any way, it can be reached scientifically, and that anything that cannot be reached scientifically, cannot exist (that combined with their reluctance to trust the authority of anyone or anything they can't understand tends to lead them to atheism).
Anything that has no measurable effect on the universe is irrelevant to any discussion about the universe. None of the "supernatural" entities postulated by various human cultures have been demonstrated to have a measurable effect on the universe. If you can demonstrate such interference, you will gain the allegience of every honest skeptic. Until then, if you press your case sans evidence, then do no be surprised when you are relegated to the same bin as every other crank.
Furthermore, the general claims presented these days are not against some lofty "philosopher's god," but rather the very real organizations which are working towards their own social goals. And these organizations are virtually uniform in making concrete claims which are easily refutable. The moment the claim "god wants/will do X" is made, you have now stepped away from the shelter of ultimate ignorance and you'd better be able to support your claims.
You can't prove they do (except God, or at least some "supernatural" thing that follows the conditions required to create our universe) but that would be where the whole "faith" thing comes into play.
See above about your "god" comment. As for faith(in the religious sense; don't bother trying to conflate it with trust), I consider it to be odious and one of the worst afflictions of mankind. All too often, it is used to engender suffering and fear.
The Cosmological Argument (Score:3, Informative)
For those of you playing along at home, what you're seeing is an example of the Cosmological Argument [wikipedia.org] for the existence of God. It's one of my favorites, because there's no way to prove it correct or incorrect, so you can keep arguing forever!
-- 77IM
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The Monotheist: God is transcendent.
The Buddhist: God is immanent.
The Atheist: God is phenomenological.
The Philosopher: God is cosmological.
Everyone believes in some kind of "God" in some form. The battle is really just over the name.
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because they assume that if it exists in any way, it can be reached scientifically, and that anything that cannot be reached scientifically, cannot exist. ... That doesn't follow.
Actually that does follow. If something doesn't have any effect on our reality (that is, we can't observe it), then it is not real. If we can't observe it, if it has no measurable effect, the state before and after are identical. And don't get hung up on the limits of our test equipment or anything like that. The ancient Greeks couldn't see the cancerous DNA in the sick, but they could observe people dying. Observable effect. If there is no observable effect, literally nothing changed.
I'm using "has obser
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"I'm too lazy to sign up. if you think posting as AC affects the validity of my statements, then you have much bigger problems"
I didn't have a reason to question the validity of your statements until you suggested as much.
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This is an interesting argument. I notice you hypothesize the presence of something that always existed. As hard it is to understand that concept,* If you were to accept that, why not accept also a God that always existed?
* nothing we know always existed. Humans understand the concept of forward infinity (having no end) but not its inverse (having no beginning). There is always that lingering question "what about before"?
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Yes, it's a vertigo inducing concept to consider that something has always existed, but the reason I don't accept that a god has always existed is that there is no evidence for such. If you were to accept that something has always existed, why would you think that it would be a fully formed intelligence rather than a bunch of "stuff" that randomly knocks around until something interesting happens?
What about before? (Score:2)
The end.
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The end of having to use my brain.
FTFY ;)
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If you were to accept that, why not accept also a God that always existed?
Lack of evidence. A "god" is a specific thing, with specific qualities(though the theists today are loathe to postulate any actualy measurable properties). Believing that there is "something" is a lot different from believing that there is "this thing."
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It works both ways. It's far more likely that something simple and relatively unstructured has always existed, and has come to order itself gradually, than some human-like god has always existing.
That's a perfectly valid argument, until you state that it is "more likely", which you have zero evidence for, which makes it as completely unscientific as his opinion.
Logically, something that creates the universe is generally not going to have to follow its rules or processes. Using the natural world, or even logic and causality itself to define a deity is as absurd as assuming that just because my avatar can't scale walls in a 3D FP shooter game, that the person who developed that game also can't scale
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For evidence, see any living creature. The slightest little issue, and that creature is dead. It is much more likely that a random arrangement of "stuff" will result in something unintelligent, dead, and definitely not in the habit of creating Universes. If you subscribe to the idea that anything that can exist does exist in some dimension somewhere, then yes, your god could exist. But also there would exist somewhere with an identical universe, but no god.
I get that you're trying to be all deep and pretend
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That sort of depends. If you consider the universe to be a virtual reality, then God could be the guy that owns the machine. Perhaps calling the root user "God" is an accurate analogy.
OTOH, if the universe *is* a virtual reality engine, then much of what we know (or rather think we know) is quite suspect. It's far easier to run a small simulation, and simply fake details that aren't what you're interested in simulating. Perhaps *you* are a disembodied intelligence in an active simulation. (Well, in fac
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And what would that realisation be?
The experience of consciousness is the only thing that makes me think there could be something "more". I haven't read very much Philosophy or History, though when I have it's fun to see that others have already had the same thoughts as me. I enjoy Artificial Intelligence, and while I generally consider that a computer can't experience consciousness in the same way we can.. sometimes I wonder "why not?".
Greg Egan wrote the best explanation I've seen so far about one possibi
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Apologies, I guess you just meant that the realisation is that you could be a simulation. I think anyone who has watched The Matrix has considered the same thing of course. I think I was considering it before then, but I can't remember. There is an episode of Red Dwarf where they get trapped inside a Virtual Reality simulator that makes you think the same kind of questions too.
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The invisible pink unicorn runs along fault lines upside down, clip-clop, through the earth, without otherwise disturbing the rock and dirt, and that's what causes earthquakes. Or you can go with the magic teapot. Etc.
The point is to propose the most ridiculous thing you can imagine, and compare to superstition. If the ridiculous thing becomes less so, then something more ridiculous is presented.
What would make an interesting argument is to actually come up with an idea that presents the superstition at han
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A Deist, non-acting God is indistinguishable from physics (thus your calling it philosophy).
But one is visible/observable (physics/universe) the other is not.
Creating IPU or FSM is no different than creating God, unless you demonstrate the universe didn't always exist.
Fact, we have universe and physics
It may not have always existed
Now you're inventing something untestable to fill what may or may not be the case. And the something (capital G God) is attributed to a hell of a lot more than just creating the u
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Re:The Invisible Unicorn Argument. (Score:5, Insightful)
How about this, tell me why you don't believe in Thor, Osiris, or Marduk. I will then apply those exact same reasons to your "god" and they will be equally valid. Considering the several thousand gods known to have been worshipped over the years the difference between us is negligable. I simply believe in one fewer gods than you.
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Obligatory: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1817 [smbc-comics.com]
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pink doesn't exist, ti's an illusion created by your mind.
That's what I tell my daughter, anyways
http://youtu.be/S9dqJRyk0YM [youtu.be]
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Re:How does this affect audiophiles? (Score:4, Funny)
The new high-end cables will come in two variants: a 'base' version using SmB6 costing merely twice as much as the current high end cable, and a 'high end' version using SmB7 to 'capture the extra bass' and 'significantly enhance the audio experience' or somesuch, and will only cost 4x as much as the current high end cable. Both variants will provide exactly the same sound quality as a generic $5 cable (or a $20 cable from Best Buy) to everyone except the person that paid for them.
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incorrect.
In those studies there 'signatures' have been observed.
Imagine it's sunset and you are expecting a friend to come over. Looking out your back gate, you see a long shadow on the fence. Is it the person you are expecting? likely, but it could be a delivery person, an unexpected visitor, etc . . .
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I'm not sure which trait you're referring to. That they're topological, having "a full pairing gap in the bulk and gapless surface states"? That's not the case for superconductors, generally.