Is Science Hitting a Wall?

[Swamp Thing]

He was referring to pure mathematics. Yet it was pure mathematics which cracked the enigma and tunny codes. It is pure mathematics which gives us encryption algorithms which make Internet commerce possible. It is pure mathematics which first laid the foundations of programmable computers.

Almost all pure mathematics is unbelievably useful. Often 300 years later.

 

[Swamp Thing]

Swampy,

I see you spotted the sexy entangled quantum thingy that's been in the news.

Joe

Joe

Spooky noticing at a distance.

Swampy

 

[JensenHealey]

Even smelling stuff — I hope not the farts emanating from Uranus — is a quantum phenomenon.

Joe

Indeed it seems that it is. All covered in the book
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0593069323/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21

Also see: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/mediacentr...uantum-biology-established-university-surrey-

If I had science minded kids, I would consider pointing them in this general direction - it is exciting stuff.

The book is a little bit like a Brief History of Time - it starts out nice and easy and you think ' I can cope with this' , then a couple of chapters later you realise that is getting heavy - and that is without any maths!

 

[martin clark]

Almost all pure mathematics is unbelievably useful. Often 300 years later.

One of my favourites on that front: George Green. Formally pretty much entirely uneducated; ran a windmill; but pondered deep stuff meanwhile; liked a drink: - the original Windy Miller!

Yet Green's mill still exists - worth a visit if you are nearby, actually - and his work ... is still finding applications; and of his wider contribution noted so far:

Green's work on the motion of waves in a canal (resulting in what is known as Green's law) anticipates the WKB approximation of quantum mechanics, while his research on light-waves and the properties of the ether produced what is now known as the Cauchy-Green tensor. Green's theorem and functions were important tools in classical mechanics, and were revised by Schwinger's 1948 work on electrodynamics that led to his 1965 Nobel prize (shared with Feynman and Tomonaga). Green's functions later also proved useful in analysing superconductivity. On a visit to Nottingham in 1930, Albert Einstein commented that Green had been 20 years ahead of his time. The theoretical physicist Julian Schwinger who used Green's functions in his ground-breaking works, published a tribute entitled "The Greening of Quantum Field Theory: George and I" in 1993.

PS hardcore porn contribution:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_strain_theory#The_right_Cauchy–Green_deformation_tensor

 

[Swamp Thing]

Lacroix wrote Traité du Calcul Différentiel et du Calcul Intégral
Which was translated into English by a foundation funded by Babbage
Which was given to Boole by Bromhead
Bromhead was also the patron of Green

And so most of computing followed. Like, wow.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

Even smelling stuff — I hope not the farts emanating from Uranus — is a quantum phenomenon.

Joe

Wouldn't it be amusing to discover that hearing also has a quantum dimension. That would seriously p!55 off some denizens of the Audio forum for whom rubbishing the term 'quantum' is a daily ritual.