"How Do You Know That's Impossible?"

On Sat., Feb. 20th, Walter Cuirle treated PhACT to a talk on "How do you know that's impossible?" Walter warmed up the good-sized crowd to the concept of impossibility with a neat card trick. He differentiated what is impossible from what is indeterminate or merely unlikely. From there, he launched into mathematics and admitted that dividing by zero is a "loophole" in arithmetic. He further conceded that any set of rules has loopholes.

He quoted Richard Feynman who had said there are Babylonian thinkers -- who mentally operate from a set of rules (like our wonderful tax code!) and there are the Greek thinkers -- who operate from a handful of axioms and deduce their way forward. An example of the latter mode is Thermodynamics (the subject of last month's talk) which is deduced from a few safe rules.

Newton looked to Euclid for axioms to find models fitting Kepler's observed planetary motions. Even without Newton, we could derive motion "laws" from simple "conservation of momentum" laws -- which are little more than "accounting." Walter said that "Energy" is not a physical reality but rather a construct. However, the long running lack of violations of the laws of physics implies there is no need for a rule change.

Walter mentioned claims by the local "Black Light" energy company who have their own variant of cold fusion. The company claims that conventional science is wrong about quantum numbers. Quantum numbers define the energy levels within atoms and, among other things, govern the colors with which objects glow when heated. Black Light claims that atoms can give up energy by falling to some lower quantum level. Walter pointed out that if this was possible the sun would no longer be yellow.

Walter further explained that reality consists of fermions, particles which can't be in the exact same space at the same time, and bosons which bind the fermions together. If atoms had some secret attribute, for example to distinguish "natural" from manufactured vitamin C, then they could coexist in the same point in space. Walter's syllogism, "Because I don't fall through this chair, homeopathy is false," was lost on much of the audience. Walt also asked, "Why would a homeopathic essence remain confined to a bottle?"

The question and answer period was most lively. Further questions about fringe theories for making free energy were countered with Walter's trenchant comment, "Show me an effect violating accepted physics before I bother to consider your alternative physics." It was pointed out that Tom Napier's offer to independently measure claims of anomalous heat generation has been ignored by the free energy community.

Other questions led to Walt underscoring the difference between physics and chemistry. At another point he conceded, "That is a two beer question. I simply don't have time to launch into a rigorous explanation here." He did admit that quantum mechanics violates common intuitive thinking.

We appreciated Walter sharing his thoughts and time. Walt's review of myths of relativity is at:  http://www.phact.org/e/z/relativity.htm