Measurement of things (time, space, distance)

RainbowSingularity

RainbowSingularity

Valued Senior Member
while reading another thread i noticed i had a question arise.
in how many ways(& in what different ways) do we measure things scientifically ?

keeping in mind i am not a physacist or mathamatician.

it rose my curiosity to ask generally ...
"have we got all the different types of measurement systems we need to comprehend the universe and all its weird & wonderful scientific principals ? (im guessing thats a soft 'no' with hard examples)

time, a generic frequency of a given thing...
distance a generic given pre-established value of size to render quantitative distance...
then all the rest etc.. magnitude, gravity etc etc ...
 
RainbowSingularity said:
while reading another thread i noticed i had a question arise.
in how many ways(& in what different ways) do we measure things scientifically ?

keeping in mind i am not a physacist or mathamatician.

it rose my curiosity to ask generally ...
"have we got all the different types of measurement systems we need to comprehend the universe and all its weird & wonderful scientific principals ? (im guessing thats a soft 'no' with hard examples)

time, a generic frequency of a given thing...
distance a generic given pre-established value of size to render quantitative distance...
then all the rest etc.. magnitude, gravity etc etc ...
Click to expand...

Subjective indeed
 
river said:
Subjective indeed
Click to expand...
was hoping to delve into peoples opinions of the scope of what is unknown as a question toward potential technalogical advancement.

if mathamatics is the language of the universe as some say,
how many languages could there be and how far along on that scale might science be ?

opinions, speculations and ideas welcome.
 
RainbowSingularity said:
while reading another thread i noticed i had a question arise.
in how many ways(& in what different ways) do we measure things scientifically ?

keeping in mind i am not a physacist or mathamatician.

it rose my curiosity to ask generally ...
"have we got all the different types of measurement systems we need to comprehend the universe and all its weird & wonderful scientific principals ? (im guessing thats a soft 'no' with hard examples)

time, a generic frequency of a given thing...
distance a generic given pre-established value of size to render quantitative distance...
then all the rest etc.. magnitude, gravity etc etc ...
Click to expand...
You seem to be talking about measuring physical quantities. Offhand it seems to me we can measure all the observable physical quantities that have been defined. But there are are physical quantities that are not observable, for example the values of quantum numbers. Things like these manifest themselves in observable quantities that they give rise to, but can't really be measured in themselves.

If your question is broader, in that there may be as yet undiscovered or uninvented observable physical quantities that may one day prove important, well yes I suppose the history of science suggests that is likely to be so.
 
exchemist said:
You seem to be talking about measuring physical quantities. Offhand it seems to me we can measure all the observable physical quantities that have been defined. But there are are physical quantities that are not observable, for example the values of quantum numbers. Things like these manifest themselves in observable quantities that they give rise to, but can't really be measured in themselves.

If your question is broader, in that there may be as yet undiscovered or uninvented observable physical quantities that may one day prove important, well yes I suppose the history of science suggests that is likely to be so.
Click to expand...

yes both.
leaning on the concept that if we do not have the theory to formulate something then it woudl be hard to compute it.
worm hole(read black hole/dark matter etc) mathamatics for example.

i often ponder if our knowledge of a broardening perspective is wide enough prior to moving in a straight line forward/up.
culture bieng quite the thing as a good example. (having the technology to wipe out the species yet not having the social and cultural intellect to prevent that from happening)
we have all sorts of scientific technology that makes life vastly better yet many people reject that calling the concept of religion to be a dictatorship to limit human advancement.
we are currently seeing a new-wave of psychology evolution taking place in the western world.
re-instigating principals that had been discovered some 30 years ago or more.

obviousely when it comes to the geniuses ... their ability to be free of the bonds of dogma and barbarianism enables them to achieve more.
thus a scope of perspective ability becomes a question to leverage the principals of pure mathamatics(quisically).
 
RainbowSingularity said:
yes both.
leaning on the concept that if we do not have the theory to formulate something then it woudl be hard to compute it.
worm hole(read black hole/dark matter etc) mathamatics for example.

i often ponder if our knowledge of a broardening perspective is wide enough prior to moving in a straight line forward/up.
culture bieng quite the thing as a good example. (having the technology to wipe out the species yet not having the social and cultural intellect to prevent that from happening)
we have all sorts of scientific technology that makes life vastly better yet many people reject that calling the concept of religion to be a dictatorship to limit human advancement.
we are currently seeing a new-wave of psychology evolution taking place in the western world.
re-instigating principals that had been discovered some 30 years ago or more.

obviousely when it comes to the geniuses ... their ability to be free of the bonds of dogma and barbarianism enables them to achieve more.
thus a scope of perspective ability becomes a question to leverage the principals of pure mathamatics(quisically).
Click to expand...
Sorry, I cannot understand that. Can you try again?
 
Not related to your theme question, but there seems to be something special about the measurements, the metric system we use , in most places.
The meter of course was meant to be a portion of the earth girth, but it is good that the atmospheric pressure would equal a water column of 10 meters, That in the Bode sequence the Earth drew a 10, that the 1 AU in diameter is 1000 light seconds. 30o 000 km/sec for c. and
It was not planned that way.
consolation prize for our American friends, km/miles is the golden ratio 1/1.6
that would be easy to fix.
 
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nebel said:
Not related to your theme question, but there seems to be something special about the measurements, the metric system we use , in most places.
The meter of course was meant to be a portion of the earth girth, but it is good that the atmospheric pressure would equal a water column of 10 meters, That in the Bode sequence the Earth drew a 10, that the 1 AU in diameter is 1000 light seconds. 30o 000 km/sec for c. and
It was not planned that way.
consolation prize for our American friends, km/miles is the golden ratio 1/1.6
that would be easy to fix.
Click to expand...
Except that atmospheric pressure is variable and not equal to exactly 10m water, the golden ratio is not 1.6 it is (1+√5)/2..etc etc. One might as well say gosh what a coincidence that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is almost 3!!!

In other words, this is just more junk numerology and indicative of nothing whatsoever.
 
exchemist said:
In other words, this is just more junk numerology and indicative of nothing whatsoever.
Click to expand...
bold added for emphasis.

Of course there is scattering, and who said it was indicative of anything, just convenient to get quick approximations, like knowing the bode numbers, and the 1000 sec AU diameter gives you instantly max min message delay times to other planets perihelion, aphelion.
Was not planned that way, but nice coincidences,
Almost 3?--The hexagon radius length inside a circle does not count here, because it is not a later man made measure, that turned out interesting numerology when applied to nature.
 
bold added for emphasis.

.... who said it was indicative of anything, .
exchemist said:
You did.
Click to expand...

As I recall, I mentioned (in not so many words) that it was coincidental, indicative of not being causative, not planned, but the fortunate outcome of our measuring units aligning with the numbers of our fingers,
I mean, how could we have planned the Earth orbit to be 1000 light seconds?
fascinating co-incidences making life easier.
 
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We observe/ measure in all known possible ways, but obviously we can always get more data. Scientists would love to get up close to black holes and exotic stars and measure things, but that's difficult.
 
nebel said:
bold added for emphasis.

Of course there is scattering, and who said it was indicative of anything, just convenient to get quick approximations, like knowing the bode numbers, and the 1000 sec AU diameter gives you instantly max min message delay times to other planets perihelion, aphelion.
Was not planned that way, but nice coincidences,
Almost 3?--The hexagon radius length inside a circle does not count here, because it is not a later man made measure, that turned out interesting numerology when applied to nature.
Click to expand...

Fibonacci sequence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number


maybe there is a certain value to the concept of "magic-formula"/magic-soup?
statistically we are extremely odd having only 1 sun and such a small sun.
thus it occured to me that statistically that changes things if we asserted that advanced life, as we define ourselves, requires various things.

note planet finder has just been launched which i look forward to following(might add a link later in a few days)

its time for HUBBLE II to be built & launched
Elon can launch it, i think his company has proven they have the ability to get the job done without it blowing up on the launch pad
all we need is countries to simply donate a tiny fraction of thier GDP & away we go.

i am going to guess
HUBBLE II cost 2.5 billion
launch vehicle finalisation & launch 1.5 billion
launch control - new space comms centre to run all scientific satalites 500 million including HUBBLE I & HUBBLE II and various Earth Science satalites etc...

yearly budget of 350 million for running costs.
with ongoing GDP co-op fund for repairs, maintanance and assorted scholarships & public scientific study funding for development.

spidergoat said:
We observe/ measure in all known possible ways, but obviously we can always get more data. Scientists would love to get up close to black holes and exotic stars and measure things, but that's difficult.
Click to expand...

"in all known possible ways"
binary reality...
holding up what cant be done to evaluate what can be done...
"Scientists would love to get up close to black holes and exotic stars"
im not a big supporter of this theory of intellectual ground work.

the religiousely broken mind of the child needs to know what the answer is before the question has been asked.
this is part of the larger problem.

data should not be excluded because it does not have a logo on it.
 
RainbowSingularity said:
statistically we are extremely odd having only 1 sun and such a small sun.
Click to expand...
Yeah, at our astronomy meeting tonight is a presentation by a prestigious prof. showing it will be gone in 5 billion years, but: with a smaller size, and closer orbit we could have had a longer life expectancy than that.
folding down paper down the middle into the Fibonacci golden ratio forever, well at least longer.

RainbowSingularity said:
the religiousely broken mind of the child needs to know what the answer is before the question has been asked.
this is part of the larger problem.
Click to expand...

Children are born with amazing minds, religious answers can really screw them up. There are answers to question built into nature already though, before we ask the questions.
J Kepler is an example, after trying polygons for orbits, he discovered ellipses in Brahe's data, in Praha.
Johannes Kepler got kicked out of his religion bsw. always a badge of honour that.
 
spidergoat said:
We observe/ measure in all known possible ways, but obviously we can always get more data. Scientists would love to get up close to black holes and exotic stars and measure things, but that's difficult.
Click to expand...

yes, so: to design the right instruments to carry on those probes, we better have solid, and even way out questions to ask, data to look for, possibly derived from alternate hypothesis. because lucky finds come to those well prepared to measure time, space and distance.
 
exchemist said:
In other words, this is just more junk numerology and indicative of nothing whatsoever.
Click to expand...

here is some real junk : I just ran into: Pi= 3.1416
Number of seconds in a year (1 orbit around the sun, a derivatit of PI,= 315576oo seconds, a match in numbers in 10 millions within .4 %.-- year and day getting longer though.
 
nebel said:
here is some real junk : I just ran into: Pi= 3.1416
Number of seconds in a year (1 orbit around the sun, a derivatit of PI,= 315576oo seconds, a match in numbers in 10 millions within .4 %.-- year and day getting longer though.
Click to expand...

is the increase in length additional to the expansion of the universe ?
 
RainbowSingularity said:
is the increase in length additional to the expansion of the universe ?
Click to expand...
I believe this is local celestial dynamics. ask the experts. has to do with tidal forces of moon, earth and sun. Even the match in size of Moon and Sun, an eclipse essential, is temporary, unique, specially relevant for our present presence.
IMHO. the universe is expanding into time. big stuff, not local.
 
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