According to the article "Top five physics discoveries chosen by magazine", there are five discoveries that are quite outstanding since they seem to transform our understanding of the world. They are in chronological order as follows:
Quantum teleportation (1992)
The creation of the first Bose-Einstein
condensate(1995)
The accelerating expansion of the universe (1997)
Experimental proof that neutrinos have mass (1998)
The sighting of the Higgs boson at Cern (2012)
In my view, physics is quite a difficult subject. I hate to only remember physics' formulas and substitute their values without comprehensive understading of why and how does each variable come from. With repetitive reading and practicing, finally I am amazed with how powerful this discipline is. It can unlock any mysteries about our earth or even the universe. I enthusiastially watch how innovative technologies are implemented based on the researches in physics to improve our qualities of lives.
However, one day after I had a chance to read a book written by Dr. Art-Ong Jumsai Na Ayudhya, I change my mind about the value I give to physics. Dr. Art-Ong illustrates the most advance discovery regarding traveling in physics that is to travel with the speed of light. By the way, this speed is not enough to bring humans to reach some galaxies that are far away from us within our lifetimes. Additionally, Dr. Art-Ong points out a better way of communication, the way that we can get in touch with lives in the other galaxies that is to use "telepathy". Telepathy is the fastest way that our messages can travel, however; only well practiced minds will be able to master this competency.
I myself also hope to possess this ability. I would like to know whether there is the other forms of lives outside the earth or not. What do they think about our planet earth ? Have you guys believe in psychics ?
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Some of my favourite stories are the vampire stories of Anne Rice - who could not love wonderfully wicked vampire Le Stat, the eponymous hero of Rice's novel The Vampire Le Stat? I keep wishing the Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise had teamed up for this film rather than her novel Interview With the Vampire, which is also great, but not as good as the second book in the series where we learn the origins and history of the monster telling the story, and of strange happenings in ancient Egypt.
ReplyDeleteBut much as I enjoy these novels and happily indulge my imagination, perhaps even wishing they could be true, I know that they are not. There are no vampires. And Anne Rice's novels are properly placed in the fiction section of libraries.
Nor is there telepathy. I think that the evidence for vampires is zero, but for telepathy, the evidence is less than zero, at least this week. As I've already suggested in an earlier comment, I don't think that Dr. Jumsai is a reliable source - he seems to have low academic standards, carelessly repeating the foolish claims that others make without checking them, and that makes him look careless and unreliable, as we see in his error prone list of famous vegetarians, which I discussed in an earlier comment (Peter F AUA, 2013). If he believes in telepathy, I think he is wrong and has no sound support for that belief.
Reference
Peter F AUA. (2013, September 27 at 5:53 PM). Re: Thinking ahead: eating meat [Web log comment]. Class Blog - AEP at AUA. Retrieved from http://peteraep.blogspot.com/2013/09/thinking-ahead-eating-meat.html
I like Yui's starting point, that science is a skeptical enterprise. I would enlarge it a little - academic work is essentially sceptical. You can hold and state any opinion you want to on any topic, but in an academic setting, you have to be able to support your opinions, especially against those who disagree with you.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the golden rule of skeptics is to check everything.
And this reminds me of an important point that came up last week when we discussing sources. Several people suggested that Wikipedia was not a source we could include in our list of reference citations because it was not academic or not reliable (personal communication in class). As we discovered, this was not the reason, and we can perfectly properly cite Wikipedia articles in our list of reference citations; in fact, if we have cited a Wikipedia article in our text, we must normally include the full reference citation in our list at the end of our academic work.
But the idea that there is something non-academic or unreliable about Wikipedia is a good idea. What is the real problem? Why do professors sometimes advise their students not to cite Wikipedia as a source? Why, indeed, does Wikipedia itself caution users to be careful about citing it as a source in academic work?
There is an important idea here that is worth some discussion.
I would also add that I think the possible weakness with Wikipedia is much more serious in a lot of other online sources, and also a lot of paper-based sources.
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