How else do you think you missed the point if they didn't also? Being
Carnegie Tech professors is no guarantee that they understood the
cosmological implications of the concepts they were teaching. They might
have even had a sinister agenda (Oh! the Horror!) in that they hoped you
would swallow their materialistic bilge without thinking for yourself.
>
>"The law of conservation of momentum is a fundamental physical law; so
>much
>of modern science is based on it that if it were proven to be false, or
>if
>exceptions were to be found, the vast majority of accepted theories in
>most
>disciplines would either collapse or have to be reconfigured."
>
>No disagreement on this, of course.
>
Then what I saw next should have been obviously right to you.
>
>"That's why I called such an exception a non-natural phenomenon, because
>it
>would violate the very nature of the physical universe as we understand
>it
>to be. And if that were the only exception extant, it would be more
>likely
>to be a non-natural anomaly rather than a representation of new physical
>laws."
>
>And that's where we must part company, of course.
>
Naturally; Heaven forbid that you should ever agree with me. ;-)
>
>There are, of course,
>an infinite number of ways the phenomenon could be observed w/o violating
>the law of momentum conservation. Natural ways.
>
Sorry, but you sound awfully confused here. Let me repeat myself slowly so
that you can better follow me; then you can tell me what the above statement
is supposed to mean. According to the law of conservation of momentum, the
sum of the individual momentums of two macromolecular objects after a
perfectly elastic collision must be equal to the sum of the individual
momentums of these same objects before that collision. No exception to this
law has ever been observed, nor would you expect to ever observe one since
the law of conservation of momentum is part of the very character and
structure of the universe; such exceptions would mean having to rethink our
entire view of what the universe is really like. For this same reason you
would not expect to find any natural law, force or mechanism that could
circumvent the law of conservation of momentum; such would be a violation of
the nature of the universe and would again require us to rethink our view of
the universe. As such, if we found two macromolecular objects that, when
they collide, produce a sum of their individual momentums that is greater
than the pre-collision sum had been, this would qualify as an exception to
the law of conservation of momentum, which would mean that a complete
reconstruction of reality would be necessary, even if you hypothesized a new
natural force to explain it. There would be no other choice. Considering
how catastrophic that would be perceived, I believe that even the most
hard-hearted materialist atheist would be more willing to accept that this
is a single anomolous phenomenon being caused by some unknown non-natural
force.
>
>I found a little top one day, many years ago, which, when I start it
>spinning, continues to spin "forever," or at least until I reach ot and
>stop it. Is it demonstrating a non-natural phenomenon? Of course not.
>
It would be if it really did spin "forever" (whatever the heck that's
suppose to mean); you would have a perpetual motion machine. If you can
patent it you would become rich.
>
>Is it violating the law of energy conservation? You tell me.
>
You would be violating far more laws than just the laws of conservation of
momentum and energy. If you can explain how it works you would win the
Nobel Prize, since this would be the first verified case of such violations,
but you would first need to reconstruct our view of the universe, plus the
very basis for all of science, practically from scratch. You would be
better off invoking a non-natural explanation for this one and only
phenomenon; it would be more believeable than a complete reconstruction of
reality.
Yes, of course I'm being sarcastic, but so I am assuming are you. If in
fact you are serious then your ignorance of basic physical concepts is
appaulling and those Carnegie Tech professors did a greater disservice than
simply fooling gullible students into believing their materialistic
claptrap. Obviously your top would not spin forever, or even "forever",
because the momentum you imparted to it would be gradually eaten away by
collisions with the air molecules and by the friction generated by its
interaction with whatever surface it was spinning on. Even in a complete
vacuum, spinning on a frictionless surface, the top would not spin forever;
electromagnetic energy alone would be enough to slow it down and eventually
stop it. (Plus a complete vacuum and a frictionless surface are ideal
concepts that cannot be made and do not exist in nature.) As such, far from
being a violation of the laws of conservation of momentum and energy, it's
behavior is actually a result of those laws, plus the laws of motion,
gravity and thermodynamics.
Why you even chose to use this as an example (an example of what, I don't
know) is beyond reason. Maybe you should go back to college and learn some
physics right this time.
Kevin L. O'Brien