My mind is especially boggled at the astronomical scale of the game (shown off starting around 15:20). can't wait...

Actually, since the development of adaptive optics, ground based telescopes aren't obsolete at all. Even without adaptive optics they have their uses, and some interesting science is done with them.

Getting telescope time on a space based telescope (or large ground based telescope for that matter) is quite hard, which limits the things astronomers can do with them.

I'm going to assume that this is the Lorentz force, because it's the principle that involves magnetic and electric fields. But there are setups that can use subtleties of magnetic and electric fields, it can be very complicated. Any physicist rather than astronomer might be able to explain this better... or spot subtleties.

If you notice, it only starts moving once the back magnet has touched the wire. Which i think means that the wire is used to carry the current from the battery, with the magnets providing the magnetic field for the Lorentz force to drive the train. Effectively the force is felt by the electrons travelling in the wire (F = q(E + v x B), x being vector product, cross product), but there is an equal and opposite force to be felt by the 'train'; so it travels along. If you watch, it does look like the wire is responding - i'm pretty sure the small track would have shot off to the right if he hadn't held it, and it moves as the train approaches in the longer track.

So, circuit is set up by the the wire contacting between battery terminals, current flows in a circular fashion (mostly, assuming adjacent loops don't short). Magnetic field will emanate out from the battery on average radially, i assume (this is a simplification but a reasonably safe one), so the resulting cross product - and therefore direction of the force - acts along the remaining perpendicular direction to those, ie. straight up or down the loop depending on which terminal is leading.

If you want to see how that works, you can use the right hand rule. First finger is the direction of the electron's velocity (which is traversing loops so constantly changing in a circular manner), middle finger the direction of magnetic field which always comes out radially from the middle of the coil or track, thumb F the resultant force always points along the loop - make your first finger point in all directions of a circle, keep your middle finger pointing radially out relative to your first finger, and you will notice your thumb always points the same way, no matter how v changes circularly.

It is reasonable to assume that other factors are involved, probably a current is induced into the coil as the battery moves - the battery carries a magnetic field cos of the magnets, so we then have a moving/changing magnetic field in the presence of a wire; it should induce a current which would create a magnetic field in opposition to the field of the magnets.. and so on. But i think the Lorentz force is what provides most of the motion.

Hey robbersdog49, thanks for the level headed reply. I'll address your comments in a few pieces here:

The origin of life and Darwinian evolution are two entirely different things. Regardless of how you believe the first life came about we do know from the fossil record and evidence about the way the environment and climate changed on earth in those early millennia that the first life was simple single cell organisms.

In my study of the evidence from the fossil record, I found more evidence that contradicted the assertions of Darwinian evolution than confirmed it. The Cambrian explosion for example, where basically every type of animal body plan comes into existence at around the same time, contradicts the idea that these things happened gradually over long periods of time. In fact, a new theory was invented called "punctuated equilibrium" which says that the reason we aren't finding the transitional fossils is that the changes happen too quickly to be found in the fossil record. Instead of a theory based on the evidence, we have a theory to explain away the lack of evidence.

Evolution is the process which turned these very simple life forms into the complex forms you see all around you today. It's an ongoing process and the evidence for evolution is overwhelming.

The evidence for micro evolution is overwhelming. The reason we have hundreds of different breeds of dogs is because of micro evolution. Darwin discovered this and all the credit should go to him, but where the leap of faith took place was when he supposed that because we see changes within species, that therefore all life evolved from a common ancestor. This claim is not substantiated scientifically. You cannot see macro evolution taking place anywhere in the world, and you cannot find the transitional fossils to say it ever took place. You cannot test it in a laboratory, it is a historical claim based on weak circumstantial evidence.

Science doesn't know exactly how life first came about. It doesn't claim to. We know that it did because we're here, but how? Not sure. But that's not a problem, science doesn't claim to know everything. Science is a process we use to find out about the world around us. It's not a book with all the answers.

Science is all about what we don't know. It's a process of discovery, and you can't discover something you already know. Religious people like to show any gap in the knowledge of scientists as showing they are frauds, or know nothing and that this means their own views must be true. That's just a stupid logical fallacy. Just because no one else has the answer doesn't mean you can just claim your version must be correct.

Science not being able to tell us how life started has no effect on the validity of the statement 'God did it'.

The God of the gaps fallacy is simply a red herring in these conversations. I don't purport to say that because science can't explain something, that means God did it. Science is all about the principle of parsimony; what theory has the best explanatory power. I purport to say that the idea of a Creator has better explanatory power for what we see than the current scientific theories for origins, not because of what science cannot explain, but for what science has explained. I think the evidence we do understand, in physics, biology, cosmology and information theory overwhelmingly points to design for many good reasons that have nothing to do with the God of the gaps fallacy.

There is also it seems a point of pride for those who think the best position is to say "I don't know", and accusing anyone who thinks they do know as being wrong headed, arrogant, or whatever. It's a very curious position to take because there are plenty of things we can know. No one is going to take the position that if you say the answer to 2 + 2 is 4 and you deny that any other answer is valid, you are arrogant or using fallacious reasoning. Yet, it is arrogrant and fallacious to those who think that science is the sole arbitor of truth when someone who believes in God points to a Creator as the best explanation. They think that because they believe no one else could know the answer except through scientific discovery. You have to realize that is a faith based claim and not an evidence based claim. You think that way when you place your faith in science as what is going to give you the correct answers about how and why you are here. I like these quotes for Robert Jastrow, who was an Astronomer and physicist:

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

"Scientists have no proof that life was not the result of an act of creation, but they are driven by the nature of their profession to seek explanations for the origin of life that lie within the boundaries of natural law."

As for the age of the earth, there's a huge amount of evidence which says it's about 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years old. That's plenty of time for evolution to take us from simple single cell life to the complex animals we've become today.

Have you ever studied the scientific proofs for both sides? There are some "clocks" which point that way, and there are other clocks that point the other way. The clocks that point to the old Earth have many flaws, and there are simply more evidences that point to a young Earth. That video I provided shows the evidences I am talking about.

@enoch
@newtboy
@Stormsinger
@speechless


31,487 American scientists say you and your belief in man made global warming via CO2 is Bullshit.

9,029 PhD;
7,157 MS;
2,586 MD and DVM; and
12,715 BS or equivalent academic degrees.
Most of the MD and DVM signers also have underlying degrees in basic science.

All of the listed signers have formal educations in fields of specialization that suitably qualify them to evaluate the research data related to the petition statement. Many of the signers currently work in climatological, meteorological, atmospheric, environmental, geophysical, astronomical, and biological fields directly involved in the climate change controversy.

http://www.petitionproject.org/index.php

PS suck my dick.

Useless in the sense that they would no longer be required to advance society. It does mean less humans because, like in China now with the one child per family law, we'd be forced to not produce so many - maybe not by law, but the cost of raising a kid would be astronomical.

And no, there won't always be a need for human caring, empathy and love. Look at Japan now with non-human surrogacy on the rise and birth rates dropping. It's more efficient than dating and we have drugs to make us happy otherwise. I doubt it will ever completely go away of course, but there it is.

Sorry, man, I like you, but you're way off base here.

Farm animals weren't engineering by NATURE and NATURAL SELECTION, we did that shit. Bananas, wheat, dogs, horses, you name it, none of them exist now as they would without human intervention. Hell, there was a recent Top 15 video about his very subject.

We've been doing this for centuries and we've just gotten better at it.

Why do it? The yields might not be astronomical, but in lots of cases they enable some yield over nothing.

Should there be strong regulatory oversight? Of course, same way there is for any commercially produced food.

But the fact is, it's going to happen, and anyone who opposes it is pissing in the wind.

Ironically, I tend not to eat much GM food myself, simply because I like to cook and I like to eat locally source food. But I think it would be selfish in the extreme for me to deny people in less favourable situations (without easy access to arable land for instance) the opportunity to use these technologies.

I love Tyson. But totally disagree with him on this...
Yes farm animals are 'engineered' but they are engineered via NATURE and NATURAL SELECTION over THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

Putting Jellyfish glow dna into mice is fucked up and would NEVER happen in NATURE.
INSERTING PESTICIDE PRODUCING GENES INTO FOOD IS SOO FUCKED UP FOR ALL OF NATURE.

Bee's anyone ?

Human's, Animals, Plants, we all share essentially the same cells.
So something that is designed to kill insects, if ingested by us, may fuck us up.

Also, WHY DO IT ? GM yields are not that astronomic.

Most of the food we grown is WASTED. Let's fix that first.

Astronomical! Congrats!!

I have a really hard time believing this.

In the entire history of air flight, millions and millions of miles have been logged and not once has an airliner, helicopter, blimp or glider ever hit or been hit by a meteorite. I would think the odds would be astronomically higher that an aircraft would be hit than a single skydiver who just happened to have his GoPro on.

Not saying it's impossible, it just feels highly, highly, highly unlikely.

http://bigthink.com/dr-kakus-universe/the-paradox-of-multiple-goldilocks-zones-or-did-the-universe-know-we-were-coming

"But today, I can view my second grade teacher's statement from a different point of view. Today, astronomers have identified over 500 planets orbiting other stars, and they are all too close or too far from their mother star. Most of them, we think, cannot support life as we know it. So it is unnecessary to invoke God.

But now, cosmologists are facing this paradox again, but from a cosmic perspective. It turns out that the fundamental parameters of the universe appear to be perfectly "fine-tuned." For example, if the nuclear force were any stronger, the sun would have simply burned out billions of years ago, and if it were any weaker the sun wouldn't have ignited to begin with. The Nuclear Force is tuned Just Right. Similarly, if gravity were any stronger, the Universe would have most likely collapsed in on itself in a big crunch; and if it were any weaker, everything would have simply frozen over in a big freeze. The Gravitational Force is Just Right."

The evidence shows the Universe is not an accident; the observation of fine-tuning leads naturally to the conclusion that there must be a FineTuner, much in the same way that the evidence of a painting leads us to the conclusion that there must be a painter. The favorable circumstances of the laws that allow life to flourish on planet Earth are by design.

Applying the principle of Occams Razor, postulating the existence of multiple unobserved universes to try to account for our favorable circumstances should be ruled out in favor of a theory of a Creator because there are fewer assumptions needed and there is greater explanatory power. Once the existence of even "apparent" fine-tuning has been observed, ruling out the theory of a Creator is illogical and contrary to reason according to the principle of parsimony.

Because inflation is used to drive money towards the very very few. It's essentially one part of economic cycle hijacked: if you don't raise wages with inflation, someone is going to pocket that money. Those who do, are not the ones paying wages. System controls inflation by creating more money out of thin air. Money that's being pumped out is then laundered to assets that aren't affected by inflation.

If you want to gather a nest egg, savings for the rainy day, invest in valuable metals.... It's basically the only thing a middle class can afford and trust. Don't invest to anything that exist only in paper.

Next: derivatives are cashed out..They are astronomical in scale of value, all exist only in paper. By collapsing that, then catching just a small portion of the perceived value and changing that to other type of assets is still billions. Which is the next part of systematic market meltdown, where trillions are used to pocket billions to very small number of bags.

Yes, absolutely, the meteor in Russia was a major event. And people got hurt.
It's big news to those among the injured (superficial wounds that most of them were - but still important) and it's important to meteorologists & astronomers.

Interesting to the rest of us, yes. but not important to me in the sense that it doesn't affect me. It doesn't. Nor does it affect the majority of the world.

But the world economy affects everyone. The stuff that is going on now will not just affect us today and tomorrow but far into the future. These are events that can change the outlook of society.

So as I promote this one lonely video that was in danger of being overlooked Vs. the more than numerous (and still counting) videos surfacing this morning concerning the event in Russia. I am not being facetious, but I am being poignant.

About ?800? ?900? years ago the planet Mars passed over the planet Jupiter. That would have been the event of a lifetime for a planetary amateur astronomer.