________________________________ Von: OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson <svj.orionwo...@gmail.com> An: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Gesendet: 19:54 Dienstag, 7.Februar 2012 Betreff: [Vo]:More info on: "Making Scientists Seem Human –Through Film" The Scientific American blog site has more info on the recently mentioned film "The Believers" ... about the human side of "Cold Fusion" research. Title: "Making Scientists Seem Human–Through Film!" ---------------------------------- Steven, one of the reasons I follow this whole topic, is, that it raises a lot of questions both on a technoscientific level, as well as a psychological/societal/global level. So we have the whole package here. Re the 'believers': most of them are more addicted to hope and spleens, but one should not throw out the baby with the bathwater, right? One thing which popped up in my (scientific)mind -and I am not very deep into nuclear chemistry and such, is, that we have certain dogmas, like the identity of atomic/subatomic particles, or the prohibition of hidden particles (after Bohm), Occam, causality, reversible time (at least in theoretical physics) then the second sentence of thermodynamics, which are some of the axioms of Physics. Then there is dark matter/energy, which is to my understanding a Bohmian hidden variable in disguise. Now, could it be, that the Atom, say Nickel, which comes in the variants Ni58 to Ni64, and is, concerning its isotopic variants, one of the most variable, is not so stable as it seems? All good with the half-life, but I ask, why does it change ? What exactly are the causes? Can it be, that atoms –at any time- actually have more variants than those isotopes? This touches one central tenet of nuclear physics, namely the 'identity' of particles - at least within their half-life. Which is, as one can infer by straightforward logic, not convincing. Because we cannot look into single Atoms, we step back and and only see an ensemble-mean, because that we can measure those. Maybe the atom-core is much more complicated, and more of a (instable) chemical element, where the subatomic particle zoo is in permanent change, and only in the statistical mean constitutes what we call an atom or an Isotope. Just letting my fantasy flow. Nothing substantial.
