13 things that do not make sense

[photon]

Interesting read, and goes to show we've got a long way to go before we truely understand the nature of our reality.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...mg18524911.600

DON'T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.

This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.

[FlamesAddiction]

The Horizon Problem

You can solve the horizon problem by having the universe expand ultra-fast for a time, just after the big bang, blowing up by a factor of 1050 in 10-33 seconds. But is that just wishful thinking? "Inflation would be an explanation if it occurred," says University of Cambridge astronomer Martin Rees. The trouble is that no one knows what could have made that happen.

So, in effect, inflation solves one mystery only to invoke another. A variation in the speed of light could also solve the horizon problem - but this too is impotent in the face of the question "why?" In scientific terms, the uniform temperature of the background radiation remains an anomaly.

Wouldn't that kind be explained by the theory (I think it's called chaos something or other) where the laws of physics are breaking down over time and making the universe more chaotic. All physical properties were at one time "one", but over time and the futher things move away from the centre, they deteriorate more and more. That would expain why the speed of light (or anything) was faster at one time.

[Flames Draft Watcher]

I love contemplating the placebo problem. It could explain why many religions, cults, cultures claim to have healing ability. Belief may be a lot more powerful than the vast majority give it credit for.

Homepathic point is very interesting as well.

[Patek23]

Can someone dumb down the Placebo problem for me, I'm not sure I understand it?

[photon]

The placebo effect is usually demonstrated by someone taking what they think is a drug or somesuch and reacting to it as they should when in fact it isn't the drug at all but a placebo; a pill that looks exactly like the real thing but is just sugar or something that has no impact.

So in this case they were giving someone morphine to kill pain. Then they switched it with saline solution (salt water) which looks the same but does nothing. The patients still felt the soothing effects of the morphine.

That much is well known.

What's so facinating about this is when they introduced a chemical that blocks morphine into the saline solution, the patients stopped feeling the soothing effects! Even thought here was no morphine to block!

It's been speculated that the mind is doing something to compensate for the lack of real morphine in the first example, but the second part proves it's not just the mind; there's something physiological going on.

Bizarre.

[Patek23]

Originally posted by photon@Mar 18 2005, 06:56 PM
The placebo effect is usually demonstrated by someone taking what they think is a drug or somesuch and reacting to it as they should when in fact it isn't the drug at all but a placebo; a pill that looks exactly like the real thing but is just sugar or something that has no impact.

So in this case they were giving someone morphine to kill pain. Then they switched it with saline solution (salt water) which looks the same but does nothing. The patients still felt the soothing effects of the morphine.

That much is well known.

What's so facinating about this is when they introduced a chemical that blocks morphine into the saline solution, the patients stopped feeling the soothing effects! Even thought here was no morphine to block!

It's been speculated that the mind is doing something to compensate for the lack of real morphine in the first example, but the second part proves it's not just the mind; there's something physiological going on.

Bizarre.

Now that you say it like that, I know what it is, but the funny thin is I already knew and didn't realize it. The sad part is that I remember from a Might Mutant Ninja Turtles Episode.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally posted by FlamesAddiction@Mar 18 2005, 12:12 PM
The Horizon Problem

Wouldn't that kind be explained by the theory (I think it's called chaos something or other) where the laws of physics are breaking down over time and making the universe more chaotic. All physical properties were at one time "one", but over time and the futher things move away from the centre, they deteriorate more and more. That would expain why the speed of light (or anything) was faster at one time.

I don't think the Chaos theory has anything to do with the laws of physics breaking down. It's more of a, you can never have the circumstances exactly the same twice, and so you can't have the exact same results twice, kinda thing.

[Superfraggle]

Originally posted by photon@Mar 18 2005, 11:56 AM
The placebo effect is usually demonstrated by someone taking what they think is a drug or somesuch and reacting to it as they should when in fact it isn't the drug at all but a placebo; a pill that looks exactly like the real thing but is just sugar or something that has no impact.

So in this case they were giving someone morphine to kill pain. Then they switched it with saline solution (salt water) which looks the same but does nothing. The patients still felt the soothing effects of the morphine.

That much is well known.

What's so facinating about this is when they introduced a chemical that blocks morphine into the saline solution, the patients stopped feeling the soothing effects! Even thought here was no morphine to block!

It's been speculated that the mind is doing something to compensate for the lack of real morphine in the first example, but the second part proves it's not just the mind; there's something physiological going on.

Bizarre.

The one thing the article doesn't mention that could have huge bearing on the experiment is whether or not the patient knew they were administering the inhibitor. If they were conducting the experiment properly, the patient likely wouldn't know, in which case it truly is mind-boggling. If the patient did know, though, that's just another normal feature of the placebo effect.

[evman150]

TAKE our best understanding of gravity, apply it to the way galaxies spin, and you'll quickly see the problem: the galaxies should be falling apart. Galactic matter orbits around a central point because its mutual gravitational attraction creates centripetal forces. But there is not enough mass in the galaxies to produce the observed spin.

Vera Rubin, an astronomer working at the Carnegie Institution's department of terrestrial magnetism in Washington DC, spotted this anomaly in the late 1970s. The best response from physicists was to suggest there is more stuff out there than we can see. The trouble was, nobody could explain what this "dark matter" was.

And they still can't. Although researchers have made many suggestions about what kind of particles might make up dark matter, there is no consensus. It's an embarrassing hole in our understanding. Astronomical observations suggest that dark matter must make up about 90 per cent of the mass in the universe, yet we are astonishingly ignorant what that 90 per cent is.

My theory: There are nine parallel universes which make up the dark matter and which also account for the multitude of dimensions needed to explain quantum mechanics.

There, I just unified the strong, the weak, gravity and E&M. Go me!

Okay maybe not.

[Flames89]

Originally posted by FlamesAddiction@Mar 18 2005, 02:12 PM

Wouldn't that kind be explained by the theory (I think it's called chaos something or other) where the laws of physics are breaking down over time and making the universe more chaotic. All physical properties were at one time "one", but over time and the futher things move away from the centre, they deteriorate more and more. That would expain why the speed of light (or anything) was faster at one time.

Entropy. All things go to disorder.

Chaos Thoeries are that amongs all the seemingly random events (like, weather to electron movements) are actually patterns - which means that there is an order but we are all too small minded to see it.

Too much thinking after an extreme St. Patty's.

[browna]

OT: The good people at google feel we should try our own Placebo experiment...ads at the top of this thread are for Tylenol 3 and Codine.

Or maybe the keywords that triggered those ads in this thread weren't saline/morphine, rather St. Patty's.

[calf]

One glaring omission from that list of things that don't make sense: women