Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2017 February 12

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February 12

Thanks for your information on the loudness the flying insects but i have still a question that has been unanswered

I have seen a youtube video that is deletet now. there where people trying to catch a oliathus regius female that was taking of later high in the trees. Do you think they could actually hear it flying away? Saludacymbals (talk) 16:04, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

If you mean Goliathus regius which is a large beetle, it's possible. Here's a video about breeding them. Blooteuth (talk) 19:41, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Antimatter

long confused/pseudoscientific rant by single purpose account, no req for refs
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
wiki refers to matter and antimatter, and thus when the two are put together merged if you will, the result is essentially nothing, to me this is illogical because if matter is mass/energy and thus something how can less than nothing "antimatter" be possible? I can agree that particle may have negative charge via a pseudo zero quanta Eg such as it is with a centre tapped transformer feeding an asymmetrical power supply, having the centre tap as the pseudo zero and thus a relative positive and a relative negative voltage, "but note that zero is in fact a positive quanta" Thus much the same construct is possible with particles charges quanta, But how can "something" anything be merged with less than "nothing" to which results with nothing? can any one see how asinine that is? in short matter and less than zero matter or antimatter is simply asinine. Also when it comes to the Universe I want to know why it is not treated as a finite seeing it adheres to conservation? Eg: something can only begot from something else and nothing can never EVER contradict and be something, this means the universe is a finite quanta that has always existed, a finite because if we refer to everything then nothing is excluded and thus we indeed can rely on conservation to that finite quanta "100% or check sum to everything equating to 1 and thus all parts "constituents" are a percentage of it", meaning expansion, mind you a perceived accelerating expansion must be at the expense of some other unaccounted quanta, such as each and every Galaxy what with its core being a super black hole. Having said that though, I am quite sure, this accelerating expansion will be debunked, debunked once relativity data has been properly considered, data that has galaxies with an inward momentum, due to each and every stars storing energy via fusion, Eg: Merging two lighter atoms into a single heavier atom, thus increasing near vacuums "or an area with little mass that is mostly energetic" expansion, and thus taking up an atoms space for every fusion, to which as said near vacuum expands inwards towards new heavier atom said atoms gravity increases, to which if we apply that to the entire galaxy, what we indeed have is a perceived accelerating expansion specially if we rely on red shift changes..Korallrbare (talk) 21:16, 12 February 2017 (UTC) The reference desk is not the place to express one's misunderstanding or frustration with standard physics. This entire post should probably just be deleted; if you second that, feel free to do so. μηδείς (talk) 21:45, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

When matter and antimatter merge, the result isn't nothing, it's a great deal of energy, described by E = mc². See mass-energy equivalence. StuRat (talk) 21:59, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree the OP is confused / confusing / over my head. But the modern theory of antimatter arose from the Dirac sea, the antielectron / positron thought of as a "hole in the sea of negative-energy electrons". Perhaps the OP had been reading about that.John Z (talk) 23:04, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

In addition to what StuRat mentioned, as our article says, antimatter is also mass/energy. The mass of corresponding antimatter is the same as the mass of matter. In that manner, it's misleading to call it less than nothing. If you call matter something, you could say I guess that it's an opposite form of something. Note the key word "form" here. I didn't say the opposite of something but the opposite form of something. Antimatter is still something, it's just a different, opposite type of something. (Incidentally any confusion here is why you should take care when trying to make English words correspond to concepts.) Consider what this means. As a being made of matter, I couldn't hold a ball of antimatter without what StuRat mentioned happening. But if I was a being of antimatter, a ball of antimatter would seem exactly the same as a corresponding ball of matter seems to me the being of matter. Of course if I were antimatter, unless I was magically converted from matter or something like that, I'd just call it matter and the other stuff would be antimatter. (Baryon asymmetry does complicate things but not at the level you seem to be thinking of, as far as we know.) BTW, I don't know if you're getting confused by negative mass, that is a different hypothetical concept. Nil Einne (talk) 03:10, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

It might be fun to go over Falaco solitons (we need an article): [1][2] for example. True, these physics particle analogies are rarely convincing, but at least the phenomenon is fun. Wnt (talk) 01:43, 15 February 2017 (UTC)