Biocurious

/ a biophysics blog

"You're not really a scientist. You're a biologist."

Posted 13 April 2006 by PhilipJ under

Arrogant physicists can say the most hilarious things. Like the above, said by recent Templeton Prize winner John Barrow to none other than Richard Dawkins.

PZ gets him* back though, “Yeah, and some physicists are little more than glorified numerologists.”

* I was going to say “us” given my own physics background, but I don’t want to be associated with the likes of Barrow.

  

  1. Uncle Al    13 April 06    #

    Physical theory is the Madam of the sciences, and it is hollow. String theory has no empirically falsifable observables. Even classic gravitation is deficient: Is the postulated Equivalence Principle true? (All local centers of mass fall identically in vacuum). The single case that can be an EP violation and still be consistent with prior observations (test masses of identical composition but opposite geometric parity) will NEVER be performed. No physicist can look into a stereodiagram and make any sense of simultaneous homochirality along all coordinate axes. “If it were a good experiment, somebody would have already done it.”

    Jesus wept.

    WA Little proposed a chemical structure for excitonic room temperature superconductors:
    decorated polyacetylenes, [C(Ph)=(Ph)C]n,

    Phys. Rev. A 134 1416 (1964)

    1) A linear polyacetylene core, 2) With pendant polarizable chromophores, 3) Said chromophores’ pi-clouds being no more than one sigma bond from the core, 4) And the core being entirely surrounded and enveloped by a cylindrical pi-cloud.

    Here is a progression of three cases. Somebody should synthesize the polymers and discover whether Little foresaw the future. These are trivial syntheses in 2006! Fat chance. Physicists cannot synthesize. Chemists don’t give a damn about Little.

    Simple phenyl substitution. Not much of an enveloping pi-cloud. 33.234 kcal/mole polymer stabilization
    http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/benzen1.png

    Pyrene substitution. Better pi-cloud coverage. 442.894 kcal/mole polymer stabilization.
    http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/pyrene1.png

    Decacylene substitution. Dense enveloping pi-cloud coverage. 806.560 kcal/mole polymer stabilization .
    http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/decacyc1.png

    That is 25 kcal/mole-aryl group. The stabilizing interaction is strongly persistent near room temp.

    As you read this, Uncle Al is mm+ minimizing another accessible Little polymer structure. At 1945 PST it is -1153.493 kcal/mole and slowly dropping. It will NEVER be synthesized. Funding for chemistry offends funding for physics, and vice-versa. Euchred!

    Jesus wept.


Name
Email
http://
Message
  Textile Help