Blue Swirl wrote:

As for "is reality maths?", I think that's the basis behind the "the universe is just a hologram" hypothesis.

The hologram theory actually comes from the Black Hole information Paradox, which takes the quantum view and assumes physical information can't be lost. 

The general idea is that matter disappears inside a black whole, and that matter obviously takes all the information about itself with it (it's quantum state). This is fine. The information is obscured but there. Then Hawking proposed that black holes eventually evaporate completely through virtual particle radiation, which has no relation to the stuff inside, and so the information about the matter inside would be lost. Then there was a theory that the 2D surface of the black hole (the event horizon) could contain all the information after all about the 3D (volume), the hidden stuff inside, and there was some supportive maths, but then everyone got confused and someone mentioned Hawking might be wrong, and I think there was a fight in a bar in Russia, and then someone pointed out Einstien was a buffoon, and it all got a bit messy from there on in. Apparently someone said they'd solved the paradox, but I think they were drunk and couldn't quite remember it in the morning. Usual physicist stuff.

Am I missing something here? Surely a mathematical description, by definition, describes a thing. If there is no thing, there is no mathematical description. The thing isn't surplus, in many cases it's not even mysterious (maths can tell us how the atoms that make up a brick are staying together, but bricks hold no mystery).

That's easily done seeing as your house has evidently been built entirely out of mathematical descriptions.

I was with you up until:

SpaceGazelle wrote:

What's energy? An abstract idea, or more exactly, a number.

"there are no blocks".

Look, i don't need to understand the magic that goes in to making a cake for it be fucking delicious.

Your maths is wrong.

Volcano pr0n? Volcano pr0n!

Scientists are keen to launch a mission to Venus to investigate mysterious dark streaks in its clouds.
With its extreme surface temperature and crushing atmospheric pressure, Venus might seem like the last place to look for extraterrestrial life within our own solar system.

A series of mysterious dark streaks observed in the planet's atmosphere however, which some scientists believe could be evidence of microbial organisms, could be set to change all that.

Both Russia and the US are hoping to join forces to launch a new exploratory mission to Venus to help unlock the secrets of this mysterious world as well as to investigate the possibility that these peculiar dark streaks are home to the first known examples of extraterrestrial life.

Such a mission is likely to include an orbiter and a lander and could launch by 2025.

"I cannot say that there is microbial life in Venus' clouds," said atmospheric scientist Sanjay Limaye from the University of Wisconsin. "But that doesn't mean it's not there either."

"The only way to learn is to go there and sample the atmosphere."

Source: phys.org

Scientists have succeeded in squeezing hydrogen to such an extreme that is has turned in to a metal.
The remarkable breakthrough was made by two researchers at Harvard University who used diamonds to squeeze a hydrogen sample to pressures greater than those at the Earth's core.

It's a result that was predicted over 80 years ago by Eugene Wigner and Hillard Bell Huntington, two scientists who determined that at sufficient enough pressures it was possible to turn hydrogen in to a metal - something that was impossible to prove at the time.

"If this experiment is reproducible, it solves experimentally one of the major outstanding problems in all of physics," said Jeffrey McMahon from Washington State University.

The scientists behind the achievement now predict that metallic hydrogen, once created, may actually remain in either a solid or liquid state even at normal temperatures and pressures.

It is so dense in fact that it could even prove to be an effective replacement for rocket fuel.

Source: New Scientist

What defines a metal?  Being solid & having +ions or something?

Three New Uranium-Based Minerals Discovered in Utah

A Notre Dame graduate student recently found three new minerals while exploring old uranium mines in Utah. The three new minerals, leesite, leószilárdite and redcanyonite, are all new compounds of uranium and other components, allowing researchers to study how different forms of uranium can propagate in the natural environment.

During the height of the Cold War in the early 1950's, uranium mining become a boom industry for Utah. Salt Lake City was known as the "Wall Street of Uranium Stocks," and the state's then-notoriously lax financial securities laws allowed for exploration companies to explode in the town while many never produced a single ounce of uranium.
Uranium mining in Utah dried up in the mid-70's, but the mines persist, providing the necessary conditions for these three new minerals to form. "Have you ever seen The Hills Have Eyes? It's that kind of creepy, barren desert landscape," says Travis Olds, the graduate student at Notre Dame studying uranyl mineral compounds.
Leesite, one of the minerals Olds has found, is like uranium rust. It appears as tiny, bright yellow blades or needles. On an atomic level, leesite piles up in stacks of uranium and oxide layers, and its composition includes potassium, distinguishing it as an entirely new mineral.

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Leesite
Travis Olds


Leószilárdite is a pale yellow. "If you look at leószilárdite in a picture, you can kind of pick out that they have an unusual shape," Olds says. "But put them under the SEM (scanning electron microscope) and it's obvious." The mineral is formed when uranium ore interacts with oxygen, so there's a solid chance that the uranium mining industries only increased the amount of leószilárdite that exists in the world.

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Leószilárdite
Travis Olds


It's more common than the third mineral discovered, redcanyonite, which is believed to be the rarest of minerals that Olds found. What makes it so scarce is all the specific requirements for growth. Access to manganese ions is necessary, and redcanyonite can only form in organic-rich layers that produce ammonium.

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Redcanyonite
Travis Olds


"The only way to better understand the chemistry of uranium is to go out and find new minerals—and describe their topology, their structures," Olds says. "They teach us a lot about how uranium can then be moved in the environment."
Source: Michigan Tech

Oooh, so magenta isn't real, it's your brain saying "not-green"!

Interesting...

February 19, 2017 - Are Spikes in Iodine-131 Levels in Europe from
Arctic “Nuclear Incident” in January 2017?

“Where the radioactivity is coming from is still a mystery. ... Someone out there
knows why the radioactivity was spread over large areas of Europe.”

- Barents Observer, February 19, 2017


February 13, 2017 Map Source: Institut de Radioprotection et de Surete Nucleaire.

ZeroHedge.com is reporting today that recently “trace amounts of radioactive Iodine-131 of unknown origin were detected in January 2017, over large areas in Europe (see above map). Since the isotope has a half-life of only 8 days, the detection is an indication of a rather recent release. As the Barents Observer adds, 'where the radioactivity is coming from is still a mystery.'” An “Arctic nuclear incident” has been rumored, but no details provided to date.


Norway's air filter station at Svanhovd near Russia's Kola Peninsula was first to measure an Iodine-131 spike at Finnmark in the second week of January 2017. Then within the next two weeks, Iodine-131 spikes were reported in Rovaniemi (Finnish Lapland), Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, France and Spain. There are no human health concerns at the levels measured, but the so far unanswered question is: Where did the radioactive Iodine-131 come from — and why?

I have high hopes for domestic beers from the Trappist systemail.