hymen0ptera

Sound waves are changes in the distribution of particles within a volume over time. The sound wave itself is a byproduct of the particles compressing closer together or stretching farther apart.

You might be in love with the idea of describing an equation that frames the gradient of distribution, and the nature of it's propagation through a medium, but the sound wave is the manner in which the gaseous molecular constituents of the air are set in motion relative to one another. They get closer, they move apart, the changes occur at different places in the medium, at different times, and do so at a certain velocity, in sequence as interactions are forced upon the medium.

Indeed, the reason sound waves travel at the speeds we observe, is because that's how fast the very molecules themselves, comprising the air, are moving at the temperature and pressure of the environment.

Meanwhile, what color is a beam with a wavelength of one nanometer? Would you characterize the color as "soft x-ray"?

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/feynman-says-photons-a...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect

I think, in most cases, the sound is omitted, since it's often the least interesting aspect of the event, and being a little underwhelming, almost detracts from the visuals.

They aren't like loud, irregular rolling thunderclaps, with interesting sweet spots and curious deviations or oddities. They don't rumble and crackle or anything. One bang, a trail off of distant reverberation, and not much else. You have to figure audio equipment doesn't do the explosions much justice during playback either, in terms of volume and possibly seismic effects.

It's just a single report, detached and delayed by the speed of sound, and the mandatory distance from the blast itself. The accuracy of this depiction is valuable, because it informs the viewer of what it would be like to witness a test first-hand, but as entertaining media that demonstrates the noises that relate to the visuals, the timing delay leaves an impatient gap between cause and effect.

To provide improved legibility, the videos would probably want to synchronize the auditory report of the bang with the imagery of the explosion, and push the sound backwards by a number of seconds to remove the delay between sight and sound, due to distance.

Interestingly enough, as a fun side effect of radial motion, the lateral motion of shadows can transit an object exceeding speeds faster than the speed of light constant, C.

From Wikipedia:

  Light spots and shadows

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light

Of course, the shadow must already be cast, in a continuous stream of uniquitous photons, which all need to be arriving upon the reflective surface at the speed of light, before the shadow can transit the surface within the area of effect.

Since gravity is a symptom of the presence of matter, gravitational changes ride along with matter travelling as fast as the matter (responsible for this gravitational symptom) can possibly move.

At best, only the destruction of matter can move at the speed of light, so a reduction of gravity may propagate, as fast as the dispersal of the dematerialization and subsequent radiation.

Accumulation of mass as a knock-on pile-up of massive particles would need to be studied, to assess how quickly the shadow of newly created matter can induce its respective gravitational phenomenon. Figure star nurseries and supernovae events (and similar generative or cataclysmic reactions) would be the place to look. LIGO studies try to do exactly that, but the investigators seem to relish conflating an interpretation that favors signal transmission, and thus "particle/wave duality" because math.

Gravity-as-a-wave, meanwhile would be sort of like an illusory sound-as-a-wave being a byproduct of kinetic energy in a material aggregate serving as a bystander medium of propagation. Sound is not it's own "force" although we can readily recognize the phenomenon as a principle that behaves with similar attributes, parameters and effects as observed elsewhere, in other fundamental systems.

That LIGO instruments can detect gravitational influence in one part of the apparatus, before the other part of the apparatus registers the phenomenon, is really not unlike saying dominos demonstrate gravitational waves, because toppling the first domino does not topple the last domino instantaneously.

That photons can be influenced by a side-effect of material accumulation, bending or altering their path of travel probably says something about the photon or the environment being travelled through, more than it does about space and time.

  A gravitational constant that is the same 
  everywhere in the universe and is incompatible 
  with a fifth force.

As a constant, that means that its invariance is significant, in the same way the speed of light is significant. There is some externality pegging the phenomena we notice, at the value we observe. Perhaps some sort of Planck-level absolute fact, which is irreducible in the same way that the concept of color doesn't exist very much beneath 400 nanometers (violet/near-ultraviolet), since color is only an abstraction of our eyeballs and the language we use to describe our sensations.

There's a lot of hysteria surrounding these freebie swag items, enough that you have to wonder if either exactly this sort of reaction was expected, and their laughing at exactly the expected level of fear and paranoia produced at the mere sight of a USB jack... or... they could only but roll their eyes, as they dropped a USB device into the mix out of curiosity to see if there would be any reaction at all, expecting possibly a muted, cool brush off, unconcerned about exploits, and instead caught ten or one hundred times the wave of hysteria, for something they might have internally estimated would be rated as being perceived as a mild security hazard.

Seriously, this has all the alarmist fear mongering of the Cuban embassy sonic weapon mystery, but none of the smoking gun who-dunnit clues.

People are going to be chasing their tails on this one, wondering if the fan rotors spin at resonating speeds to give off infra-sonic beam-forming geolocation signals, and that's after they sample scrapings from 1000 different components in a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer only to find that they were some standard chinese USB components, purchased in bulk orders months ago, but had arrived too late for Olympics swag and were basically left-overs.

It's funny, but I think the volume of this knee-jerk reaction caused more damage than an actual attack could have.

If North Korea was going to try and swindle it's way onto targeted USB interfaces, I'd have to imagine that they'd attempt a level of indirection (at least one), and launder the swag through a secondary shell entity, like some shady third-world press corps gadfly to the event.

If they hadn't thought of that before (even though I'm sure they already do think that way), this hair-on-fire reaction has certainly taught them to do so, unconditionally, going forward.

It doesn't sound like they actually compared apples to apples by performing the same test as a modern replication of results though.

A similar apparatus is not named or sited, when noting the modern equivalent. Does that matter? Couldn't there be side-effects for measure reation time to different stimuli?

Also, did modern 1941 measurements operate with the benefit of newer advancements, such as high-speed cinematography to produce objective slow-motion footage?

Actually, they both do the same thing, but attack different sides of the mood slope.

Which you'd know, if you ever stopped to consider how to adjust your mood with either.

Caffeine introduces anxiety and irritability on downslope, after about two half-lives, or 12-ish hours (6 hour half life). On the up slope, caffeine provides a long slowly declining period of alertness and performance. The initial buzz comes on strong and tapers off over time.

People seek caffeine to perform. But a slow sinking feeling appears near the end of the day.

Nicotine modifies mood on the other side of the bend, with it's presence evening out irritability with immediate relief. The trail off goes unnoticed until a sudden urge kicks in, to bump one's self back up onto the plateau.

Nicotine is sought to cure or cool an immediate pang, which leaves the impression of easing into relaxation, which degrades silently until suddenly noticed as an urge to re-up.

The perception of nicotine is downtime, even though the dosage process and serum curve is the usual spike and tapered downslope, people learn modify the nicotine downslope differently, by catching the drop-off before cravings become desperate.

Which is why cigarettes are designed as they are, and achieve product success the way they do. Metering doses at an almost hourly rate, with twenty dose packs marketed to afford exactly that behavior.

Coffee, as a liquid, is readily either sipped or chugged as needed, and has different preparation and consumption habits, so its marketing is different.

Caffeine's downslope is handled differently, since the withdrawal effects, are separated by longer distances of up to 48 hours, and because circadian rhythms are more drastically effected. Consuming in the late afternoon results in insomnia, so the better choice is to cure the anxious late day mood disruptions with food and alcohol, and stave off withdrawal (vasodilation migraines, etc) the next morning.

The Victorians.

Kind of an artificial make-believe people set.

Better to suppose "some" and not generalize for the universe of all possible people.

Furthermore, nowhere is the process of measurement, or quality measured, noted. Is it simple reflex tests (tapping the knee with a small rubber mallet) or something else?

This, just as we find out that sometimes, authorized "apps" are just proxies for mechanical turks, and people's eyes are reading your messages. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446459

It feels like there's a premeditated process, here, in terms of timing.

1. Tobacco Cigarettes emerge as public health scare in the late 1990's.

2. McDonaldsization of Coffee via Starbucks in the late 1990's.

3. Cigarettes taxed and regulated with punishing costs and counter-media-manipulation.

4. Bindings introduced to market coffee with free wi-fi, boosting high-end coffee's incidental exposure to novice internet users at a time when caffeine is very-nearly required to negotiate the ever-expanding terrain of new technologies. (it's just good business, of course)

5. Millions of former nicotine addicts herded away from nicotine to expensive, premium high dose caffeine alternatives, serving as stimulant to wean many down off of nicotine cravings with new habits.

6. 20 years later, with ordinary tobacco cigarettes habits all-but-destroyed, across two generations of former users, and new technologies now well established, coffee habits can wind down. A mild campaign against coffee is introduced. See: acrylamide, poor stock performance, racial sensitivity incidents in liminal zones of large franchise chain restaurants.

7. Emerging technologies, now ready for maturity may be re-introduced with new players. These entities work to re-normalize a newly engineered and tested concept in managed synthetic addiction, with status symbol oriented marketing plays.

Why vaping is anything is beyond me, but I feel like this represents the fundamentals of a broader subversive program to phase out agricultural-plantation-oriented modes of daily-use otc psychoactives that play vital roles in common universal social norms that cut across a wide array of global cultural customs.

There's one theory, notably absent, from the entire cavalcade of possibilities that no one seems to highlight...

1. D.B. Cooper boards the plane.

2. D.B. Cooper reveals a bomb, and with it, his intent to kill everyone on the plane, placing himself in control of their jeopardy.

3. He then, demands assistance, which involves the FBI. This, after placing everyone's life in danger, with the threat of violence.

4. The thing he asks for is absurd, and anyone who has ever used a parachute would raise an eyebrow at accepting equipment from a hostile entity. Even the FBI.

5. Once handed to him, there will be no way for him to look at the equipment, to see if it works, within the confined space of the plane.

6. As long as the money is real, someone making demands like this would expect the parachute to be real too. Especially, providing that their experience and status as a parachutist remains at novice level, with no specialization for preparing equipment.

7. The FBI could have easily provided him with real money and a sabotaged parachute, leaving him to plummet to his death. And why not?

There are obvious risks to this play. What if D.B. Cooper had been smart enough to unpack and inspect the parachute before jumping out of the plane, and then, what if he noticed the sabotage and blew up the plane?

That's the primary risk, there are other risks, and alternative options in the FBI's corner in this story.

They could have also opted to have the fighter jets circle back and gun D.B. Cooper down, before a working parachute reached the ground.

But, no matter what, no one seems to have considered the possibility of a vengeful off-the-record FBI. Which, of course, we all know, definitely existed back then.

This continues to invert the premise. The intersection of appealing things and functional things is more interesting that either taken in isolation.