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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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rshow55 - 03:07pm Apr 20, 2002 EST (# 1566 of 17697)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Since undergraduate days, I've been concerned with the mathematics of coupled physical systems -- actually - working on building bridges from the measurable world to abstract math. For about the last ten years, it has been clear that that task is the task of getting modelling arithmetic that works in all cases. After working for a long time, much of it alongside Steve Kline of Stanford http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klinerec I found an error in the arithmetic of coupled physical models. The result (and paradigm conflict issue) I've devoted much of my life to, is described in S.J. Kline's letter http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/klinerec and can be summarized as follows:

. The interaction together over space of simpler physical effects produces emergent effects. These emergent effects are often measured directly by an experiment, without any need to understand how they occur. But emergent effects can also be calculated from models. For this calculation to be possible, emergent effects have to be represented in a numerical form that can be set out in an equation. The representation must satisfy all conditions of physical, dimensional, and logical consistency that apply to the case. Representations of emergent effects that occur over space must be set out in an algebraically reduced and dimensionally consistent form, defined over space - at unit scale for the measurement system used. Emergent effects, represented in this dimensionally consistent way, are real effects that act like other effects in modeling equations.

Here's an experimental fact:

. A thin walled plastic tube, filled with a conductive ionic solution and immersed in an ionic solution, is a simple model of a neural line, with channels closed. Such a neural line model has an “effective inductance” (the ratio of di/dt to dv/dx) more than times greater than electromagnetic inductance now thought to be the only link between di/dt and dv/dx in nerve. This effective inductance is due to an emergent property, due to the combination or line resistance and capacitance over space.

A summary of that, from an analytical point of view, is in http://xxx.lanl.gov/html/math-ph/9807015

But the result can also be modelled on a computer -- and when it is, using SPICE - the standard electrial circuit modelling program the existence of the new terms is shown -- and a basic error in a standard computer algorithm is also shown.

A REDERIVATION OF THE ELECTRICAL TRANSMISSION LINE EQUATIONS USING NETWORK THEORY SHOWS NEW TERMS THAT MATTER IN NEURAL TRANSMISSION. http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/kirch1

The SPICE program uses the standard finite integration algorithms people are now assuming -- and in the "neuron" case in http://www.wisc.edu/rshowalt/kirch1 that algorithm produces "crosseffects" that are incorrectly modelled -- very often numerically too small to matter, but effects that cannot be physically right (wholes don't equal sums of parts) and that must involve explosive errors - dangerous errors -- grossly misleading errors -- in cases not now being checked for.

rshow55 - 03:11pm Apr 20, 2002 EST (# 1567 of 17697)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Computational difficulties have been extreme in modelling -- and people have pushed computer capacities far beyond what anybody imagined could be done a few decades ago.

Many "invisible colleges" and large teams, all over the world, have deep committements to existing procedures - - enough that finding a mistake that is 350 years old in arithmetical modeling procedure is difficult -- and convincing people to acknowledge and look at the error is also difficult.

It has to be done step by step - and there are difficulties at many steps. Some of the steps have to be done "at once."

I was very interested in

Japanese Computer Is World's Fastest, as U.S. Falls Back By JOHN MARKOFF http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/20/technology/20COMP.html

" A Japanese laboratory has built the world's fastest computer, a machine that matches the raw processing power of the 20 fastest American computers combined."

That computer will be perfect for some things - - and is likely to produce gross errors in other calculations -- unless algorithms are corrected.

The difficultes in explaining what needs to be explained, and getting the persuasive force to actually get changes made, are much less than they were before, mostly because of the guidance I've gotten from lchic about persuasion and paradigm conflict.

But those difficulties are still challenging.

Part of the problem is logic -- and part of the problem involves force, as well.

The key human and organizational problems involved are similar to problems involved in dealing with the missile defense boondoggle. When a big group of people have made a deeply embedded mistake - for whatever reason -- how do you change it?

To figure out the complexity of the job, you'd almost have to do the things it takes to make a movie about getting the job done.

For many of the problems that stump people now -- for many of the things where we say "if only we could do the obvious" - and then do much worse -- there are problems of simultenaity, complexity, and human nature of similar forms. MD1231 rshow55 4/10/02 11:28am

I've seen some documentation in the last few days that highlights the difficulties of the problem in missile defense -- and I'll be posting some of it shortly.

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