Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Halo on August 21, 2007, 05:58:24 PM
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A recent movie, 21 Grams, takes its title from a theory around 1900 that the human soul weighs 21 grams. Some guy supposedly weighed bodies before and after death to reach that conclusion.
Obviously the theory didn't catch on; e.g., did you ever hear of it previously?
I mentioned this as an interesting farout sermon possibility to a preacher friend, but he said that was new to him and immediately dissed the idea with several Biblical quotations.
I was present when my Mother and my Father-in-Law died several years apart, and was impressed with the departure of life (i.e., spirit, soul, animus, energy) and how their corpses literally were just shells of what they were, temporary Earthly vehicles for their life force.
Instead of opening another discussion about life and death and souls, let's confine this one to a more secular topic: can everything be weighed and measured, including all energy, light, air, heat, anything you can think of?
Conversely, is there anything we can perceive or imagine that cannot be weighed and measured in some form, however fine, e.g., trillionth of a gram and smaller?
And if you simply must foray into Lala Land, okay, share some quantification vibes about the life force, spirit, animus, soul.
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I have heard of this before. Not the exact weight, just the difference in before and after death weights...
Kind of cool.
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Well, I do believe that everything within our physical universe can be measured, both matter and energy which probably are the same. But, measurement can never truly be accurate in a universe that changes constantly with time.
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Which brings up an interesting question. Does energy have weight or mass?
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Last I heard, we're pretty sure the laws of physics are constant. I've recently read some pretty dry articles about the speed of light possibly varying, but as far as I could tell it's nothing dramatic in our scale of time.
The most precise weight measurements I've heard of are down at molecular level, depending on the applications (e.g. reliably weighing the difference between individual cells).
Mass can be infered from a number of clues, such as light lensing in astrophysics, or the wobble of a rotating body out in space, etc.
Lala land speculation: I find the everyday routines of homo sapiens a bit too primitive. If there's something out of this world (universe, perceived dimensions), it would make consciousness make a lot more sense. I just can't buy that something as "evolved" as a soul would be limited in foundation to sensory inputs and their associated basic algorithms (yearning for physical safety, fight or flight instincts, freudian mechanics, jungian archetypes, etc) as hardwired and nothing more.
An idea I've read is that dark energy is only the effect of an influence from another dimension... Could consciousness, if it is in fact anything special, come from there?
I just can't get over the possibilities and immensity of the universe, math, philosophy, etc, not being appreciated by such a large proportion of the species.
Photons have no mass.
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Originally posted by Dichotomy
Which brings up an interesting question. Does energy have weight or mass?
Energy = Mass * Speed of Light * Speed of Light
The answer to your question? They are equivalent.
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In 1907 a Massachusetts physician named Duncan MacDougall tried to find out by weighing six dying patients before and after their death. He reported in the medical journal American Medicine that there was a 21-gram difference. Even though his measurements were crude and varying, and no one has been able to replicate his findings, it has nonetheless grown to urban legendary status as the weight of the soul.
http://64.233.169.104/u/SkepticsSociety?q=cache:4enrnOYWCBoJ:www.skeptic.com/reading_room/debates/afterlife.html+21+grams&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&ie=UTF-8 (http://64.233.169.104/u/SkepticsSociety?q=cache:4enrnOYWCBoJ:www.skeptic.com/reading_room/debates/afterlife.html+21+grams&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&ie=UTF-8)
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Originally posted by moot
Photons have no mass.
Much debated.
If photons do have mass then it has all of it that there is to be had.
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If photons have no mass then how do photon torpedoes work?
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1. If something cannot be measured in some fashion, how can we know it's there?
2. A photon torpedo is a device that detonates, and the explosion is, I dunno, fully converted into pure photons. Matter+Antimatter explosions would be pure photons, so I guess that's as good a retcon as any.
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Originally posted by moot
I've recently read some pretty dry articles about the speed of light possibly varying, but as far as I could tell it's nothing dramatic in our scale of time.
They have gotten light to go so slow it has stopped.
http://www.seas.harvard.edu/haulab/press/HauPress_02.htm
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Originally posted by Halo
A recent movie, 21 Grams, takes its title from a theory around 1900 that the human soul weighs 21 grams. Some guy supposedly weighed bodies before and after death to reach that conclusion.
This is kinda funny in a morbid way, since we lose both bladder and sphincter control at death you will weigh less within a minute after you die.
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Photons have energy, but not mass.
Yeah, people crap and pee when they die. Thats probably the 21 gram difference.
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Originally posted by Dichotomy
Which brings up an interesting question. Does energy have weight or mass?
lolz When was the last time you had a physics class? :aok
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I can't wrap my head around McGroin's proof, but then I haven't slept in 2 days straight.
Thrawn, I remember that one. I meant C the speed of light in a vacuum, the constant. There was a bit about the cosmological constant that went hand in hand with the idea which made it more intuitive, but I can't recall it at the moment.
Btw, the German report of the speed of light being broken is pretty suspect. The photons didn't travel the distance in the experiment, only tunneled through it. Some similar experiments had photons exiting the tunnel mass before they'd completely entered it. I remember there was a good explanation for this not being extraordinary.
The German report, though, apparently wasn't measured right, or something (forgot the specifics of it too).
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(QUOTE) Yeah, people crap and pee when they die. Thats probably the 21 gram difference. (UNQUOTE)
Mmmm, yeah, but unless on a starvation diet, I bet I could exude a pound or two. :eek:
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Originally posted by AquaShrimp
Photons have energy, but not mass.
Yeah, people crap and pee when they die. Thats probably the 21 gram difference.
I fart bigger then 21 grams
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For perspective, 21 grams supposedly are about the weight of a hummingbird.
A gram is 1/1000th of a kilogram (duh) which equals 2.2046226 pounds.
One gram equals 0.046297 pound.
A gram is the mass of water in a cube one cm on each side.
21 grams x 0.046297 pound = 0.972237 pound, so a pound weighs about 10 souls?
No, that can't be right. Somebody help out here with the decimals.
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I have sold my soul, so in theory i should not loose 21 grams when i die.
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Originally posted by SkyRock
lolz When was the last time you had a physics class? :aok
never :D isn't it obvious?
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Originally posted by moot
I find the everyday routines of homo sapiens a bit too primitive. If there's something out of this world (universe, perceived dimensions), it would make consciousness make a lot more sense. I just can't buy that something as "evolved" as a soul would be limited in foundation to sensory inputs and their associated basic algorithms (yearning for physical safety, fight or flight instincts, freudian mechanics, jungian archetypes, etc) as hardwired and nothing more.
An idea I've read is that dark energy is only the effect of an influence from another dimension... Could consciousness, if it is in fact anything special, come from there?
I just can't get over the possibilities and immensity of the universe, math, philosophy, etc, not being appreciated by such a large proportion of the species.
Photons have no mass.
Very nice post Moot. It is only a matter of time before we determine that photons do, in fact, have mass. I never have bought into the distorted path idea that Einstein's relativity proposes for the change in direction of photons around a large object. I believe they have mass, and it is only a matter of time before we invent a way to guage that mass. Unfortunately the process is slow in coming but this might be a start:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4474
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There is one law.
A measurement will always affect the measure.
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If any of you are interested, read up on KIRLIAN photography.
Its like an x-ray of the body's energies. The amazing thing is that any living thing emits an 'aura' that this technique captures. Even more amazing is that even after a piece of that organism has been removed, there is STILL an aura for the missing part !!!
You take a leaf for example. Take a kirliogram 'snapshot' of it.
Cut the leaf in half.
Put half of the leaf in a different kirliogram machine a day later..
and the kirliogram will shot the half of the leaf exactly like the original picture.. BUT... the missing half of the leaf is ALSO there! Just that its a bit faint compared to the 'actual' leaf half that was physically there.
They did the same with a man who had lost a finger in an accident a week ago. The kirliogram showed all fingers. The missing finger was there but fainter.
Really neat stuff.
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My soul weighs 28 grams. But, I have a lot of soul.
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Tac, not a single result from google, yahoo, answers.com or in wikipedia for 'kirliogram'.
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My soul is of average length but above-average girth.
At least that's what my asian friends tell me.
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Originally posted by SkyRock
lolz When was the last time you had a physics class? :aok
Some day when I die I hope to be like SkyRock....Brain Dead.
J/K
Mac
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As far as I'm concerned, if it only weighs 21 grams, I've been ripped off for 7 grams again.
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Originally posted by Dichotomy
Which brings up an interesting question. Does energy have weight or mass?
mass is just stored energy says Einstein i believe.
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Originally posted by Dichotomy
Which brings up an interesting question. Does energy have weight or mass?
Ever here of E=MC2?
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Do you guys mind? Some of us try to relax the braincells after work... jeebuz
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Ok, time for the expert....
A person's Soul weighs EXACTLY 15.23 grams.
This is based on the fact that once I extract it from said person, I have to peel away or "strip" vast quantities of a protective barrier or "Shield" to get to the Meat and Potatoes so to speak. Originally "out of the box" it's weight's vary. And the more good things a person has done in their life, the heavier it weighs. Now take me for example... SoulTakr, I don't have one, that's how I know and that is why I do what I do(feeding off all yous guys)
I hope that everyone is now satisfied w/ the correct answer and will look to me more often than "Ask Jeeves" or Google :)
Have a nice day :aok
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:lol