What science discovery would you explain to a famous past scientist?

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, NSEP said:

So i know Jules Verne isn't really a scientist, but i will still tell him about the Apollo Moon Missions.

You would make him unhappy and force to buy all his books about the lunar cannon, like he did this with the first edition of Nautilus, after he realized that they use torpedoes while Nautilus has just a ram _{"Shame! Shame!"}.

Edited January 18, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

6 hours ago, ARS said:

Going back in time to tell Baron Kelvin about aerodynamic and prove to him that heavier-than-air flight is possible and practical

He's perfectly aware. Lilienthal performed his flights in his lifetimes, model gliders existed much earlier. Explain to him a modern glider that can reach the stratosphere, dynamic soaring, thermal flight, foehn waves, squall lines, etc. My question if i were him: "Which materials are so light and strong for such an enterprise ?"

 

 

To Galilei: He and Kepler were contemporaries. No need to tell him that he was right, and that's not exactly current knowledge. Current knowledge is n-body problems, gravitational slingshots (no, that's old), relativity in the presence of large masses, etc. That's what we should tell him, if we could ;-) First most of us don't know enough ourselves, second he may not want to listen because of fear of being sent to the pyre. And then get to KBOs and TNOs, planets around other stars, and quite up to date interstellar asteroids as old as who knows. Possible questions:: "how is age determined ?", "how do you get to speeds, masses and composition ?", "what are different kinds of orbits you mentioned ?"). But that is current knowledge. And i fear he'll have you cornered soon or he will just not understand.

Hubble: no need to explain the Galaxy to him, he found many others outside ours. Explain him the Hubble constant and how we get to it, the expansion of the universe, dark matter, energy, standard candles to measure distances, etc. He knew the concepts, he founded them. He surely knows more than most of us, be prepared to stand there with the finger in the mouth on his second question.

Newton was covered by @PB666 above.

Einstein: he perfectly knew about black holes, Schwarzschild described the concept with the help of his GR. It is just that his formulas reached a division by zero, that's all. I think there are not many people living today who could conclusively describe to him the concepts of modern day physics, except slap his back and say "Well done !". Which would not be new to him either.

Edited January 18, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

Also get to Greg Mendel and tell him about GMO.

[James Kerman]

I would love to see Robert Hooke's reaction to the fact we still use Newtonian physics today.  Also DNA would blow his mind.

[tomf]

Someone has already mentioned Newton, but I would like to explain to him the modern periodic table of the elements.

If I could convince him to give up alchemy and instead search for proof of the table he might not have wasted most of his life on searching for the philosophers stone and instead kick started chemistry roughly a century early.

Option B might be Thomas Midgley and some studies into the effects of tetraetyllead on brain development, and CFCs on the ozone layer.

[PB666]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Also get to Greg Mendel and tell him about GMO.

Umm, tell gregor mendel, once, to Go talk at the British Royal Society.

1 hour ago, tomf said:

Someone has already mentioned Newton, but I would like to explain to him the modern periodic table of the elements.

If I could convince him to give up alchemy and instead search for proof of the table he might not have wasted most of his life on searching for the philosophers stone and instead kick started chemistry roughly a century early.

Option B might be Thomas Midgley and some studies into the effects of tetraetyllead on brain development, and CFCs on the ozone layer.

How about convincing the Emperor Constantine to adopt the metric system and at the same time disclose that the earth is approximately 40,000 meters in circumference in all directions.
Lets see what else, that the earth is not the center of the universe but that earth does have a center it orbits the sun like all the other planets.

[Green Baron]

15 minutes ago, PB666 said:

 40,000 meters in circumference in all directions.

He might even believe that

Edit: ... but it would be mean :-)

Edited January 18, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

Do not forget to explain to Constantine The Emperor that this unit (meter metre mètre) is established by the Great French Revolution after cutting off the head of another emperor.

(Just because he didn't hurry with this unit adoption).

Edited January 18, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

Yep, that was the missing kill-o part ;-)

Edited January 18, 2018 by Green Baron

[Kerwood Floyd]

I would talk to Darwin and tell him first about the work of his contemporary, Mendel, and then the work of Thomas Hunt Morgan. No need to go any further than that. Just enough to give a solid modern genetics basis to Darwin's work.

[Superfluous J]

I don't know about a scientist per se but I always thought it would be cool to go bank really far, like ancient Greece or Egypt, and show as many people as would watch a simple cistern, pipe, and  water faucet.

Then come back to the present day and see if we're living on Mars yet.

2 hours ago, PB666 said:

How about convincing the Emperor Constantine to adopt the metric system and at the same time disclose that the earth is approximately 40,000 meters in circumference in all directions.

Or even better, convince people that thumbs aren't important and we should use a base 8 system. Then computers and we would not have to do so much muckery to convert between our preferred number systems.

[Green Baron]

9 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

I don't know about a scientist per se but I always thought it would be cool to go bank really far, like ancient Greece or Egypt, and show as many people as would watch a simple cistern, pipe, and  water faucet.

Greece is bronze age and younger, Egypt starts in neolithic. They had these things. Well, the faucet was a wooden slider because no iron. But you could be a local hero if you showed the wheel and cart to the pre-Bronze age Egyptians (it comes up in early bronze age), so they could make their pyramids just a little higher and shinier and beat a little heftier and faster on their neighbours.

But be aware that is was incredibly easy to do something inappropriate for one of the deities, or hit the wrong time when worshiping one deity was out of style and another one came en vogue, as dictated by the current leaders.

[Scotius]

I'd prefer to load couple of sacks full of potatoes, maize and beans and drop them in some Neolithic village in Southern Europe (preferably in the middle of awesomely fertile Pannonian Plain) - with instructions on how to plant them and process the yield of course. Sadly, it probably would not  solve the world's problems - but it would give our ancestors a nice headstart.

And after doing that, i would jump to  Middle Ages city of Frombork, visit Nicolaus Copernicus (y'know - heliocentric model guy), give him two thumbs up with "Dude, you're totally on the right track with heliocentrism. Keep it up!" thrown in I might also mention something about ellipses he should use instead of perfect circles - so he could make his model more streamlined and elegant by doing away with all the weird epicycles and deferentes.

[kerbiloid]

And teach the Phoenicians to use Unicode instead of their pictos.
Also, Egyptians should not be messing around.

And combine this with the mentioned octal system and teach the Sumerians to draw the cunei as octo-binary code (vertical scratch - 1, horizontal - 0, combine them in octets).

2 minutes ago, Scotius said:

with instructions on how to plant them and process the yield of course

written ones...

Edited January 18, 2018 by kerbiloid

[PB666]

23 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

I don't know about a scientist per se but I always thought it would be cool to go bank really far, like ancient Greece or Egypt, and show as many people as would watch a simple cistern, pipe, and  water faucet.

Then come back to the present day and see if we're living on Mars yet.

Or even better, convince people that thumbs aren't important and we should use a base 8 system. Then computers and we would not have to do so much muckery to convert between our preferred number systems.

Oh my, that would opened pandora's box. Why chose fingers at all, you could say Man = 1 and Woman = 0 based on the possession or not of a single digit and watch watch what happened to the lovely christian churches of the 4th century AD. Sure you would have a universal binary system and utter social chaos everytime you need to do some math . . . . .

We are endowed with all but universal counting systems (some of the near-sighted probably could not see there toes) and along the way this was extended to the abacus, but as long as folks were playing with their own fingers, there would be normality in the world. (hmmmmm, though I guess that didn't stop the greeks).

 

[Scotius]

Pictures. On clay tablets Like, they should boil the fat tubers, instead of trying to eat poisonous stalks - like one British cook tried to do while preparing novelty dinner for Queen Elizabeth I

[kerbiloid]

9 minutes ago, PB666 said:

you could say Man = 1 and Woman = 0

As in Semitic languages m. usually has no suffix, while f. is generally ended with -th, there would be a discussion: Either m = 1, f = 0, or "-th" means +1, and m (default) = 0, f (appended) = 1.

Edited January 18, 2018 by kerbiloid

[PB666]

6 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Pictures. On clay tablets Like, they should boil the fat tubers, instead of trying to eat poisonous stalks - like one British cook tried to do while preparing novelty dinner for Queen Elizabeth I

Well you have to be careful about introducing new wonderful technologies to the medieval Europe, they burned people who kept cats, much to the delight of Yersinia pestis

People often credit Columbus with discovering America, both the Basque, Norse, Chinese, Inuit. . . .discovered America before Columbus, what Columbus did was create a methodology for bringing Mexican food to Europe.

14 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

As in Semitic languages m. usually has no suffix, while f. is generally ended with -th, there would be a discussion: Either m = 1, f = 0, or "-th" means +1, and m (default) = 0, f (appended) = 1.

That would make sense in inverted space.

[kerbiloid]

7 minutes ago, PB666 said:

That would make sense in inverted space.

In real space they didn't have 0.

[tomf]

7 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Well you have to be careful about introducing new wonderful technologies to the medieval Europe, they burned people who kept cats, much to the delight of Yersinia pestis

 

Although the latest research is apparently suggesting that it was spread by human fleas, not rats http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42690577

[kerbiloid]

2 minutes ago, tomf said:

Although the latest research is apparently suggesting that it was spread by human fleas, not rats http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42690577

Interesting, are the fleas biting us and cats in summer, human or unhuman.

[PB666]

1 minute ago, tomf said:

Although the latest research is apparently suggesting that it was spread by human fleas, not rats http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42690577

But cats kept the number of flea carriers down. There was a study done in England that found that even house cats that spend time outside that don't eat what the kill, kill something like 800 animals per year. Reduce the number of animals carrying Zoonotic organisms and the time between interactions and you can modulate the growth of the plague.

The plague in Europe exhibited some rather peculiar behaviors, rather than tapering after the first major epidemics, for a period of about 150 years is managed to kill 20-30% of the population in episodes of about one per 20 years per area. I will look at the link.

So what they are basically arguing is that once the plague gets into human population human lice is better at spreading disease than the rodent borne disease. A counter point however is that we already have a means of spreading Yp from humans, aside from fleas there is also the airborne spread of disease in families which at the time of the plaque as 100% untreated fatality rate as opposed to the 40-60% fatality rate of zoonotic carried disease.

Quote

Several species of rodents serve as the main reservoir for Y. pestis in the environment. In the steppes, the natural reservoir is believed to be principally the marmot. In the western United States, several species of rodents are thought to maintain Y. pestis. However, the expected disease dynamics have not been found in any rodent. A variety of species of rodents are known to have a variable resistance, which could lead to an asymptomatic carrier status. -wikipedia

And that says alot, the Typhoid Marys of the bubonic world are rodents. But the reason that rodents get blamed stems from the fact that in some cases a counter-selective agent (a toxic drug, a pesticide, . . .) that doesn't eventually kill all of a thing can turn the agent into a resource. This happens relatively quickly with soil-borne bacteria. Rodents are particularly vulnerable because they are near the bottom of the food chain and because of that carrying a bug that is fatal to something that eats you provides kin selection for social animals. Thus if a big mountain lion kills a nice fat rat, it can die from the plaque and before it dies it might transmit plague to its offspring, its mate. It works well unless the thing that is killing you really does not need to kill you to survive. This means if I feed my cat, and the cat goes and kills rats while after  making lots of babies (an in a typical case the fleas bail after then animal has died and will bite anything, can't tell if its a good rat until it bite the new host). The cat might die but I am forcing cats into the system (this is a forcing model, that is what drives artificial selection) independent of the prey-rats ability to support a cat economy. So that not all the time are cats eating rats and exposing themselves to disease. A good example is at a port that cats eat fish scraps, they breed, and when ships are in port they catch rats coming on or off the ship. Its really no different from Racoons living in your trees eating your garbage are also going to eat all the pecans when they fruit. So that overtime the ability for rats to communicate disease rapidly falls as life expectancy and density falls.

How do you translate this, a predator based active rodenticidal system reduces the initial chance of disease, but if the disease manages to peak, may increase the chance of disease, but this is not so important to the system if the outbreaks are pocketed because this overall prevents the joining of pockets.

I

[kerbiloid]

Cats eat rats.
Dogs hurt cats.

Conclusion? Medieval thiefs and hunters are the root of the problem. Dogs against the former, and hounds for the latter.

 

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

The cat might die but I am forcing cats into the system (this is a forcing model, that is what drives artificial selection) independent of the prey-rats ability to support a cat economy.

Making a cat-overdose for the rats.

[PB666]

27 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Cats eat rats.
Dogs hurt cats.

Conclusion? Medieval thiefs and hunters are the root of the problem. Dogs against the former, and hounds for the latter.

 

Making a cat-overdose for the rats.

The plague was never much of a problem here even though Yerseni Pestis did move through the area prehistorically, but we could have. We are in a bit of a different situation, In Europe there were only wolves and no jackel-forms. Here in the SW we had both wolves and coyotes and they tended not to intermix. On top of that most of Europe is above 50' north, so there are few poisonous snakes. The coyote, in and of itself is a 95% rodentivore (although there is some concern that there is admixture with other canids resulting in more wolf-like predators). So if you eliminate the coyote from the system you get spikes. In that late 60s early 70s while birds were still suffering from DDT they decided to start killing coyotes because some ranchers thought they were pests so the put cyanide laced meat out for coyotes (a very bad idea environmentally). And they did drop the population, but since rattlesnakes only eat what they killed their population bounced up and  . . . . .Rattlesnake roundups. Rattlesnakes don't eat your cattle, they just hibernate in your barn, in the dresser drawers in your house, in your outhouse . . . .needless to say very inconvenient. And so DDT is gone and coyotes are left to live in peace, mostly. What makes the coyotes useful is that at night they cover huge ranges, often miles from their dens and they travel very quickly and quietly in search of prey.

Edited January 18, 2018 by PB666

[Green Baron]

8 minutes ago, PB666 said:

The plague was never much of a problem here even though Yerseni Pestis did move through the area prehistorically,

I'm interested, could you point me to something to read about that (not Wikipedia) ? Did it affect human population as well ?

Afaik origin, spread and cause of the plague (black death in 14th century) is at least principally understood, last i read was a study that compared historic DNA samples from different sites between Asia and Europe that showed and confirmed that indeed Y.p. was responsible. America wasn't part of the known world by then (sorry, guys :-)).