Cecil Moore wrote:
Michael Coslo wrote:
The cesium standard is defined as "in the absence of external influences.

The Catholic Church said the same thing in the
16th century. Paraphrasing them: In the absence
of external influences, the Earth is the center
of the universe. That's true to this very day.
Take away all the external influences and the
Earth is indeed the center of the universe.


I didn't know that the Catholic church even knew about atomic clocks at
that time, Cecil! Something new to learn every day. 8^)

You slippery sloped from an atomic clock to ancient religion on me.

"in the absence of incontrovertible proof to the contrary, the world
was created in the fall of 4004 B.C." ;^)


One of the things that help us in the determination of cosmological
age, and all scientific endeavors is that most things end up fitting
together pretty well. Atomic decay tends to mesh together with
determination of the age of artifacts. It proved itself on items of
known age. The concept simply works. That's just one example.

To say that all things have been discovered is naive hubris though. I'm
still waiting for evidence of proton decay, without it the Big Bang has
a Big Problem. But it doesn't make sense to throw everything we do know
away because of that one issue - at least until something better comes
along that fits with what we do know.

Let's drop away from cosmology for a moment..


Take say, number 14 bare wire, and make a dipole for some arbitrary
frequency. at some arbitrary height.

Raise the antenna and lower the antenna. Do the antenna characteristics
stay the same?

Substitute insulated number 14 wire for the bare wire at the same
length. Do the characteristics stay the same?


Of course not. The differences are easily measurable, or at least
easily modelable.

That isn't religion, it fits in with what we do know about physics.
That VF changes depending on the insulating material doesn't mean that
the original characteristics are null and void. Just means they have
changed in a manner that is predictable, and for which cause is known.

No Papal Bull required! ;^)


- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -