is the electron ACTUALLY doing that, or was that simply a mathematical/logical proof that correlates highly with what we see?
Ummm. physics has been all about testing for discrepancies between the two for at least a century now. There's a nobel prize waiting for anyone who can show an electron not behaving itself in accordance with the standard model.
Wikipedia articles cite sources.
Exactly, WP is an encyclopedia, academics do not cite encyclopedias, never have, and most probably never will.
Can this claim even be proven or disproven?
Silly question on a nerd site, you don't "prove" anything with science, and Jurassic park was a movie, not a scientific model.
Back then the short cut they took probably saved them weeks in rendering time, and as you say, came out looking realistic. A scientific simulation would be comparing real data points to the output, it would be able to identify the "handful of leaders" that initiate each manoeuvre of a real flock, it would definitely not be a bunch of lab coats looking at the pretty pictures and nodding.
Disclaimer: I like Crichton's stories too, but he tends to write in "false document" style and every story has the same "science gone mad" plot.
Pollution occurs wherever there is life.
Indeed, the oxygen we breath is another life-form's pollution.
we suck at knowing things, even when those things are big enough for us to see
Welcome to the real world where imperfect knowledge has been enshrined in a very useful philosophy we call "Science".
Science is just highly refined common sense. The fact that the biblical plague of smallpox has not been seen in the wild for decades convincingly demonstrates science knows enough to control it, what more do you need to know? Sure it may pop up somewhere after all these years, but even if that very unlikely* event was to occur we have already demonstrated we know how to deal with it and stop it spreading. So even though we can never know for sure that every last smallpox bug has been killed, we do know that as long as our current knowledge is passed on to the next generation, smallpox will never again cause human miseries of biblical proportions. This scant knowledge also tells us that smallpox (alone) would be a stupid choice for a biological weapon.
very unlikely* - Without special care smallpox does not survive for very long outside of a human host, the human body is it's unique natural habitat.
hi mr thinly-sliced, thank you this is awesome advice, really really appreciated.
If you think the system is working, ask someone who's waiting for a prompt.