Talk:Speed of Dark

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Occupation

He wasn't a programmer. He worked at a phamaceutical company. there's a difference.

He refers to himself as a "bioinformatics specialist" (page 298 of Del Rey - Reprint edition (June 28, 2005)). He does indeed work at a pharmaceutical company, analyzing patterns (many references throughout the book). --eLowar 16:17, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I changed "programmer" reference, just read the book and he's not a "programmer". He analyzes processes using a pattern generation computer application, apparently (though not explicitly stated) to design chemical reactions that will take compounds from one form or state to another. Possible occupation titles could be Chemist, for example, but based on what Lou says about his job he comes up with processes to go from one (chemical?) pattern to another. Voideater 00:19, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A "bioinformatics specialist" usually is a programmer. Strictly speaking, bioinformatics is the use of computer tools to study a biological phenomenon, but if you're not developing said tools as you go along, it's just biology, not bioinformatics. Think of it like this: if you develop a word processor, you're a programmer; if you just use one, you're a secretary.

Most bioinformaticists are biologists who have learned to program and suck at it. Some are programmers who have learned biology and suck at it. A few have an equal grounding in both fields. Unless they work in teams that combine both skills, people in the first group will have an easier time of it that those in the second group, because ultimately their results will be evaluated by biologists. The unfortunate consequence is that a lot of bioinformatics software sucks.

DES (talk) 22:55, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to add - Elizabeth Moon was once a computer programmer in the USMC and was later trained as a biologist (behavioral biology and wildlife management, IIRC). I don't know if this had any bearing on her choice of occupation for the novel's protagonist, as bioinformatics didn't really exist back then, but it's still an interesting coincidence.

DES (talk) 23:02, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

...Huh?

I just reverted three edits by Spiffytech, wherin he/she replaced the page with this:

The speed of dark is the speed of light (186,000 miles per second)

The speed of light is the speed at which a ray of light approaches any given point in space. Since darkness is the absence of light, the speed of dark is the speed at which a light leaves any given point in space. This speed is equivalent to the speed of light.

Now, I'm no expert on such things but it sounds like nonsense to me (If it isn't, let's discuss here how to get it included). Possible Original Research and all that too, completely unsourced, and so on and so forth. However I won't call it vandalism: He/she did put "See also The Speed of Dark (Novel)" (now a redirect here) at the top of the page, and moved this article there (although just by cutting and pasting, and forgot to move the talk page... a real messy job, especially considering the other pages that link here). Weird stuff... -- Antepenultimate 02:34, 31 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reason for my editing

The reason I modified the "Speed of Dark" article is because I see enough people mention the Speed of Dark (chiefly on T-shirts) that I thought there should be a place on Wikipedia where it was addressed, in case someone looked it up. Not knowing if there is another real answer, I applied logic to the matter, and came to the conclusion above. I understand if you feel that it's too nonsensical to be in Wikipedia.

I'm sorry for the messy job of redirecting- I'm rather new to it. Spiffytech 04:38, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, "logic" (really, in this case, intuition rather than logic) applied in this way to determine the physics-related question of the "speed of dark" may not lead to the right answer. I seem to remember from High School electronics class that when watching an electrical conduit, a "hole" or "space between electrons" actually appears to move faster (backward) through a line of electrons than an electron moving (forward) through the conduit. If I am recalling this correctly, an implication would be that space/dark can "move" faster than electrons/light (when looking at light in its particle behavior context).

When viewing light in its wave behavior context, it may make more sense to view the speed of dark as nothing more than the steady state interface between light/not-light, in which case you would infer that the speed of dark and the speed of light are always equivalent. But light does some pretty non-intuitive things under certain conditions, so it may not be as cut-and-dried as this context might suggest. Voideater 00:11, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Speed of Dark

hi my name is Bobby and the 'Speed of dark is the same as the Speed of light' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.220.144.76 (talk) 21:57, 14 January 2009 (UTC) [reply]