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That's ridiculous, Jane. Notice that "net radiative power out" equals negative "net radiative power in". Since Jane seems to agree that "net radiative power out" is positive, "net radiative power in" can't be zero. It has to be negative, which just means more radiative power is flowing out than flowing in.

Now you've just gone off the deep end. And by "deep end" I mean the deep end of the pit full of BS you've dug yourself. Just no. Any spherical boundary you draw within this system has additional input: your vaunted electrical power. I'm amazed that you finally got so caught up in your own bullshit that you made a mistake quite THAT fundamental. Get stuffed, troll. For that and actually quite a pile of other reasons that have built up over time, I still don't believe you're a real physicist. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-12]

Electrical power isn't radiative power, so it wouldn't be included in net radiative power.

... I have written down all I need to write down to answer Spencer's challenge. I solved for the correct temperature, and showed your own answer to be utterly wrong. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-11]

Once again, Jane's solution halved the electrical heating power. Jane didn't notice this because he calculated net transfer incorrectly, which led him to the absurd conclusion that Jane was only off by about 0.1% when Jane was actually off by ~100%.

So Jane hasn't written down all he needs to give the correct answer to Spencer's challenge. To give the correct answer, Jane has to draw a boundary around the heat source:
power in = electrical heating power + radiative power in from chamber walls
power out = radiative power out from source

This is the same answer that Prof. Brown and Dr. Joel Shore tried to explain to Jane. It's also the same answer that underlies the positions taken by the National Academies of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society, etc.

... YOU are the one going against "established" physics here. ... If you could actually show how the physics textbook idea of heat transfer was wrong, you would be world famous by now. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-06]

No, I'd have to get in line behind all those other physicists who agree that adding CO2 warms Earth's surface, which is equivalent to saying that enclosing a heat source warms it. This is probably the most fascinating part of Jane's delusion. Not only does Jane completely misunderstand fundamental physics, Jane seems to earnestly believe that his crackpot Slayer conspiracy theor

> Nearly all engineering fields did not experience as big an increase in female participation as did CS; many of them fell off as well.

Somebody has to be at the top, the thing is that it was all part of a similar trend and while that trend continued for women in other disciplines long after 1984 it didn't for women in CS.

> Physics, for instance, topped out at 22%.

I thought it was interesting that you failed to provide a citation for your claims. Obviously you had just googled it yourself. When someone does that, it is a clear indicator that they know they are misrepresenting the facts and are hoping nobody is going to double-check them. So when it actually turned out that the percentage of bachelors degrees in STEM in general, and in physics specifically, going to females continued to grow at nearly the same rate the 20 years after 1984 that it had been for the 20 years before 1984, I was completely unsurprised.

It's "capisce", and Luca Brasi you ain't.

Dictionary pedancy is the surest way to discredit yourself.

... These are just straw-man arguments, as usual. I have no argument with these other physicists. It was about Spencer's challenge and how YOU got it wrong, nothing more. Have you asked them, personally, about Spencer's experiment? (No, you haven't, or you would know you were wrong.) ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-25]

Does Jane have the memory of a goldfish? Of course Jane has argued with these other physicists. Jane personally asked Prof. Brown about Sky Dragon Slayerism, but wasn't able to "educate" him. Lonny Eachus personally asked Dr. Joel Shore about Sky Dragon Slayerism, but wasn't able to "educate" him. And now Jane/Lonny Eachus fantasizes that these physicists agree with his Sky Dragon Slayerism? Maybe Jane/Lonny Eachus should read those exchanges again, and notice that Prof. Brown and Dr. Shore told Jane/Lonny Eachus the same things I am. That's because Prof. Brown, Dr. Shore and I are simply reiterating elementary mainstream physics.

... Bringing up OTHER arguments like greenhouse gases won't win THAT argument for you. You have already lost it. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-25]

How bizarre. The whole reason Slayers deny that an enclosed source warms is because that implies greenhouse gases can't warm the surface:

.. the CO2-warming model rely on the concept of "back radiation", which physicists (not climate scientists) have proved to be impossible. I'm happy to leave actual climate science to climate scientists. But when THEIR models rely on a fundamental misunderstanding of physics, I'll take the physicists' word for it, thank you very much. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2012-07-05]

That's why Jane, Dr. Latour and the rest of the Slayers disagree with the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society.

Again, how did we detect the 2.7K cosmic microwave background radiation with warmer detectors? How do uncooled IR detectors see cooler objects? Again, why is Venus hotter than Mercury?

If Sky Dragon Slayers could answer these questions without resorting to gray Oreos or basketball player gloves, physicists might take the Slayers more seriously.

.. Be a man for a change and admit it. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-15]

.. Be a man and admit the truth.. You've been owned, man. BE enough of a man to admit it. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-19]

... Time to act like a man and admit that you were wrong. ...

... I mean, didn't it send up a red flag when you took your answer and fed it back into standard heat transfer equations and it didn't balance? Oh, that's right... you didn't. But I did. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-24]

Completely backwards, as usual. I've already shown that my solution keeps electrical heating power constant. Once again, Jane's solution halved the electrical heating power. Jane didn't notice this because he calculated net transfer incorrectly, which led him to the absurd conclusion that Jane was only off by about 0.1% when Jane was actually off by ~100%.

... because ALL of the incoming cooler radiation is reflected or scattered, and no NET amount is absorbed... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-24]

Good grief, Jane. How did the Sky Dragon Slayers brainwash you into endlessly regurgitating this nonsense? Once again, radiation is absorbed by any surface with absorptivity > 0. Jane's either hopelessly confused about the very term "NET" which he keeps capitalizing, or Jane/Lonny Eachus has betrayed humanity by deliberately spreading civilization-paralyzing misinformation.

Again, how do Slayers think we detected the 2.7K cosmic microwave background radiation with warmer detectors? How do Slayers think uncooled IR detectors see cooler objects? Again, why do Slayers think Venus is hotter than Mercury?

... I'm not arguing with you now and I'm not going to again. You're either a fool or a liar, and I do not care which. I have already proved it and I intend to publish that for the world to see. Along with textbook explanations and diagrams showing exactly where and how you went wrong. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-24]

Again, Jane/Lonny Eachus actually means that he intends to show where mainstream physics "went wrong" according to the Sky Dragon Slayers. There are many ignorant, stupid physicists that Jane/Lonny Eachus needs to educate: Prof. Brown, Dr. Joel Shore, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society, etc.

.. Be a man for a change and admit it. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-15]

.. Be a man and admit the truth.. You've been owned, man. BE enough of a man to admit it. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-19]

.

.. By the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law, the chamber walls add no net power in. It just goes right back out through your boundary again. How many times must I explain this to you? .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-23]

If radiation enters the boundary and goes right back out, we need to account for it entering and exiting. That's why there are separate terms for "power in" and "power out". For instance:

There is no net "radiative power in" from cooler to hotter. It's against the second law of thermodynamics, and it violates the S-B radiation law: (e * s) * (Ta^4 - Tb^4). [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-23]

That's exactly the equation Jane should be using to calculate electrical heating power! It has separate terms for "power in" and "power out" so it can describe power entering and exiting a boundary. If Jane would use that equation, he'd honestly be only saying there is no net "radiative power in" from cooler to hotter.

Instead, Jane insists that electrical heating power = (e * s) * (Ta^4). Jane's ridiculous equation doesn't just say there is no net "radiative power in" from cooler to hotter. Jane's wrongly saying the source absorbs no radiative power at all.

There is nothing more to say. You have been proved wrong. You can write books about your nonsense "physics", and it won't make your bullshit theory any more correct. .. The textbooks all say you're wrong. Goodbye. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-23]

So Jane refuses to retract his absurd claim that view factors vary as the radius ratio, which violates conservation of energy. A cynic might have expected as much, given how Jane flagrantly violates conservation of energy by incoherently ignoring radiative power passing in through a boundary around the heat source.

.. I honestly -- and I mean that: honestly -- don't believe you could be this stupid and possess a degree in physics. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-15]

.. I only replied on the off-chance that you really were ignorant and could be educated. .. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-20]

Jane's campaign of educating ignorant, stupid physicists about physics has only just begun. Jane still needs to educate Prof. Brown and Lonny Eachus still needs to educate Dr. Joel Shore.

Then, Jane/Lonny Eachus needs to educate the "ignorant" and "stupid" American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society.

.. the CO2-warming model rely on the concept of "back radiation", which physicists (not climate scientists) have proved to be impossible. I'm happy to leave actual climate science to climate scientists. But when THEIR models rely on a fundamental misunderstanding of physics, I'll take the physicists' word for it, thank you very much. ..

Podcasts: pick up a used ipod and subscribe to the astronomy related podcasts.

Kindle: get a used kindle that has the bubble-type keyboard, and let it read books and papers to you. The keyboard lets you start/stop the reader without looking, for in the car use. Download Calibre application and convert online/document resources and copy them to the kindle. You are not stuck with just Amazon eBooks, but many of them are good.

When online use an RSS reader and connecty to the publications feeds: e.g. http://iopscience.iop.org/ http://arxiv.org/ http://www.physicsforums.com/ http://prl.aps.org/ http://phys.org/ http://physics.stackexchange.c... http://prd.aps.org/ and many blogs!

Podcasts: pick up a used ipod and subscribe to the astronomy related podcasts.

Kindle: get a used kindle that has the bubble-type keyboard, and let it read books and papers to you. The keyboard lets you start/stop the reader without looking, for in the car use. Download Calibre application and convert online/document resources and copy them to the kindle. You are not stuck with just Amazon eBooks, but many of them are good.

When online use an RSS reader and connecty to the publications feeds: e.g. http://iopscience.iop.org/ http://arxiv.org/ http://www.physicsforums.com/ http://prl.aps.org/ http://phys.org/ http://physics.stackexchange.c... http://prd.aps.org/ and many blogs!

... It is the engineering textbook answer. Claiming it is nonsense does not make it so. It was your own model that violated conservation of energy. But to see why, it's easiest to solve the general case first, then look at a specific case. I told you I had reasons to solve the general case first. ... Well, then, I guess you do admit defeat. It doesn't take much time to obtain a textbook on the subject (you were given references 2 years ago and it's not that hard to find others) ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-01]

No, the PSI Sky Dragon Slayers told you it's the engineering textbook answer. I showed you MIT's final expression which reduces to my Eq. 1 for blackbodies, and is consistent with these equations and Eq. 1 in Goodman 1957. Physicists and engineers have been using thermodynamics for decades in the real world that contradicts Dr. Latour's Slayer nonsense.

That's why Jane, Dr. Latour and the rest of the Slayers disagree with the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society.

... I am disputing that given reasonable chosen dimensions it is anywhere near an intractable problem. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-01]

I never said the problem is intractable. Just that it's more complicated than the spherically symmetric problem. Again, do you dispute that equilibrium temperatures for a non-enclosing plate would vary across the plate surfaces rather than being simple numbers like with a spherically symmetric fully enclosing plate?

Maybe I should explain that. Consider Dr. Spencer's first illustration. Presumably the heated plate at "150F" has finite conductivity, so its lack of spherical symmetry means that its corners will be cooler than the plate's side's midpoints. That's because the corners are closer to the cold chamber walls than those midpoints.

An integral over the heated plate's surface might average to "150F" but (unlike a spherically symmetric plate) it can't have that temperature everywhere as long as it has finite conductivity. But at least the single heated plate has bilateral symmetry; the left and right hand side midpoints have the same temperature.

Adding a cool plate removes even that bilateral symmetry. The left hand side's midpoint warms the least because it's still radiating to the 0F chamber walls. The right hand side's midpoint warms the most because it's now radiating to the (initially) 100F cold plate.

Since enclosing a spherically symmetric plate warms it from 150F to ~233.8F for area ratios similar to Earth's, the right hand side's midpoint won't warm past ~233.8F. But it has to warm to conserve energy because at equilibrium power in = power out.

I can't be more specific without programming a finite element model. But Dr. Latour never even allowed for the heated plate's temperature to be different on each side. As long as we're only considering materials with finite conductivity, this would only be poss

The American Physical Society disagrees. http://www.aps.org/units/fps/m...

The American Physical Society, http://www.aps.org/units/fps/m... Association of Energy Engineers http://www.aeecenter.org/i4a/p... and the Annual Appalachian Energy Summit http://www.news.appstate.edu/2... all seem happy to have Lovins as a Keynote speaker. Guess claims he is not an expert are ignored by these groups.

A large body of scientists who are PHYSICISTS agree with me. A large body of scientists who are CLIMATE RESEARCHERS disagree. ... which group should I listen to? The ones whose SPECIALTY it is, or the tyros? Go learn a little humility yourself. Like for example learning to admit when you're wrong. [Jane Q. Public, 2013-05-30]

I showed Jane statements from the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the European Physical Society. Spoiler alert: mainstream physicists don't agree with the Slayers.

Maybe Jane doesn't actually take the physicists' word for it?

... None of your citations even mention Latour, much less try to refute him. You are just making your usual straw-man arguments again. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-08-04]

All those professional physics societies agree that our CO2 emissions are causing warming, which Dr. Latour and the Slayers deny. Jane's claimed that physicists are "the experts" when it comes to physics, and that Jane "takes the physicists' word for it." I'm skeptical.

... To the best of my knowledge -- and I have been following the issue -- not one physicist has even attempted to refute LaTour's analysis, while a number of physicists have backed him up. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2013-05-30]

rgbatduke is Prof. Brown, a physicist who'd refuted Dr. Latour's analysis directly to Jane, but as usual Jane just doubled down. On a Slayer blog post about Prof. Brown, Lonny Eachus even repeated Jane's arguments to physicist Joel Shore, who refuted Lonny.

Maybe Jane/Lonny Eachus doesn't actually take the physicists' word for it?

... As for your heating the walls, the argument all along has been about something that is warmed from a cooler state to equilibrium. Whether your point about heating the walls is correct or not isn't part of it. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-08-04]

Of course it is. The heated plate reaches equilibrium at 150F with the chamber walls at 0F, then the chamber walls are warmed to 149F and the heated plate warms from a cooler state to a warmer equilibrium. This is a simple way to see that Slayer claims like these are wrong:

... Do you understand the second law of thermodynamics? Do you understand that it is not possible for a cooler body to increase the heat of a warmer body via infrared radiation? ... [Jane Q. Public, 2013-05-27]

... An object that is radiating at a certain black-body temperature WILL NOT absorb a less-energetic photon from an outside source. This is am extremely well-known corollary of the Secon

Predicted the 1960's (Kerr-induced self-focusing: http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab... ), and it was a big part of SDI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... and was again applied to space-to-ground weapons systems in 2009: http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab...

It was ale demonstrated at LLNL in 2009: http://www.researchgate.net/pu... and 2010: http://www.researchgate.net/pu...

What's new about this one is that they've renamed the tunnel as the desired artifact, rather than describing it in beams going down the tunnel.

Predicted the 1960's (Kerr-induced self-focusing: http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab... ), and it was a big part of SDI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... and was again applied to space-to-ground weapons systems in 2009: http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab...

It was ale demonstrated at LLNL in 2009: http://www.researchgate.net/pu... and 2010: http://www.researchgate.net/pu...

What's new about this one is that they've renamed the tunnel as the desired artifact, rather than describing it in beams going down the tunnel.

Right.

That was pointed out by Bondi in his 1957 paper introducing the concept.
http://journals.aps.org/rmp/ab...

You assume the dynamics is that of a simple exponential decay, which it is not. If you had a perfectly circular orbit in complete isolation, you could have a decay in the rotational energy of the moon that would take infinite time to decay. However, even with the perfectly circular orbit, if it were not in isolation so that there were any perturbations in the system, it would switch from rotation to libration and never rotate again. A very slowly rotating body is an unstable equilibrium, as it would take a very small perturbation to make the tidal bulge switch to acting like a pendulum. When there is non-zero eccentricity, you get a more complicated tidal braking that has a positive minimal braking rate no matter how slow the rotation goes, so it will transition into libration on its own and quite quickly. Early papers like this one cover the basic dynamics of this, although later ones do a better job of handling things like changing eccentricity that account for what the last line of that abstract speculates about. These papers typically don't have nice specific examples though, although the really simplified numeric model in this one shows in figure 2a a very clear and sudden stopping of rotation as it switches to libration.

Even if you want to completely ignore all that, and treat it as a simple case of exponential decay, you still won't have anything close to motion remaining after this long. A single proton from the solar wind hitting the edge of the moon would impart enough angular momentum to give it a rotation period of ~10^40 years. There are many far larger effects on the moon that would wipe any sort of residual rotation in the sense you tried to talk about. As stated in the previous comment, there are other cyclic effects that would wipe out any such residual long before it came down to random collisions with solar wind...

Buddy, I have a physics degree too, so does Matthias Troyer and Geordie Rose.

Eight qubit entanglement has been demonstrated.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.3500...

Do you know how to use a search engine?

Are you aware of scholar.google.com?

It's really not hard to find papers like this or this.

And yes, the Matthias Troyer who co-authored the first paper is the same guy who conducted the performance study that the /. blurb references.

That D-Wave performs quantum annealing can be regarded as settled. The only question that remains is how useful this may be.

Eight years ago everybody (myself included) thought D-Wave was a scam or just crazy. As new facts emerge smart people (such as Matthias) adjust their judgment.

You mean like the overall long-term increase in Antarctic ice mass, despite breakups in the Western sheet?

False. Antarctic land ice mass is decreasing, and reliable estimates of Antarctic sea ice volume (or mass) aren't available.

Even if you meant to refer to Antarctic sea ice extent (not mass), you already ignored me when I told you that this is consistent with Manabe et al. 1991 page 811: " sea surface temperature hardly changes and sea ice slightly increases near the Antarctic Continent in response to the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide."

But maybe you'll listen to the National Academy of Sciences, if you honestly don't think the National Academy of Sciences is "alarmist". Again, their recent report is educational. They address Antarctic sea ice in question 12.

The gradual, long-term non-warming that has occurred over the last 15-17 years, depending on who you ask?

Jane and Lonny Eacus have repeatedly ignored me whenever I've told you that there's been no statistically significant change in the surface warming rate. But if you honestly doesn't think the NAS is alarmist, you might learn something from their answers to questions 9 and 10. This point is particularly relevant: "More than 90% of the heat added to Earth is absorbed by the oceans and penetrates only slowly into deep water. A faster rate of heat penetration into the deeper ocean will slow the warming seen at the surface and in the atmosphere, but by itself will not change the long-term warming that will occur from a given amount of CO2."

I agree: science is a wonderful thing. You can appear to "prove" almost anything you want if you restrict your study to relatively isolated phenomena, and ignore the bigger picture.

No, that's not science the way it's practiced by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, the American Meteorological Society, the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Federation of American Scientists, the American Quaternary Association, the American Society of Agronomy, the

Proper link to paper

I just searched for an answer to this question. Seems that pair generation by irradiation of matter (e.g. a mirror) is shown experimentally and can reach quite high intensities:
http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab...
Generation in vacuum though seems to be shown only in models until now:
http://iopscience.iop.org/0295...
http://journals.aps.org/pra/ab...
Seems that the reaction rate is much lower, so maybe this is not a limiting factor for building a laser.
Normally high intensities are achieved by building a pulsed laser. This produces a beam of laser pulses, which is then focussed into a tiny spot. Intensities in this spot can be alot higher than inside the laser cavity. You could achieve higher laser intensities just by building a larger laser (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... ).
Inside the laser cavity intensities are normally limited by the effects of nonlinear optics ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... ), which occur in all kinds of matter.

I just searched for an answer to this question. Seems that pair generation by irradiation of matter (e.g. a mirror) is shown experimentally and can reach quite high intensities:
http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab...
Generation in vacuum though seems to be shown only in models until now:
http://iopscience.iop.org/0295...
http://journals.aps.org/pra/ab...
Seems that the reaction rate is much lower, so maybe this is not a limiting factor for building a laser.
Normally high intensities are achieved by building a pulsed laser. This produces a beam of laser pulses, which is then focussed into a tiny spot. Intensities in this spot can be alot higher than inside the laser cavity. You could achieve higher laser intensities just by building a larger laser (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... ).
Inside the laser cavity intensities are normally limited by the effects of nonlinear optics ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... ), which occur in all kinds of matter.

How about a maths degree (47% women) or physics (40%)?

Where are you pulling these statistics? I was a physics major and in I never had a 300 level class with more than 20% women. I went to the American Physical Society and found that in 2010 about 20% of physics degrees are given to women. Math and Statistics on the same site was at about 40%, but that does seem a bit fishy based on my experience (although I was in school in 2000). I wouldn't be surprised if they were counting Math education degrees in their statistics. And math education degree is as similar to a real math degree as JavaScript is similar to Java.

I could be wrong though, my experience only has a sample size of one college in a few year period over 10 years ago.

OK, first bypass the click troll and get to the actual paper.

The general idea seems to be to transmit a large amount of noisy data per plaintext bit. Historically, crypto schemes which make the input much bigger are disfavored, but communications bandwidth is cheaper now and that might be OK.

The author of the paper seems to have fallen into the old trap of thinking that that analog signals have infinite amounts of data in them. He writes things like ''The encrypting key space is unbounded." and "The choice of the form of coupling functions comes from a set of functions that is not bounded." ("High-end" audio people also fall for this.) In reality, at some point you hit a noise threshold, and, anyway, down at the bottom, electrons and photons are discrite. Also, to be usable, whatever is used for the key has to be of finite size, and preferably not too big.

"No new cypher is worth looking at unless it comes from someone who has already broken a very hard one. - Friedman.

and pissed in a number of esoteric theories cheerios

I'm not inclined to think this is the case. I think their result was many orders of magnitude over the previous measurement because there was only one other measurement made in this frequency range. The previous experiment was a torsion bar experiment done in a modest-sized lab. According to the LISA folks:

In general, a ground-based interferometer is limited to frequencies above about 10 Hz because of seismic noise

I didn't read the torsion bar paper to see what they did to eliminate noise sources.

Quantum physics seems to be the ultimate proof that the universe is a simulation.

World record for simulation of classical physics: 10 billion particles
World record for simulation of quantum physics: 42 particles

If I had to run a simulation of an entire universe, I'd rather not make it quantum.

From:
http://physics.aps.org/article...
Published March 25, 2013 | Physics 6, 36 (2013) | DOI: 10.1103/Physics.6.36

  One symmetry that has so far avoided any signs of breaking is the so-called CPT symmetry, which equates matter and antimatter at a fundamental level.

With this data analysis technique, they determined the antiproton’s magnetic moment to be pN=2.792845(12), which has equal magnitude, within experimental uncertainty, to the NIST CODATA recommended value for the proton magnetic moment of pN=2.792847356(23). Thus the magnitude of the antiproton and proton magnetic moments differ by less than 5 parts per million, in agreement with the CPT theorem.

If CPT violation did occur it would forever alter our understanding of the universe—or lack thereof! History has taught us that experiments such as this one play an important role in shoring up, or changing, the foundations of physics. So for now, the debate will go on.

This actually was ball lightning if you bother reading the article. They just decided to use whatever file photo they could grab when they posted the article but the photo they chose has nothing to do with the actual ball lightning captured on video during a thunderstorm in china. The researchers were originally photographing normal lightning when ball lightning occurred near enough. The actual link to the actual article/video: http://physics.aps.org/article...

It's available here: http://physics.aps.org/article...

Not much to see though.

From the link, with my emphasis:

That is what Ping Yuan and co-workers from Northwest Normal University in Lanzhou, China, now report. They had set up spectrometers on the remote Qinghai Plateau of northwest China to investigate ordinary lightning, which is frequent in this region. During one late-evening thunderstorm in July 2012, they saw ball lightning appear just after a lightning strike about 900 meters from their apparatus and were able to record a spectrum and high-speed video footage of the ball.

(groan) ... seems there are publications much slower than /. - this was supposed to be news one year and a half ago.

You can never take these things seriously when the never present their results at meetings like

APS DPP
Sherwood
MHD workshop
IAEA

Improbably things sometimes happen more frequently than expected, like Dragon Kings http://prl.aps.org/pdf/PRL/v111/i19/e198701

I should be writing code. Not farting around on Slashdot.

it's not billions of rounds of growth, but billions of individual mitosis events. 2^22588, to first order approximation.

No, that's actualy the maximum limit.

All in all, the estimated amount of HeLa tissue used in research until now is around 20 tons .
With an estimated weight of a cell at 27 picograms, the number of cells would be in the order of 1e+18 (implying around 2^61 to 2^62 mitosis events)

another link: http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200301/history.cfm

Instead of starting the whole run over, he started midway through, typing the numbers straight from the earlier printout to give the machine its initial conditions. Then he walked down the hall for a cup of coffee, and when he returned an hour later, he found an unexpected result. Instead of exactly duplicating the earlier run, the new printout showed the virtual weather diverging so rapidly from the previous pattern that, within just a few virtual "months", all resemblance between the two had disappeared.

The research has potential uses in creating security barriers that permit voice communication to pass through, and in developing types of sound-based microscopes that could find application in research laboratories and medical practice.

The scientific paper further notes:

Such a high concentration of acoustic energy into a small hole of radius enables sensitive detection of acoustic signals with subwavelength resolution ... the present work not only opens the way to the efficient realization of [near-field acoustics] in fluid ultrasonics and underwater acoustics, but also to the analogous realization in solid-state ultrasonics.

More broadly, results obtained for one kind of wave behavior often have implications for other kinds. I.e.: results in controlling acoustic waves sometimes have implications in controlling/sensing light-fields, or radio waves, or even more esoteric things like electron beams or neutron beams (which are also regulated by wave equations).

NO.

That was a stupid idea of Dr. Edward Teller and others. This paper is a fascinating look at how stupid of a plan it was and although they didn't do full scale nuclear testing, they did import fallout into Alaska from Nevada.

Edward Teller toured the territory of Alaska in the summer of 1958 to promote his dream of "engaging in the great art of geographic engineering, to reshape the earth to your pleasure." He told the curious Alaskans that they were "the most reasonable people," that the atomic scientists had "looked at the whole world" for just the right location to test their technology. He flattered them, saying that "Anything new that is big needs big people in order to get going..., and big people are found in big states ." He boasted that the Atomic Energy Commission (the predecessor to the Energy Research and Development Administration, and now the Department of Energy) could "dig a harbor in the shape of a polar bear, if required." He further boasted that "If your mountain is not in the right place, just drop us a card." (Coates, 1989).

It's no small wonder that Kubrik patterned Dr. Strangelove after Teller. One quote sums it up by Isador Rabi about Teller as well:

"He is a danger to all that is important. I do think it would have been a better world without Teller. I think he is an enemy of humanity."

We did have the Sedan shot which was part of Plowshare but it made a nice big hole in Nevada.

The Soviets with their Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (PNE) did do geoscaping with nukes. They did create a lake but it's still radioactive like most sites.

Pics or it didn't happen!

Link to the actual artical "Viewpoint: A New Look at the Hydrogen Wave Function" (with pics!) or PDF available.

Pics or it didn't happen!

Link to the actual artical "Viewpoint: A New Look at the Hydrogen Wave Function" (with pics!) or PDF available.

Doh, here is the link to the PDF itself.

Here is the article at physics.aps.org with a link to the (free) PDF about the experiment.

What you are referring to is an Edge Localized Mode (ELM). ELMs cause a lose of confinement but ELMs can be controlled with the application of symmetry breaking fields. The bigger problem right now is a material science problem of what to make the first wall material from.

Bugs for electronics, bird poop for science and now rats for engineering?

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h96000/h96566kc.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/06/cern-big-bang-goes-phut
http://www.aps.org/programs/outreach/history/historicsites/penziaswilson.cfm

It's not that a particle has a theoretical probability of being somewhere with some probable momentum, no it will be at a very real place at a very real time with a very actual momentum. It's just that practically it's so complicated to predict it, that the best way we have come up till now are quantum mechanics .

Nope, you're wrong. Here are the experimental evidence which falsify your hypothesis. Bonus: Zombie Feynman.

http://prl.aps.org/toc/PRL/v108/i19

Scroll down to "Trouble with the Lorentz Law of Force: Incompatibility with Special Relativity and Momentum Conservation", there you can get the pdf, if you have university access. Whew, it took me more than 20 minutes to find it. Why those journalists do not include the cited source?!

This paper is actually quite interesting, and I remember my ED teacher complaining about the Lorentz Law incompatibility during his lectures too. Whether "hidden moment" exists or not - maybe is a matter of performing the right experiments :)

And what about the proton radius problem?

The Biggest "Spooky" System Ever Seen: 4 Entangled Ions (Jun 2009)

Ok, that's Discover magazine. Never quote discover magazine. They're the foxnews of science. I don't trust a god damned thing they say. I tried looking up the experiment and I just keep seeing the word "Study"... So I'm thinking this was all on paper. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't trust it. Actually entangling IONs would be big news and I should find it all over the net.

and Entangled diamonds , big enough for the eye to see (Dec 2011). We haven't managed the information transportation part with anything other than photons though but we're doing well on distance; quantum key transmitted wirelessly 144km.

With both of these, see my post above. To me these are just parlor tricks with optics that maybe... or even are likely to be examples of Quantum teleportation. But they are not proof. It's neat that people are doing this, but it's not the "Real-deal" yet. It's kind of like that meteorite with the possible fossilized martian bacteria. Was there life on mars at one time? Most likely. Is the meteorite proof of that life? Maybe, maybe not... we need something better.

Humanity has entangled stuff bigger than photons; The Biggest "Spooky" System Ever Seen: 4 Entangled Ions (Jun 2009) and Entangled diamonds , big enough for the eye to see (Dec 2011). We haven't managed the information transportation part with anything other than photons though but we're doing well on distance; quantum key transmitted wirelessly 144km.

Negative temperatures have also been studied in '90s. To my knowledge Finnish cold lab had coldest temperature record for a long time and this is also work of the same laboratory.

It's thermal recall force from heat generated by components on Pioneer.

Right. and the headline is a little misleading, it's a "new" explanation only if you weren't following; since it was announced in late 2010. The "anomaly" is solved.

Popular Science article about Toth and Turyshev's work here: http://www.popsci.com/pioneeranomaly

More detailed calculations supporting the explanation:
Phys Rev Letters paper by Toth and Turyshev here: http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v108/i24/e241101
ArXIV paper confirming the work with more details: http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.5222v1

JPL press release: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-209&cid=release_2012-209&msource=12209
Centauri Dreams article: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=23720

Still, it's a nice article to read about how the work is done.

If you want an abstract, read the original paper. It's linked from the article. Unfortunately the paper itself is behind a paywall :-(

Some people will probably complain that it is "too technical" or relies too much on looking up previous papers to understand the background story.

Photons interact with each other and other things. The idea of photons and CP violation is being explored:

http://prd.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v79/i6/e065020
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9405203

After detecting and identifying the mesons, the experimenters determined the proper time difference between the decay of the two B states by determining the energy of each meson and measuring the separation of the two meson decay vertices along the e-e+ beam axis. When time-reversed pairs were compared, the BaBar collaboration found discrepancies in the decay rates. The asymmetry, which could only come from a T transformation and not a CP violation, was significant, being fourteen standard deviations away from time invariance. Thus the long wait for an unequivocal time-reversal violation in particle physics is finally over.

IANAP, but here is my understanding of the experiment. They knew that two different decay chains occur from some positron/electron collisions. If time is symmetric, there should be equal numbers of both chains. By making the beam energies different between the positron and electron (e-e+) beams, they were able to differentiate the decay order. If time symmetric decay occurred then there would be one spacial pattern in the results, and if time was asymmetric there would be another. The results conclusively show that for this subatomic event time runs in the direction we know as "forward". This is a big deal for subatomic physics.

Stanford R. Ovshinsky, "Reversible Electrical Switching Phenomena in Disordered Structures," Physical Review Letters, vol. 21, no. 20 (1968), pp. 1450-1453.