Slashdot Mirror

You have neurons, which are arranged into "cortical units". These in turn are arranged into wide striate layers (for increased resolution) and pyramids (for higher levels of cognition). With human vision, the neural pathways follow the topology of the retina.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

With human audio, the neural pathways follow the frequency of sound (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonotopy)

This research paper covers the evolution of the human brain when compared to reptiles and other mammals:

http://people.sissa.it/~ale/an...

The 1987a SuperKAK measurements (at least) got the direction (approximately, +- 20 deg or so) and energy (again approximiately) of the incoming neutrinos; they came from the right direction (except for one, IIRC), and had "normal" energies, so the identification is pretty robust. The energies for this experiment were much higher. Now, for tachyons, that means that the 1987a guys should have been much faster, and arrived earlier. If the SuperKAK guys are smart (and they are) they should be looking through the old data right now for a FTL burst prior to 1987.

I am going out on a long limb here, but my physical intuition is tell me that supersymmetry may be involved. In simple supersymmetry, neutrino masses are zero, but there is some discussion out there where supersymmetric neutrinos are tachyonic.

I robustly predict a bunch of theoretical ... whimsy before this is resolved.

Not only is it free, it has a high impact rating in the UK, so we can even publish there without having our careers impacted. Backed by the Institute of Physics, it is an example of what journals could easily become in time. I doubt that much in there will be of interest to the /. community, but it's a harbinger of things to come across all fields, I hope. I would expect that within 10-20 years, there'll be very few, if any pay-to-publish-and-pay-to-read journals.

In the same way that HEP has been using linux now for at least a decade, we are getting there with publishing too. Let's hope we can have some more examples here of other serious sciences with open-access journals.

Each piece of evidence demands that it be considered on its own terms

How do you go about determining what "its own terms" are, for "[e]ach piece of evidence"?

To what extent must the provenance (for want of a better word) of the 'evidence' also be considered in such determinations?

For example, The microwave background temperature at the redshift of 2.33771 (http://babbage.sissa.it/abs/astro-ph/0012222); abstract:

The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation is a fundamental prediction of Hot Big Bang cosmology. The temperature of its black-body spectrum has been measured at the present time, $T_{\rm CMBR,0}$ = 2.726$\pm$ 0.010 K, and is predicted to have been higher in the past. At earlier time, the temperature can be measured, in principle, using the excitation of atomic fine structure levels by the radiation field. All previous measurements however give only upper limits as they assume that no other significant source of excitation is present. Here we report the detection of absorption from the first {\sl and} second fine-structure levels of neutral carbon atoms in an isolated remote cloud at a redshift of 2.33771. In addition, the unusual detection of molecular hydrogen in several rotational levels and the presence of ionized carbon in its excited fine structure level make the absorption system unique to constrain, directly from observation, the different excitation processes at play. It is shown for the first time that the cosmic radiation was warmer in the past. We find 6.0 {is less than} T_{\rm CMBR} {is less than} 14 K at z = 2.33771 when 9.1 K is expected in the Hot Big Bang cosmology.

(the related ESO PR is here: http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2000/pr-27-00.html).

This reports the results of some very difficult astronomical observations, with the detailed quantitative support for 'Hot Big Bang Cosmology' explained using both the wonderful capabilities of the UVES spectrograph on the KUEYEN VLT and details from quantum theory of the atom ('atomic fine structure levels').

Or, saying this another way, the relevance of the data collected from UVES depends critically upon the accuracy of the (physics) *theories* used to design, build, and operate UVES (and the VLT), and (physics) *theories* on atomic transitions (which may not be testable in the lab, because no lab can create a plasma which mimics the relevant one in the interstellar medium (ISM)).

You and others like you do not consider something worthy of investigating unless there exists mathematical models that can demonstrate it is so.

Please do not try to side-track my questions.

Besides, how do you know what I do (or do not) consider worthy of investigating?

Perhaps you 'know' in the same way you 'know' that I "actively silenc[e] alternative views" (I note that you didn't reply to this)? May one conclude that making unsubstantiated, pejorative statements about other SD writers is an acceptable to you? For example, I could state - without any substantiation whatsoever - that pln2bz is a well-known convicted felon?

For avoidance of doubt: I am not, repeat NOT, asserting that pln2bz is a well-known convicted felon!

There are forms of evidence which can elevate an idea to a level of consideration as plausible, and for which mathematics really doesn't have a lot to say about.

If you say so ... with respect to astronomy and space studies, what are these 'forms of evidence'?

For these, what are the methods which an independent, objective third party could use to test, judge, evaluate, etc the 'plausibility' of any such ideas?

{omitting a large part of your comment, as it concerns your assumptions of what I might, or might not, do with respect to evaluation etc.}

To repeat: dear pln2bz, would you please

(1) Jane Austen's works are in public domain. You can do anything you like with them (including release them with the author's name changed to your own!) This man holds copyright to his own work and can severely restrict its distribution.

(2) Some journals have more "juice" than others, and the oldest ones have the most (usually.) I was told by a colleague in my field that, for example, Physical Review D (lots of pay-per-view / access restrictions) is a better place to publish than JCAP. I am small-fry, so I go where I'm told. (Although JCAP is now advertising a very high impact factor, not sure if things are already changing.)

(3) Not sure what this means. My scientific production is unconnected to my holding IP rights over it, but then, I'm a cosmologist. Many universities take control over your IP if it makes them money, or at least demand some profit sharing.

(4) Not sure, but as far as I can tell from posts below, they allow you to use CC licensing if you pay an additional fee?

Subscription-only journals aren't dying: they're dead. See http://www.arxiv.org/ or http://jhep.sissa.it/ for more details. The fact that Nature etc. have left it until 2007 (!) to seriously worry about this just shows how little chance they have.

There was a paper published in PRL a couple of years ago that wanted to identify languages using gzip (Benedetto et al: Language Trees and Zipping). It sure sounded cool, but was quickly forgotten when Joshua Goodman took a closer look (link is down at the moment, probably IIS, Text version in Google Cache).

I think you've over-emphasized the effect that neutrinos having non-zero mass has on the Standard Model.

As defined in a review paper, neutrino masses are zero only in the "minimal" Standard Model. There is probably still interesting physics in understanding the masses of the various particles, but it seems to me that most physicists don't think that we need to throw away the Standard Model to incorporate neutrino mass so much as "upgrade" it to a slightly more ornate version.

From my point of view as a physicist outside the high-energy field, the reason people say they would be "glad to see the Standard Model go" seems to be that the field of QFT has been pretty boring for a long while now, and they hope that concrete experimental results will start clearing out the dead wood from the forest of possible alternatives that have grown up in the last 30 years. On the other hand, none of those existing alternatives would excite me enough to start caring about high-energy physics again. That says to me that the theorists in QFT have pretty much exhausted their imagination without any earth-shaking possibilities.

I have a nagging feeling that we are going to have about 20 or 30 more years of high-energy physicists hoping for new physics, without getting it. Maybe the string theorists will finally connect to experimental reality, and things might get interesting again. I have a similar nagging feeling that string theorists will keep talking about the thermodynamics of black holes without having much impact on the realm of experimental physics.

This article does contain a good overview of recent results of different neutrino measurements.