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Interview: Physicist Leon M. Lederman
This week's star interview guest is Leon M. Lederman, who has received more science and physics-oriented awards than we have room to list here, up to and including a Nobel Prize. The opportunity to quiz a scientist of Prof. Lederman's stature doesn't come along every day. Please use it wisely! (Special thanks go to Slashdot reader Rich Wellner, who arranged this interview.)
every time an atom is split, a universe is created in another dimension. anti-matter is the creating universe's matter that ultimately will disipate the created universe.
simple, isn't it?
You should email Rob with any moderation abuses you spot as well. Other than that (this is not for you BTW but the other meetoos), 14 replies to Kintawhoever's post means 14 offtopics, flamebaits and trolls, which could easily be 3-4 good AC questions moderated up to be read or even included in the interview. Whenever I moderate I specifically look for at least one case where an AC has been overlooked. Making that job more difficult by clogging the conversation with me too posts does nothing to help that.
Nowhere in the bible does it say that Sex is wrong. Nor does it say that sex is solely for procreation. That crap was invented by the catholic church to try to curb population growth among the lower classes.
Right. It just says that sex outside of marriage is wrong.
that you would have been able to spell your own screen name correctly...
To get you all riled up :)
YHBT HAND.
Maby he did....Jesus
In this older story, Weinberg basically asserted that given the pace of science, the human race might come up with a Grand Unified Theory by 2050. While I am curious if and when you personally think this might happen, I would really just like to know what affects, if any, you think this kind of discovery would have on the human race.
Or is this particular question just not your bag?
Those fundi-christians think anything not verifying there own idiotic world view is heritic. I mean, wouldn't you see the irony if this guy belived in god and the big bang?
If you look on Amazon's reader reviews of Dr. Mill's books, you'll see that someone from the Math Department of Ohio State Univerity has found numerous flaws with Dr. Mills Theories. Although I found a logic error in one of his claims, the pure math he cites is damning to Mill's theory.
Of course, just because the guy made a math mistake doesn't mean he hasn't discovered something wonderous. Just a thought...
come on moderators. keep on moderating this crap to the comment refuse heaven where it belongs.
As smart as this guy is he either has a sense of humor or browses at +2 (see above)
:-)
What books would you reccommend to someone interested in the subject of quantum physics? Is there anything that explains the different facts and theories and their implications, but doesn't weigh-down the reader with equations or lose the reader in the author's fantasy? Something from an engineering perspective perhaps?
Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin'
Trollin', Trollin', Trollin' , Trollin', Trollin', Trollin'
Slashdaaahhht!
Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Though the Karmas swollen
Keep them Post's a Trollin'
Slashdaaahhht
Firsts and grits and daily, Hellbent for Natalie, Wishin' my gal was by my side
All the things I'm missin', flames, naked and petrified'
Are waiting at the end of my ride
CHORUS
Post 'em on, Mod 'em up, Mod 'em up, move 'em on
Move 'em on, Mod 'em up, Slashdaaahhht
Karma out, Trollin' in, First postins'in , Signal 11's out
Mod 'em up, trollin's in , Slashdaaahhht
Keep trollin', trollin', trollin', Though they're disapprovin'
Keep them doggies trollin', Slashdaaahhht
Don't try to understand 'em, Just cheer 'em, post and feed 'em
Soon we'll be postin' high and wide
My hearts calculatin', My first post will be waitin',
Be waitin' at the end of my rant
Hyaa!
CHORUS
Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin'
Hyaa!
Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin', Trollin'
Hyaa!
Slashdaaahhht!
Slashdaaahhht!
.
. Trollmastah
A problem is with the interpretation of the the laws of thermodynamics; for example, Before Tesla invented the Alternating Current motor, It was said it would have violated the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
I dont think Kintanon was talking about a catholic god or anything similar. 'God' could be some kind of random force acting outside the universe.
TYPO:
a case of poor experimental design where the wrong _THING_ is being measured
thanks for pointing this out. It's a blatant case of prejudice against AC's and blatant groupieism. some people like kintanon and will moderate him up regardless of the content.
i'm the poster of comment #4, by the way.
about God?
Actually it just says that sex with another man's wife is wrong (a form of stealing). It says nothing about a man doing an unattached woman.
I am aware of your influence in the founding of the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA), and of your continued involvement there (e.g., the Great Minds Program). Do you see yourself in the future working even more closely with pre-college students at IMSA and elsewhere, and if so, in what ways?
hahaha. I'm taking your dumb ass down, rightfully so. your karma whoring days are over sucker !
You suck! Please please PLEAAAAAASE!!!!! Moderate this up!!!!
Now, according to this story, somebody by the name of Mills claims to have come up with a Grand Unified Theory already. Specifically, the theory is here, in PDF format (note section 2, especially). I was hoping for an opportunity to ask a real physicist this: Is Mills full of it, or does it sound like he hit upon the real thing?
I've heard the smart money is on fraud, but the article noted in the story above seemed to describe him in the same way one typically thinks of Galileo. Just curious what a real physicist thinks about this guy.
What caused the Big Bang?
AFAIK, each of the following are commonly held to be possibilities as to what the universe was like before the Big Bang:
A) time, and the Universe itself, did not exist before the Big Bang, and then everything kind of exploded into existance
B) all matter in the Universe was completely stable into the infinte past until about 15 billion years ago when it suddenly exploded
C) its part of an infinite Big Bang/Big Crunch cycle
Except maybe for option C, explanations for what caused the Big Bang tend to lend themselves rather nicely to the idea that there may be a creator, that somebody had to dip his finger into the pool.
Yes, planck's constant is as small as things can get. (or so we believe)
In classical Newtonian physics, it would seem that if you had perfect knowledge of the state of the universe at any given moment, you could predict with total accuracy its state at any point in the future. This kind of puts a damper on the concept of 'free will'. However, with my limited understanding of quantum mechanics, it seems that this is no longer considered true. A perfect knowledge of the state of the universe is not possible (or meaningful??) and even if it was, multiple future states are possible from a given starting point. My question is, what are the implications of quantum mechanics for the philosophical concepts of fate and free will? Is free will possible in a quantum mechanical universe? Is the future a line, a branching tree, a probability density field, or something else? Are random quantum mechanical effects just noise, or can they have lasting consequences in the 'macro' universe? thanks
Do you forsee a shift in magnet or superconducting technology to make the exploration of the possibility of Higgs more feasable?
That was probably the best answer to date.. :)
Since most posters have nothing to say the war against ACs and trolls is the only reason to read comments.
Wooo, I get this warm fuzzy feeling, I'm waiting/hoping for escalation.
choice have to do with anything?? If he does not use Linux...does that invalidate his work in your eyes?
I might be wrong, but doesn't Bohm's 1952 hidden variables theory hold up against this proof. I might be wrong.
What would happen if I stuck my head in the particle beam?
Don't forget that anyone may comment on their beliefs. Asking only theologians about God would bring us back to the Dark Ages. While we're interviewing a famous person anyway, why keep from asking such a question? Kintanon says that "Someone has to ask this." I will add: Everyone should be asked this, and anyone may answer.
Hi, 1- Do you thing that super string theory has any merit in it? Are there any recent experimental results supporting this theory? 2- There is a common belief among physicists that there should be a fairly simple formula (similar to E=m.c^2) explaining everything, why do you think this should be the case? (I remember you mentioning something like a formula that could fit on the back of a t-shirt in one of your speeches) Fahri Basegmez
What do you think of Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff's assertion that consciousness arises as a result of a switch between classical and quantum physics in brain microtubules?
(Bit of info for anyone not up on the idea here.)
ucgapam (just registered)
Dr. Lederman, What's your view of Albert Einstein as Time Magazine's Person of the Century?
Do you think he had more of an impact on physics than anyone else in the last 100 years?
in the words of homer simpson, "ooh la dee da mister french man."
We could also lose a few pounds of mission mass by reducing clothing requirements. I think a lycra/spandex type speedo with velcro attachments should be sufficent for most shuttle missions.
Esp. for all those women that we'll need to hire...
yes
Dr. Lederman, I know the canceling of the Super Conducting Super Collider was a big loss for you. How was it a big loss for the world in general? What questions would we have been able to answer with the SCSC? Where will we go to find these answers now?
I follow quite closely a couple of recent developments between the US government and the scientific community and I would appreciate your opinions on them. Politically, national security and the environment are currently getting a lot of headlines. Most notably is the alleged compromise of nuclear information from a foreign born scientist at the LANL. Less covered, but no less important, is the permanent closure of the High Flux Beam Reactor at Brookhaven National Laboratory, due to the huge outcry following a discovery of its tritium leakage. How much of this do you think is "political witch-hunt"? If you have to handle these cases yourself, all over again, would you have handled differently?
I don't work at MIT though. Still, the opportunity to break the legs of a pompous ass of your stature seems like it's just about to come my way. Where exactly at MIT do you work?
Good. Just checking.
What would you consider the greatest achievement in your field in this century and why. And to make it interesting, how about for the Millenium? thank you very much for your time PE
What do you think about the problem of consciousness and the various attempts of solving it. Roger Penrose has his own quantum physical theory. Daniel Dennet thinks there is no problem. David Chalmers and others don't agree. Do you think that physics is fundamentally involved? Do you have your own theory?
But that's kind of beside the point: one of the big things going on is that the UK, Canada, India, and China are contributing a great deal to the problem in the US with their (parsimonious) attitude toward basic research. Perhaps there is not a glut of Ph.D.s, it's just that US universities are producing enough for the US, and so are overseas universities -- who get to send them here (and not vice versa of course). The economic model would then dictate that you, the manager, should hire the equally qualified person who costs less, therefore 'wasting' the taxpayer investment in the US student's education... There aren't easy answers here!
My understanding of this situation is that even though the state of the entangled photon changes instantaneously, all of the information content is passed in a classical signal telling you what kind of measurement you're going to make. My memory on this subject is fading a bit, but I do remember that all of the practical information is sent in the classical signal.
why do scientists take all the credit for ideas that the ancient philosophers came up with in the first place?
Actually, DOE funding has remained relatively flat and funding of Basic Research within DOE has been cut. See:
ACS Government Affairs Web Page
While the overall federal R&D budget has increased, a large portion of this money has gone to NIH (medical research). Funding of Basic Science (fundamental physics and chemistry) has remained flat or decreased during the last decade, largely due to pressures on Congress to reduce deficit spending. Unfortunately, additional basic science research will be needed at some point in the future to fuel advances in medical and other applied research.
Considering the current robust economy congress should be increasing rather than decreasing R&D budgets.
You'll enjoy every luscious minute of it, as you wake into wondrous womanhood under the ministrations of my magical hands.
Even if it's an AC, it's a really good question. Does the ego surpass the good of the many?
What would you like to work on? How much work time do you actually squeeze into a day:)
And you are basing this on what?
moderators remind me of ....... a big gelatinous pile of tapioca
What do you think is the feasibility of Quantum Computers? What do you think of the attempts by various people to tie in Information Theory with Physics? This is related, of course, to Penrose's declarations about the Brain and Artificial Intelligence.
In classical Newtonian physics, it would seem that if you had perfect
knowledge of the state of the universe at any given moment, you could
predict with total accuracy its state at any point in the future.
This kind of puts a damper on the concept of 'free will'.
However, with my limited understanding of quantum mechanics, it seems
that this is no longer considered true. A perfect knowledge of the
state of the universe is not possible (or meaningful??) and even if it
was, multiple future states are possible from a given starting point.
My question is, what are the implications of quantum mechanics for
the philosophical concepts of fate and free will? Is free will possible
in a quantum mechanical universe? Is the future a line, a branching
tree, a probability density field, or something else? Are random
quantum mechanical effects just noise, or can they have lasting
consequences in the 'macro' universe?
thanks
...this is actually one of the funnier send-ups of /. I've seen in a while.
moderators, if you are going to moderate this up, please moderate up post #4, since it asks the same question. Or are you guys biased against AC's?
Do you ever use your knowledge of how the universe works for making waffles?
His OS is irrelevant.
Have you _seen_ any of our female astronauts?
What is this "reality" thing you physicists keep talking about?
Experimental data shows that we have 3 quark colour states. Colour is merely a label and should not be confused with what we normally refer to as colour.
Nevertheless we have 3 different quark colours, and gluons mediate between those 3 different colours, i.e. gluons exchange colour.
Therefore you need 3*3-1=8 different gluons to exchange between all possible colour configuration (just count them)
really end
I see from some pages about you and your career that you are interested in science education, so I am wondering what you think about our current education system as it relates to science education. What do you think we're doing wrong, right? Do you see many young minds entering your field, and if you do, are they well prepared?
some people need to learn to grow up! fuck you you whiny asshole troublemaker! these moderators work fucking hard! they are smarter than you and have more brains! they are from hollywood! you dont know shit! you arent even a moderator! what do you do for a day job scrape shit off the floor at mcdonalds! they are slashdot, the most famous site on the internet! they are leon ledermans good buddy! you fucking suck cock you motherfucking jew baiting redneck cracker!
it appears to be a bug involving "overrated"
besides I AM THE TRUE POSTER OF #4 , I AM THE GENIUS! FCUK YOU I PATENTED QUESTION #4 ALREADY ! EAT MY DSR PIN!
And those moderating bitches had the nerve to moderate you down... I'm very displeased. While its offtopic to the article, its definitely on the same topic as the thread. FUCK MODERATORS!!!! MODERATE ME INTO OBLIVION! I DARE YOU!!!! Oh, and Mr. Lederman, is there any logical explanation for interference patterns, other than multiple universes? I would think there would have to be, since they are rather predictable. On that topic, if multiple universes were proven to exist, do you think this would prove with finality the existance or nonexistance of God.
you misunderstood. The poster you replied to's father was the janitor at a high energy research facility.
Do you think the human "mind" and consciousness is MORE than just emergent behaviour resulting from the very complex connections of the numerous nerve cells of our brain tissue? If so, what would the physical explanation for such phenomena be?
he is too busy wanking off to something 'uber' while using his 'drool' as a lubricant
And those moderating bitches had the nerve to moderate you down... I'm very displeased. While its offtopic to the article, its definitely on the same topic as the thread. FUCK MODERATORS!!!! MODERATE ME INTO OBLIVION! I DARE YOU!!!!
Oh, and Mr. Lederman, is there any logical explanation for interference patterns, other than multiple universes? I would think there would have to be, since they are rather predictable. On that topic, if multiple universes were proven to exist, do you think this would prove with finality the existance or nonexistance of God.
fuck you bitch! cant you see i have important ideas im working on! shut up, go back in the kitchen, take your fucking shoes off, and cook me my dinner wench! and dont give me any fucking lip about it! no im not going to go to the goddamn kids school play i got shit to do! the free world is at stake and all you want to do is talk about your stupid feelings!
Since the cycle of horrifying wars utilizing the most destructive technology available is not likely to end soon, our species might have to survive a nuclear war. Are you aware of any research which might help mankind survive this sort of catastrophy (such as the radioactive shielding mentioned here)? Physics and our desire to understand the universe created a deadly problem, do you think it can help solve it?
The Navy's been doing some interesting research in this area; using a controlled plasma layer to block out EM; in this case, for the purposes of defense against EM pulses and HREF guns. Controlling plasma is difficult, of course, but not impossible, and I think we should continue to see major advances in plasma controls/processing. With this in mind, I think a 'yes' is in order to your question.
muhaha
moderators, thank you for moderating this retard down. He saw post #4 and ripped his question off. Typical Kintanon karma whoring ways.
Seriously, if you understand GR, then you understand as non-intuitive as it may be, it is quite possible that there was no "before the Big Bang" to talk about. Time only makes sense within the space-time manifold, and we have reason to believe that the manifold has a boundary there.
Many descriptions of God describe him as being the "Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning AND the End". Such wording suggests that God exists "outside" of time. Perhaps this is an attempt to describe a being from the pre-Big Bang state (which possibly still exists, beyond the limits of our Universe).
Paradoxically, some of the conclusions of modern QM, GR and SR theory seem to provide answers to or at least make irrelevant questions which have plagued religious philosophers for centuries. For example Calvinism promotes the idea of deterministic predestination. In other words, "Since God is all knowing and all powerful and he created the universe, men's futures are predetermined by God and hence men are pre-destined for either heaven or hell." Many have wondered how a loving God could be so unfair as to predetermine how many of His children will go to Hell. However, QM suggests that the universe is so constructed that determinism is impossible (the uncertainty principle), hence God can be all knowing and yet the future still be undetermined.
Since God exists outside of time, it would also be possible for Him to know the Future without having determined the future by creating the Universe. One possible explanation suggested by some theories of QM is that there are multiple futures each in indeterminate states. As time progresses the real future is selected. If God knows all of the futures, he is all-knowing even if the future that will become reality is not yet determined.
Of course these ideas may be wrong, but that doesn't mean that there is no possible reconciliation between physics and religion, just that I'm not smart enough to figure it out.
i dont care about the answer, i want to take sides and be famous and fight alot...i can get on talk shows with Buckley and Oprha, write books and speak at colleges to stuffed old bastards who will pay me thousands of dollars to boot! you idiots who try to 'muddle the question' are going to bring down western civilization... if people think about these things for themselves the entire humanities industry will go down the shitter.
Physics philosphy is bo-ring! Go watch Star Trek, you dumb needledick.
if the universe is finite, the number of first posts is limited to the amount of available matter.. even if compressed somehow one could still come up with new ways to say 'first post'.. in fact one could come up with an extremely long way to say 'first post. a novel perhaps. on the other hand: if the universe is infinite... i dont know... some people might say its limited to the amount of available matter.. but can you encode information in energy itself? in space? im not sure.. i guess there will definitely be an infinte number of first posts but will it be more than the infinite number of, say, pants with hot grits in them? idont know...
Well Leon- what do you prefer, brunettes or blondes? And who gets your vote for all time internet whore/slutpuppy
Now, I've gotta go read some science before I can ask intelligent questions :P
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
What would you say was the biggest advance in the past hundred years? Why?
He may well, be a whore, and his question is silly, but since he was #5, it's unlikely #4 was up when he went to reply.
FFFFIIIIRRRRSSSSTTTT!!!!
I didn't know that he liked to bold his middle name.
Have quantum electrodynamics and other renormalization theories been made mathematically rigorous yet?
why has this retard been moderated up 3 times, but the ac who posted the same question before this cock goblin did gets moderated down to offtopic.
Moderators at their worst again. Moderation has been slahdot's downfall. too bad Malda fucked up with that one.
is it some kind of race condition, or is it intentional?
Sick fucker.
Was Dr. Lederman born in the US? He has a german name, that's for sure.
Are you sure somone isn't poking your anus right now with a big hot one? OOOOOOOOHHHH!!!!
I'm afraid I'm going to have to rant. To keep things simple, I'm just going to attempt to quote Stephen Hawking:
"While the Big Bang does not preclude the existance of God, it certainly provides limits on when He might have created the Universe."
Now, to follow up: the original purpose of science was to understand how God works. The earliest scientists were monks. For example, everything we know about genetics today started with a monk and a pea garden.
Moral: Don't assume Religion and Science are mutually exclusive or you are as blind as the followers of any other faith you can name. I would imagine most physicists are athiests, but I would also imagine that the really smart ones are agnostic. You may not be able to prove God exists, but can you prove that He doesn't?
Yes, but Penrose is a notorius crack head and opium fiend.
It seems that the single greatest (current) obstacle to continued, manned exploration of the cosmos is the extreme costs involved with lifting mass into orbit.
While we seem to have the technology to send men to Mars and beyond, the monetary costs of lifting that technology out of the earth's gravity well preclude it getting done.
The two, paired solutions to this problem would appear to be reduce the mass of the drive system (so that there is less mass to lift into space) and to reduce the costs of lifting mass into orbit (so that what mass you must lift into orbit costs less)
What, if any, future developments do you see coming that might help this situation? Are we doomed to remain forever Earthbound as we cannot afford the gas bill?
it was. i am kinaton and I'm laughing all the way to the moderation bank !!!!
haha no all physicists aren't geniuses, but most are pretty good at physics.
No one thought about much of anything in the dark ages, mainly because the Catholic Church wouldn't let them. Besides, most people were trying to live out their lives, keep from getting the Plague, or dying in some stupid holy war or another.
Roger Penrose has given a very nice description of the essential difference between QM and classical mechanics in _Shadow's of the Mind_. He says that to "quantize" any classical system, one replaces the elements of the classical configuration space (discrete positions for point particles, fields for field theories) with a ket which gives associates with every element of the classical space some complex number. This, in particular, makes it very clear what one is talking about when one talks of quantizing a field. It also makes it very clear what people are on about when they discuss various approaches to quantizing gravity (in that various different aspects of the GR mathematical structure are chosen to be the elements which are then "spread" over a ket with associated complex numbers.
Once I came across Penrose' view I was startled at how much clearer QM became. It was immediately obvious what people might mean when they wanted to quantize anything, also obvious was why there would be deep conceptual links between QFT and statistical mechanics.
So my questions are:
(1) Do theorists in general agree that this is essentially what is going on when one quantizes a theory?
(2) If so, why is this not made clear in texts? Even recent QFT textbooks natter on about second quantization, a silly term which made sense historically but needs to be retired, but without giving this essential background into what one is doing. (One now has a ket that consists of every possible configuration of a classical field, each associated with a complex number. This is a pretty complicated beast and so one immediately wants to try to get a handle on it, which is where so-called second-quantization is taking you.) In addition to giving the text motivation, such an explanation would show how certain non-locality appears to be intrinsic to QM, which would help make people feel a little more comfortable about just what is and is not going on in EPR type situations.
Maynard Handley
i'm sure because i currently have my thumb up my ass.
Yes, I would ask a theologian about physics and (if they were Christian) I would have some questions about geology and biology as well. Physics, and in particular theoretical physics, has a way of impacting metaphysics and religion. Note: i'm a DIFFERENT annonymous coward than the original poster of the question.
Where is yours O Dickless One?
My questions are, do you forsee another dramatic revolution in physics? Furthermore, how does one personally handle such a paradigm shift with respect to one's past research? Finally, will someone experimentally show that Del dot B not equal zero? Will this mean that I have to take the killer EM class again?
Got crack?
Physicists aren't mystical people at all
On the contrary, great modern physists are quite mystical.
From www.m-w.com:
mystical - having a spiritual meaning or reality that is neither apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence.
The modern theories of relativity and Quantum Mechanics are neither apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence, yet they are (or at least we believe they are) ultimate truths.
The typical physicist spends years tacking on another decimal place to some well-known constant.
This sounds more like the typical graduate student! How sad for you.
There is nothing mystical or holy at all about tensor analysis, or differential equations.
Blasphemy!
[-hbar**2/(2m)d2/dx2 - V(x)]psi = E psi
Does God beleive in you?
Like to ask the following questions: 1) What in your opinion is the most important scientific discovery/theory in the past century? 2) What do you think is the contribution of theoratical physics to society or technology at large? I mean pple can debate all day long about superstrings, going faster than the speed of light, or even a Grand Unified Theory, but what exactly do u think is the material significance of this all? eg, what do you think are the practical applications of a GUT even if we came up with it. Or will it be just another load of "quote" material for future generations of physics students to come? I really would like to hear meaningful discussions of questions on slashdot instead of some of these really tasteless short ugly offtopic comments that serve no purpose other than to ensure than this page takes more than 1 minute to load.
Your "US approach" sounds like the National Ignition facility in Livermore (slated to be operational ~ 2005), in which a duetrium (heavy H) pellet is irradiated with intense laser light. The surface ablates, (evaporates) and that action causes a reation, or compression, of the pellet. The idea is to form a plasma that is sufficiently hot and dense for long enough to get fusion to occur (only ~10^-9s for very hot, dense plasma). This approach is called inertial confinement fusion (ICF). Incidentally, laser light is only one of several possible "drivers" for ICF. Others iclude heavy and light ion beams, a single petawatt laser on one side of the pellet, and x-rays generated by varios processes, including by a Z-pinch, a device which pushes terawatts of power through a wire thinner than a human hair.) Your "European approach" is called a tokomak. It is a torus of plasma that is held in a "magnetic bottle" - thus, this approach is reffered to as magnetically confined fusion. Tokomak plasma is cooler and less dense than that of ICF, but is much longer lived (~1s). I mostly want to correct your division of the focus of fusion research. There are several tokomaks in the US, and there is a lot of work being done in Europe on lasers, z-pinches, and possible ignition schemes. There are, in addition to ICF and MCF, intermediate schemes, all of which have vociferous proponents and detractors; I'm sure you could find further discussion easily if you are really interested. (This response is offtopic inasmuch as it's not a question, but I suspect that the esteemed particle physicist who has granted /. this interview may not have too much to say on this issue)
Depends on the cat.
Yeah right. Someone supposedly comes up with the greatest invention ever plus some weird energy source and the first thing they think of is "How to sell it". That is SO sick.
Dr. Lederman, Do you think that any physical theory that predicts infinite quantities is automatically suspect? (For example, electromagnetism before Feynman renormalization.) Or do you think that infinite quantities are physically permissible (For example, the density of a black hole)?
If you know what's good for you, you better start growing those sideburns now...
Legalize suicide.
Encourage it, even. Start showing advertisements on TV that say, "Death rules. It's good to be dead." You'll clean up the country in no time.
hahahahahahahahahah !!!! Your dumbass was up to 4 earlier but now you're down to 0 !!! And the AC post that you copied from is at 1 !!! There is a God after all, to answer your question, jackass !!!!
Answer 1: After the first measurement the spin of each of the two particles is known, so they are no longer an "entangled state" (which means that you know only something about the sum of the spins). Any subsequent measurement of A does not yield more information about B, and thus does not change B's state.
If you measure noncommuting observables (like horizontal and vertical components of spin) your measurement disturbs the system. Thats the reason why spin is then not conserved. (note that overall spin measurement and measurement of the spin of one particle does commute).
Answer 2: You cannot transmit information faster than light (causality). You can find correlations between events that cannot exchange information (you could let a clock ring on the moon and here simultaneously) (simultaneously in your frame of reference).
how about how my dad lost his funding and my family of six was left out on the street for five years. insensitive bastard.
At least you didn't quibble with the "needledick" part. A telling omission.
Dr. Lederman What do you see as the largest current barriers to high-energy physics research? Are there political difficulties, funding problems, or perhaps technological barriers?
Malda, do not fall for the I-can't-think-of-a-probing-scientific-question-bec ause-I'm-a-retard-so-I'll-ask-the-generi c-where-do you-stand-on-God-and-science-crap-that-5-year-old- kids-can-think-up.
Please do not forward this question. it is a blatant attempt at karma whoring.
thanks.
But he does jizz all over Planck! I saw it! And he does the humpty-hump on a doll of Dirac!
hurry moderators !!! relinquish your hard earned points by rewarding vapid questions posed by Kintanon !!! Hurry, your time is running out !!!
would you like to blow kintanon now?
The God Particle... If only I could remember any of it!
3D Visualization *is* used in many fields. For example, in HEP, CERN's ROOT can be run on cheap PCs with hardware acceleration.
There are also demonstration programs available on the web that demonstrate the various effects of relativity (length contraction, perceived light frequency=colour, optical aberation). I haven't got the URL offhand, but a serach in your favourite engine should do the trick.
-
Dan
Can one measure both the location of Natalie Portman and how petrified she is at the same time?
How much energy does trollmastah use on each post?
Since his posts generate quite a bit of reaction, does the first post mastah create energy?
better, and equally relevant question...do you believe in Thor? At least he had a cool hammer.
Do you beleive in thermodynamics? It sure has been useful.
Duh, do you think Linux might somehow provide insight into solving the UFT ?
monotheism is a crock. there are 423 gods. and i have a personal relationship with all of them.
praise jesus, rudolph, bartholomew, susie, hank, etc. (too many to list)
I can answer this one...VMS!
do you have to know him blow him?
My, aren't we presumptuous with our little third grade relativity question!
More moronic sci-fi shows!! Woohoo! I watch star trek ergo I am interested in science!
from the man who brought you pearls of karma whoring wisdom like:
Nowhere in the bible does it say that Sex is wrong. Nor does it say that sex is solely for procreation. That crap was invented by the catholic church to try to curb population growth among the lower classes
or comment friendly drivel like:
Someone needs to get their ass handed to them on a platter for dumping a bunch of oil in our ocean!
Clearly, Kintanon will be talked about years from now and lauded for his commentary.
Please tell them I said hi.
I don't know if this will help, but last I heard Public Storage had purchased the defunct underground SSC S. of Dallas and was offering attractive temperature controlled storage rates? only rumor
>Is the damn cat alive or dead?
Yes.
Well duh, it's been moderated down below most people's threshholds - of course there are no replies.
then you're stupid.
AC POST #4(Score:-1, Offtopic)
what do you think...
about God?
KINTANON POST #5(Score:4, Interesting)
Someone has to ask this:
Do you belive in (a) god?
Kintanon
Trying to make everyones day a little more surreal.
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If thats not the most fucked up example of moderation here, then I don't know what is...
slashdot moderation has gotten out of hand
Where is the link to the .mp3? :)
What is Dr. Lederman's O/S of choice?
"I have great faith in fools: Self confidence my friends call it." ~Edgar Allan Poe
Do you believe in (a) God?
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
asdfdsf
[w00t@freaky.bish]# rm
I'll confess, I've always been a bit suspicion of certain quantum principles (hey, Einstein was too!), so how would a scientist go about convincing someone that things like 'Chaos Theory' aren't merely an ad hoc attempt to make up for deficiencies in traditional mathematics. Is modern physics hiding behind smoke and mirrors?
This is really a two-parter.
Periodically, some information will surface that researchers (legitimate scientific research, not the backyard perpetual motion types) are starting to get some reproducible results extending the original work. Are you familiar enough with the work and the researchers to comment on the quality of the work? If so, do you have an opinion as to whether it is a case of poor experimental design where the wrong this is being measured, experimental error in that excess heat is not being generated, some non-nuclear but poorly understood (at least by the experimenters) mechanism, or something interesting and new.
This brings me to the second, and likely more interesting, question. Has the practice of science become too constrained by peer review? I am not talking about throwing scientific method out, but rather the gatekeeper approach to deciding which projects to pursue and disseminating research results. Could a well-conceived, but controversial, project receive funding through the traditional channels? Could a positive, reproducible paper about a topic like cold fusion even be published in a peer-reviewed journal?
For the past 50 years or so, physics has been postulating and discovering an ever-growing 'zoo' of sub-atomic particles.
But last time I checked, our theories could only model the behaviour of 2 atoms -- the first being the standard Hydrogen atom (one proton, one electron) and the second being the H+ ion (two protons, one electron, no neutrons).
Fifty years, many of the best minds in the world and I-don't-know-how-many billions of dollars later and we still haven't gotten to '2' on the chemists' periodic table. Why?
Einstein is reputed to have said, "If only I'ld known, I'ld have been a watchmaker instead." Could the lack of progress (and the departure of the 'Golden Children') be the result of individual decisions not to go further?
What other explination can you suggest for the parallels between the ever more-complex theories offered by today's physics and the astronomical explinations offered by those scientists of earlier centuries who were wedded to an earth-centered view of the cosmos -- as they kept putting ever-smaller rings on the supposed orbits of the planets around the earth to accomodate the observations of those pesty amateur astronomers?
McGill University Physics graduate, class of 1969.
The physics community continues to design colliders which have greater energetic collisions in order to study the fundamental fabric of the universe (quarks, Higg's mechanism, etc...). Do you think we will continue to build higher and higher energy colliders in order to learn more physics? Or is there some threshold that will allow us to probe everything particle physicits want/need to know?
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Just lurking, thanks!
In the long term (from one to two hundred years or more) what do you see as the practical applications of particle physics? Will our engineering ever be advanced enough to create new forms of matter or different types of elementary particles besides those which can be created in accelerators now?
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
I've got a goofy pet hypothesis to explain A an B's behaviour: they're same particle, but their 3d projection is a tad out of whack; not parallel with our 'normal' universe. Since their 'core' existence isn't *here* right now, all we see is the behaviour of the parent particle's constituent components.
Hey, I said it was a goofy hypothesis!
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Dr Lederman;
I picked up your book, "The God Particle" recently, and am enjoying it immensely.
Seeing this q&a session on slashdot, I thought I would ask a question that my buddies and I have tossed about at cocktail parties for the last 20 years, at least. You might have a clue or two as to whether we're total fools, or inspired thinkers.
My query is thus:
Is it possible that, if the universe does not result from a big bang scenario, but is instead a steady state mechanism, that the background radiation attributed to Koop, et al , and Hubbel expansion, be explained by a virtual infinitude of mass at great distances. IE that our observed red shift for distant objects could be relativistic in nature, and NOT the result of movement?
This would seem to indicate that at great distances, our universe, from our observational location, would bend toward spherical singularity. Black sphere, if you will. Not too difficult a model to visualise. Gives 'no matter where you go, there you are' a whole new meaning!
I'm no cosmologist (I only know enough to make myself look stupid) But I've never seen this idea posited anywhere, and it seems rather obvious to me as some thing to at least be examined somewhat. It's clean, simple, and could explain quite a bit.
Am I an idiot?
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
I am TOTALLY with you on this. The universe is NOT chaotic, it's just orderly on a gigantic scale.
We as humans seem to think that this huge thing is all about US. We get confused, so we assume the universe is confused also.
How vain.
This universe is causal. Period. It's just SO BIG that it's causality isn't easily visible.
Chaos DOES exist. Chaos is NOT random. It's just excruciatingly orderly at a microfine level that most of us cannot see.
Randomness does NOT exist. It's a fantasy that wannabe gurus create for themselves.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Really.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
After all, what came BEFORE the big bang?
(Yes, I know this was a troll. But hopefully, some good will come out of this.)
Fundi-christians are not the only people of spiritual leaning - nor do they have a lock on the notion of God.
InThane
The opportunity to quiz a scientist of Prof. Lederman's stature doesn't come along every day.
:-)
Actually, some of us work at MIT...
Then again, some of us had Dr. Lederman for our freshman physics course. Of course he wasn't there that often, but still, I can say I had him as a professor.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
I'd prefer Richard Feynman's "QED Theory of Light and Matter", which is adding amplitudes for the layman.
However I doubt that anyone I know studied physics because he/she thought he/she could base a career on it. They do because they want to learn physics and hope to get some job somehow.
Thanks mainly to the shortage in information technology, many (me too) manage to get a job outside physics. (What does a real physicist create? More physicists.. :)
We should be thankful for this, because too many physicists with no job and too much time on their hands are not good (think russian nuclear scientists here :)
Even his most abstract contribution, general relativity, was led first by physical insight. As legend goes he sent his friend Marcel Grossmann (a mathmatician) to the library to go looking for a theory with this and that property (which were implied by the principles he got in mind), upon where he returned with Riemann's differential geometry, the mathematical theory to formulate general relativity.
Do you imagine any application that involves the physics of weak and strong interaction?
Nobody forces people to do PhDs or to pursue even more. Then leave after graduation and go for a job with physics involved and be it in the domain of engineering.
The "really good" mark might be high, but I experienced the case too that being at the right place at the right time with the right people, 4 and more publications a year plus good presentational skills do the job to get knighted er.. professored.
Is there any chance in the foreseeable future? Does the apparent acceleration of the expansion of the Universe in any way influence how you feel about the GUT's future?
Do you predict the devopment and acceptance of a Unifying Theory in the next decade or two?
This attitude annoys me. Why? Every dollar diverted from the Superconducting Supercollider will have 10x, or even 100x the benefit if the money is spent on other science programs. Particle accelerators are simply awful uses of our research science budget. The cost of these things is on an exponential curve, as well.
Put it this way. How many researchers are supported by the data that would have come from the supercollider? How much did it cost? How much funding would be required to fund researchers in other disciplines? You'll find a 10x-100x cost increase for this type of research. And for the next generation of supercollider, it will cost an additional 10x more. This is the reason that governments are reticent to build new particle accelerators. It is somewhat akin to the situation with computer chip fabrication plants. Each generation, the cost of the plant goes up by a factor of 10. As a result, I suspect that only a handful of manufacturers will be able to afford building new ones (IBM, Intel, TI, Hitachi, Samsung, Phillips??). Everyone else will be forced to buy time at other companies' chip fabs (watch--I bet within 3 years AMD no longer has any chip fabrication facilities--look for a deal between them and IBM).
The same will happen with particle accelerators. Before long, the western world will unite to build a single particle accelerator bigger, faster, and better than any one country would be able to afford. Other countries (and companies) will lease time on the accelerator.
Oh, and what really irks me about this topic is that it seems that nuclear researches somehow feel that their research is inherently more important than that of a biologist, a geologist, or a chemist.
--Be human.
Given his status as big name physicist, I'd be interested to know his opinions on 'The End Of The World' - Specifically the suggestions that going to higher and higher energies in particle accelerators might produce particels which end up having catastrophic effects on the local environment.
Or are we more likely to get hit by a killer asteroid before this happens - in which case should we not be spending more money on NEO research than on Particle accelerators.
6. Bohm's hidden variable
Of all of your many accomplishments, which are you most proud of?
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"To know recursion, you must first know recursion."
Of all the famous, and semi-famous people you've met through your awards or Professorships, who most impressed you?
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"To know recursion, you must first know recursion."
Do you buy the existence of the top quark?
I read a couple stories about the research at Fermilab, but I heard so much differing information during the actual experiment, I'm not so sure that I'm convinced by their results.
Do you think having two teams working towards finding the same phenomena in such close proximity is a good idea?
Seems like people might be tempted to be less than accurate.
Tech history tells us Dr. Mills would not be the first to make a discovery, but fail to understand why it works. Radio transmission is an example; radio had no known medium of propogation and so the idea of "the ether" became popular. Today we know RF energy does not need an "ether" to propogate.
If what we read on the web is true, and Dr. Mills does indeed have remarkable materials available for analysis and his work is replicable, then critiques of his theory can prove his theory wrong, but they cannot make the material disappear.
My question is, "Where DID the stuff at Blacklight Power come from?"
My metamoderation cancels your moderation
Now I just need money to buy airtime.
;)
This sig is false.
Thank you for your time.
First, it seems as if the 20th century was the time of physics, but the 21st will be the time of biology and chemisty. How do you view this possible change?
Second, are there fundamental structures of the universe? Are quantum particles only a step as electron/proton were in the past? Are strings the end?
Third, will we ever be able to transform our conscious existence to a different form- from matter to a more maleable form? Is thought simply the sum of signals in a network?
Fourth, what interests you?
Again, thank you.
Perhaps now the US space program doesn't have any height restrictions, but on the original capsule missions all the astronauts were purposely under 6 feet tall.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
In the "God Particle," you briefly describe
super string theory and some the excitement it
has generated in the search for a TOE.
Unfortunately, string theory's primary appeal has
been due its mathematical elegance and consistency. Due to physical constraints, experimentation and empirical evidence have proven
to be elusive, if not impossible.
As work in this field has continued, what are your
current thoughts on the strength of string theory?
Also, how likely is it that we'll actually be able
to test its veracity experimentally?
One problem with finding these is that in a large proportion of the collider data, any signature for these particles is completely hidden, e.g. by the fact that not all the quantities required to reconstruct the underlying amplitude are measured. The amplitude is what is predicted by the theory, and to obtain the comparison with experiment, one generally has to sum several amplitudes and take the modulus squared (amplitudes are complex numbers). This means that for any given measurable angular probability distribution of particles in a reaction, there are potentially many amplitudes which will, when the modulus squared is taken, predict the same results.
Only in a few cases can enough quantities, in enough coupled reactions, be measured to attempt to reconstruct the amplitude. In fact, in reactions of interest to people seeking new QCD bound state particles (such as the diquark anti-diquark mentioned earlier) I know of only one reaction:- the proton antiproton annihilation at low energy into (exactly) two pions and even then both pi+pi- and pi0pi0 final state reactions are required to reconstruct the amplitudes, along with a set of other constraints.
I did some work in this very field about 5 years ago.
Mark
--
"I am not a nut-bag." -- Millroy the Magician
Normally I don't flame for grammar and spelling, but the man's name was Edgar Allan Poe. If it's going to be on every post, you should get it right.
Hello sir,
Do you believe that the laws of physics are constant throughout the universe? If so, what could the cause of the differences be?
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
Nope, everything's made of tiny little strings which exist in oodles of dimension. What they're made of? Nilmop only knows.
Don't ask me where I got this from. Probably Scientific American...
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
4.5 Decoherent Histories
just as a follow up, in the God Particle, Dr. Lederman made clear that the SSC would allow for sufficient energy to detect the Higgs particle. with the collapse of the SSC project, what is the next feasible method for uncovering the answer to The Question?
I have a technical question about neutrinos. For many years, we have tried to find the mass of the neutrino (which to me, implies that they do not move at the speed of light, because that would require infinite energy). But the mass has been very elusive to measure. Do you suppose that the mass of the neutrino is related to the velocity? If, at the usual velocities we see (or rather, don't see) neutrinos (say, 99.9% C), their mass is undetectable. But as they approach the speed of light, their energy increases. Because energy and mass are related, perhaps as their energy (velocity) increases, their mass increases. The reason we have a hard time finding the mass, is that the neutrino mass is only detectable at velocities from which we can not currently obtain accurate measurements. For example, if we could create neutrinos (say in an accelerator) at 99.99% C, and the mass of the neutrino becomes large enough to measure only as it reaches 99.999999% C, perhaps it would appear that the neutrino does not have a mass. Assume that very high and very low velocity neutrinos are less abundant than medium velocity neutrinos. (This could have other implications, such as the omega value for the closure of the universe, or the lack of neutrinos measured from the Sun.)
-- Straights are for fast cars, corners are for fast drivers.
So it's ok for the woman to have sex with another woman's husband? (he's going to hell, but what about her? ;) )
Contrary to popular beleive science dose contain something like ``dogma.'' Example 1: Biology only reacently (10 years) showed that DNA really is a double helix, but most biologists and the public believed this almost blindly long before it was really shown to be true. They concluded it was a double helix from scatering experiments which showed it had a ``shadow'' consistant with a double helix and a double helix seemed like a good idea for other inconclusive reasons. (Biologits even call this the central dogma)
The latter part of this statement is untrue - the "Central dogma" of molecular biology is that DNA makes RNA makes protein. This use of "Central dogma" was coined, I think, by Crick. I think he may have been using it to emphasize the fact that this was a fundamental principle for molecular biology.
As to the idea that this was only conclusively demonstrated 10 years ago - I really don't know about that. If you are dismissing all the other "inconclusive", yet highly consistent, evidence that cohered with the idea that it was a double-helix then I don't know what you would accept as reasonable evidence. What was the conclusive demonstration?
Disclaimer: I am a math person and not a biology person, but someone gave a coloquim recently tring to talk lots of us math type into getting interested in math biology problems.
I would support the speaker on that at any rate - there is a real shortage of mathematicians that are working on biological problems. It is also true that there are some really good mathematicians and statisticians - especially in the area of phylogeny and protein-folding problems - oh, and don't forget population genetics: R.A.Fisher was responsible for a lot of the foundations of genetics and statistics.
Is it possible that the speaker was talking about A,B and Z-DNA? Anyway, if it's handy I would like to know what he was talking about. Cheers, Crush.
Thank you very much. I'm going to go search for any pubs he has. Thanks for taking the time! Regards, Crush
All other sciences - materials science, chemistry, biology - ultimately must rest on the basic laws of nature that govern the behavior of the elementary particles.
While not disputing this, I would question its usefulness as a perspective for those engaged in the study of biology, for example. The elucidation of biological laws is accomplishable at a level of investigation far above particle physics and would actually be hampered by a consideration of the most fundamental stuff of nature - so, this is an example of where reductionism would get it wrong. Do you think that there may be other methodological/epistemological pitfalls in the atom-smashing approach?
I've no real physics background, and my interpretation is most probably missing the point, but the example you mention above might have a use in crypto.
If the particles maintained the same properties, one in New York and one in Moscow, could they be used for one-time pads in crypto?
(Of course, I realize the example is probably just an imaginary situation with no real way to seperate the particles and send them to different places) but dismissing reality(tm), is that a possible random one-time pad generation with only two recipients?
.. hrm. Or is the timing impossible?
Screw this shit, I've had it/I ain't no mister cool./I'm a pig, I'm a dog/Excuse me if I drool./stm
In your book "The God Particle", you seemed to have a lot riding on the Superconducting Supercollider to make many advances in physics, especially in finding the Higgs-Boson. How much of a setback has the loss of the SCC been for physics? Has anything else come along that has made up for it, if only partially, or are we going to have to wait for another machine of the same scale before we can hope to see the kind of discoveries the SCC would have made?
Many prominent physicists seem to think that the revolutions of the next century will be in biology and not in physics. What do you think?
CPU design has been primarily an engineering field since its inception, though as things advance further and further, problems such as decreasing physical size become increasingly important. How long do think before Moore's law regarding processor speed advancement becomes unsustainable due to fundamental problems of particle physics? Do you feel CPU design will become more of a physicist's job instead of an engineer's?
Signed,
A Fellow Wheaton High School(s) Alum
Do you think a source for very cheap electric power, like nuclear fusion or John Galt's generator a la Atlas Shrugged, will be seen in our lifetime, and if so, what major changes in society do you forsee.
In a recent lecture, Murray Gell-Mann reported that "Physics is done". All that remains is just working out the details. Now, considering the obvious huge discrepancy between quantum mechanics and relativity, this seems rather premature. How close are we really to "the end of Physics"? Is this even a meaningful concept?
Perhaps you've heard this point of view: "Physics is done, because Physics is simple. Biology is far more complicated than Physics, and in fact, Physics is a special case of universal Biological laws." (paraphrased from Rosen, 1991).
Do you think there is any truth to the notion that questions like "What is Life?" are unanswerable by current Physical Theory? Or can Biology inform Physics in the search for the "End" of Physics?
What do YOU think should be the foremost question in our minds? And what is the answer to it?
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Dr. Lederman,
While the question of the geometry of the Universe is still open, it seems that there is a good chance that it will be "open", i.e. expanding forever until all cools into low temperature thermal radiation or some such dismal fate.
As I believe that life is one of the most precious things ever found, can life itself have an effect on the Universe as a whole to further life's existance?
I suppose I'm wondering if our own ingenuity can perhaps forstall or even evade a situation far in the future where there is no longer sufficient energy differences, etc. to support life.
Long term thinking? Yes. Worth asking? I think so.
Bryan Baskin
This will probably suffer from Late Comment Syndrome, but oh well...
My Question(s) to Dr. Lederman:
Science has always been filled with those that believe in sharing information, and those that believe in keeping things secret. How do you feel science is benifited by sharing information, between nations? How do you feel that science has been benifitted or stunted by competition between countries or scientists, and the keeping of "secrets"? Should an "opensource" method of study be used now? And, finally, do you feel that the scientific community has shown an attitude favoring the sharing of information so far?
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
Dr. Lederman - I had the opportunity in high school to hear you speak at the release of your book, The God Particle. It fast became one of my favorite books, and I could tell how excited you were for the completion of the SSC. Since its demise, I haven't heard much in the news regarding high-energy physics, with the exception of Fermilab finding the top quark. My question is, now what? Will our current infrastructure allow us to keep going? Or is someone going to have to step up and push physics forward again? With the recent loss of the two Mars probes it seems like the fad of the "cheap and quick" science experiment has lost favor, yet no one seems willing to foot the bill for a large scale experiment either. So where are we headed? Thanks! P.S. If I played better basketball I might have become a physicist too!
What do you think the evolution of the Universe really is?
I've read recent news that there is evidence of an accelerating rate of expansion for the Universe, but my reading prior indicated that our Universe was poised at an point of neither expansion nor collapse.
How does the amatuer physicist evaluate competing claims like this?
--binkley
Dr. Randell L. Mills claims he developed a mathematical formulation using fundamental laws of physics to arrive at a closed form solution for the hydrogen atom which predicts allowed stable energy states (n = 1, 1/2, 1/3, ...), as well as the excited integer states (n = 2, 3, 4, ...).
Claims such as this abound in modern physics and science in general. We have seen leaps of science taken for our move from classical to quantum physics. Do we need to look outside our traditional thinking to find answers to remaining questions regarding Astro-Physics? Do our resources (both computational and analytical) allow us to make leaps of science, or are we in a situation where all leaps of science are seen as improbable? Does our own skepticism limit our ability to perform science?
I think I read somewhere that current "hot-fusion" technology generates tempratures much hotter then the core of the sun. something like 10 million degrees or so.
:P (actualy, you probably wouldn't be able to do that with a cold fusion reactor ether, since the mettals used are so exspensive)
Hot fusions's pretty cool, and it will be a reality, someday. Unfortunetly, I don't think you'll be able to do things like put a hot-fusion reactor in your car or anything
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
From what I've read all the "falures" are caused by "imperfections", therfore, unlike catalitic converters, you need the pure stuff. Witch would be much more exspensive I think then the regular stuff used in cars
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
If MWI turns out to be wrong, do we have to give some scientific account of "observation?" Is this possible?
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
What role do you see for computers in Physics, primarily in the future?
Have many recent furthering of Physics happened because of computers (modeling, data crunching, solving large series of equations, etc.) or by a sharp mind with a sharp pencil?
Do you think computers will ever solve any of the major mysteries of Physics by themselves (with major evolutions in AI)?
Another: avian population biology. Most of our knowledge of bird distirbution and population trends in the North American is due to the work of hundreds (or even thousands?) of talented amatures. Many of the censuses which have documented the declines of many bird species have been performed by dedicated bird-watchers. One of the important journals in the field, especially in terms of distribution, North American Birds, is mostly composed of regional resports taken from the observations of legions of bird-watchers.
That said, I think these two fields are in the minority. There may be a few others like them, but they are the exception.
Anti-Matter would has Anti-Time. Thus a particle of Anti Matter would appear to behave in reverse compared to the same particle in our same space. The tougher question is can we ever copy particles from Matter to Anti-Matter and back.
I also have an Anti-Grammer. I was testing it out on this post to make sure it worked, so there!
since when did scores go up to 6? I've been asking for this for a while.
+&x
what about No?
+&x
Prof. Lederman,
As a Ph.D. scientist (toiling away as a postdoc), I think there's a cycle between big and small budget science. Early work on subatomic particles and much of the experimental work that gave rise to quantum mechanics was fairly low budget. Then came the bigger and bigger accelerators and articles in Phys. Rev. Lett. with a list of 50 authors.
But (in my opinion) the most important recent findings in the field of physics have happened on a tabletop or small evacuated chamber, such as scanning-tunneling microscopy, high Tc superconductivity, and Bose-Einstein condensation.
Funding agencies are aggressively promoting research in "nanotechnology".
In your opinion, is the era of truly huge scientific experiments over (perhaps a one-time frenzy fueled by the cold war?), or is the process cyclical, or is it a damped oscillation, where eventually there will be a more steady flow of funding and important findings in both categories?
...have we learned from it?
There really is very good evidence out there that Cold Fusion, of the Pons and Fleischmann variety, did NOT happen, doesn't work, and nearly all positive results can be attributed to simple error.
The fact is, some scientists are sloppy, or get a little overeager when looking at preliminary results. Or they get greedy. Scientists aren't perfect. Neither is scientific equipment. So from time to time we get an amazing "discovery" that doesn't hold water. We have to ACCEPT the overwhelming evidence that the initial claims were wrong.
One aspect of science that makes this process difficult is that there are no absolute truths in science, only evidence and a loose consensus.
For further reading on the short and interesting times of cold fusion, check out Bad Science, by Gary Taubes.
The question is simple but I am sure the answer is not:
Now that you are in your latter years and you look back on what you and many others have accomplished do you think that any "real" progress was made as a species?
To qualify it I'll expand a bit. I have noticed that there are always gropus and individuals that don't agree when it comes to science, be they for or against, in or out. That is not what concerns me. I am none of these. I simply realize that language and actions bind individual lives and humanity as a whole to a "certain" number of tracks, so to speak(in a physical sense anyway). I have also come to realize that as people age they began to see things differently than when they were more "active" in worldly affairs, or at least think about different things more (I have a few newly formed "wind bag" uncles that were real pitbulls in their younger years). I am really interested in your response. I don't think you are a windbag *smile*.
Thank you for your time.
nothing excels in every environment
I would just settle for some luke-warm fusion at this point. Or maybe some uncomfortably warm fusion. Or even unseasonably-hot fusion, since our Sun has to do it at something like 3 million degrees or so.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
There are two God particles, Chicken & Soy.
May we have your opinion on Blacklight Power Inc. and Dr. Randall Mills seemingly quackish Universal Theory of Everything? Reference www.blacklightpower.com. It has been in the news the last couple of months, and I am curious to hear a REAL physicist's view on the subject.
Dr., I recently read a book that presented an overview of superstring theory and Roger Penrose's twistor theory. I am curious to know which theory is presently most popular amoung physicists, and which you subscribe to. Why?
thank you,
kevin
Since the SSC is now pretty much a dead issue, when do you think that a Accelerator with the capability of definitively proving/disproving the existence of the Higgs Boson will be built?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
I have heard recently that you are behind the project of making a soap opera about scientists.
Is there any truth in this? I'm a bit bored by all those police-lawyers-ER stuff so this could be an interesting change.
Do you personally take "superstring" theory seriously? There seems to be many physicists who dismiss it as useless or even as nonsense.
444.00 Palladium
;^) Moderate me
404.50 Platinum (buy either today, at our site, but those aren't our buying prices,
they are our selling prices.)
Both (in various mixtures, I'm told) are in the catalytic converters of automobiles.
I'm interested in the scientific politics (yep, it's there) of fusion. I think "cold fusion"
has an unfortunate moniker, but is interesting because of unexplained results
nonetheless. I don't claim to know the answers, but I find the FAITH exhibited by
those who do claim to know what's going on unseemly, considering the fact that
they can't explain the unexplained results in a satisfactory way (IMO). I'll stop now,
I'm in danger of expressing an opinion and I'm out of my league.
down, now!!!
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
Yes, but they weren't short either.
Will in Seattle
The fundamental flaw with this famous thought experiment is the use of a cat. As everyone knows, cats are born with nine lives. Assuming a random distribution of cat-deaths, a random chosen cat would be expected to have 4.5 lives remaining. Therefore, the cat in question almost certainly has enough lives to survive the experiment, regardless of the outcome. In addition, the cat's natural curiosity is likely to classify it as a quantum observer, thereby collapsing the state-vector and ruining the experiment.
To rectify these problems, I propose that this experiment henceforth be refered to as "Schrodinger's slug".
Drinking will help us plan!
-r
The electromagnetic force has photons and gravity has gravitons, but why do all the books say that the strong force has 8 gluons? Why must it be 8?
Maybe you'd prefer the Nobel laureat answering your questions, but I have the requisite qualifications to at least answer your #5...
Chicks dig physics guys. Well, okay, PHYSICS chicks dig physics guys.... so I guess you just have to find the right kind of chicks.
Dear Dr. Lederman,
Is there an experiment planned or in the works that will tell us if sterile neutrinos are a necessary part of the standard model? How would we find such elusive beasts?
Thank you very much!
The economy is telling you that it has too many physicists. There is a NEGATIVE economic need for more scientists. Unless you think you're going to be the next Feynman or Gell-Mann, be something the economy needs more of.
This has been a problem fo a while. It is endemic to all of the basic sciences. It is going to get worse before it gets better.
Nanobots? Reality? How soon? What kind of impact would it have on the world of science?
"I have great faith in fools: Self confidence my friends call it." ~Edgar Allan Poe
Before I discuss the quantum examples, I should mention that there is a very general reason to believe faster than light communication is impossible: according to the theory of relativity, it is entirely equivalent to communicating backwards in time, which brings up deep questions about free will and killing your grandmother. For details of this and and lots of other mind bending features of the universe, try reading Spacetime Physics by Taylor and Wheeler, a great introduction to the special theory of relativity at a level a good high school student should be able to understand.
There has been quite a lot of noise about transmitting information faster than at light speed (with twin photons, tunnelling or whatever means). All (serious ?) scientists say that this is not possible, no matter if experiments show something else (or are these all faulty ?).
The short answer to this is that since any measurement on one member of a set of (maximally) entangled particles will give a random result, you can't possibly derive any information from that measurement alone; you might as well flip a coin, and avoid the trouble of setting up the entanglement. On the other hand, if you can communicate with the person who has the other entangled particle, the classically impossible correlations between measurements the pair of you you might make allow you to do a number of things you couldn't do otherwise, like provably secure key distribution, dense coding and quantum teleportation.
For a popular science discussion, see Schrodinger's kittens and the search for reality : solving the quantum mysteries by John Gribbin. If you want it from the horses' mouths, try Bennett and Shor's review (IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 44 (6), p2724 (1998)).
Also, why do physicians claim that faster than light information transport by tunneling does not transport the information faster than light ?
They don't; physicists do. This is a somewhat ill posed question, in that a phenomenon (like an electron tunneling through a barrier, or the edge of a shadow travelling along a surface) can not transmit information by itself. You have to be able to control it so different things will happen depending on what you want to send. If you want to communicate using an electron tunneling through a barrier, you can modulate either the energy of the electron or the height of the barrier. These changes will take time to propagate from your position, and for all situations people have thought about so far, this happens slower than light.
Given the ongoing experiments to observe CP violations in B-mesons and the recent indicators that neutrinos posess mass, what do you see as the evolution of the Standard Model to meet these new results? Furthermore, what are your expectations towards the discovery of the supersymmetric particles?
Why don't we see intelligent life everywhere throughout the universe?
(I will use the American definition of billion here: one thousand million or 10^9.)
Even if one assumes that the speed of light is an absolute limit to the rate at which an intelligent life form would propogate itself through the universe, it seems to me that one or more intelligent life form should have already filled most of the universe. With the development of molecular manufacturing techniques imminent, I can see humanity beginning an expansion at near the speed of light within the next 200 years, or 1000 years at the very most. This could be done via spores weighing at most a few milligrams but containing sufficient information and tools to allow building a transciever and molecular manufacuring plant from raw materials at the target. More complex instructions could be beamed continously at the target by laser to allow bootstrapping.
The universe has most likely been forming planets which could be earth prototypes since (this is total guesswork, let me know how far off I am), say, one billion years after the big bang. Give them five billion years to age into having intelligent life, and it seems that for the past six billion years (assuming a twelve billion year old universe) there should have been ETs spreading through the universe!
So where are the ETs? Would the universe require appreciably more time than I have allotted to produce earth prototypes? Is there some strong disincentive to take over the universe? Do most civilizations kill themselves off? Is life and/or intelligence so rare that we are among the first, if not the first?
Is there a reasonable explanation for the universe to be as we observe it, or do we just throw up our hands and say that we are too primitive to even understand the problem and possible solutions to why the universe isn't already taken over by extremely advanced civilizations?
Disclaimer: I am a math person and not a biology person, but someone gave a coloquim recently tring to talk lots of us math type into getting interested in math biology problems.
:)
As to the idea that this was only conclusively demonstrated 10 years ago - I really don't know about that. If you are dismissing all the other "inconclusive", yet highly consistent, evidence that cohered with the idea that it was a double-helix then I don't know what you would accept as reasonable evidence. What was the conclusive demonstration?
I really do not know that much about it, but I do know that they ultimatly found that it is sometimes not a double helix (the story we got was that it can twist back and forth instead of arround).. and the impress I got from the speaker was that it still satisfies the old arguments for a double helix when it dose this, but that some newer more convincing arguments showed that DNA was a double helix most of the time.
I would go look up the speakers name from last symesters coloquim list for you, but I do not think it was his main line of research (it was really a look the scientific method can be a lot of fun just like the mathemaical method statment) so it probable would not help you find papaers. It would probable be better to look for papers directly related to the structure of DNA.
I donno.. as they say a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing..
Jeff
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Anyway, if it's handy I would like to know what he was talking about.
Ok, here is abstract from the Rutgers mathematics department colloquium:
Sept. 24: Craig Benham, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
The Emergence of Mathematical Biology - New Opportunities and Old Pitfalls
ABSTRACT: Biology is unique among the sciences in that it periodically reinvents itself through the
development of unanticipated new methodologies and perspectives. The discovery by Watson and Crick of the linear encoding of genetic information in the DNA molecule has caused a revolutionary paradigm shift, in which the fundamental determinants of many important biological phenomena are now realized to be encoded in molecular sequences, structures and interactions. This has brought biology into the realm of the traditional
"hard" sciences - physics, chemistry and mathematics. Because few biologists are trained in mathematics, unprecedented opportunities are becoming available for mathematicians to contribute to, and in some substantial measure create, the biology of the 21st century. This talk will describe one point of view on the opportunities and pitfalls facing a mathematician who wishes to work on new biological problems. If one wishes to make a useful contribution to biology one must first understand biologists - what problems they regard as important, and what contributions they view as useful. So the cultural perspective from which biologists view their domain will be described. Then several new directions in biology will be described that provide unique opportunities for mathematicians. Commonly, these are situations where a complete list of the components of a biological system are known, but where there is little understanding of how these work together to make the system dynamically stable yet rapidly adaptive to change. The mathematical and numerical analysis of the governing dynamical systems provide the means by which the global organization of many biological systems will be understood. Examples of this type will be described from areas such as genetics, cellular biology and neurobiology. By developing effective ways to treat specific situations such as these, mathematicians will create a methodology that will be at the heart of 21st century biology. Finally, if time permits a brief history will be sketched of this investigator's research on mathematical aspects of DNA structure and function. This will show how cascades of mathematically tractable yet biologically important problems can be developed from apparently naive initial insights.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Nothing happened. Anonymous posts start at zero, whereas logged in users' posts start at +1. So the guy's post was not moderated down, it started down and is being moderated up.
What do you think about superstring theory?
1. With the enormous growth and pace of modern science, how do you feel about the generally overwhelming scope of knowledge required to make further progress? Today a researcher almost has to specialize in a narrow field in order to absorb enough material even to understand what has already been discovered. Do you feel this limits further research, because so few people can actually see the "Big Picture"?
2. The classic "two-slit" experiment is usually cited as the best demonstration of the wave-particle duality. I'd like to open others eyes to the uncertainties and implications of quantum physics. Is there a good "kitchen sink" version of this experiment that can be performed at home, maybe with some Edmund parts?
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
I've always had this question, but never gotten a satisfactory answer:
If the universe is closed, how does that fit in with the 2nd law of thermodynamics? If the start and end of the universe are the same (ie all matter and energy located in an infinitely small space), how can there be a consistent, one-directional rule that says entropy will always increase from beginning to end? How is the end of a closed universe different from the beginning?
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
So while this may not be a _useful_ effect, it's still an interesting one.
I specifically reference current experiments in alternative energy ("cold fusion" if you will) wherein results are obtained that require either bending the theory to fit the results, or vice versa.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
The cat is both dead and alive...but only instantaneously.
The interactions of the myriad of particles in the cat cause the wave function to collapse almost immediately.
Thus, by the time you open the box the cat has either been alive or dead for quite some time. In other words, you missed "witnessing" the superposition. In fact, the odds of witnessing a cat in superposition are close to the odds of watching all of the air in the room congregate in the wastepaper basket under your desk (which is a classical physics problem). It's possible but extremely improbable.
That's how I understand it, anyway. Corrections are welcome.
--
"I'm too old to use Emacs." -- Rod MacDonald
I am currently a physics undergrad at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Right now I am part of a HEP research group which is working with theoretical approaches to solving the the problems with the Standard Model, more specifically we are dealing with Supersymmetry.
I have two questions.
1) Do you believe that supersymmetry is the most likely answer to the problems with the Standard Model, and why?
2) Will you be at the NLC meeting in March? And do you think that the NLC will get funded?
For those who don't know, the Standard Model describes all the elementary particles and the forces between them. Unfortunately the model is flawed, there is the need for something called the Higgs field to allow for the particles to have mass, this introduces the Higgs boson which is where the problem is. Put simply, using the Standard Model the Higgs boson has infinite mass.
Thank you for your time
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
reading of feynman! this is really what he believed, at least later in his life. i should say this: he had very little feeling of social responsibility while at the same time having a great sense of scientific responsibility. there is a great quote even to this effect which i will try to remember now:
what you choose to do in your personal life--whether you cheat on your wife--that is between you and your rabbi, but when it comes to science you'd better be honest!
something like that anyway. if someone else has "Adventures of a curious character" on hand please feel free to correct me, thanx.
sh_
Interested in learning Chinese or Japanese? check out Chinese/Japanese-English Dictiona
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Do you feel that science in general is to critical of new ideas. I've noticed that anything that doesn't agree with mainstream thought is flamed, for lack of a better description, by mainstream scientists.
The great thing about most mature scientific disciplines is that things that don't agree with mainstream thinking are usually wrong. There's a reason that the currently accepted theories are accepted -- they do a good job of explaining available data. A new theory not only has to do that, it has to either explain the existing data even better (e.g., simpler, or more accurately), or make novel predictions that go counter to existing theories, and then gather new supporting data. Eventually, if the new theory is supported by replicated findings that support it vs the standard theory people (hopefully) start to become converts.
The responsibility is on the 'maverick' to demonstrate the superiority of his/her theory, not on the establishment. Kuhn did a pretty good job of describing this process in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions."
Great crank logical error:
They Laughed at Newton;
They laughed at me;
I must be like Newton.
(Hey guy, they laughed at Bozo, too)
There are thousands of Bozos for every Newton.
In light of Hawking's interview recently, what do you think about mankind breaking the speed of light barrier? I know that current scientific theory (ala e=mc^2) states that it is impossible, but do you think that technology will be developed to circumvent this theory? Or at least create other means of moving, like wormholes or the like?
Some people take their .sig way too seriously
Dr. Lederman,
Can you please comment on the current status of
the NLC project and the major obstacles that
remain in its design and those of the detectors?
Also, what are the plans for the first few live
experiments?
Hey there... What's the plural form of universe? Damn! I digress! :)
:)
I have an amateur background in special and general relativity(thanks to a great physics teacher in high school), and I've been wondering about this for a while, and here it is. I fly into a black hole. I pass the even horizon. Sure, nothing will ever see me again, but I can still see outside(sort of). Well, here's my question: If I'm being strung out like a strand of spagetti, but my frame of reference is incredibly scewed(that is, I look outside and can see galaxies rotating and spinning, because time is so much slower for me), Will I feel like I'm being stretched out? ARG! It's so hard to do this without math...
Let me try again:
I aim my ship directly for a singularity. As I move towards the center of this black hole, gravity starts stretching me out like a strand of spaghetti. However, in this gravitational well, both my length as well as my perception of time change. I become shorter, and everything outside seems to be moving very fast.
Question 1) Will the length dialation due to acceleration off-set the spaghetti-strand problem?
Question 2) Since my frame of reference is different from the singularity's, and everything else for that matter, will I feel such a crushing gravity? Will it ease, because I am slower? Or will it be even more powerful, because I am slower?
Whew. Hope this doesn't get moderated too high.
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Isn't there a way to set the polarisation to a certain angle without destroying the particle (if I would use a polarisation filter, I would just be able to tell if the photon had a certain polarisation (it came through) or not (it didn't came through)). With that, I could manipulate the photon in New York before it is measured in Moskau. Or is such a manipulation considered as a measurement (because I know which angle it has afterwards) ?
--
Dipl. Inf. (FH) Aaron "Optimizer" Digulla
"(to) optimize: Make a program faster by improving the algorithms rather than by buying a faster machine."
Professor, today we work at pushing back the limits of knowledge of how the universe works. Considering that (accd to some) as the universe formed, the physical constants/laws changed, do you think we may ever harness the ability to /change/ the nature of space to our liking? ie, alter the gravitational constant, put extra quarks in nucleons, bend space without mass, change the speed of light, time travel?
2)
Heat Death of the universe/black&white holes: My (undergrad layperson's) understanding of black holes is that they may 'fall' out of 'our' space, and then undergo their own Big Bang; do you think that it is possible to use these holes and otherverses as cosmic power plugs, to syphon in/out energy, thus prolonging or even immortalizing our own universe?
3)
On the physicality of information: I have often heard of info inside of a computer as being called "pure" or "just" information; considering that this information is embodied by electrons, do you think that information can exist apart from matter/energy? On its own? As in, do provable mathematical 'facts' exist before someone sits down and proves them?
4)
I have heard that some physicists think of physics more as a model of how we humans percieve our environment, than as a model of REALITY; what do you think about this? And what do you think of Zen?
5)
Has a woman ever expressed interest in you based mostly on the fact that you have a PhD in physics? (sorry, but I'm a young guy, and i really want to know!)
6)
Do you believe in a non-subjective, exceptionless Truth?
What do my fellow /.ers think?
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
For example, when uranium fission was discovered, the news was rapidly spread all over the world, and that was in 1938, when all the nations in the world were poised to lunge at one another's throats. If physicists in an American laboratory today discovered a phenomemon with obvious military or commercial potential comparable to that of uranium fission, would they publish it? Could they?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Mr. Lederman is truly our greatest guest ever.
National Medal of Science (1965)
Elliot Cresson Medal (1976)
Wolf Prize in Physics (1982)
Nobel Prize in Physics (1988)
Enrico Fermi Prize (1993)
Co-discoveror of the Bottom Quark
Director emeritus of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
Please, intelligent questions only!
.sig: Now legally binding!
I've found that there are very few prospects for people with physics degrees. After 5 years of a Mathematical Physics Ph.D., which I did for the love of the subject, I've ended up working as a Linux Sysadmin because that's how I could make a living.
How can the study of physics be encouraged when this situation continues?
[I want to go back sometime, and build the biggest beowulf cluster in existance!]
Do you think that we are becoming too dependent on computers in our science and engineering. For example, are there useful mathematical techniques being lost because we are relying more on symbolic mathematical packages (mathematica, matlab etc).
Every once in awhile I hear something or other about the promises of quantam physics. At the same time it seems as if no one truly understands this branch of science (even those who win the nobel prize in the area admit to not fully comprehending it). Can you give me a simple explanation (no easy task) as to what the basic ideas/assumptions, and possible implications of those ideas? Where is quantam physics headed? What will it do for us in the future? Thanks.
Dr. Lederman,
Thank you for this (to most of us, anyway) unique opportunity.
I apologize in advance if I misstate the physics.
I was very impressed with your book, "The God Particle." I read it shortly after the cancellation of funding for the SSC (which derailed the summers of many of the folks out at Berkeley that I was taking classes from.) It seemed to me that your book, looking forward to the SSC construction, was hopeful that it would find the Higgs boson, that sneaky little generator of the Higgs field.
Recently, I heard an interview of yours on NPR, in which you described the problem of understanding quantum mechanics (or really, the problem of not understanding it.) And you sounded hopeful again that the Higgs field explanation would be verified soon.
Like Poincare's post on this thread, I wonder what, if anything, is going on with the SSC idea now, or if there are other projects that might demonstrate Higgs bosons in the near future. Also, what were your feelings about the cancellation of the SSC's funding? Do you feel it has delayed our progress in the field?
Lastly, I salute your hopefulness despite past adversity, and I wonder if you might share with us some of the sources of that hope for our understanding of physics in the future.
Again, thank you.
Bob Wieman
I sure wish more slashdotters thought this way. Especially with regard to science.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Thanks you for the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure view on history. Your comment is stupid and uninformed, and you should be ashamed of yourself for writing it.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
It's a shame for you that your article did not prove your assertion. I read your page and the actual numbers showed increases in most everything but the EPA. The article was concerned with what chemistry research funding was, whatever the source. There is no evidence that basic science research funding is decreasing.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Yes... it seems so obvious from the post now! Janitors that lose physics research money! Okay, I'll answer. The chances of a janitor not finding a job in the US in the 90's are infinitesimal. Maybe if he had no legs or arms. But then he'd qualify for grants. Why am I responding to you?
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Even the lowliest physicists get self-published manuscripts every month that purport to turn physics on it's head. They never do peer-reviewed (or reproducable) research, and they always have suspicious qualifications, like Mills' M.D., or they studied EE, or took the Navy nuclear submarines courses. Never an actual physics background. They're all full of shit. The days of the amateur physicist are long past.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
You're so full of it. No physicist has gone homeless because of DOE grant cuts. Pure physics research grants have gone up every year in the 90's. Even if a physicist couldn't get grant money, he is qualified for a zillion other jobs. Quit lying.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
This isn't directly physics related, but it has been getting a good deal of media attention.
JPL and NASA have been raked over the coals by the media for several recent mistakes they have made. Granted, these mistakes were not nearly as costly as previous successful missions have been. But now a good deal of JPL's funding for future missions has been cut. My question is this: Should popular opinion and political opinion have this much control over scientific research? Is it safe to assume that most of our politicians in the House of Representatives that decide how much funding JPL, NASA, and NSF receive do not have a good understanding of the nature of the research being done, and what that research entails? Should research into space exploration be continued because of the possible benefits even if public and political opinion feels that such exploration is a waste of money?
Thanks for doing this interview on slashdot.
moller
Is this possible:
;)). Isn't particle collision sort of a high tech ghost from the past. (I'm aware that statistics and theory are used to study particle traces, but reductionism is the general tactic.)
:)
As above so below? Several books I've read say things like studying the universe enlightens us about ourselves and it wasn't just a cliched introduction you see in most high-school and freshman college physics texts. The authors actually went into great detail.
Are sciences all the same just different labels?
As far as I've seen, they seem to be the same. Someone mentioned reductionism earlier. I'm wondering if perhaps the hierarchy we obsereve in the popular reductionist system of analysis isn't better modeled as a spiral.
I often get the feeling every science goes through several stages of maturity. We used to think knowing where every particle is at all times and the laws of phyasics could help us know the future. Now we have statistics (which also has some reductionist qualities. You really can't escape it completely, but that's not the point.
I think it's akin to the way the Greeks invented a God for every aspect of life that they observed. While it shows intelligence in being able to name the intangible, it's informal and inconsistent.
I could say the same about genetics as well. I find it hard to see it as more than the science of scanning human input and output ports.
One of the things I've discovered while workiong on open-source projects, including a CPU project, is a curse
Anytime you try to improve the performance you have to do it along invisible lines of logic and theory, otherwise your improvement results in decreasing the performance in another area. Just look at how caches work.
So I guess my question is can we develop a generalized science curriculum that teaches different tactics and so that we can fully understand nature. (Maybe even get the gimmickmongers out of the way as a result:))
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
you can't get a GUT until you can swallow all the info properly. IMSA sounds like they have a clue.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Dear Professor,
in quantum mechanics we have perhaps the most succesful theory and tool ever devised by man. One of the strangest features of the theory in my opinion is that we have been able to use it without really understanding what it is all about -- for example, what *is* an electron? What happens in the Young experiment?
With various interpretations of quantum mechanics, such as the copenhagen interpretation, hidden variable theories and the "multiverse" explanations, I wonder what would be Your personal opinion about the fundamental meaning of quantum mechanics? What kind of a universe do You live in?
Right now, Dr. Lederman is sitting in an office not more than 30 feet away, and I just said hello to him as I walked by. Small world? I would say tiny. the cat is dead and alive. that is why time travel is possible. ~vishesh
~sig~He who waits for opportunity to knock will never hear the doorbell~end sig~
Whoever marked this off-topic is either not very fun... or clueless.
Just an opinion, but I really liked this question. It's always interesting to hear how different people answer. Oh well.
/* CDM */
Thank you for speaking to us. I have two questions:
[1] Back when I was in high school and college, twenty plus years ago, particle physics was the cutting edge, the window on the ultimate nature of matter. But today, the most challenging results seem to be coming from low energy "desktop" experiments (cavity QED, decoherence and entanglement, "quantum teleportation", etc.). Is this a function of reduced funding for large accelerators, or is it another example of serendipity in science?
[2] My old quantum mechanics text (Merzbacher, 2nd edition) makes no reference to either entanglement or decoherence. These ideas seem to be fairly recent, yet there seems to be little criticism of them. Is this because the standard Copenhagen interpretation fails to explain these results (or leads to intractible problems that haven't been solved)?
First off, let me say that I don't know whether Global Warming is happening or not; my specialty is computer science. What bothers me is that too many "scientists" seem to be using computer models of the atmosphere as proof that Global Warming is happening. Now, I know as a computer expert that computers are nowhere near powerful enough to model the entire earth's weather systems with any accuracy (if they can't predict the weather two days in advance, why do they think they can predict the weather 2 decades in advance?)
My question is this: Are these scientists merely chasing the Grant Money that buzzwords like Global Warming bring? Given the huge economic impact of some of the proposals that some of the more radical elements bring forth, I think questions such as this are critical.
---
OK, it's off-topic, but it's hilarious.
---
We've been hearing recently about quantum cryptography, in which data is sent in an uncrackable format; and also about quantum computers, whose massively parallel computation ability might make current crypto trivially easy to break.
I know that people have had some success in the laboratory with both of these things; do you see them succeeding in the real world? How soon?
A few related questions .... What are your views on the now defunct SSC project, and the current LHC at CERN project, especially as it applies to the lack of funding (thus cancellation) for the former, versus the active funding for the latter (considering that it is not in the US) ? With the rather large surplus in the US budget, do you foresee a rekindling of an SSC-like or other high energy physics project ?
I believe just a few buildings and the main accelerating portion of the ring are left. I read here that a radio-parmaceuticals-producing company bought some of the expensive equipment for a pittance.
Because government funding plays a very large part in determining direction of high-energy physics projects (SSC for example), whom do you see in the current presidential political arena as the most friendly to your cause and why ?
Dr. Lederman,
Exotic matter and negative energy seem to be the key to many interesting applications of relativity: wormholes, time warps, etc. Do you see it conceivable in the near future that matter or energy of this nature could be produced in (relatively) large quantities?
Also, what kind of revelations and applications can you envision that would arise from a Grand Unified Theory? Would we see any benefits from just a partial marriage between some forces, general relativity, or quantum mechanics?
What are your thoughts on the feasibility of time travel backwards or travel through wormholes (or other means to circumvent the limit of the speed of light), given an infinitely advanced civilization?
Lastly, here's a somewhat trivial question (argument with a friend), but... can you see any advantages to reducing the speed of light to something on the order of 75 miles per hour?
Daniel J. Peng
Daniel J. Peng
Professor Lederman, a few years ago I remember talk of some new ideas for particle accelerators. Supposedly they would let us build teravolt accelerators that fit on a desktop. Two names that stuck in my mind were "wake field" and "plasma beat wave". Has anything come of these ideas? If they do become feasible, do you think we might already have built the last of the giant accelerators? What would the role of the national accelerator labs be in that case?
Dr. Lederman:
Can you estimate how much of recent research in High Energy Physics you can oversee? (not to speak about research in the other fields of physics). My impression is that at the current rate of producing scientific knowledge the human mind will soon hit a brickwall, lots of similar research will be done over and over again due to impossibility of communication. Sometimes I feel the apparent fragmentation of the scientific community might be caused by bad presentation: at closer inspection concepts in many fields are similar, but it costs time to find out and is often not taught in courses. Or will we need new representations on a grand scale (sorry for being so fuzzy), just as Feynman's diagrams represent lengthy integrals in a supposedly more human-readable manner? Or are computer agents the solution to browse and edit the vast knowledge databases, and to find out what has already been found out? Of course this would not solve the problem of the restriction of the human mind to actually hold and understand and use the information thus obtained.
As a physicist, one feels obliged to try to understand a wide range of phenomena (additionally to a hopefully deeper understanding of one's own field of work), but this may become difficult.
Thank you,
Robert
Well, according to popular nature, you don't know until you actually look. (personally charging the box with 10K volts and listen for a MEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW! would spoil me having to look)
However, on a more humourous side, this question is so old that the cat would be SURELY dead by now. (especially if it hasn't been fed, since noone's looked)
heh heh
Tenement
--
Given what we know about the relationship of matter and energy (the path of photons are affected by gravity, E=mc^2, etc.) and the relationship of energy and entropy (techniques to achieve close-to-absolute-zero temperatures involve the re-ordering of particles, can we say removing information energy where it is not practical to remove thermal energy?), and given what we know about areas of high matter density (black holes, et al.), can you envision a singularity of such high informational density an event horizon forms beyond which no information can escape?
(And I'm not referring to Microsoft tech support.)
Is it possible to know too much-to have a computer too powerful or too small, to have too much information in too small a volume-and what would such a singularity look like?
It's not a case of having any of the major theories we have so far being debunked, any more than Newton's theory of gravity was undermined by Einstein's theory of relativity. Newton's theory is perfectly valid in its domain of applicability - speeds much less than the speed of light and weak gravitational fields (i.e. compared to neutron stars or black holes). The two main theories we have at the moment - general relativity and quantum field theory - are both valid in their domains - large graviational fields and scales for general relativity and subatomic scales for quantum field theory. The next step, a so-called "theory of everything", won't render these invalid, it will just cover a far wider domain of applicability - the large and the small.
I believe current superstring theories utilise lots and lots of maths to do with the topology of multi-dimensional spaces such as Calabi-Yau spaces (a specific class of a more general space called an orbifold). There are other related fields which have found a use, such as cohomology.
The other interesting element in all this current research is that the physicists have had to develop new maths to cope with some of the problems they have faced. One example I can think of it duality, in which calculations involving one particular toplogy of a Calabi-Yau space can instead be done using a different, simpler Calabi-Yau space and give the same results. This has meant that some of the more complication calculations can be made much simpler i.e. possible to solve. If you're interested there's a non-technical discussion of this in Brian Greene's recent book, The Elegant Universe.
One answer to why strings is that they have much more freedom than point particles. A point particle has relatively few degrees of freedom - they can rotate in n-dimensions. However a string, as well as rotating, can also vibrate in n-dimensions with different modes of vibration. Because of this they have enough freedom to allow a single string to represent every other particle depending on how it is rotating and vibrating. Also, the simplest mode of vibration of the superstring corresponds to the graviton (the force particle of gravity) which means superstring theory automatically includes gravity, which is the thing that other quantum theories have failed to do.
Probably, since there is a set of minimum quantities calculated using the three fundamental constants h-bar (Planck's constant), c (the speed of light in a vacuum) and G (the gravitational constant). For instance, at distances shorter than the Planck length (about 10^-33 m) the Uncertainty Principle says that enough energy can be 'borrowed' so that a microscopic black hole can form for a period of time equal to the Planck time (about 10^-43 s). So distances shorter than this are effectively meaningless (unless we are talking about superstrings). Since all macroscopic (in the sense of being above the Planck length in scale) events have these minimum lengths, then a finite number of bits could be used to describe any particles position in spacetime (since time is also quantised in this way).
Here's a list of books I've read or bought and enjoyed:
In Search of Schrodinger's cat by John Gribbin.
Schrodinger's Kittens by John Gribbin.
Hyperspace by Michio Kaku.
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene.
The Ghost In The Atom by Paul Davies.
Seeing as they're 1-dimensional, I don't think they have to be made of anything, they just are :)
.This one is explained by Einstein's general theory. It's core principle, the Equivalence Principle, states that for any system undergoing acceleration there is an equivalent gravitational field for which the laws of physics are identical i.e. there is no way of telling whether the system is accelerating or if it is in a gravitational field. Hence the interial and gravitational masses must be equal or else you could determine whether you were accelerating or in a gravitational field.
To answer your questions:
1) Whilst macroscopically conservation of energy (which of course includes matter) is always preserved, at the quantum level it is certainly violated thanks to the Uncertainty Principle, which allows "virtual" particles to be created from nothing so long as they vanish after a certain period of time. But while these virtual particles have considerable effects on every interaction that occurs in the universe, the energy they have is always lost when they annihilate each other. "Regular" matter does obey the conservation of energy.
2) Whilst biological systems certainly impose states of greater order upon themselves and their surroundings, the energy that they expend in doing so is always greater than the energy they make back. Food is generally a high order system, but the process of eating and getting energy from it involves turning it into lots of heat and molecules such as ATP which are much higher in entropy.
Both. Or was that a trick question?
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Sorry for the pessimistic note.
It seems the assumptions of the no-hidden variables theorem are too strong to rule out all kinds of hidden-variables theories.
PS: "Finite Precision measurement nullifies the Kochen-Specker theorem"
Non-commutative Differential Geometry comes to mind
Here's a paper showing that the brain can be thought of as a classical mechanical system, not a quantum one. This seems to be relevant criticism of Penrose's theory.
Do you think the Grand Unified Theory (if there ever is one) will be based on M-theory, or will it require a fundamentally different approach?
From the time it was first proposed, it took scientists around 1500 years to prove the existance of the atom.
...
It's strange though, how people would refuse to believe in something that they couldn't see, but now, not only do we believe in atoms, but also quarks, photons,
We keep finding smaller and smaller particles as the days go by. So we've discovered that atoms, the building blocks of the universe, have their own building blocks, but there must be something even smaller than that, since we've discovered that light has mass (albeit very little), and who knows how small small is!
Do you see an end/limit on "building blocks" of matter? Do you see in the near future the discovery of the barrier between mass and energy?
In your opinion what major advance in physics in the last few years will lead to some new technology. Quantum computing? Something else?
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
Do you feel that science in general is to critical of new ideas. I've noticed that anything that doesn't agree with mainstream thought is flamed, for lack of a better description, by mainstream scientists. Shouldn't a scientist apply the scientific method. Wouldn't it be better if they would say this does not agree with current thought but until I see proof to the contrary I don't know if it is correct or not.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
What, if anything, could the next President of the United States and Congress do different to help physicists brake through on applicable (real-world) fusion energy?
I study ecology, and have been finding that much of the mathematics is not notably different from economic theory and that there are clear similarities between some ecological equations and quantum physical equations. The reason why is obvious: all three are using the same statistical base to ask questions about the behavior of large populations behaving in certain ways.
My question is, how much cross-over between ecology, economics, and physics do you see, and what effect is that having on physics?
I must admit I have no idea who you are and I am going to correct that at Brittanica Online after this post. But what I am always interested in is what makes people tick. What makes it for you 'fun' to do physics and why did you go into certain subjects and others not?
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Related to this.
Basically, what makes you tick? What got you started and keeps you going and what makes physics 'fun' for you.
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It has been commented that string theory, unlike most concepts in physics has the equations worked out before it is truly understood. Some people think that like Issac Newton deriving calculus because he needed it for gravity, radicly new mathematical tools will have to be developed to handle string theory. Do you have any ideas to what form this "multidimensional calculus" will take or know of any new ideas being pioneered in this feild?
As the semiconductor industry is slowing pushing the theoretical limits of deep sub-micron, do quantum computers offer a viable alternative to standard Von Neumann architectures, in the forseeable future? ;)
In the field of VLSI layout in particular (I'm referring mostly to FPGAs and CPLDs, although the same problems apply to large ASICs as well), feared problems such as mutual inductance and power dissipation through heat are becoming bigger and bigger issues that the industry, as a whole, must deal with.
Does quantum computing promise a new model of computation that would introduce a high enough degree of nondeterminism that we might even be able to apply facets of probability theory and fuzzy logic to exponentially increase our computational muscle? If it does indeed have merit, what kinds of implications might it entail from an architecture standpoint? Would the algorithms and computation models that we've developed over the last thirty years or so be moot? Would we have to return to the proverbial drawing board?
Or is there a slight chance that there might be a sufficient problem mapping from a (deterministic) Von Neumann architecture problem space to a (nondeterministic?) quantum computing problem space?
Is quantum computing merely a solution that is "theoretically applicable, empirically not"?
And finally, I've read that quantum computing does indeed offer some degree of computational nondeterminism. To what extent is this true?
Thank you for your time.
For the past 50 years, most Big Science money has gone towards building higher energy and more expensive tools with which we can look at the fundamental constituents of matter. Now there seems to be a political climate that it may no be feasible (if not impossible) for a single country to finance the next great accelerator to look at smaller particles. Moreover, is it even justifiable to attempt to explore the sub-quark level? Have we reached the limit of practicality for theoretical physics? If not, are we close? I have heard some theoretical physicists lament the loss of "Golden Children" to the biological sciences. What are your views on this emerging field?
Dr. Lederman,
In your mind, will such currently fantastic theoretical possibilities as exotic matter and closed timelike loops ever be manifested in an exploitable manner?
Thank you.
I am, therefore you think.
The SSC was to be built outside of Dallas, TX according to Michio Kaku's book Hyperspace. It was to be, IIRC, 50 miles in diameter. It ended up being scrapped by the democratic congress of the time. Does anyone know if there is any other RECENT information on the SSC?
Dr. Lederman, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. I know you are an active voice for physics and physics research and education. I was wondering what your thoughts are regarding the attitudes towards non-academic physics Ph.D.s? While the old-line attitudes are slowly changing with the realization that there are more Ph.D.s than potentially permanent academic positions, there is still a stigma that if one doesn't follow their academic advisor into academe, then they either weren't good enough to get an academic job or they are "selling-out" and chasing the big $$ elsewhere. From a funding standpoint it is rare for a person to have an opportunity to be a PI on a project unless they are either in academe or a government facility (apart from very large contractors such as JPL, Lockheed, etc.). Do you think research money should mainly go only to universities and national labs (i.e., should physicists give up hope to do their own research if they leave academe)?
Do you belive that the creation of Negative Energy in the lab, even in nearly unmeasurable amounts, will be an obtainable goal in the next 10 to 15 years? If so do you think that it will make possible the proof of theroies about fater than light travel and wormholes?
Also how do you think this will change peoples views on Einstien's Theroies? If at all.
From Scientific American Article Summries:
Negative Energy, Wormholes and Warp Drive
Lawrence H. Ford and Thomas A. Roman
Contrary to a popular misconception, Albert Einsteins theories do not strictly forbid either faster-than-light travel or time travel. In principle, by harnessing the elusive force of negative energy, one can shorten stellar distances by bending space-time around would-be star trekkers.
Just wondering about your thoughts on recent announcements by Dr. Randell Mills and his company Blacklight Power, http://www.blacklightpower.com do his ideas seem feasible and sound. PS I really enjoyed The God Particle.
As a fan of Occam's Razor, my preferred model for the universe is one with baryonic dark matter only. As of a few years ago, the baryon density (determined by Big Bang Nucleosynthesis theory) and the overall density of the universe (as determined by the masses of galaxy clusters, from galaxy velocities) had error ranges that (slightly) overlapped. Has the baryonic-dark-matter-only universe been ruled out since then? When can we expect to know the nature of the dark matter, and what is the answer likely to be?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Which type of particles can be accelerated with a Van de Graaff generator? Which cannot? Why? When alpha particles are negatively charged in the remission, what kind of reaction is expected? What's your opinion on the state of lecture in solid state mechanics?
While not yet a fully-developed crackpot theory, there's a connection I often make, and I wonder if it has any validity:
It seems to me that the probabilistic behavior observed at the quantum level may be an artifact of complex interactions occuring at an even smaller scale, that are unobservable due to the uncertainty principle, much like non-linear "chaotic" systems involving huge numbers of particles yield behavior that is non-deterministic, but has observable "patterns" on a large scale.
That is, are our observations of quantum systems like someone listening to the chaotic rhythms of dripping faucets, without the means to learn about water, viscosity, surface tension -- the underlying causes of the dripping?
I am aware that the "quantum chaos" field looks to apply quantum mechanical analytic techniques to chaotic systems, and while my question turns that on its head, is there possibly something to it?
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
The theory of relativity hinges on the assumption that an event occurs regardless of the frame of reference of the observers: if I see two cars crash in an intersection, then any observer in any reference frame will also see the cars crash.
The upshot of this is the idea of simultaneity: regardless of the various measurements of space and time by the cars and any other observers, any proper explanation of space and time must conclude that the cars were in the same place at the same time, in order to cause the crash.
Interestingly, (and, IMHO, incorrectly) one of the interpretations of quantum mechanics (Many Worlds), posits that all possible scenarios actually occur, i.e. that there is a "parallel universe" in which the cars' particles' locations resolve in such a way that they do not crash!
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Currently physics departments turn out many more Ph.D. physicists than there are jobs tailored for such a background. On the other hand, the general public's literacy in science in general, and physics in particular is quite low. The pair of these problems would seem to pose a Gordian knot of a problem -- how do we cut through it? Excessive production of Ph.D physicists seems an inefficient way to improve public awareness and scientific literacy.
Is cold fusion potentally a good source of low polluting energy? Do you play any console or computergames? (videogames) And if yesm which ones?
Could physics be the result of a digital computation (like a cellular automaton, except non-local)? (to ask it another way: could there be a finite amount of information per volume of spacetime?)
Recent advancements in 3D accelerators have greatly increased the realism of the games many of us love to play so much but I could also see them being a great tool for teaching physics. Have any of the physicists you know of who do visualization use PCs with modern 3D accelerators instead of high-end expensive workstations?
Are there any projects that you know of that are trying to make use of this new technology to, teach concepts that can't be demonstrated in a lab? I think it would be great to have an interactive demonstration of the time/space dilation effect as you approach the speed of light.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
How long do you think it will take someone to nab the nobel for explaining the phenomenon of high temperature superconductivity? I find the problem incredibly intriguing. Or if they will find a use for the veep? Do you think that tachyons exist in anything other than theory? And one more thing... Do you think that superstring theory is more credible than the bubble universe theory?
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Lately I've been thinking that physics has taken the wrong turn. It seems that the theories that have come to light over the past few years seem more and more out there. I think physisicts seem to be patching old theories instead of taking two steps back and reformulating some basic ideas.
Do you believe that unified theory will be a few steps back and one forward? Or will we be able to tie our patch work together?
Apologies to OT, and everything else.
/. denizen? I am slowly converted ...
:)
It is beyond I hate Roblimo at this stage, first the Woz, now Dr. Lederman.
I have this 3D game engine to code, and then you have to interview all these nifty people.
Why do you "force" me to become a
Now I have to think of if there is one question I can ask Dr. Lederman which one would it be.
It is beyond Roblimo hate!
P.S. Please do not moderate this up. This is not a question.
Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer
I went to IMSA, as well, the first year it existed (1986). I became disillusioned with the academy because it promised more than it could deliver. I find myself similarly disillusioned with science in general when it promises advancements that will improve human life, and it turns out so many projects that merely improve corporate profits. What can we do to combat this disillusionment? What can we do to make science more than a servant to big business?
tlauf
There is no question that the science of chemical and molecular biology will be the major sinks of funding and interest in the next century. Many people talk about a scientific shift from physics to biology, which is misleading as a lot of what's happening is physics which we are using to understand biology past the pure chemical level; it's really more of a shift of application then anything else. Will we ever see a shift in the reverse? That is the DNA , protien and water which produce a life form, are by themselves inanimate molecules that play entirely by the rules of physics. But by some magic ingredient, when they are all arranged carefully one gets something quite different than simply a larger inanimate blob. So we know this complexity to exist at the chemical level, can it exist at the subatomic? Could there be entire collections of interacting free high energy subatomic particles that can give rise to something analogous to a life form that would follow rules of population dynamics, metabolisms, concioussness etc.? How could we even begin searching for such beasts?
Regardless of what he says, a religous person might think, "The purpose of science is to gain knowledge. To gain knowledge is to see the truth. To see the truth is to know God." This is just an example.
On the other hand, an atheist might say, "He is too smart to believe in (a) God."
This is not a troll, I am an atheist, but depending on who is reading his response to your question, they will chose to believe whatever they want. The only purpose a question like this serves is to judge his character, but either way someone will think less of him.
If you could be alive to see just one major scientific breakthrough and its effect on civilization, whether in the past or in the future, what would that be and why?
What type of system/OS do you use to run the various equipment that you use and to test theory.
Dr, Has anyone come up with a reason that gravity appears to be weakened above a superconducting disk?
Jumping to correct solutions slowly is better than jumping to incorrect solutions quickly.
What I'd like to know is the following: To me as an undergraduate student and probably to many other people, it seems as if physics was standing still at the moment. Every now and then, scientists discover a new property of some elementary particle, but -- if it weren't for the GUT every physicist is longing for -- one may think, that the great discoveries have already been made and we are only struggling with ever more complex problems. (This somewhat reminds me of computer science btw...) What is your opinion on this? Can we expect any major breakthroughs in the next few years or decades? Or do we already have the theoretical foundations to "understand" nature? And what branches of physics do you currently consider the most innovative and interesting?
Dr. Lederman,
Do you have any advice for current students at the undergraduate level? What areas of science or physics do you see the most potential growth? What material is the most important to learn at the undergraduate level before continuing on to grad school?
One question, with the multitude of experiments all trying to accomplish the same basic task: How far away are we from a reliable method of creating fusion, be it in a collider or other means?
I had an opportunity to hear you speak at a graduation ceremony for the Illinois Math and Science Academy (IMSA) a few years ago. It appeared that you were somewhat in touch with education enviornments today and how they would be in the future.
With the increasing popularity of online interaction and learning enviornments, how do you think today's traditional classrooms will be changing? At IMSA, various experimental teaching techiniques are being explored. Are any of these techniques utilizing online enviornments? If so, how successful are they?
thanks
Do you foresee any hope of faster-than-light communications in the next century ?
If I remember well, the US approach to nuclear fusion consists in focusing a spherical array of blue lasers at a metal core at the center of the setup (not quite sure if its iron though...), while the european approach is plasma circulating at high velocity around a circular(?) path, controlled by a strong magnetic field.
Now, both approaches have their drawbacks and their advantages (Wasnt there a statistic like the US laser setup drags about 1/9th of the US's power supply while actually functioning? effectively dimming every lightbulb in america)
the implications of the "european" plasma coming in contact with its container are not all that rosy either...
which of the methods would you opt for, or which of the methods do you think will succeed in the (near) future?
What are your views on the idea that life exists on another planet in the solar system? also, everyone agrees that in order for a planet to support life, it must have water.. is it not conceivable that there may be some other form of life that is radically different than anything we've thought of? life on earth is relatively young, especially human, so how are we to know that some other life didn't exist that was not dependant on water? -Nick
-------------------------------------------------
Is the universe an n-dimensional fractal? It would seem to fulfill both the criteria of infinite resolution and finite information. It would also provide a framework for the conservation of all distinction. What is responsible for the non-uniformity in the universe? How can a singularity have variance?
As I understand it, particles get their mass from the Higgs field. Then, is there some amount of time after a particle comes into existence but before it gains mass? If so, then does this imply that there is some mechanism that, if we understood, would allow us to tap into the field, like the particle does?
We met at Rice University about a year and a half ago. I was a student of Arkansas' residential high-school for mathematics and science (modelled after the Illinois school you helped create). Now I am at CERN searching for the Higgs Boson... The `God Particle' as you called it. I think a great deal about how research and education are carried out today and the great possibilities that technology has brought us. I know that a great deal of the slashdot readers are strong proponents for a movement in the software industry called the `open source' movement. The fundamental principle behind this movement is a freedom of information. I am curious what room science can make for such a movement. Do you foresee a way in which research can move to an open source paradigm while retaining the stringent process of peer review? Do you foresee any novel ways that we can use today's current technology to combine research and education?
Kyle Cranmer
We met at Rice University about a year and a half ago. I was a student of Arkansas' residential high-school for mathematics and science (modelled after the Illinois school you helped create). Now I am at CERN searching for the Higgs Boson... The `God Particle' as you called it. I think a great deal about how research and education are carried out today and the great possibilities that technology has brought us. I know that a great deal of the slashdot readers are strong proponents for a movement in the software industry called the `open source' movement. The fundamental principle behind this movement is a freedom of information. I am curious what room science can make for such a movement. Do you foresee a way in which research can move to an open source paradigm while retaining the stringent process of peer review? Do you foresee any novel ways that we can use today's current technology to combine research and education?
Kyle Cranmer
Thank you for this opportunity, Dr. Lederman. From what I have heard, the SSC project was cancelled due to excessive cost, and the attitude that "this money could be put to better use". My question is this: Given that the cost of serious scientific research is rather high, results may be years in coming, and often, the research done at accelerator facilities does not appear to have any impact on the life of the average person, many people do not see the use of such expensive research facilities. Thus, many worthy projects (the SSC, for one.) never get built or suffer budget and funding cuts. What is the best way to convince "the powers that be" that the work done at these labs justifies the cost?
Are particle colliders endangering the world, the solar system, and possibly the galaxy? (duh da duuuuh!)
:).
Back in August, news was made about the dangers of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The gist was that this ion collider could very well create small black holes.
Is this a justified fear?
We're obviously still here, but as experiments increase all throughout the world, is there a risk of the creation of small black holes in particle collision? News sources ran with the story for a while, but I do not recall any serious resolution. Logic and high school physics tell me that it wouldn't be a threat, due to the rather small amount of mass involved. As far as I know, black holes are extremely small regions of insanely high mass, and are remnants of massive stars, not colliding ions. The reason they function is because of their immensity, and the corresponding strength of their gravitational fields. Therefore, you'd have to have a great mass input before you could have a black hole of any size (in my mind
So, do particle colliders endanger the world, the solar system, and possibly the galaxy by creating whatever they create?
Thanks!
-Adam-S-
"Perfect, your pictures, your lies.
Promises, can't reason, can't hide.
Cheated, I've seen it I know.
Beaten, keep moving, keep close.
I feel so, I feel so,
WHITEOUT, It's beaten, wasted, no, no."
~Whiteout - Pitch Shifter
It is evident that (1) fractal geometry gives us an indication of how simple rules, when applied recursively, can produce complex systems; (2) nature provides many examples of the recursive application of (self-)organization, from simple molecules to DNA to... (3) humans could very well be part of a similar recursive process in which we are organizing into a single larger entity.
What is imposing the (simple) rules of self-organization, and how does it work? Our understanding of the physical universe, as described by the products of scientific endeavor, provides a clue: the 2nd law of Thermodynamics, to wit, Entropy (disorder) is always increasing. This simple law, supported by observation of simple processes, is in full contradiction to the immense activity of self-organization we can observe all around us. It is little consolation to point out that we can show mathematically the constant increase in entropy when all processes (in the universe) are taken into account - it's as if we can comfortably declare that time runs in a single direction, on average, even though we have found a local area in which it runs backwards!
A principle is at work here, and we are, day in and day out, slaves to that principle. We clean our houses, elect governments to sort out society, organize our thoughts, constantly battle to reverse entropy - where is that principle in the equation?
- Everything is made of atoms
- Atoms are made of smaller particles
- All these little particles can be converted into energy
- Little particles can suddenly appear & then disappear
I get the impression that all these particles are just "compressed" or "tightly confined" or "highly concentrated" energy.
In other words, isn't it all energy?
Solid matter is a myth?
If I understand it correctly, vertical spin and horizontal spin are a pair of properties, like position and momentum, and are dual in the sense of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. In the famous experiment, I take a particle with zero spin and cause it to fission, sending two sub-particles A and B off in different directions in such a way as to preserve the (zero) spin of the system. If I send particle A through a device that measures vertical spin, I will get an answer, `up' or `down'. If I subsequently make the same vertical measurement on particle A, I will get the same answer. Particle B will give the opposite answer (so the spin of the system is preserved.) But a vertical measurement destroys any information about horizontal spin; after a vertical measurement, a subsequent horizontal measurement has a 50-50 chance of yielding `left' or `right' as an answer.
Question 1: If I do a vertical spin measurement on particle A followed by a horizontal spin measurement on particle A, and then a horizontal spin measurement on particle B, am I certain to get opposite horizontal spin indications for particles A and B? (If not, why does this not violate the conservation principle governing spin?)
If so, it seems by induction that I could extend the above procedure to perform an arbitrary sequence of intermixed horizontal and vertical spin tests on particle A, and then perform a test on particle B with the same orientation as the last test on A. After doing so, I would get opposite spin indications from the two particles with probability 1.
If the above is true, it seems to imply that the quantum states of particle A and B remain tangled at a distance, even if I switch the horizontal spin of one of the particles back and forth by interposing vertical spin measurements. The particles cannot store an arbitrarily large amount of information, i.e., how to respond to arbitrarily long sequences of horizontal and vertical tests. But they respond in consistent ways with probability one to queries made when they are far apart.
Question 2: How is this reconciled with the notion of locality?
Do you think we'll see smarter than human computers someday? If so, don't you think it's possible computers would help with current theories or even come up with new ones?
Best Regards
I see a trend in science that seems most pronounced in high energy physics. Where once we observed phenomena and developed theories to explain them, (ie Why do apples keep falling on my head?)modern physics generally starts with a theory and sets out to find a way to observe some correlated phenomena (I bet we can make tau neutrinos if we zap a detector that's behind 400 miles of solid rock and Cmdr Taco's head). So, I guess the question is, is this a good or bad thing? Is it still possible to do meaningful science by noodling aroung in the lab, or are real developments the domain of mathematicians?
ceci n'est pas un 'sig'
What do you make of the apparent equality of inertial and gravitational mass?
Now, the British Government has to pay for all nuclear science done, because it can't honor it's side of the European science exchange agreement. Similar facilities cost the British Government a vast amount to hire, and they have to pay to ship or fly their scientists abroad, rather than cover the cost of a car ride just up the road.
(I worked at the NSF, in it's final year, developing an online filesystem for the "Eurogam" project - an attempt to build an array of 50 gamma ray detectors around the end of a tandem accelerator. It was fun, but the budget cuts were dangerous, with more than a few leaks of SF6 gas. This is a gas used in this kind of accelerator. It's inert, non-toxic, and colourless. It's also heavier than air, and suffocates it's victims without them knowing it's even happening.)
A second, linear accelerator was given to the Australian National University. Not sold, GIVEN. Several hundred million dollar's worth of completely brand-new, state-of-the-art, unused equiptment, worth something like quarter of a (US) billion US dollars, just handed over, in the name of saving costs.
In America, the Supercollider was cancelled, after the executives were caught spending more on potted plants than potting protons. It was a farce, which set back nuclear science in America by decades. (If you don't move forwards, you WILL move backwards.) A potentially magnificent tool to forward science, utterly obliterated by personal greed, politics and corruption. And there's not a chance that a similar device will be built on American soil for decades to come. Nobody'd touch such a project with a 10' barge pole, now.
Nuclear science will be relegated to ever-smaller handfuls of countries capable of maintaining the equiptment (I don't trust CERN), eventually becoming the province of one or two, or vanishing entirely.
Politics and greed WILL kill nuclear science, unless there's a major shift in attitudes, but I don't believe that'll happen in my lifetime.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This would include non-local effects (other than entangled photons), quantum-scale wormholes, somehow exploiting superstrings, etc.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I must admit, I'm not particularly optimistic about you receiving this question, but I feel the question deserves at least the opportunity to be asked:
Do you feel there is, at times, an inappropriate tendancy to assign properties to the universe for no other reason but that specific equations proven on a lower end of inputs will show "amazing results" on a higher range of inputs?
Call it false linearization if you like--the best example I've heard of this came from Bill Gascoyne:
A cautionary thought on the dangers of extrapolation.
It is reported that in 1977 there were 37 Elvis impersonators in the world. In 1993 there were 48,000. At this rate, by the year 2010 one out of every three people in the world will be an Elvis impersonator.
While I'm assuredly not qualified to mention specific examples of what I might feel qualifies as inappropriately applied mathematics, I'd be interested in hearing your perspective on the commonality of this type of error.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
- last year I read an
- excellent edition of new scientist on this exact topic. Here's the link to the online article so you can read it.
links:http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19990828/contents.
http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19990828/ablackhol
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
Seriously, if you understand GR, then you understand as non-intuitive as it may be, it is quite possible that there was no "before the Big Bang" to talk about. Time only makes sense within the space-time manifold, and we have reason to believe that the manifold has a boundary there.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Whether there does for your faith is another matter. But many deeply religious people who also understand science quite well have found what they consider acceptable reconcillations of science and religion, including Martin Gardner, Frank Tippler (though his reconciliation seems to be crazy to me), Larry Wall and many, many more.
Additionally most of what you have to say about determinism etc is not necessarily true. For instance both Bohm's interpretation and the Everett interpretation of QM are complete deterministic (in extremely different ways) so determinism and QM can definitely co-exist. (Though Everett's view does make it hard to state what the future - or even the present - really is.)
OTOH there is nothing produced in science that in the slightest will shake up an atheist's belief that religion is a series of made-up stories. By contrast there are many religious positions that science flatly contradicts. (Which is why people resist trying to understand Evolution.) So while some religious positions have no issues, others, well...
Cheers,
Ben
PS In case it matters (it shouldn't) I personally am an atheist.
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I think I can answer that for you myself. The main technology draw as regards a GUT is the possibility of manipulating gravity as easily as we do electricity.
The achievability of this hinges on the value of the Grand Unification energy. This is the energy density at which the gravitational force becomes indistinguishable from the already-merged electromagnetic, weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces. To be able to handle gravity like electricity we would need to be able to generate a similar energy density.
Some more recent theories suggest a fairly low grand unification energy (still fscking hot by human standards, but possibly achievable in the lab on a small scale). However, most theories still predict a grand unification energy of truly enormous proportion, very near the temperature range prevailing in the initial instants of the big bang.
If the latter is correct, then at least for the foreseeable future, we have very little hope of benefiting technologically from a GUT.
It's too late and I'm too tired to dig out my sources now but if someone else wants to supply the figures for the energies involved, that would be, er, "Grand"...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I've wondered about this (your last question) and done a few calculations - it seems a not unreasonably-sized ring or cylinder of superconductor might be able to produce a magnetic field sufficient to turn away particles with energies up to 100 MeV or so - maybe higher. Actually it wouldn't turn them away so much as make them loop around the field lines and drop in through the poles - but that leaves a much smaller area to protect, I think. Do you know if any research has been done on this kind of approach to radiation shielding?
Energy: time to change the picture.
Thank you Doctor Strangelove.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I am interested in your predictions for the complexity of a Grand Unified Field Theory. For example, the mathematics of the Special and General Theories of Relativity are extremely complex, yet the basic principles can be explained to (almost) anyone. It seems that the theories that are becoming popular are very complex even in principle, much less in terms of mathematics.
So, if a GUT is developed, will it be accessible to the average person?
Thanks
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
Gravitational Tidal forces will crush your ship and rip apart your body long before you get to the singularity, probably even before you get to the event horizon.
remember your body can't stretch out like a strand of spaghetti from a black hole anymore then it can from a pair of cars chained to your feet and hands. But then again, spaghetti dosn't strech anyway. Whew. Hope this doesn't get moderated too high.
Me to.
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Thank you for the link, it looks like an interesting read...
LetterRip
I was at IIT in 92, and you taught my freshman physics course in mechanics. Are you still teaching at IIT or are you back managing a large particle physics lab?
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Do you think that science will ever discover the Grand Unified Field Theory, or that it even exists? Along the same line, do you think that it is worth the time and money to investigate, or could it be better spent elsewhere?
In the book the God Particle you talked all about a particle that was the basis for everything. Are we any closer to seeing this particle, or better yet understanding this particle. Also, this "particle" being what it is, does it require a new classification to be created for it? Atom, quark, these just dont seem to fit.
dear mr. lederman,
thank you for your kind opportunity to accept questions
from the slashdot community. i have two questions:
1) what i would like to know is this: we have all been
instructed in the theory of the conservation of matter
and energy. yet, i was wondering if there is any
evidence to confirm that the possibility exists that
the conservation of matter is an illusion created by the
continuous passing-away and re-appearance of matter
on an atomic scale. only because the matter continuously
passes away, and then comes back into existence, it
gives the illusion of the imperishablity of matter.
what are your thoughts on this?
2) we know that physical systems are bounded by entropy,
but seeing that we live in a world which not only contains
physical systems, but also biological systems (which seem
to defy entropy), do you have any idea of where is the
bridge between the entropy of the physical systems, and
the seemingly entropy-defying behaviour of the biological
systems?
thank you, and best regards,
johnrpenner@earthlink.net
After the astonishing advances in physics over the last century or so, we now probably have more 'hard' questions than we started with. Only the irretrievably brave would say that another great breakthrough is 'just around the corner'.
If you could choose which of the 'hard' questions you could know the answer to, which question would you ask, and why?
Actually, in a few game systems, including one that I created (and some others that I played in), I believe many simulators allowed more female space pilots to exist on the same life support requirements as male space pilots.
The only real problem is the spatial visualization. If you take a group of 100 males, perhaps only 5 could be space pilots; if you have a group of 100 females, perhaps only 2 could be space pilots. However, if we're talking space scientists, the whole visualization thing is less necessary, whereas a better center of gravity system and flexibility works out as a plus for women.
Sadly, in our culture, we put a bonus on TALL space pilots. Which is really inefficient, but culturally demanded.
Perhaps a mixed crew approach works out pretty well, though.
Will in Seattle
Consider this. Suppose you tried the same experiment with particles found in cosmic rays. Now, it's conceivable that some of these particles were produced in a decay that conserves angular momentum, and hence that some of these particles have partners in a shared quantum state somewhere across the galaxy. When we measure the spin of such particles, does it make sense to say that we are receiving messages from the other side of the galaxy? Such usages reduces the concept of "transmitting messages" to triviality.
Whether messages are "transmitted" or not, I strongly disagree with your statement that the effect is not "useful". In fact, the effect is immensely useful in that it allows us to rule out experimentally certain types of "hidden variable" theories of quantum mechanics. Surely an effect that tells us something fundamental about the way quantum mechanics works qualifies as "useful", don't you think?
-r
The two, paired solutions to this problem would appear to be reduce the mass of the drive system (so that there is less mass to lift into space) and to reduce the costs of lifting mass into orbit (so that what mass you must lift into orbit costs less)
I think it's obvious, with it costing about $10,000 to place a pound in orbit, we need to select skinnier astronauts.
I think my weight is ideal, 145#, but I would be willing to lose a few pounds for my country. I think 140 pounds is definitely doable.
Since females are generally smaller than males, more female astronauts might help, maybe a 2:1 ratio of female to male astronauts, for morale purposes.
We could also lose a few pounds of mission mass by reducing clothing requirements. I think a lycra/spandex type speedo with velcro attachments should be sufficent for most shuttle missions.
Thanks for the consideration,
George
MSK
This is the best post I have seen so far and it has only a fraction of the moderation that the obsurd aregument over who asked the "do you believe in god" question first.
Now, I think we should adjust the slashdot interview policy to give the person we are interviewing more choice in the questions, i.e. take a higher percentage of upwardly moderated posts (killing repeats) and incurage them to only answer the questions they want to answer. I think we would see a lot more interesting responce to the interviews.. the person we are interviewing generally seems to know a lot more about why they are interesting then we do.
Jeff
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
What advice would you offer to a person about to start work on a B.S. in physics?
For a person to successfully obtain a degree in physics, would you say it is necessary to have a natural aptitude for science and mathematics, or is only a love of science and learning and a willingness to work hard required?
Are all physicists geniuses, as the general public thinks? How common are the physicists who throroughly enjoy their work, but rarely (if ever) get recognition for this work outside of physics circles?
Is physics a rewarding choice of career? Is it a competitive field? Do you, or have you felt, that your work or the work of others in physics has benefitted the general populace? (This is not to belittle your work in any way; I simply wonder how you feel, personally, about your impact on the world).
What opportunities are there for physicists, other than employment in government (national laboratories) or academia?
Thank you for the opportunity to ask these questions.
In the post-SSC cancellation era, do you think the American government is willing to fund multi-billion dollar high energy projects? Are physicists of late at all hampered by a low equipment to brain ratio?
There has been extensive hype about super symmetry, strings and what haveyou, but most of this theory is as of yet untestable. Do you think that this sort of theory is BS or is it genuinely helping the exploration of the high energy realm?
On a related note, consider this article I wrote for my school newspaper when I was in college
/ 27/p07_matthewcol.txt.html
htt p://www.illinimedia.com/di/archives/1998/February
Essentially, the DOE provided my university's CS department with extravagant funding in return for "scientific" research that the administration knew perfectly well would be turned to purposes of war. Certainly I can understand why the pursuit of knowledge might diminish ethical considerations in the eyes of a researcher, but when research so plainly leads to death doesn't the scientist bear some culpability?
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
This is a good post, moderators! Woppened?? IMPORTANT TOPIC. It ain't just physics, we as a nation are spending oodles on educating Ph.D.s in all academic fields who then go into a job market that makes temping for Microsoft look really good. The public investment in the students is then 'lost' (this is arguable) to other fields. This pattern may be bad in the long term for science and technology development which some say fuels the long-term economic success of the whole country. Worth some debate, and I'd greatly appreciate the perspective of Dr. Lederman and his generation.
--
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Dr. Lederman,
We live in an age of unparalled technological achievments and scientific knowledge, yet we seem to be moving further and further away from individual knowledge. Branches of science and engineering are now divided and redivided into such depths, that I question whether it is possible for a Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Dirac, or Feynman to emerge in our future. Certainly your field, experimental HEP, is the current extreme of loss of individuality when collaborations run into the hundreds.
So I ask you: Have we, as individuals, become so over specialized we are doomed to suffer not being able to see the forest thru the trees?
in my excitement, I forgot to ask the professor what he thinks should be done about this situation...
:).
wow, feels good to get a 5
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
If the foremost question in your mind is "What should I have for dinner" for more than a few minutes at a time, you're not even in the ballpark.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
What on earth are you talking about? The so-called dark ages saw much more interest in God and general discussion of him than the present. It was a widespread lack of literacy and record-keeping (outside of monasteries) that makes them "dark."
While we're interviewing a famous person anyway, why keep from asking such a question? Kintanon says that "Someone has to ask this." I will add: Everyone should be asked this, and anyone may answer
Well, maybe, but there is a tendency to think that because somebody knows a lot about one important subject, he will be wise about others. Experience is very much to the contrary. Most every good physicist I know (I am a dim one) is practically a moron when the subject changes to economics, or politics, or history, and yes, religion. The age of the polymath seems to have passed, and single-minded pursuit of a set of ideas like physics seems to have precluded serious study of anything else. There are (very very few) exceptions.
Now, this woudn't be so bad, but people somehow miss this, and go around asking actors their ideas on politics and the economy, and physicists their ideas on the nature of God. And what comes forth is a mess of banality. Think of some good physics questions for Dr. Lederman.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
That's absurd. Congress has done no such thing. DOE grants are still plentiful. Show some numbers or proof of some sort.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Unless you mean the SSC. But lots of physicists thought that was a boondoggle. Wonder what's been done with that monstrous tunnel, anyway?
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
In situations like with Schroedinger's Cat, is the cat in one of the end states and we are merely unaware of which state it is in, or is the cat in fact in neither state until someone looks at it?
If the cat isn't in a definte state until someone looks at it, what is special about a person looking at it? If another animal observed it, would this collapse the possibilities? If the janitor who is locked in the building until morning observes it, do the possibilites collapse when he sees it, or only when he can go outside and tell people? What if an intelligent computer observes it? In short, why the priveledged role of a single human observer?
--Kevin
Ok, how about this (I'm not sure whether I've got the lingo right, but I hope the idea comes through):
We have the twin photons, photon A and photon B. Adam takes photon A and Bob takes photon B. Bob will go on a journey on a space shuttle to a distant system light years away. Before they leave, they have an agreement: at some time in the future, they will both look at their photons. If the photon has Spin up, then Adam will set off a bomb that destroys that world. Otherwise, the Earth will be spared.
So Bob goes on his journey and years later he looks at the photon and discovers instantaneously whether the Earth has been destroyed or not.
So is this communication or not? I guess the same effect can be achieved by having a third party throw a dice and write the result in a sealed envelope given to both parties before Bob leaves, but it seems that the photon does convey some information.
Several people have asked you to speculate on
when the grand unified theory of everything will
be discovered. Could you please give a brief
explanation of what that means? Thank you.
Test 1 2 3 4
To be even more clear, viewing the light from a star 10 light years away tells us what the star *might* look like right now to some alien who is also 10 light years from the star (and up to 20 light years from us) but that doesn't mean that we are communicating with that alien.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Whenever someone talks about anything happening at speeds faster than light, they discuss time as if it is an absolute, i.e. that New Years happens in New York and Orlando at the exact same time. However, although it may seem like this, in fact, does happen. I've never seen any particular proof of it, and certain results and theories seem to me to indicate that this, in fact, may not be true. It seems to me that midnight could happen in New York both before AND after it happens in Orlando.
Unfortunately, I can't find a way to describe this in a language that assumes a moment always occurs at the same instance in time. (I can't even write that sentence very well.)
Is it possible, or even believed, that time is not one-dimensional, but instead multi-dimensional? Are there terms to describe it if it is?
No Zen is good zen
What is your favorite operating system to do scientific work on? And programming language. Which do you prefer to use and which have you found most beneficial in the long run for doing scientific work.
Dr. Leberman, What do you see as the next revolution in physics? What do you predict for the next 100, or even 1000, years as we break down the atomic and subatomic barriers?
Hello, My question is, What do you think about the idea that, Fritjof Capra, has put forth in both "The Dao of Physics" and "The Turning Point"? Specifically, the idea that everything is interconnected, and the systems theory? Thanks Jaerin
Dr. Lederman,
What is your opinion of the current peer review process in scientific journals and conferences? Specificaly, as a physicist just beginning my career, I have heard many stories of abuses (and seen a few first hand); from reviewers rejecting papers only to steal the ideas for their own, to conference chairs making sure their sessions were stacked with people of like mind, omitting any dissenting voices.
Although I have had colleagues argue with me that the only solution is to abolish the peer review process altogether (for example, set up web sites for online publication without review), it seems to me this could only lead to anarchy and a signal to noise ratio little better than the online "scientific" newsgroups. On the other hand, nobody that I talk to seems happy with the current state of affairs. Do you feel it is the best that we can do, or do you have some opinion on how to make the process better?
1) Dr. Hawkings have been very vocal about the impossibilities of Faster Than Light travel. However, it seems that with a few exceptions like Kaku, very vew physicists are willing to talk about the possibility of FTL travel using wormholes or Einstein-Rosen bridges or other loopholes in theory. What are your thoughts on these possibilities?
2) It is interesting when reading predictions about the future, that many people and physicists alike talk about HSCT, manned Mars missions and other fantastic ideas. However to those of us in the industry, we know that although such technologies exist (sort of), it's only really a question of money: who has it, how much is spent (wisely), and so on. Many people come up with quick fixes such as "commercialization for more competition", thinking that it will fix the problems in the industry quickly.
As a physicist, it probably isn't fair to ask about your political views of this problem. However, where DO you see aerospace propulsion technology going for the next 50 years? Are there physics principles being developed that can help with cheaper and better aerospace travel? Where would you LIKE for the aerospace industry to be in 50 years?
Dr. Lederman, Correct me if I am incorrect, but I've heard some talk amongst the various deans at Illinois Institute of Technology about you involvment with physics education. Where do you see physics education heading the future? How much physics should a person (not going into a phyiscs field, say an engineer or bilogy major) be taught and at what age should the concepts be taught to students? Thanks for your time, Patrick Wagstrom CpE student @ IIT
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
It is nice to see a Physicist getting his due besides Mr. "He's the next Newton" Prof. Hawking -- though Prof. Hawking seems more than a might bit nicer than Newton -- and would someone PLEASE install a speech pack with a British Accent for that man! :) But I digress.
Anyway, with his background in mind (since Prof. Lederman probably hasn't much more ideas on the Cosmological Constant than the average reader of 'New Scientist'), here is the question I would pose in terms I hope even lay-people can understand:
Prof. Lederman,
One of the hottest theories in modern physics is the String or M Theory. One of the propositions of that theory is that our universe is actually composed of many "hidden" dimensions which are curled up onto a loop -- like the tassels of a fine-woven carpet along the "plane" or our entire universe, as you well know. Of course, there is much debate as to how small these dimensions (10 in most String Theories, 11 in M Theory, 26 in some older theories) may be in length. This is because the only dimensions we can directly perceive are the 3 of the spatial universe and our old, millennium-turning friend, Time. Of course we are pretty sure the spatial dimensions are looped back on the scale of 20 billion light-years or more. [That is, if you drew a straight line in any direction, give or take a few 100 sextillion (100 trilliard or 100 thousand trillion for our British friends out there) miles in length, it should eventually meet up with itself, the same way longitudinal lines meet up on the Earth. It is unclear if time has this property.] But what of these other dimensions. Originally it was though they were on the order of the Plank Length -- a length a few septillionths [quadrillionths] of the diameter of an atom, which is far beyond any atom smasher we have to even conceive today in producing an explosion with such energy [7.6723(57)e+15 TeV] that some of the particle thrown off in the explosion might make a dimensional shift noticeably into one of our curled-up dimensions. Now, some recent theories believe that maybe not all of these concealed dimensions are of the order of a Plank Length. Some even believe they may be on the order of as much as a millionth the width of an atom or just beyond the energies of current particle physics, or even longer!
That's the background, now the question: What do you think the probability of discovering extra dimensions curved in upon themselves at measurable lengths and energies in our lifetime is? What implications do you predict, if any, for our view of the universe if multiple dimensions are shown to be correctly predicted by hypothesis? Or do you feel they will forever be outside our range, well beyond our detection due to their high-energy conditions?
Thanks much for taking the time to answer and good luck with all your future research!
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey C. Jacobs.
Time Lord, Dark Horse: The Techno Mage of Gallifrey
You have 2 questions really.
:-)
First the twinned photons. This is the infamous EPR effect, where two photons "remain connected and aware of each other" even though they are separated. However it cannot be used to transmit information. Huh? Well there is a simple demonstration of that, and here is a layman's outline.
First of all, have you heard of different interpretations of QM? The truth is that we don't really understand QM, but there are various "interpretations" of it, any of which fits with the world we see. They all say that we will see the same things, so we cannot run an experiment and say which is right. However the flip side of that is that whatever is true in one, is also true in any other.
Well the Everett Interpretation is one interpretation. In this interpretation when we observe an event and think that we observe a collapse of a quantum mechanical state, there is no collapse. Instead we have merely become entangled with the event, and there are now several of us, who don't interact with each other.
Thinking in terms of that cat, the cat is both dead and alive before you open the box, and is STILL both dead and alive after you open it. However there are now two of you, one of which saw the dead cat, one of which saw the live one. And since the two of you cannot interact, you both think that the alive/dead state of the cat collapsed!
OK, got that? Good, now we are going to use it.
In the EPR effect there are two photons which two people observe in two places. When they come back together they realize that what one observed affected what the other observed, even though that would take communication faster than light. At least that is what it looks like.
But wait! In the Everett interpretation if person A observes photon 1 and person B observes photon 2, then A and B both split when they observe the photons. All that the quantum says is which copy of A will meet which copy of B. But that is a prediction about a future event that takes place below the speed of light (person A walks over to B and asks how it is going). In A's region there is in fact no extra information gained about B's region at all. So no information was transferred!
The other question you had was tunnelling. Well that is similar. With tunnelling you set things up and can show after the fact that some of the electrons went across faster than light. Cool. Some of them might even have gone backwards in time. Ultra-cool.
However the receiver cannot figure out which ones did this until after the fact, and amazing as it sounds, no action on the sender's side will affect what the receiver is seeing until after light could have travelled from the sender to the receiver.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
When the Superonducting Supercollider project died a few years ago, I remember people in other areas (eg fluid mechanics) saying that it was good because big colliders cost so much, only matter to a small portion of the scientific community, and even a small fraction of the money would do a lot more good in other areas of science.
Being a prominent member of the high energy physics community you must have had to deal with these people. How do you answer their argument?
Thanks,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Are there any particular projects or people who you would like to see nominated for an IgNobel prize?
:-)
(My apologies if Marc A of AIR has already asked this
--
Infuriate left and right
Although this may lean a bit more toward the cognitive sciences, do you have any thoughts about the physics related to consciousness?
I am curious about this issue for a few reasons:
Since the role of the conscious observer is a cornerstone of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics, what possible mechanism for consciousness do you think could provide some explanation for this role?
Also, as we approach the point where computers could have at least the physical complexity of the human brain, do you think that level of complexity alone is sufficient to create awareness?
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
Dr. Lederman,
What predictions might you make for the 21st century in the area of space exploration? Do you think we'll see a manned mission to Mars within the first couple decades?
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
There seems to be a trend in high energy physics towards larger and larger collabrations due to the increasinly high costs to conduct experiments. Do you believe that the physics community should focus on these increasingly expensive experimenmts or should the focus shift to other areas such as nonlinear dynamics, fluid mechanics and interdisciplinary fields such as biophysics?
Also, I worked with a group that was collabrating on the Superkamiokande experiment which found evidence that neutrinos oscillate and thus have mass. How would these results affect the current standard model and the various attempts to formulate an unified theory.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
What is your opinion of Roger Penrose's "Quantum Theory of Mind"? (His popular treatment of the subject can be found in "Shadow's of the Mind" and earlier in "The Emperor's New Clothes"). The only relevant criticisms I've seen have been by logisticians, and the criticisms seemed to be adequately resolved.
m l
The logistical discussion and related information is here: http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/psyche-index-v2.ht
LetterRip
Dr.,
Many theories exist that attempt to explain the reality underlying Quantum Theory. A few of the most popular are:
1. The Copenhagen Interpretation
2. Observer Created Reality
3. Consciousness Created Reality
4. Many Worlds Interpretation
5. Einstein's Ordinary-Object Reality
I would like to know exactly how you surmise the reality beneath Quantum Theory manifests itself. Do you have a hypothesis for the Quantum Measurement Problem or the Quantum Interpretation Problem?
thank you,
kevin
The experiment works as you describe, and the effect has even been confirmed in the laboratory, but suppose you are the observer in New York. Now, suppose you measure the spin of your particle; let's say you look at the z-component, for the sake of argument. Now, it is true that this does tell you the z component of the particle in Moscow, but ask yourself, what "information" has been transmitted, and to whom? You don't know whether your colleague in Moscow has measured her particle's spin or not, so you can't say whether you are sending or receiving a "message". What's more, you don't have any control over which value for the spin you measure, meaning that you can't even control which message you are sending, even supposing you know for certain that your colleague hasn't looked at her particle yet. So, even though their appear to be curious nonlocal effects, no actual information is being exchanged.
You can find more information about the EPR paradox and Bell's inequality in the physics FAQ, or by doing a search on the keywords "Bell's Inequality" and "EPR paradox".
-r
What do you think of Kip Thorne's and John Wheeler's ideas about worm holes and time travel, and what do you think about Matt Visser's and Steve Lamoreaux's experiments in detecting negative energy?
. html.
For Slashdot readers, the transcript of the relevant Nova episode is at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2612time
Please take a look at it if you are interested...I originally wanted to take quotes from it, but they were too large and hard to format, and also probably copyrighted.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Many time it's been the case that fields of mathematics once thought "pure", i.e. with no conceivable application have turned out to be critical to new formulations of physical theory. Einstein's use of tensor calculus and the applications for symmetry groups in subatomic physics come to mind.
The question is twofold. What do you see as the most interesting fields of mathematics that are currently entering application in physics, and what directions in modern mathematics do you find most interesting in terms of possible future physical theories?
If our current understanding of physical laws is accurate then it seems that the extrapolations being made on the possibilities afforded us by molecular nanotechnology point to achieving a world that is orders of magnitude more advanced in every conceivable field sometime in the next century. Do you think such a "phase shift" is likely to occur and, if so, when? What are the obstacles to such dramatic changes? How do we prepare ourselves?
Do you believe in an arrow of time? How does the notion of time relate to determinism?
I understand there's some debate in this area, but the deep thinking behind the debate has always eluded me.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Thank you, Dr. Lederman.
I would like to ask what, in your opinion, could be done to better teach the love for physics (and math, also). In other words, what would be the best way to avoid boredom and teach physics and math like the fascinating subjects they really are?
Considering your background in high-energy physics and such, what is your opinon of String theory? It does provide an interesting answer to the TOE, but it also leaves alot left to be explained. For example, why strings? atoms (and their composite particles) seem so much simpler (to me at least), and strings require so much more effort on the part of nature, and in my experience nature tends to follow the path of least resistance.
=======
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Creation
How is it possible to see light that originated at about the time of the big bang when we are moving through space at less than the speed of light? Wouldn't any light from the time of the big bang long since have passed us by?
Time
I have read that according to relativity a moving object ages more slowly the faster it is moving. If it were moving away, wouldn't this just be the Doppler effect like a redshift? Wouldn't an object moving towards us seem to age faster?
Reality
What evidence is there that our reality is or is not a computer simulation? For example, the speed of light limitation on velocity and the discrete (particle) nature of matter?
Consciousness
It occurs to me that an argument against simulated reality is that computers are ruled based; whereas, humans have free will. However, if the brain is a physical device, it can be simulated by a computer. It seems more plausible that the molecular causes and effects resulting in thought are so complex that it merely seems like free will, and it IS free will in that no other entity is guiding it as far as we know.
Thanks,
Jim Hammond
Some time ago, I came across a Scientific American article discussing the results obtained from quantum chromodynamics simulations performed on a recently-built supercomputer. The simulations predicted the mass of several hadrons quite accurately, and also predicted the mass of the hypothesized "glueball" particle.
Subsequent examination of recorded particle accelerator events looking for a particle with the glueball's properties found several glueball events.
My question is: How likely is it that other particles lie undiscovered in accelerator events that have already been observed? Would an event that produced a particle with unexpected mass or other properties be flagged by present event-filtering algorithms?
My question: With basic research budgets in disarray, do you see any opportunity for amateur scientists to pursue distributed research projects?
I believe that amateur astronomers have done a great deal to assist the "professionals", due to the ease of distributing a great amount of work among many volunteers, but I am not aware of the same phenomenon occuring in any other field.
It has been suggested that the only experimental physics left to do is that which requires billions of dollars and/or 50 acre+ installations. I do not know whether to believe this view -- perhaps with a bit of creativity, experiments could be designed such that they could be farmed out to an array of amateur scientists willing to commit time and money towards the effort (similar to how open source software is pursued now). I have heard of a few such possibilities, eg amateur neutrino detectors, but none that I know of that are endorsed or initiated by institutional science.
To restate my question, is such an approach possible, and/or desirable?
Thank you for your time.
Forte Bravo
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"If children weren't copyrighted, no one would have babies." -- Alex Eulenberg
Every pop book on Physics I've read for the past 20 years (sorry, I studied accounting in College) states that we are on the virge of a breakthrough that will allow an understanding of the Grand Unified Theory of Everything. Must like rocket cars or thinking computers, this is perpertually 10 to 20 years in the future. What are your opinions on this?
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Is the damn cat alive or dead?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I've been wondering about this for a while, there seem to be a lot of people who believe its real, and can show "some" results. I have a hard time believing that so many people would claim success if there was really nothing there.
What do you think of this whole situation? Thought I don't know myself, I've heard it said that this would violate the laws of physics. (I would like to know, though). Of course Relativity violated the laws of physics to before it became the laws of physics, to right?
What My main question is, is do you think enough actually laboratory work has been done to discredit Cold Fusion for good, or is it possible that there's something to it?
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I believe it was Richard Feynman that said something like "trying to figure out how the universe works by smashing particles into each other is like trying to figure out how a swiss watch works by hurling it against a brick wall and watching the pieces whizz by your head..."
:))
I keep hearing about accelerators with higher and higher energies being proposed for "breakthrough" research. I realise that theory must be confirmed with experimentation, but are there more elegant solutions this problem?
(I recall that the proposed SSC could not be built in Rhode Island because it was too big
Thanks!
Dr. Lederman, As someone who is very interested in science education, I'm sure you have some strong opinions on the utility of computers (and other high technology) in elementary education, which as you know is a hot topic now. Would you share your feelings on the topic and perhaps some forecasts for the future?
--
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
There has been quite a lot of noise about transmitting information faster than at light speed (with twin photons, tunnelling or whatever means). All (serious ?) scientists say that this is not possible, no matter if experiments show something else (or are these all faulty ?).
:-)
Some background: You can use a crystal to create a twin of a photon which will always have the same properties (for example spin or plarisation) as the original photon no matter the distance between them (quantum theory predicts this effect and it has been proven that it exists. The photon teleportation uses it, for example). Now the idea is like this: You create these twins in Paris and send them via fiber to New York and Moskau. In Moskau, I use a filter to polarise my photon and in New York, the polarisation is measured. This doesn't work but why not ?
Also, why do physicians claim that faster than light information transport by tunneling does not transport the information faster than light ? If an electron tunnels, it will appear on the other side in a shorter amount of time than when it had passed the distance at light speed. While we cannot force the electron to tunnel (we can just increase the probability that it eventually happens) the electron still did travel faster than light, right ? And it did not travel back in time because it appeared on the other side after it disappeared. And also its mass did not change (as Einsteins formula would predict). So what is wrong with the model that the electron travels faster than light ? Or better: Even if the model is completely wrong and we cannot understand or explain the effect, isn't there a technical use for it (for example a memory in which the data is stored in a quantum point and released by a tunnel effect ensuring save data storage plus FTL access) ?
Any pointers to more information about these topics would also be most welcome
Thanks a lot,
--
Dipl. Inf. (FH) Aaron "Optimizer" Digulla
"(to) optimize: Make a program faster by improving the algorithms rather than by buying a faster machine."
I noticed that you turned your attention to education after you left the top post at Fermilab. As I'm sure you're aware, American students consistently test near the bottom in math and science among industrialized countries and even nations like South Korea. Do you think that America can continue to be a leader in these fields if the schools (especially public schools) do so poorly in giving children the basis from which to go on to undertake the complex and difficult jobs?
On a related note, do you think that the influence of religion on science education is currently positive or negative?
Finally, do you think that our society can make intelligent judgements about such subjects as gentically engineered foods, pesticides, appropriate use of antibiotics, global warming and preserving the ozone layer if the voters do not have any grasp of the science behind the issues?
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
While I am not a scientist, I've read popular physics texts, etc. It seems like our understanding of the physical world is once again due for a radical change as we begin to comprehend the mysteries of the very small and the very large. Of all the major physics theories/breakthroughs so far, which do you think has the greatest chance of being debunked and/or seriously undermined in the coming century? Why?
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Dr. Lederman, What are your thoughts on patents? Particularly, what do you think of the practice of patenting genetic discoveries? Is this not analagous to, and just as ridiculous as, patenting a newly found particle? Thank you.
I am, therefore you think.
While perhaps not everyone here is aware of it, I remember your involvement with the early history of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy.
[For those who don't know, IMSA is a state-wide, residential magnet school for grades 10-12, with less than 1000 total students. It requires an application, recommendations, and the SAT to gain admittance. While math and science take a prominent place in its name, it also has excellent humanities and social studies programs. The idea was to provide a better educational environment for gifted high school students.]
IMSA, which first opened in 1986, is now halfway through it's thirteenth year. It was an experiment when it was first created. Over the years, it has changed and adapted on a number of levels. Now it's more a fixture of the Illinois educational system.
Certainly, improving the education of future generations is as important and controversial a topic today as it was then. Do you feel that the IMSA experiment was a success? Would you now advocate starting more programs like it in other states? Would you say that, over its 13 year history, the institution has maintained the correct focus, or have they perhaps lost sight of their original goals in order to ensure their own survival and continued funding?
In any case, thanks. I felt it helped me.
--K. Schalk, IMSA calss of 1990
CVS is teh suck. Use Vesta instead.
I am a Ph. D. student in physics at the current time. It appears that only a minority of physics Ph. D.s get a permanent job in physics after graduation. Do you think this indicates that too many Ph. D.s are being produced? If so, what are the reasons for this overproduction?
As a biologist, I've been interested to see how rapidly the physics community has embraced new methods of publication. (The WWW being one example.) In the next 20-30 years, do you think that paper journals with online archives will persist as the standard in most sciences or will online-only journals reach the same level of prominence?
The opportunity to quiz a scientist of Prof. Lederman's stature doesn't come along every day.
Actually, some of us work at MIT...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
So...now that Congress has more or less gutted funding for pure science, how can we change the way we do Physics to make up the difference? Could the next Physics breakthrough be done in someone's garage, for example? If this is the case, what advice do you have to offer those who want to conduct (experimental) physics research on a shoestring budget?
(Oh yeah, one last question: Cubs fan or Sox fan?)
Finding God in a Dog
While having an open mind is one of the most important personality qualities of a scientist, what has happened to skepticism in American society? These days it seems that, for most Americans, anything shrouded in scientific sounding jargon is probably true, even when absolutely no supporting evidence is given. We believe such unsupported claims as aliens abducting and sexually molesting people, where evidence is replaced by the sheer emotional power of the stories. Why has scientific sounding jargon and emotional testimony become a replacement for hard data?
And more importantly, what can we do about it? How can we teach people to be skeptical and to demand hard evidence for claims?
This sig is false.
Dr. Lederman
Thank you for this opportunity.
A century ago it was noted that, "...except for just a few little problems with the hydrogen spectrum, all of physics had been solved."
In your opinion, what are the outstanding problems that are likely to be solved in the forseeable future?
Joe
Prof. Lederman, I am Ph.D. student in plasma physics, a subfield of physics that has many large scale (both in physical and budgetary size) experimental projects. High Energy experiments tend to be even bigger and require more man power. I see this having two negative effects: (1) More money means more politics, and (2) experimental physics seems much harder to do in a university campus setting. My question(s) -- what is your forecast of the political status of scientific research and where do you think government research money will go in the future.
Where do you place yourself on this continuum? Do you feel that science is inherently agnostic, and we should go ahead and use it in any way we can, since if we don't, someone else will? Or do you believe that scientists have a moral and ethical responsibility to think through the consequences of their research? What do you feel about the collision between public funding of science, the increasing apathy and ignorance of the general public, and the expectation of a return on investment in basic sciences?
Apologies if this is needlessly complicated, but it is just one question...
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
As a follow-up, I want to ask what would happen as a result of a GUT being found/proven?
To be more specific, say a GUT is found and verified (as much as possible). What technological breakthroughs would come in the 20 years following such a discovery, that were directly attributable to it? In other words, for everyday people, what are we likely to see as a benefit down the road from a successful GUT?
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
I am a member of the contributor network for NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program. The objective of the program is to create new propulsion and energy technologies that would allow mankind to reasonably travel within the solar system and to nearby stars.
Given the staggering problems, what sources of propulsion and energy do you envision that might realistically allow humanity to travel within the solar system with relative ease ?
What solutions do you see for radioactive sheilding on such trips ? Do you think we will always be bound to using massive sheilds, or will we become able to use some sort of electromagnetic barrier ?
Thank you.
Alexander Ibrahim
aibrahim@zenera.com
Don't post innacurate information
If you do, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will end you.
Physics once meant everything to me, but now I'm doing the "greed is good" thing on the Internet.
Many others followed the same path. There's a vast physics diaspora out there. Among many others, consider Dr. Stephen Schutz, MIT graduate and Princeton physics Ph.D. who recently sold his online greeting card company to Excite for nearly a billion dollars.
On the other hand, I know a couple of folks who foolishly persisted in their dreams of a science career well past the age of employability (late 30s), and now they're shipwrecked and facing reality. It seems they have a lot in common with failed actors, musicians, and athletes who didn't make the big leagues. When did scientists become "starving artists"?
Is there any hope of reversing the tremendous attrition rate of potential scientists? In good conscience, should we even be encouraging young people to pursue science careers given their dim career prospects?
Do you share this pessimism, and what changes do you see in the decades to come, for better or for worse?
Prof. Lederman, I have recently graduated from UCLA with a BS in physics. I came into the program with a gleam in my eye when it came to physics, and left with a ho-hum attitude towards the organized teaching of the subject (I still love learning how the universe works however). The reason? Professors incapable of teaching at an undergraduate level, or at all.
Don't get me wrong, it is without a doubt in my mind, that I was taught by some of the most brilliant minds at my college, who understood topics that would make my head spin. At the same time however, they were unable to grasp the simple fact that their methods of teaching weren't understandable by most of the students.
UCLA is not alone in this trend, speaking with a PhD from the UK, the situation is the same there. It seems that no research university understands the need for teaching professors how to teach.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)