Slashdot Mirror
Physics Problems For The New Age
In May, we ran a story on ten
"math problems for the new age."
ContinuousPark writes: "Last month, at the end of a conference on superstring theory at the University of Michigan, a group of physicists chose ten of the hardest problems in their field. They range from 'simple' ones like 'What is the lifetime of the proton and how do we understand it?' to obscure ones like 'Can we quantitatively understand quark and gluon confinement in quantum chromodynamics and the existence of a mass gap?' Resolve one today, get a Nobel Prize tomorrow. This
NY Times article
has the details." And unfortunately, says the Times,
"'Just because' is not considered an acceptable answer." Darn, there goes my Nobel.
Well, it's kinda hard to have a "frame" when there's no absolute time. The state of all the particles in your body can't really be said to be in the same "frame" with a particular state of the particles in mine.
ok then . . I've got a few I'de like to add one to the list.
1) Where the hell are my keys ?
Wrong. It's trivially easy to take an arbitrary large number and see if its prime or not. The problem is factoring that number if you know its not prime. Breaking down a 1024 bit long composite number which is the product of two 512 bit primes is the difficult part (and, oddly, exactly what you need to do to break 1024 bit RSA)
no one has yet to discover *any* pattern in the prime numbers
That is just a blatantly false statement. There are many patterns, the most obvious one being that the product of any number of consecutive primes starting at 2 plus 1 is a prime.
What would happen if you just burned the book? Or did some other ghastly thing to it, like explode it in a hydrogen bomb, how could you then retrieve the information? Can someone explain all this?
That is, you can't even tell that sodium and chlorine fell in, much less salt or a salt crystal. Depending on conditions, you might get electrons and protons with particular trajectories back since in addition to the mass of whatever is swallowed, the charge and angular momentum is also conserved.
The encyclopedia is much too macro to be a decent example.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
If you want to analyze the slope of your account balance or take the second derivative to find out where it might be in the future, solve for limits(heh, minimum != 0) or other stuff like that, then it could be a math problem. ;-)
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
And here's proof that all prime numbers are odd: Two is the only even prime number; that makes it very odd. Hence all prime numbers are odd :-)
You're expecting drunk people to think about being objective?
---
If 90% of everything isn't crap, your standards are too high.
One of John Cramer's Alternate View columns is about this topic both generally (what are the problems, who makes the lists and what is the public perception of science's unsolved problems) and specifically (seven unsolved problems that he thinks are important). It is interesting to note that there are overlaps between many of these lists.
One problem that Cramer mentions that no one else seems to, however, is the causality problem. I often wonder if science as a paradigm can even deal with this sort of problem as causality is implicit in experimentation.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Ahh.. but we're not sure yet, are we. You'll just need to find somebody to actually understand it, then go pick up that Nobel (get ready for a small wait though...)
--EMN
Hmm. I believe the correct statement is that "1 plus the product of any n consecutive primes starting at 2 is either a prime number or has a prime factor greater than n."
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
The interesting thing about string theory is that we may now be running into some serious limits on the degree to which we can experimentally verify our theories. Some of these limits may be fundamental, and tied into the theories themselves (as with Heisenberg's principle), but they may also be economic or otherwise practical - the problems involved in building accelerators with high enough energies to detect some of the artifacts of these theories may become insurmountable in future.
Even if string theory succeeds (which it hasn't yet) in providing a perfect explanation which integrates and explains all forces and dimensions, we still may not know whether the entities it postulates actually exist in any real sense. Unless we can get some kind of fairly direct (experimental) evidence of the hidden dimensions and strings (or branes), we won't know whether perhaps there's an entirely different mathematical solution waiting in the wings, which may use different undetectable entities to explain the same phenomena. In either case, the question of whether those entities truly exist becomes rather irrelevant, if we can't detect them directly. All we can say is that "the universe behaves as if our theory is valid, and therefore the entities it proposes may have some physical correlate".
This bears some resemblance to what the Copenhagen interpretation says of quantum theory, so this philosophical ground has been covered before. However, quantum theory has the benefit that all the objects it proposes have either been experimentally detected, or else are not central to the theory, but rather predicted by it. With string theory, we are indeed returning to the era of epicycles and hidden variables.
Of course, we hope that this situation will change in future, whether because of new experiments or different theories. Until this happens, lay people and physicists alike are right to treat string theory with a greater degree of skepticism than even the notoriously unintuitive quantum theories.
Einstein didn't conceive either special or general relativity theories in vacuum. His work was based on the work of the "other" great contemporaries - Hilbert, Minkowski and Poincare, to name a few.
Don't forget that it was Hilbert who wrote the righthand side of the basic general relativity equation (matter tensor).
Just because a "mildly" educated Joe Blow knows the names of whopping 2 physicists - Einstein and Hawking - doesn't mean he's right.
Well, actually, the "first principles" are, in some sense, mutable, they're just not mutated very often. There is no "absolute truth". There is "consensual reality" which is the acknowledgement that, to get anything done at all, you have to use roughly the same set of rules as the next person. Otherwise you descend into solipism, and you're then better off talking to a philosopher than a scientist. Anyway, that science is not infallible is no reason to accept any religion's doctrine of infallibility - science doesn't even claim to be infallible, unlike, for example, christianity, judaism or islam... The very fact that there are so many mutually contradictory religions to choose from, all claiming to be the "one true faith" should be a bit of a hint that they're baloney. Science doesn't even try to claim it's the "one true faith", it's not even a faith, any more than zero bananas is a useful amount of bananas.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
A religion is based on faith; where faith is belief in an absolute truth without justification. In science, there is NO TRUTH. There are only theorems to be disproved. The scientific method is to continously adapt the "truth of the moment" by experimiental verification. Religious doctrine tends to be *the exact opposite* - faith without proof, trust in a power higher than our own. Why else is innocence venerated? Why was doubting Thomas scorned?
Please see www.infidels.org for some though-provoking essays.
Choice of masters is not freedom.
"Here's the screwup: Your interpretation of quantum mechanics. It IS ridiculous that an "act of observation changes the observed"--that's why I subscribe to the many-worlds hypothesis. Every quantum event "creates universes". If they electron can go both left and right at time T, then at time T+1 there are two universes, one for each possibility."
You've watched way too many episodes of 'Star Trek'
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Time is a perception, not a physical property. We choose to measure our perception with clocks both analog and digital, and call it 'time'.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
There's a government grant hiding in there somewhere.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Many SSC opponents were naive in thinking that if the SSC were cancelled, the funds would go to other disciplines. But that money only existed for one purpose -- kill the project and you kill the money, too
This is incorrect. No one assumed that the money would flow to the other fields. What the SSC did effectively do was to suck the air (and money) from other projects though, as congress wanted to limit the money given to the scientists. What many SSC opponents knew was that the zero sum game of science funding was about to get tremendously worse due to the funding problems in the SSC. Why should the condensed matter physicists have to lose funding for their research just to let the SSC continue? I speak from experience, after watching the funding in the grant that I was working under get sucked dry as monies shifted around to bolster the SSC at the expense of other science.
That this ever happened in the first place (despite the protestations that it never would) was unfortunate. Unfortunately, my group was the norm and not the exception. The grant program managers explained to us what had happened.
You also wrote
Maybe, but are they similarly far less intrigued by black holes, wormholes, the origins of the universe, superstrings, etc.?
I would expect that they are highly focussed on CJS (aka Mad Cow disease) and the issues surrounding the processing of food, food borne illness, how to prevent contamination, are they infected, what CJS actually is (a prion, or disease state of a protein, folded in a different conformation) than they are about black holes, superstring theory, and other things that aren't likely to kill them because they ate a bad burger. You also write:
By the way, while I contest many of your points -- because I'm in high-energy physics -- I will freely admit that the most interesting science book I've read in years is Kauffman's At Home in the Universe on biology, biochemistry, evolution, etc.
I personally encourage healthy debate. I had many such debates in grad school over this with friends in HEP and friends in my own field of computational condensed matter physics. One of the most fundamental points of such debates is can we afford to do the science, as well as can we afford not to. I personally argue that not all mountains should be climbed because we can (with a nearly infinite expenditure of energy), but we need to pick our mountains more carefully. My apparant focus on the biological aspects comes with a recent shift in career to a bioinformatics focus (which is a beautiful application of statistical mechanics).
Then again I also think that we (in the US) spend far too little money on basic research, and we treat our graduate students very much like slave labor (or indentured servants, or even middle class kids on the government dole). The investment in basic research almost always pays off (economic analysis seems to put the internal rates of return at ~30% or so... I wish my stocks did as well).
Wow. Thanks for the informative post.
As you have no doubt realized, when I referred to "epicycles added to epicycles" I was repeating what I had heard elsewhere (probably in elementary school) and accepted as fact.
I learn something on slashdot every day!
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Thanks for an incredibly informative post.
As far as the math and the books go - I guess the ideal book for me would be something that carefully defined and explained all these terms like Standard Model and Gauge Fields, and then went on to give some overviews of the proofs. I suspect I won't be able to understand all the math in the books you mentioned, but I can certainly read calculus and discrete math equations, so I'll see how far I get...
Thanks again. Posts like yours make Slashdot worth reading.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
What about Computer Science?
As a current undergraduate student looking towards an academic career, I know a list of unsolved problems in CS (perhaps not including Math and AI?) would be a great help in focusing my course selection.
Or even better, why not establish an online database of unsolved questions in every discipline? Each question could include some links to background information, a list of researchers who were known to be working on them, perhaps a method for companies and individuals to offer financial incentives (much like Paul Erdos used to).
As an aside, if anyone has any links or suggestion for topic selection, I'd greatly appreciate it.
umm... that doesn't exactly make sense. what the heck is so important about a black hole then? I mean, if you take that piece of paper, then burn it and burn it and burn it so that it's just a pile of ashes, and then throw that in acid, blah blah, the message would be effectively erased, right? or its not erased enough? anyone care to explain more?
note to moderators: this ain't redundant. the guy asked a question. and nobody replied yet. (i think)
ahh... thanks
or something like that. maybe i'm just not awake.
then again, I really really really really screwed up in terms of my physics class... ugh. painful.
#0. if this was true, number theorists would be idiots :)
#1. the sieve of Eratosthenes.
#2. multiplying a couple primes and adding by 1 is not always a prime--it just isn't divisible by the primes that were used in computing the product. However, the primes may be primes, but that still wouldn't help much--you would still have to check whether they're primes or not.
oh. and I hate number theory.
I guess you don't really want to read the article that badly then.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
The parent post probably represents the first time in history where advocating that we pay *more* attention to "condensed matter physics" was referred to as "keeping things in perspective".
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
"...but he hit the nail on the head when he said that you couldn't even begin to translate the real world into logical statements. His proof was both elegant and simple: "This statement is a lie". That phrase cannot be made to fit any standard logical expression set."
Godel didn't say anything even close to "you can't translate the real world into logical statements". Godel's proof applies to formal systems. Who says that Nature (or even Science) is a formal system?
"That because of the act of observation that the observed changes? Again, a clear sign that something, somewhere is screwed up so completely, but nothing is ever done."
Here's the screwup: Your interpretation of quantum mechanics. It IS ridiculous that an "act of observation changes the observed"--that's why I subscribe to the many-worlds hypothesis. Every quantum event "creates universes". If they electron can go both left and right at time T, then at time T+1 there are two universes, one for each possibility.
How does this fix the screwup? When I "observe" an electron making the choice, my own atoms (in my brain, body, equipment, lab, etc) are unavoidably influenced (for instance, my box registers "left" or "right"). But that means that the box must be in only one of the universes--which makes detecting the other one impossible. Thus the illusion of destroying the "quantum weirdness".
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
The first half of you post is good, the second half is unproven at best.
For instance, "our trust in the finite rules we place on (seemingly?) infinite systems should be questioned". All formal systems to which Godel applies are "infinite systems", but not all "infinite systems" have Godel apply. This is because the issue that Godel raises is not related to infinity but to self-reference.
'Also, with the advancement of physics, we are now encountering things which are "unexplainable"...'
There are things that are unexplained. That doesn't make them unexplainable.
"...maybe we should start to think of metaphysical explanations, no matter how hokey that sounds (especially to you purebred empiricists out there)"
It's easy to think of metaphysical explanations ("The universe is a cheese sandwich" for example). But how to prove it? Also, who says that humans aren't formal systems? Maybe we can't find answers to some questions...
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Think of it this way. Say someone writes a message on a piece of paper and seals it in a box. Assume that no one has has seen the message, or was told by the writer what it said. If the writer dies and the box is tossed into a black hole, then the infomation in the message is effectively erased. There would not be any record of the message ever existing. There would not be anyway to recreate the message from the matter in the black hole. The black hole destroys the information content of the matter leaving only the mass behind.
I was thinking the same exact thing when I came out of Hollow Man. I guess we're just gonna have to make every part invisible except for the eyes.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
And what would you suggest happen? Make something up? Perhaps you know the answers? "My mate John down the pub, he knows a bit about physics"? Perhaps the scientists should stop doing physics and wait till a simpler explanation drops into their lap?
It might very well turn out you're right, but finding easy answers isn't that easy...
But it turned out that velocities approaching c made some newtonian physical "laws" invalid (for that case); why shouldn't black holes make this physical law invalid (for that case)?
> 2nd law DOES hold, for a closed sytem
/isn't/ a closed system. Things "leak out" into a space that isn't part of our universe.
:-)
Well, the obvious conclusion to me would be that a Universe with black holes
Saying "Look, entropy! There, see!" means that entropy describes the behaviour in most conditions quite well, but what is the evidence that it holds for odd conditions like black holes?
(These are all honest questions, by the way: I assume I'm probably wrong, I want to know why
So why don't we just abandon the second law of thermodynamics? What evidence do we have that entropy always decreases, rather than "entropy pretty much always seems to decrease"?
Furry nuff :-)
;-)
I'd personally be tempted to give it up as a bad job and start again, but luckily for me computers were invented and so I'm a computer scientist rather than a physicist
I think I might have heard it before, but it's a still terrific joke.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Cheers,
Greg
That is just a blatantly false statement. There are many patterns, the most obvious one being that the product of any number of consecutive primes starting at 2 plus 1 is a prime.
That is just a blatantly false statement. Consider (2 * 3 * 5 * 7 * 11 * 13) + 1 = 30031 = 59 * 509.
-jason
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
The Slashdot Oracle has pondered your question deeply:
You faithless imbecile, you should know better than to say the "double-ew" word in my presence!
..--=={{ ZOT! }}==--..
You owe the Oracle a dozen frags at the next LAN party.
THS
---
THS
---
"Poor girl looks as confused as a blind lesbian in a fish market." - Simon R. Green
Just to nit-pick a little bit, but Copernicus' explanation wasn't all that much better than the Ptolemaic version. While he accounted neatly for retrograde motion, his version had epicycles too (34 of them, in fact), since he used circular orbits. It wasn't until Galileo and Kepler came along that the evidence for a helio-centric solar system really started to get overwhelmingly convincing.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime...
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
I think the reason "disappearing information" is considered so important is that, if information in a black hole is completely gone, then theoretically that would imply a decrease in entropy in the universe. The second law of thermodynamics says entropy always increases, so this causes a bit of a problem.
Matt Reece
Every natural number has a unique prime factorization. Right?
This is a pretty fundamental concept in number theory.
So 4's prime factorization is:
2*2
If 1 was a prime, 4 could be factored as:
2*2*1, 2*2*1*1*1, etc.
So we DON'T define 1 as a prime. The definition of a prime is a natural number which has EXACTLY TWO unique factors over the natural numbers, 1 and itself. 1 doesn't satisfy this condition, it has only one unique factor over the naturals.
It's the age old smart sock/dumb sock problem. The smart sock hops from sweater to towel and slowly escapes to the land of sock. The dumb sock stays with its original owner, getting put on feet, sweated into, and, finally, thrown away.
I mean, wouldn't YOU try to escape?
Fun Fact: Most planetariums use the epicyclical model to reproduce heavenly motion. Good enough for planetariums... good enough for me ;)
I know...and what about applied materials research just to "keep things real".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Sorry, that's just to cute.
We don't have to proove you wrong. You have to come up with proof that we decide is adequate.
And you know this.
So shoo!
Later
Erik z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Someone already caught my mistake. Thank you though.
As I explained to the other person I slipped up because we tend to use simulated pion events along with simulated electron events for out work with the detectors. Pion events tend to create fairly useful, easy to interpret information when dealing with detector resolution simulations.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
2x7+1=15=5x3. Disproof,unless I misunderstood what he was wanting. It's just not that easy, sorry.
Blah I can't get my sig to work, it won't fit.
The problem with String Theory is that it's the first time since the classical greek natural philosphers that theory has preceded experiment.
The math isn't the biggest problem. The problem is we can't experimentally verify anything that string theory says with current technology. In the near future, BIG super colliders could provide us with the evidence to support string theory, and that would be awesome.
At any rate, there is nothing else in physics that comes close to explaining the basic nature of the universe. Quantum [insert related field here] can't do it, even with much of relativity and gravity factored in. String theory is the only party in physics right now...
The biggest question in all of Physics right now is solving the riddles behind SuperString theory. If we solve the problems with the math behind SuperString theory, we basically have the key to understanding *everything* in the universe.
Many people have pointed out interesting problems in Quantum mechanics and it's integration with Relativity and Gravity, but the thing is, if we understand SuperString theory, those problems solve themselves.
If time IS discreet, then the Planck Time would be a good candidate for the quantum.
I believe it's sqrt(Gh/(c^5))
Don't flame my math if I have the formula wrong.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Yeah, I was making no argument that 2xp+1 = (yet another prime) so you are absolutely correct.
I was just giving examples of primes that fell out of his description.
I did forget to add that each of those that I tabbed over is "missing" from his prime generator.
-Vel
This is a job for ... Ludwig Plutonium!
"The urge to fly from modern systems, instead of moving through them to even greater, fairer things is, I think, an indi
What is the resolution of the black hole information paradox?
Gotta be at least 1600x1200.
"You'll die up there son, just like I did!" - Abe Simpson
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I would have, but that question was already covered in the aforementioned article
Unix: Where
My initial ideas:
- How fast can information be transmitted from one machine to another? Is fiber optic the way to go? What about the time spent in routers and switches?
- How fast can we search a database? Is there some fundamental sorting algorithm that we've missed?
- How many instructions per second can the microprocessor as we know it execute?
I know there are others. What do you think?Unix: Where
Let's test this:
2 3 5 7 11 13 17
(2*3)+1=7
(3*5)+1=16
(5*7)+1=36
(7*11)+1=78
(11*13)+1=144
(13*17)+1=222
This doesn't seem to hold up very well.
First posting isn't trolling. It's...first posting.
Any number of consecutive primes (I used 2 in each example), STARTING at 2.
My math was flawless, and in accordance to what you said (note that I am not arguing the theorem; just your initial description of it).
First posting isn't trolling. It's...first posting.
Sometimes an accurate description is needed for a correct interpretation, you know? :P
Oh, btw, I maintain perfect grades in all AP classes
First posting isn't trolling. It's...first posting.
Actually, what appeals to physicists about superstring theory *is* its simplicity. Among other things, it hopes to eliminate a lot of arbitrary constants, which are sort of like the epicycles of current theory.
The problem about simplicity is that you sometimes have to look at things the right way to see it. Can't you imagine a Copernican physicist saying to Kepler (or more historically, probably Kepler saying to himself): "Why all of those complicated ellipses? Every one requires *two* variables to specify. Circles are so much simpler." But once you have Newton's laws, the ellipses turn out to be expressions of a simple underlying structure.
And simple equations aren't always simple to solve, as those who tackled the three-body problem of Newtonian physics discovered.
A few months ago I saw a list of unsolved mathematical problems that required no special knowledge to understand
can you post a link?
willis
there is no thing
what else could you want?
quantum mechanical property that observing changes the observed
In other words, this law/thing/observation has more to do with the method of observation than it has to do with the property being observed.
Wow, that's a nice .sig quote addition.
Thanks!
--
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I have different answers: ..., really big number.
1. Yes, it is one or the other.
2. It can't.
3. It is infinite and to understand it just think of a really, really,
4. No and so the second part is irrelevent.
5. Because clocks only go one direction (clockwise) and because some bright person decided to label the dimensions starting with x and ran out of letters after using z.
6. Good question - I'll get back to you on that one.
7. M
8. The correct resolution is not to throw encyclopaedia's into random black holes.
9. I believe at our university that is PHY 642.
10. Since the use of the pronoun we includes me, the answer is no.
One small thing that most people overlook with respect to C is that not only does time dialate when approaching the speed of light, but distance shrinks. This means that a photon, which is traveling at the speed of C, is everywhere at the same time because distance becomes zero. Chew on that for a day of so... Jamey
Jamey Kirby
It's trivially easy to find new primes.
What's hard is to take an arbitrary large number, then see if it is prime or not.
I think the poster was confused with the proof that there does not exist a largest prime. Like with the 2...13 example, 30031 is relatively prime to primes 2 through 13 but it obviously is composite.
Whenever I read about these incredibly complex theories, like 11 dimensional superstrings, the M-theory, "sparticles", and what have you, it just reminds me of the "theories of planetary motion" that people used to come up with before they realized the earth goes around the sun.
Actually, SUSY (supersymmetry, that's where the sparticles come from) would simplify a great deal of things! For instance, it would unify the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces. It would also explain dark matter. SUSY is really pretty elegant. The big drawback, however, is that it hasn't been observed yet... But due to the nature of the theory, SUSY is very hard to rule out by current experiments.
You might want to check the web page of one of our professors, he's got some talks on SUSY there.
I don't know much about string theories, but we had a speaker here for a seminar lately and from what I understand, string theories aren't fully understood yet.
Since the early days of relativity and quantum mechanics, physics in general has the problem that it's no longer "intuitive" as it was in Newton's days. Our everyday experience doesn't help us in understanding quantum phenomena. But just because it's no longer "graphic" it's far from being unsatisfactory.
--- The light at the end of the tunnel is probably a burning truck.
All the others are happy break my simple little mind physics problems and then number 8? Does tossing an encyclopedia into a black hole make information disappear? No it is displayed on a cosmic movie screen? What the hell are they talking about? Is this like what the MPA is going to do with DeCSS? If they win the suit and toss it into a black hole will it disappear? anyway that one struck me as stupid and I just felt like asking about it.
I am 31337 or something.
If there are 6 really small curled up dimensions, where are they, and why would they affect anything. What is the probablity of one of these dimensions even being in our galaxy. For these dimensions to affect anything surely they would have to be loads of them all over the place... Surely the size of something cannot be estimated by the lack of it's presence/effect.
I understand that dimensions don't have a specific location, but when you say something is small and curled up, that tends to rule out it being everywhere at the same time. Your example of the cylinder is just more confusing, now I'm imagining six big infinitely long cylinders that exist somewhere in the universe...
My point was that Relativity was not conceived in an intellectual void. Ie) Einstein wasn't approving patents one day and suddenly decided that the speed of light is the same in all reference frames. (This is pretty much a result of Maxwell's Equations -- the speed predicted for an EM wave was nearly exact to the value of light, so if light is an EM wave, then its speed is the same regardless of reference frame -- it just took Einstein to elevate it to a principle.)
Also, credit where credit is due has nothing to do with the fact that someone is not able to publish based on the current political climate. You can challenge their character, but the genius of their ideas undoubtably influenced later generations.
Quoth the article: "If you square the charge of the electron and then divide it by the speed of light times Planck's constant, all the dimensions (mass, time and distance) cancel out, yielding a so-called "pure number" -- alpha, which is just slightly over 1/137. But why is it not precisely 1/137 or some other value entirely? Physicists and even mystics have tried in vain to explain why. " Correct me if I'm wrong (and I may be), but the elctrons charge is 1.602*10^-19 C, the speed of light is 2.998*10^8 m/s, and Planck's constant is 6.626*10^-34 J*s. Performing the operation described above, e^2/(c*h), one gets 1.289*10^-13, which is about ten powers of ten away from 1/137 (0.00730). WTF?
Nice discussion on a concept called the mass *deficit*, which (unfortunately) is not the same as the mass gap. ITGeek (Ph.D. in nuclear physics)
Are you saying you'd rather have a science, a supposed truth, based on a fundamentally insecure foundation? Personally, I'd rather know less than think I know more...
(Wow. I get the impression I'm gonna get flamed for that last line...)
--
--
It's not the rambling I object to, so much as the mumbled incoherancies...
Okay, I didn't realize this web site was all about catastrophism when I linked it. But it's still a good all around idea, linking widely different disciplines together to compare notes.
-----
"You spilled my egg... I needed that egg."
Yes, but what's the question?
WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Don't remember who said that though...
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
yeah, i just tried a few out... its cypherphreak for both id/password
I dont understand space OR time to be honest. If you had a photo of anything at any level, how can you tell which bits are moving and which arent?
And i`m vaguely aware of zenos paradox...which, if i`m not mistaken, is the one where before you go 10 metres you have to go 5, but before you g 5 you have to go 2.5, but before..etc etc...
So at some point, at whatever level of granularity, surely you either move between 2 points in time, or you dont. I dont get it. Can anyone explain, or give me a url/book that deals with this?!
Or he hates signing up for sites? I know i do. Isnt there a `partners` prefix normally, or you use cyberphreak for id/password? I cant be arsed to register either, so i was hoping for a link...
sure, its the first link in the story at the top of this page!
:)
Chris
Wrong, it's 42.
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
What is the lifetime of the proton and how do we understand it?
Ask! What is playing on the TV channel or network Lifetime?
Can we quantitatively understand quark and gluon confinement in quantum chromodynamics and the existence of a mass gap?
Ask! Where can I find the Holy Mass in the Catholic church? Ask! What is the return policy of Gap.com?
Ask! Where can I find a Gap near me?
Ask! Where can I find resources from Britannica.com on gluon?
Ask! Where can I find analyst reports for Gap Inc?
Ask! Where can I buy clothing from Gap?
IF the answers are so hard, how will they know when the right one has been picked? Catch 22. The answer is 8. Prove me wrong. mwahahaha
Score:-1, Funny
The answer is 2.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Number 8 is a very very odd problem. I can't begin to understand why Dr. Hawking believes that it would dissapear even if there are other copies of it in the world.
Lets say for example...we take something that is rather constant...1 X 1. If I take one apple and create one times as many apples as I have, I made one apple. According to Hawking, if I wrote down 1 X 1 = 1 on a peice of paper it would dissapear and for all we know 1 X 1 could now equal 7 or 70 or 10^700. Or if we do 1 + 1, where does the fibonacci sequence start? since 1 + 1 can no longer equal 2.
Or even to take it one step further, if 1 X 1 = 1 is tossed into a black hole, is 1 * 1 = 1 still valid, is it the physical form of the idea, the way it is written that is no longer there, or the logical idea behind the information that dissapears.
I am not a mathematician, a physicist or the like, just a 17 year old who doesn't understand the numbers and physics behind these things, just thinks the lgoic through about them.
Not that I can come up with a good example of this not working off the top of my head, but wouldn't this make the problem of finding large primes trivially easy ?
AFAIR hugh amounts of time (computer and human) has been spent looking for large primes for crypto work, perhaps somebody should tell these people that all they have to do is
- Compute the first few thousand primes using the sieve of what-his-name (a few seconds work, even with only brute force)
- Find the product with infinite precision and add 1 (Okay this may take a minute or two)
It would save so many computer cycles...Now this *is* interesting.
A good explanation and example of this can be found here.
Source code is a lot like a parachute; it needs to be open in order to function properly.
Funny, you just proved my point while trying to disprove it. I never made any assumptions about which number came next, you did. However, the pattern you mentioned is in fact a pattern and not a method of calculating a member of the group.
Source code is a lot like a parachute; it needs to be open in order to function properly.
Or is it true, as another response to my post said, that "string theory IS the simpler theory.". If so, why are there so many different string theories, and what's with the M-theory "unifying" them but "adding complications"?
String theory is "simpler" in the sense that it starts from mathematically simpler (and more well technically well justified) assumptions (not being a string theorist, I really can't tell you what those are, sorry) than does quantum field theory, the mathematical framework upon which the Standard Model is hung.
The reason there are "different" string theories is that there is some freedom in which subset of those mathematical assumptions you are allowed to choose from: you need to choose some minimal set from those assumptions that will give you enough "interesting" structure that you can obtain results that can be identified with physical processes that we see in nature. It turns out that there are only five mathematically consistent ways to combine the assumptions, hence there are only five different string theories.
Now, it turns out that combining those mathematical assumptions in a certain way (again, not an M-theorist, so I don't know the details), you get a theory called M-theory. When you take certain limits (in the same sense that you learned in freshman calculus) of the theory, you obtain each of the 5 string theories. It is in this sense that M-theory "unifies" all the string theories (since they are all subsets of the same theory), while adding "complications" (any of the calculations that you can't do in string theory, you can't do even more in M-theory :-)
Let's not also forget that they while "they laughed at Newton, and they laughed at Einstein, they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
.sig, btw.
Just because you're a rebel and your views are rejected by the establishment, that does not automatically make them wrong and you right. Einstein turned out to be a greater mind than the greatest. But he had to prove it first.
I just keep thinking about all those guys with Tesla-fied perpetual motion machines (and patents for them, I think!) that you will find if you creep along the underbelly of the internet. . .
Quoted material by the same guy in my
Well, if you believe the mathematicians there is no logical system that could be proven to be free of contradictions. Now, if you want to use any logical system to describe physical phenomena, you're always on an insecure foundation.
Besides, Physics relies on inductive reasoning which doesn't hold up at all.
So you'd rather have no science at all, because you feel that any logical framework used would be faulty?
Again, a clear sign that something, somewhere is screwed up so completely
Or, the microscopic world is so different from the everyday macroscopic world where we live in, that we lack proper language to describe extremely small (or large) phenomena.
Take the term "spin", for instance.In the case of electron, it is a familiar word used to label a weird, truly non-classical property of an electron. It most definitely does not imply that electron is somehow revolving around its axis!
Other examples are the colours and strangeness of elementary particles.
All these fields can be described by classical field equations or quantum mechanically (if I remember right) through second quantization. It's a question of thinking fields either as continous (macroscopic; waves) or discrete (microscopic; "particles").
The scale has everything to do with it. Natural sciences fundamentally rely on experimental evidence. That means, you have to use parts of the Nature to probe the other part you're interested in. The smaller things you're trying to look at, the smaller and more delicate a probe you need so that you don't disturb whatever it is you're investigating.
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
I have determined, using Big Blue's new Quantum Computer (special 6 atom version) that the life of a proton very interesting properties. The answer to everything you ask is 3.
The problem is, (and I should have made it clearer in my earlier post) I really get the impression that most physicists today are just trying to "patch up" these theories. And there are so many holes that there is lots to do, so they all keep pretty busy.
I think that this characterization of theoretical physics is a little unfair, though often bandied about.
Most modern particle theorists, real theorists, of which there are probably twelve, are not so much trying predict things as trying to prove whether or not you can predict things. To use a computer science analogy, they are not patching code for alogrithm, they trying to prove that the algorithm answers the question and find out when it fails.
Many modern physicists calculate things. They assume something about the algorithm, code it up, and see what they get. You can think of this "patching" as proposed modifications to the algorithm to make it work in certain special cases, like the observable universe. It does not pre-suppose that the current theory is correct. Instead they are showing where the theory is incorrect and how one could fix it.
Is anyone (other than crackpots) even trying to come up with an alternative explanation? Or is it true, as another response to my post said, that "string theory IS the simpler theory.". If so, why are there so many different string theories, and what's with the M-theory "unifying" them but "adding complications"?
Well, yea, string theory is much simpler in concept then having quantum electrodynamics, quantum chromodynamics, general relativity, etc.
Let's look at General Relativity. No one complains anymore about living in a four dimensional space-time. GR works by almost equating time with space, yet time still gets special properties in GR. Why? Isn't that an ugly complication, basically a patch? Shouldn't all four dimensions be equal? And why four dimensions? Why not an infinite number?
Simplicity in physics is a slippery thing. General Relativity has a beautiful formalism and only a handful of equations. Now try and calculate something simple, like a massive body orbiting another massive body. Good luck....
Godel essentially said that any system that is powerful enough to be able to refer to itself cannot be both complete and consistant. The proof is done by creating a statement which reads "This cannot be proven in this system."
I had a physics professor who couldn't help but giggle when mentioning electrons getting "excited." Don't think he ever made the erection/electron slip, though.
Ok. We'll go to fewer dimensions to make it easier to explain. Pretend you live in a 1 spacial dimensional universe. You can move in two directions- call them east and west. This maps to our 3 dimensions of space.
Now, pretend that you don't actually live on a line- you're actually on the outside of a straw. From anywhere on the line you were used to, you can now move north or south as well. However, after going a few steps north, you end up where you started again. Now, shrink the straw's radius. Shrink it so much that you can't tell from observation that there is a north and south- trying to move in those directions almost immediately puts you back where you started, and east and west are still the important directions. No one notices that there is this other, north/south dimension curled up tightly in the universe. But at every point along the east/west line, there is this tiny curled up ability to move north/south.
Expand that to our three spacial dimensions universe- we can move in three directions, and the others are unnoticable because moving along them doesn't noticably change our position. In fact, in string theory, things don't tend to move along those dimensions so much as resonate in them, like a plucked string.
IF you wrote something on a piece of paper using a black bic pen, and then burned it, and then tossed it in acid, or however you choose to destroy it, yes, the "information" you consider is lost. This, however, is not what is meant by this question. The question refers to the entire source of information about a particle/object. If it enters and is lost in a black hole, all that remains in the universe a factor due to its mass. You can not tell what it was, what it was made out of, where it came from, how fast it was going, how long it had been traveling, or anything else about it, except that it was an object, and it had some certain value of mass. Your solution might destroy the superficial information, but you can still tell it was paper, you can tell the information on it was written with ink, you can tell what kind of ink it was, you can tell how hot the fire that burned it was, you can tell what kind of acid it was drenched in. All superficial information is lost, but the overall information remains. That is the real thought behind question #8.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
overclocking i might accept.... but what the fuck is your fascination with anime? that shit annoys me. I can't stand that stupid shit. bad animation, horrible sound dubbing, its a huge waste of time and money and tv time. if i want to watch cartoons, i'm turn on bugs bunny or some of the good ol' wyle coyote chasin the road runner... i'd rather shove my computer up my ass than watch anime.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
If you have any really deep question about anything, just remember that the answer is possibly (but not quite certainly) fourty-two.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
whoops
I have found answers to the following questions:
Ask What is playing on the TV channel or network "Lifetime"?
Okay, I still don't know much about how long a proton lasts, but I do know that Janine Turner is starring with Rosa Blasi on Lifetime's brand-new drama seried "Strong Medicine". Gosh, I really liked her in "Northern Exposure".
Thanks, Jeeves, for reminding me what the really important questions are... Who needs science or religion or philosophy when we have the steadfast cathode ray of the TV tube to enlighten us?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
bah! Enjoy those 1/2 a sheet of paper problems while you can! Soon enough you'll long for the days when you could fit two problems per page. :)
See this Bob the Angry Flower cartoon for the definitive method of winning Nobel prizes in physics.
--
--
What short sigs we have -
One hundred and twenty chars!
Too short for haiku.
We need a particle accelerator that can accelarate leptons, like electrons and pions, to the TeV scale.
I'm not a physicist, but as leptons and mesons are lighter (rest mass wise) than hadrons, wouldn't accelrating them to TeV require less energy than a hadron would? So wouldn't an existing TeV scale accelrator work? Just asked.
One of my high school teachers gave the following speech about importance of number research --"Just a while ago scientists discovered a new number between eight and ten. It was decided to call it 'nine'. Do you understand how important this is?"
- Electrons
- Electron neutrinos
- Muons
- Muon neutrinos
- Tauons
- Tauon neutrinos
- Plus six more, tack on an "anti-" prefix for each of the six above.
Now, I'd have to check, but I thought pions were mesons, yes?Heh, I once wrote a BASIC program to list all the prime numbers, using a pseudo-refined brute-force algorithm. Afer it got to about the 100,000th prime, the next prime took like 3 hours.
Looking back, the code was soooo bad. I'm almost tempted to write another. Or some sort of shared-cycles thing. I also have old basic programs that could give (theoretically infinite) digits to pi and pythagorean triples. I just read on this thread that pythag triples have been solved...where can I read about this? I remember spending weeks trying to find a patern.
BTW - the 100,573rd prime is 1,307,731 if my algorithn held up
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
pattern differs from formula, but I've long heard there being an extemely complex formula that can be used to find prime numbers...otherwise, the estimation of n(log(n)) (or is it ln?) is a crude estimation that gets closer and closer to the value of the nth prime number as n approaches infinity.
-- Sig (120 chars) --
Your friendly neighborhood mIRC scripter.
* Q
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
I have only a laypersons understanding of quantum physics, so feel free to ignore me.
Dont worry about being ignored. The people with questions are, in my opinion, more important to science than the people with answers.
I don't mean to dis modern physics... but I can't help thinking that in 100 years, people will look back on M-theory and sparticles and laugh, saying "Why didn't those people realize how ridiculous those theories are? Why didn't they try harder to find a simpler explanation?"
Well, there will always be theories which may sound stupid afterwards, but which made sense in the times they were introduced to the public. Like phlogiston, the "fire element". Or the Ether substance, which "filled the whole Universe". Or spontaneus (sp?) generation.
The point is, they were honest approaches to finding the right answers to questions like, what is fire made out of? What is out there between the stars? Where did these $/)("!% cockroaches came from?
For every Copernicus, there's a hundred people with theories of their own, which on hindsight we may shake our heads and wonder, "How come they didn't know any better?". But thats the point, they DIDN'T. They were getting into uncharted areas of knowledge. Just like they're doing right now.
Maybe in another 50 years or so, as you say, we'll find out that the Universe is made out of, I dunno, "Spamticles" or something, and people may wonder how come no one had the sense to figure it out earlier. But until then, let's keep exploring any new theories, trying to find the one that'll solve all those questions scientists have.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Actually, from reading the article, it looks like the ultimate answer is just a smidge over 1/137. Now, of course, the question is why?
Well, why not?
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Well, actually it's the _sock_ that somehow get's torn, producing a hole, and since it's quite dark inside the washing machine it develops into a black hole, swallows up the sock and disappears into another dimension...
The Fruit of the Loom zone...
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
But Coke _IS_ Pepsi... only with a different spin number...
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
he said that you couldn't even begin to translate the real world into logical statements.
What he really said that in any logical system which attempts to explain everything, there are valid statements that cannot be proved either true or false. By using self referencing systems (such as your example) he demonstrated the validity of his statement.
BTW, it's easy to write logical systems that aren't subject to Godel, for example:
The only valid statement in my logic system is:
A is A.
Actually, the answer is a resounding "YES" because Can implies that, in this case, one is theoretically capable of qantitatively understand[ing] quark and gluon confinement in quantum chromodynamics and the existence of a mass gap. We can also be any scalable number of people, and could even be taken to mean "me, myself, and I" (3 versions of the same personality(objective, reflexive, and subjective, respectively)).
Anyways, all that it would take to quantitatively understand quark and gluon confinement in quantum chromodynamics and the existence of a mass gap is quantitative data on the mass and numbers of quarks and gluons. Confinement in quantum chromodynamics basically means the changes in space taken up by quarks and gluons in hadrons over time. A mass gap would be:
((the masses of all the quarks in a given hadron)+(the masses of all gluons in said hadron))-(the mass of said hadron)
The mass difference would come from the fact that some of the mass (most likely a few gluons) would be converted to energy, per Einstein's E=mc^2 equation, where in this case:
Mass gaps are nothing new in physics. They are found in every atom, as some mass from proton(s), neutron(s) (when present), and electron(s) is converted to energy along the same method as the one used above.
If I can figure this much out on my own (i'm a rising junior in high school with no prior formal physics education), then certainly someone else here should be able to. The fact that I've been learning particle physics on my own (I'm much indebted to Scientific American and Discover) since at least 6th grade might have something to do with my knowledge on this subject....
That is all.
These questions are all pieces of one big puzzle, I think the thing we've got to look for is an answer to how the laws of physics themselves were set down. I've always found that while relativity has a few set of strong guiding principles, quantum theory doesn't. Seems more of a top down than bottom up theory. I think finding these principles will go a long ways to the answers to these questions.
This is a clear example of the sock information loss paradox. I have found through my years of research that while I start off with many pairs of socks, after a time period, I end up only with mismatched sets. This has lead me to develop a concept known as sockisospin. When socks are exposed to the interior of a rotational heat vortex, the direction of the abstract mathematical sockisospin in Hilbert space is altered, hence destroying the internal symmetry. This symmetry breaking leads to unpaired socks!
Maybe now we can answer that age old question... Coke or Pepsi? Just as long as that annoying little girl isn't part of the equation....
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
some math proofs? Not a chance.
>1.Yes, they are a direct by-product of the >topological shape of spacetime, and that shape is >the only possible shape.
Sorry: The topology of spacetime is governed
by a dimensionfull parameter, the gravitational
coupling. topology alone will not get you anywhere.
> 2.QG itself can't, but you can derive the >creation of time from the topology of space. The >perception of time is just a side-effect of the >way our consciousness works.
I don't think you got a handle on this question.
The problem is that general relativity (The Robertson-Walker model) breaks down at the Plank scale where Quantun effects must be considered. There is no present topological model that is usable (quantum gravity has renormalization problems).
>3.Protons are "wrapped" across the entire >temporal dimension, like a loop, and thus appear >to live forever, unless you radically distort >spacetime.
Hmmm. a Little too much star trek here. I think you are trying to describe a closed string here.
Protons are not fundamental particles (made of guarks and gluons). String theory has not come close in answering this. All present GUT models fail (starting with the famous SU(5) by Glashow and Georgi.
>4.Yes, and it actually is not broken
Not broken?
If what you say is true, then supersymmetric particles exist at all energies. In that case their masses would be small (if not zero) and we would have detected them long ago.
>5.The "temporal dimension" is an illusion of >consciousness. It is really just a highly >expanded spatial dimension. Only three spatial >dimensions have expanded because n-banes only >need three dimensions of freedom to do all
>of the topologically possible transformations >they can undergo.
Again you are guessing wildly. The question is really asking why, if there are more than 3 spatial dimensions, all are compactified except for the three we can comprehend. You should read more about M theory and superstring theory.
>6.This is a direct fallout of the "shape" of the >temporal dimension.
You are really into time and topology. The cosmological constant has nothing to do with time.
It is to do with the vacuum energy density.
>8.The information does not go anywhere - it is >stored in the topology of spacetime. This >confusion comes from failing to consider time as >a dimension capable of information storage.
Topology again. This time you are closer in your guess. Some physicists like t'Hooft and Susskind propose that information is not lost in a Black hole but stored on its surface like a hologram
of its true nature,
hence the term holography and black holes.
Go to http://www-spires.slac.stanford.edu/find/hep
and type ' f t holograph# and black hole'.
>9.This is an artifact of only considering gravity >in the 3 expanded dimensions
Gravity in 5 or 100 dimensions does not help. Sorry.
>10.Yes, again it is just an artifact of the shape of spacetime.
Ouch! This one really hurts. Space time has nothing to so with quarks and gluons and QCD.
For the record:
The Schodinger equation is not correct. It is not covariant (is not invariant under Lorenzt transformations). quantum field theory is fundamental and predicts the standard model and is covariant. QFT is not a patch. The paradoxes about wave particle duality are Bohr-Heisenberg problems. There really is not mystery today.
On the other hand, Supersting theory IS fundamental and definitely not a patch (although is was developed to get rid of renormalization problems). Most of the high energy physics today is not patch work, with the exception of those who tweak the standard model (like MSSM ans so on).
Go to http://www.rhic.bnl.gov/html2/primer.html to get a simple intro into the quark-gluon plasma.
While superstring theory (or M theory, or GUT-of-the-day) is certainly important, something is amiss with the idea that solving the equations, or even determining that we have the right set of equations, will provide us with any understanding.
We have the equations (as far as we know) to accurately and essentially perfectly describe classical phenomena (fluids, plasmas, day-to-day things) -- kinetic theory, in its most primal and ugly form, whichs tracks every goddamn particle and interaction. This is unfortunately useless, as the system of equations is then far too large for our puny brains or computers to deal with. Therefore, we replace the correct equations with approximations -- newtonian mehcanics, statisical mechanics, fluid dynamics, chaotic systems, etc.
Nature is quite possible just too large and varied to be understood through possession of the proper equations and solutions. Depressing, huh?
good god, thank you for clearing that up. "No formal system can prove all of its own truths" would be more accurate way of describing Godelian (pardon the lack of oomlat on o) logic. sure, this definitely throws shit in the fan for logical positivists (e.g. Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, authors of Principia Matematica, the book which tried to reduce all matehematical statements into formal logic equations (which Godel completely trashed)), and definitly makes us aware that our trust in the finite rules we place on (seemingly?) infinite systems should be questioned. Also, with the advancement of physics, we are now encountering things which are "unexplainable"; maybe we should start to think of metaphysical explanations, no matter how hokey that sounds (especially to you purebred empiricists out there).
i dont know about higher dimensions, but definitely some creamy centers. ludes man! gimme the ludes!
this is also known as "tapping the sweet spot".
id rather have this bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
AHHHH! 1 is not a prime number! Shame on you for not believing in definitions!
(Taken from Burton's Elementary Number Theory, Fourth Edition)
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Or give him really good eyesight so that only a small amount of light need be disturbed. Better yet, give him eyesight in the IR, that way he would only block heat, which sounds like a reasonable thing.
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
This points out a significant metaphysical principle: we can't really know how the universe works, we can only come up with rules, explanations, and methods to describe and predict its behavior. Eventually, someone observes behavior that doesn't quite fit, and the rules have to be changed - sometimes a tweak, sometimes thrown out altogether, sometimes a mix.
Consider relativity. At speeds less than c, newtonian phyics holds up quite well. Technically, they are an approximation, and we know more is going on "behind the scenes" than classical physics equations describe, but they work and so we use them until they cause problems and then we start factoring in relativistic effects.
Another example is the heliocentric theory. Previous to that, scientists used epicycles to describe the movements of the planets and stars that they observed. As more observation went on, the rules got more and more complicated until the heliocentric theory was introduced, which simplified everything. But the average joe was not in a position to evaluate whether the scientists needed to scrap their theories in favor of a more elegant one.
This strikes me as a similar situation. I don't know whether superstring theory is all wet or not. I don't even pretend that I understand it or the math involved. Only the march of history will determine whether it is the next relativity/heliocentric theory or the next phrenology.
People are always saying "let's rethink this." Of course, an awful lot of the time, they really can't do it better, so the prevailing theory stands -- it woudn't have got there in the first place if it did not work at all. But I believe there is someone out there who is not content with "the way it is." Look for him.
-------------
The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
I'll see what I can do... It was handed out in my classical algebra class, but if I can find the sheet I'll scan it and post the link
Actuaries - making accountants look interesting since 1949
Here's some I found, it was along the lines of stuff like this
Actuaries - making accountants look interesting since 1949
and now the Lamer's proof:
FUCK YOU ALL. PH33R MY SKILLZ!
Raymond Smullyan's What is the Name of This Book? goes through a bunch of logic puzzles, leading up to the Incompleteness Theorem. Highly recommended if you're into that kind of thing.
--
--
lurking like a troll under the bridge between your heart and your head (rbr020)
A mathematician I know was told by Paul Erdos that one should expect to find every pattern, within reason, in the primes. This was in reference to the unsolved "sum of reciprocals conjecture," that if A is a subset of the positive integers such that the sum of the reciprocals of the elements of A diverges, then A contains arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. (This would imply that the primes contain arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions.) Erdos offered $3,000 for a proof or counterexample to his conjecture, which has been taken over by Ron Graham since Erdos' departure.
For more prizes offered in number theory, see Richard K. Guy's book, Unsolved Problems in Number Theory
There are some mysteries that mankind will never be able to solve such as: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Blow Pop? Why do men have nipples? and Is it possible for a deterministic Turing machine to solve in polynomial time problems which are solved by a nondeterministic Turing machine in polynomial time? I was always told when I was growing up- If you don't understand something, just give up. I standby that advice.
'Can we quantitatively understand quark and gluon confinement in quantum chromodynamics and the existence of a mass gap?' Well DUH!
Check this out: Einstein Biography and those of related scientists.
Every man has one thing he can do better than anyone else - and usually it's reading his own handwriting. -G. Norman C
Kepler's descriptive model of elliptical planetary orbits came before Newton's physics. Newton provided the theory that explained how Kepler's model worked.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Within a certain framework, yes. One of the most perplexing things about the Standard Model is that it doesn't contain gravity. There are many straightforward ways to extend it, all of them wrong (WRT gravity). Richard Feynman explored this in detail in "The Feynman Lectures on Gravity" (look for this in a library). But to really understand these lectures requires quite a bit of background knowledge. This is, for instance, why we think the "graviton" is spin-2. Extending the Standard Model in a straightforward way requires the graviton to be spin 2. Of course, it doesn't work. But within the framework of existing theories, you can rigorously prove that it has to be spin-2. There are a finite number of "actions" which can be written down in this framework. (action being the equation from which equations of motion are derived, by minimizing/maximizing the action) Each of these can be explored in turn, and rigorously proven to be wrong.
The next question is: "is our framework wrong?" The Standard Model is a set of "Gauge Theories", that is Quantum Field Theories which posess a certain gauge symmetry (represented by a Lie group). Now there's a mouthful to scare off the lay person. ;) String Theory/M-Theory is attempting to explore this, by starting from the simple assumption that particles, rather than being point entities, contain a continuous degree of freedom. (that is, parameterized by x,y,z,t and one extra, continuous, internal degree of freedom...hence "string") This theory has turned out to be significantly more complex than one might imagine at first, and we're not done trying to figure out the theory.
For instance, you can straightforwardly prove that string theory can only exist in 26 dimensions. If you add supersymmetry it requires 10 dimensions. If you go to M-theory (which still isn't well defined) it requires 11 dimensions. Each of these is rigorously provable.
Supersymmetry solves a nasty problem in field theories of renormalization in certain calculations. It turns out that by adding a fermion (1/2 integer spin) for every boson (integer spin) and vice-versa, that you exactly cancel many divergences. This is clearly desirable. A theory with divergences should be treated with skepticism. But where are these extra particles? Supersymmetry was discovered in the context of string theory and carried over into field theories because of this nice property. You can have a string theory without it, but it clearly does not correspond to our universe.
I often wonder if there is a better framework. The Standard Model/Gauge Fields framework was very confusing (because of certain apparent problems like renormalization...which turned out to be a calculational problem, rather than theoretical) when it was first introduced, but it has turned out to be extremely useful in calculation.
Gad, I'm rambling again...that's what I get for answering posts in my field. ;)
ah, books. I'm most familiar with graduate texts, so I'll give those. I don't read lay books because they frustrate me. (I need the math dammit!) These are the "canonical" texts in the field, those most respected in the physics community. There are others, I cannot speak for their quality, but I have used all in the following list, and can recommend them. I can handle the math: good luck, these are not easy reading, and often require a close examination of relevant equations. Note that this is the course regimen for a graduate degree in physics. If you make it through all these books, you should consider applying to a local university and getting a masters in Physics. This isn't light reading. Usual starting point for this material is an undergraduate degree in physics (though math or some engineering may suffice).
hep-th/####### and similar references can be obtained electronically at www.arxiv.org.
Hope this is useful, --Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Perhaps there was something about his anatomy that caused him to continually confuse an infinitesimal particle with his hardon.
Did he also say "erectron" instead of electron?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
As the AC stated, there are patterns in the prime numbers, but what it seems you're asking is, is there a pattern that all the prime numbers fall into. Or, to put it another way, given all the prime numbers from 2 to n, find k=f(n) such that n+1 thru k-1 are composite but k is prime. Personally I doubt this one will ever be solved.
Heck, we haven't even been able to solve relatively minor prime-related problems, like the twin primes conjecture: Are there infinitely many pairs of primes of the form n and n+2? Or a followup, which I thought of but have no idea if anyone's done any research on, which I call 'quad primes': pairs of twin primes of the form n, n+2, n+6, n+8. It's easy to show that except for 3 and 5, all twin primes are of the form 6k-1 and 6k+1, and similarly that except for 5-7-11-13 all quad primes are of the form 30k+(11,13,17,19). But past that, who knows?
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Since when has alpha been different than 1/137? Man this really bums my day.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Some will take issue with these points. That is fine and arguably quite good. A healthy debate on the visibility of science is good for the country and the world.
Admittedly I am biased, as I am not an HEP person. My dissertation was on molecular dynamics studies of semiconductors. What I saw while in graduate school was projects like the SSC draining all the money out of science. When the NSF went before congress to ask for more money, congress balked, as it was after all funding this massive white albatross. Couldn't all scientists use it?
Arguably that was part of the problem, the lack of congressional education. The other part of the problem was the selling of HEP as Physics. It isn't, and it has demonstratably damaged the entire research community when that view was pushed. Yet there are still some that push it (see the article pointed to at the root of this thread).
No, the interesting problems in physics come from all the physics disciplines. The High Energy Physics (HEP) types still haven't learned that interesting physics to the public and interesting High Energy Physics are not identical. I would suspect that people in the U.K. are far less intrigued by the parity violation experiments as they are with protein folding diseases, specifically prions that are suspected to cause CJS. That is biophysics, biochemistry, biology, condensed matter physics, etc. The binding of small molecules to receptor sites to promote or inhibit life processes is arguably more interesting, and related to molecular dynamics, molecular recognition, statistical mechanics, etc. It is also the basis for drug discovery, without which we would have no pharmaceutical products.
It may be too late posting to this thread to get a reply, but oh well...
You say the current model of particle physics is the simplest model that is possible, and it's difficult to explain why.
That sounds a little like what we call a "hardness" proof in computer science.
I have a very good theoretical computer science background. Sometimes in computer science we can prove what we call "hardness" of a problem. That is, for some problem like multiplying two n-bit numbers, there is no algorithm that can do it in less than f(n) steps on some rigorously defined hardware (probably a virtual machine). These results are very difficult to obtain in general, and a lot the ones we do know aren't very good. For instance, it is easy to show that there is no way to sort n items in less than n steps, regardless of what algorithm you use, because you have to look at each item at least once.
Anyway...
When you say there is "no simpler theory" do you mean that it is possible to rigorously prove that? For instance, can you prove that any theory of particle physics that matches experimental results must be supersymmetric, or must have at least 11 spatial dimensions, or whatever?
If it's really too hard to explain in a Slashdot post, can you recommend a good book? I can handle the math - layperson stuff like "Shrodinger's kittens and the search for reality" is easy reading for me.
Thanks!
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Multiplying all the primes below a certain number N, then adding one will either result in a new prime, or in a product of primes where at least one prime is greater than the largest prime in the original sequence. This is one of Euclid's theorems that proves that there are infinitely many primes.
BTW. 2*3*5*7*11*13 + 1 = 30031, which is non-prime because 30031 = 59 * 509.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
- Yes, they are a direct by-product of the topological shape of spacetime, and that shape is the only possible shape.
- QG itself can't, but you can derive the creation of time from the topology of space. The perception of time is just a side-effect of the way our consciousness works.
- Protons are "wrapped" across the entire temporal dimension, like a loop, and thus appear to live forever, unless you radically distort spacetime.
- Yes, and it actually is not broken
- The "temporal dimension" is an illusion of consciousness. It is really just a highly expanded spatial dimension. Only three spatial dimensions have expanded because n-banes only need three dimensions of freedom to do all of the topologically possible transformations they can undergo.
- This is a direct fallout of the "shape" of the temporal dimension.
- No, it doesn't yet.
- The information does not go anywhere - it is stored in the topology of spacetime. This confusion comes from failing to consider time as a dimension capable of information storage.
- This is an artifact of only considering gravity in the 3 expanded dimensions
- Yes, again it is just an artifact of the shape of spacetime.
I have delightfully simple mathematical proofs for all of these, but alas, this text entry box does not allow me to paste in equations... =;-PSo you'd rather have no science at all, because you feel that any logical framework used would be faulty?
I would rather that science be treated like the religion that it is, and like all religions have its problems talked about in a meaningful manner.
Or, the microscopic world is so different from the everyday macroscopic world where we live in, that we lack proper language to describe extremely small (or large) phenomena.
But what should scale have to do with anything? Any properly described event will happen the same way no matter how much, or how little, enery or matter is a part of the equation. That we recongize a difference is part of the problem.
Look at the bottle - see the number "57" right where the neck starts to bend to form the body? After shaking the ketchup, turn the bottle toward where you want to pour, and gently tap the number with the heel of your hand, and the ketchup will start to flow.
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Sorry my slip up.
Yes, the pions are mesons, composed of two quarks. When running simulations we tend to use both electrons and pions for detector simulations. The simulated data from pions tends to be very easy to compile and use to check whether one detector is better than another. I slipped up because I had been using pion simulationed events in my last project.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Perhaps but that rule only results in a subset of the primes at best.
2+1 = 3
(missed)= 5 (2x2+1)
2x3+1 = 7
11 (2x5+1)
13 (2x2x3+1)
17 (2x2x2x2+1)
19 (2x3x3+1)
23 (2x11+1)
29 (2x2x7+1)
2x3x5+1 = 31
His statement should have read more like, "no one has yet to discover *any* pattern that completely maps out the prime numbers."
:)
Veldrane
"Why does the Cambridge combinatorial hierarchy (a mathematics construct, pure and simple) generate the observed scale constants with great accuracy whereas standard theory does not?"
Seastead this.
"Why does the Cambridge combinatorial hierarchy (a mathmatics construct, pure and simple) generate the observed scale constants, such as vacuum energy, with great accuracy, whereas standard theory is off by 10 to the 120'th power?"
Seastead this.
6 double-quotes
8 single-quotes
I think we have a "winner"!
-----
Actually, he wrote that note in the margin of Arithmetica by Diophantus. In that book, the problem posed by Diophantus was to express a square rational number (a fraction), as the sum of 2 other square numbers.
Fermat's note stated that he had a marvellous proof of a related problem but that the margin was too small to contain it. I find it hard to believe that a mathemetician such as Fermat would make that sort of reference based on a specific case (n=4). More likely, he had a general case worked out which never saw the light of day. Considering the difficulty of the proof by Wiles, it is unlikely that Fermat's would have held up under scrutiny. But that is something which will probably remain a mystery :)
Best regards,
SEAL
Oh the invisible monster has lenses and retina that only affects wawelengths outside the visual spectrum, like infrared. How else would the hero be able to shield his own infrared emissions and detect the disturbance in those wawelengths caused by the monsters eyes, just in time for the final scene?
All opinions are my own - until criticized
The answer is: Yes. Now were's that Nobel prize when I need it????
kwsNI
Since when do you need proof to get a Nobel prize? And I was sooo looking forward to the fame associated with receiving that...
kwsNI
You can't prove me wrong.
kwsNI
No. Everyone knows first posts are faster than light. At least they appear faster.
----
When you toss a web server running slash into a black hole, will first posts finally get lost forever?
This is a method used to calculate *a* prime number. It's not unique in that manner. There are many others.
What it is *not* is a pattern to the prime numbers. Hell, there is no known pattern to the non-prime numbers either. Guess what though, I can take any power of two, and it won't be a prime number. Yes! I figured out the pattern!
Wait, here's another. Multiply the number five by any other number. Wow! I found another!
In short, the word pattern: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Source code is a lot like a parachute; it needs to be open in order to function properly.
Science is about revising our view of the universe to be closer and closer to the way the universe actually acts.
Mathematics is a compression method. It compresses large amounts of explanation into small symbols which can be understood in an open-source kind of way. I use that term because 1. You can get your hands on the proofs for the mathematics we use today. 2. You are both allowed and encouraged to use and revise those proofs to show new principles. "Going back to first principles" is a much-lauded activity. Mind you, much like GPL, you are required (For some value of required) to point out the original data. If you built upon the theory of relativity, for example, and then claimed to have done all the work yourself, you would be professional crucified.
The big important thing to recognize is that as we form new theories we find ways to explain old behavior. Saying we shouldn't move on until we explain every open space in our logic today is like saying we shouldn't go to Mars when we still have hunger on our planet. Advances in space-based technology have consistently percolated down through the human strata to ensure a better way of life for [nearly] all mankind. (Sorry, I refuse to be PC.) My point is of course that by making advances in science, we solve old riddles. Some of those riddles would doubtless not be solvable without this new knowledge. So I think your initial exasperated expression of desire is at best uninformed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Can somebody please explain how a "dimension" can be "curled up tiny"?
I'll try...
First, think of an infinite 1 dimensional surface ... a line. Now, as you know from geometry, the line has infinite extent. This is what we normally think of when we think of a "dimension". It is "1-dimension" since we need 1 parameter to describe a position along its length. It is an infinite dimension since the value of that position parameter can vary from -\infty to +\infty
Now, we'll think of a finite 1 dimensional surface. Take a line segment and connect the ends, and we get ... a circle! It is also "1 dimensional" since we need 1 parameter, and it is finite, since that parameter can vary from (say) 0 to 2\pi
When formulated in the right way, there is nothing that prevents you from doing physics where the dimensions are finite instead of infinite (I admit that it would be quite difficult using the techniques normally taught in an undergraduate setting). And, generally speaking, there is nothing that prevents you from doing physics with more than three space and one time dimension (although again, it is generally quite difficult using undergraduate techniques).
Now, we bring it all together; while a particular string theory requires that our universe be ten dimensional (for the mathematical consistency of the "supersymmetry algebra" of the theory), the theory itself doesn't specify which of those dimensions are finite, and which of them are infinite (eventually, we would hope to come up with a theory which DID make that specification, starting from basic assumptions, but we aren't there right now). What makes that specification right now is our experiments, which say that there are at least 3+1 "large" dimensions (nearly infinite). Thus, those extra 6 dimensions must be finite, or "curled up".
Incidentally, the fact that we can't see those extra dimensions (if they exist) tells us something (that "something" depends on exactly how you assume that they have compactified). Generally, it tells us that they must be smaller than a certain size, otherwise they would have manifested themselves in experiments, usually as deviations from the Newtonian gravitational force. The fact that we haven't seen any such deviations tells us that the "size" of the "dimension" must be very small.
Rereading what I just wrote, I'm not sure it helps, but I hope it does!
----
The most interesting "pattern" is the Prime Spiral. Get a sheet of graph paper. Write a "1" in the center square. Go one square to the right and write a "2". Move down and write "3". Continue in a clockwise pattern incrementing each number by one until you get to 100-200. Now circle all the prime numbers and you will see an interesting pattern. (or better yet, search for prime spiral on Google and see someone else do the hard work)
Everything in this post is false.
In any case, this is only potentially true for Einstein in the case of his work on the photoelectric effect. Special and general relativity were conceived as a world-famous, extremely prominent physicist.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Firstly, they were backed by religion. Everything orbited the Earth, if you recall, and according to both the Church and Aristotle, they orbited in circles (aristotle claimed the solar system was geometrically perfect - each body orbited the earth on a sphere, inside of which was inscribed a regular polygon). One could argue that force of habit is as binding as religion, but probably not win that argument, in tht force of habit does not possess axemen.
Secondly, until Newton's gravity, epicycles were more accurate, ie, they gave results consistent with observation. Once Newton's gravity was on the field, Kepler showed how to compute the correct ellipses, and the simpler argument was more correct.
So two points are worth remembering here - one, that epicycles were the best solution to a geocentric orbital model - a model which could not be discarded b/c of the catholic church; and two, more advanced (ie, complex) physics had to be invented to compute the simpler explanation.
Today there is no religious body powerful enough to squash disagreeable science. World views we have accepted a priori bind our perceptions, but we have learned to question all our instincts these days. Also, simpler explanations don't fall out of a system until we are mired inside a more complex explanation, and made familiar with the system we're trying to model. I recall what a professor once told me:
It's a good try, though.
Steve
Well, you won't get the nobel prize tomorrow, because if you solve the problem, nobody will realize how important your discovery was for another 40 years. Anyway, that's a good reason to start working on it.... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
This is what happened: Aristotelian physics required that all motions in the heavens to be circular, so some astronomers introduced epicycles to account for retrograde motion. Ptolemy incorporated this in his magnificient theory. Now, the story goes:
(taken from de Vaucouleurs, Gerard (1957)), it's just that this is wrong! First, where is the evidence that there was any significant observational progress. Have a good look, and you'll see that there wasn't any observational progress, so they had no reason whatsoever to introduce additional epicycles. The observational progress didn't come until Tycho Brahe, after Copernicus.
Now, the whole thing culminated in 1963, Robert Horace Baker wrote an article in the Encyclopedia Britannica stating that 40 to 60 epicycles were added to each planet, which is absurd, they would have needed a Beowulf cluster to compute the positions of the planets if they did that... ;-) At least with the math they had available.
Baker further said that Alfonso X stated that if he had been there at creation, he would have given the good lord a few hints. Alfonse X computed (well, as a patron) the Alfonsine Tables, that astronomers needed to determine the expected positions of the planets.
Owen Gingerich bashed the myth in 1968 by recomputing the Alfonsine Tables, and found that they were based on a pure Ptolemaic model with only minor corrections to the parameters used by Ptolemy.
I have been trying to figure out why this myth came to be and how it propagated. I haven't had time to do much research on it lately, and I won't tire you with my stuff, but I have an old essay about it for those interested.
Now, the myth has been uncritically accepted by a number of canons, most notably Thomas Kuhn. I have read a couple of his books, and I'm a bit uncertain how important it is for his philosophy, but it is clearly motivating him to go in the direction he does. Gingerich told me on the History of Astronomy Discussion List that Kuhn was very embarrased when he told him about it.
It is very important to note, IMHO, that Ptolemy went away from Aristotelian physics a long way, and that allready in the 10th century (i.e. before Aristotle was made compatible with Christianity by Thomas Aquinas), the criticism against him gained strength. Ptolemy had to introduce several concepts, among them, the equant. The epicycle itself is not consistent with Aristotelian physics, because the circular motion should be around the centre of the universe, namely the earth. Now, could it be that Copernicus was mainly motivated by lack of proper physics as opposed to merely mathematical constructs?
Finally, as others has mentioned, Copernican cosmology had no advantage over Ptolemaic cosmology in terms of accuracy, also as shown by Owen Gingerich. The breakthrough in accuracy came with Kepler.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
The catch to all this is that in order for things to become simple, we must put them in the correct frame work. What made us realize that the orbit of the planets was simple? We had to find the correct framework, or rules, to apply to the orbits, and then the orbits became simple. We experience reality in 3 dimensions (4, if you want to toss in time as a dimension). But that's just the limitations of our perception of things. Adding higher dimension can vastly simplifiy mathematical propblems. Think of going from a list (one dimensional) to a table (two dimensional). With a table, organization and patterns can appear that were not evident in the one dimensional list. So... eleven dimensions ( or 24, or whatever) may sound messy, but if you can come up with on equation that describes all the forces (or just reality in general) within the framework of those dimension then that's simple.
The concept of special relativity had been in development for several years..
It was not the concept of relativity, it was the mathematics of what would later be called special relativity. The concept of relativity in this theory is mostly if not exclusively due to Einstein, who arrived at it from purely physical considerations. He did not need that mathematics.
As far as GRT and Gauss is concerned... What credit do you think deserves someone who even does not have guts to publish one's ideas. That's precisely what happened to Gauss who never published his idea that the space can be curved because he was afraid to be laughed at...Mach might have some impact on GRT, perhaps even negative. Einstein pursued Mach's ideas, but this turned out to be a blind alley: GRT does not realize the so called Mach principle that Einstein tried to incorporate in GRT. Poincare had nothing of substance to contribute to GRT at all, unlike to the mathematics of SRT. As far as Leibnitz is concerned- I can only guess that his ideas were very vague and certainly of no impact on Einstein.
So much about where the credit is really due...
Every man has one thing he can do better than anyone else - and usually it's reading his own handwriting. -G. Norman C
...whatever remains, however improbable, must be the case.
That's typically how the "logic" in science's attempts to describe reality functions, and it functions quite well that way, Godel be dammed.
Or in other words:
"I think X is so"
"This experiment foo tests X"
"If foo fails, X cannot be true"
"If foo succeeds, X may be true, and can probably be treated as true until something better comes along"
As far as the quantum mechanical property that observing changes the observed, that isn't as screwed up as you seem to think. Instead, consider how one might "observe" something at a quantum mechanical scale. Anything bounced off a quantum mechanical particle with sufficient energy to perform a "measurement" is locally "large" enough to affect whatever it is you're observing.
Consider a basic thermometer. If I take your temperature, the amount of heat energy drawn off into the themometer is not enough to materially affect your overall temperature. But if I take that same thermometer and attempt to take the temperature as a drop of liquid nitrogen, the heat energy in the (room temperature) thermometer will boil off the nitrogen, and thus alter it.
It's just a question of scale, not metaphysics.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Investigators at a major research institution have discovered the heaviest element known to science. This startling new discovery has been tentatively named Administratium.
This new element has no protons or electrons, thus having an atomic number of zero. It does, however, have 1 neutron, 125 assistant neutrons, 75 vice neutrons and 111 assistant vice neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by a force called morons, that are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since it has no electrons, Administratium is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. According to the discoverers, a minute amount of Administratium causes a single reaction to take over four-days to complete when it would normally take less than a second.
Administratium has a normal half-life of approximately three years; it does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons, vice neutrons and assistant vice neutrons exchange places. In fact, an Administratium sample's mass will actually increase over time, since with each reorganization some of the morons inevitably become neutrons forming new isotopes.
This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Administratium is spontaneously formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass".
You will know it when you see it.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I totally agree that it's hard to come up with other answers. Of course I don't think that scientists should stop doing physics.
The problem is, (and I should have made it clearer in my earlier post) I really get the impression that most physicists today are just trying to "patch up" these theories. And there are so many holes that there is lots to do, so they all keep pretty busy.
Is anyone (other than crackpots) even trying to come up with an alternative explanation? Or is it true, as another response to my post said, that "string theory IS the simpler theory.". If so, why are there so many different string theories, and what's with the M-theory "unifying" them but "adding complications"?
Are there physicists out there writing journal articles that say:
"Let's assume that all this string theory stuff is just wrong. Instead of patching holes in it (adding epicycles!) here's an alternative explanation..."
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
- True invisibility (not that refractive/ablative Predator-camo stuff) is complete transparency to light
- Human vision is transduction of light energy to electrochemical stimuli
- An invisible guy's lenses (light not refracted, focused, flipped) and retina (light not transduced) are transparent to light energy
wouldn't an invisible man be blind? Haven't heard this one discussed - just wondered.I find this rather hard to believe... can you give me any examples? Ideally, examples of original and/or important discoveries... My undergrad number theory prof told us an interesting story about when he was at Utah... seems one day the math dept got a packet in the mail from an amateur mathematician. It had several pages filled with Pythagorean triples. The person who sent them in said he did it because he thought they "might be helpful". Unfortunately, the problem of identifying Pythagorean triples has been completely solved, so all of his work was for nothing...
A few months ago I saw a list of unsolved mathematical problems that required no special knowledge to understand
Any chance you happen to remember where you saw it? Sounds interesting... My personal favorite is the Collatz problem (also called many other things...): define C(x) = 3*x+1 if x is odd, and C(x) = x/2 if x is even. Consider iterating C on a natural number N. Does C^n(N)=1 for some n? (Hint: it's true for N assuming Fermat wasn't bluffing or erred in his proof, then a simpler method awaits rediscovery.
I think it's pretty much assumed that Fermat didn't have a proof... partly because (as best as we can tell) he made that note several years before his death, and he had a proof in the case n=4. The generally accepted theory is that he thought this proof would work for the general case, and so he made that note in the margin. When he realized it didn't work, he didn't go back and scratch out that note...
Published lists of unsolved problems that can be comprehended by a layman may increase interest and make science "real" again for a lot of people who view things like physics and chemistry as voodoo.
It's not too hard to do for math, but are there any of these types of lists for physics or chemistry?
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
The engineers proof that all odd numbers are prime.
...
1 is prime and odd, 3 is prime and odd, 5 is, 7 is, 9 isn't but that's probably just statisical error, 11 is, 13 is, well that's good enough for me.
The computer scientists proof that all odd numbers are prime.
1 is prime and odd, 3 is, 5 is, 7 is, 7 is, 7 is, 7 is
MSs proof that all odd numbers are prime.
1 is prime and odd, 3 is, 5 is, 7 is, [BSOD!]
Well it was holding true up until it crashed so it must be true.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Remember some of the basic rules of quantum mechanics? That because of the act of observation that the observed changes? Again, a clear sign that something, somewhere is screwed up so completely, but nothing is ever done. Nobody ever stops and says, maybe we need to rethink everything up to this point, because this just shouldn't be happening.
Although one could say that the problem must stem from the Schrodinger Equation, which is one of the four fundamental equations like F=ma, and therefore it must be changed, it also seems to be inexplicably correct. People have stopped and said, maybe we need to rethink everything up to this point, because this just shouldn't be happening. Einstein did, he questioned quantum mechanics until he died. Every question he threw at it, everytime he tried to throw a wrench in the gears, he failed. Some of his questions have only been answered in the past 20 years, but they have been answered.
Quantum mechanics has been poked, prodded, attacked, and verbally abused and yet it keeps on showing us that it is correct. All of the scientific data taken to try and disprove things like the Uncertainty Principle has failed. We cannot do any better than hbar. We have to deal with the duality of waves and particles. All of the evidence shows that it is correct.
Sure there are holes, the standard model for particles is full of them. People are trying their hardest to patch them, a good example is question #4. Supersymmetry was theorized as a fix for the standard model, and it wasn't the first, there were others with funny names like Technicolor.
Einstein placed the cosmological constant into his relativity equation because he wanted the universe to be static rather than expanding or collapsing. Now there is talk of re-introducing the cosmological constant, in a slightly different form, but never less it has been talked about to try and explain some of the holes.
Superstring theory is just another patch, a way of trying to understand the universe. Other theories don't cut it, they have gapping holes. Superstring theory surfaced because something wasn't quite right and someone tried to fix it.
Most of the physics done today is patch work. Something isn't working right so we need to find out why.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Casting a wide net and exposing the worlds problems to everyone in the population is the scientific comunities way to seek out people thay haven't previously considered. Let's not forget that the theory of relativity was concieved by one man, all alone, without contact to the "greatest minds of the day". He was a loner, an outsider, a rebel that took conventional wisdom and bent it around space time.
note that the definition of "physics" being used here is pretty broad. :-)
There are many ways to calculate prime numbers, yes. Calculations are not patterns.
To help you out a bit, there is a pattern to the following series: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25,
Can you guess this pattern? Good job. Know what the 1000th number in this list would be? Good job. Did you have to know the values of any other elements in the list, or did you just need to know the pattern? I think you understand.
Oh, and the 1000th prime number is 7919. Useful stuff to know.
Source code is a lot like a parachute; it needs to be open in order to function properly.
Why didn't they try harder to find a simpler explanation?
I'm a grad student in particle theory, so take what I say with a grain of salt. In a sense that isn't easy to relate to a lay person (because they are technical and require acquisition of a vocabulary and rigorous definitions that I'm not well equipped to explain), the current model of particle physics IS the simplest theory that is possible (meaning anything simpler gets the wrong answer). Whether it be within the Standard Model or with M-theory, you start by writing down the simplest mathematical description you can, and then check the consequences.
The complications all arise in the last step, checking the consequences. Those calculations are often horrifically difficult. This is not unlike the example you cite of Newtonian gravity: you COULD write down a more complicated model that agrees with experiments, but the inverse square law works very well, and is incredibly simple. Unfortunately, even this simplest possible model becomes calculationally intractable when you try to do something as seemingly simple as the three body problem, which is unsolvable (in a technical sense) except in a few highly contrived circumstances.
String theory is the same thing. Write down the absolutely most trivial and general equations you can that are consistent with the known "properties" of the universe, turn the crank, and see what comes out....but you get stuck in the process of turning the crank.
As to whether there are physicists trying to come up with a simpler set of explanations; yes, there are, but anything that has been tried that IS simpler is KNOWN to be wrong. Since these theories are mathematical, you can convince yourself that there AREN'T simpler theories that you have missed (in a certain highly technical sense....), because those classes of theories makes predictions which are wrong.
Of course, it may turn out that a more complicated fundamental theory may turn out to be simpler to calculate with, and hence be simpler in a different sense.
This question could be resolved by checking your reference frame. If I am someone outside of the black hole, dropping my copy of Webster's in, I never actually see that copy of Webster's hit the event horizon. Instead, it approaches it more and more slowly, the image growing ever redder and ever dimmer. From my reference frame, it never actually enters the black hole. It may be very red and very dim, but just 'cause I can't read it, doesn't mean that it is not there. Locking that Webster's in a box doesn't count as information loss. Thus, no information loss.
From the reference frame of someone (someone due to die a quick and short death) inside the event horizon, I would see a Webster's plunging in towards me. Still, no information loss.
Black holes were also once called "frozen stars," due to the fact that the "history" of a black hole (as Thorne puts it) is contained just above the event horizon -- the star's surface would appear to be there, if it weren't so red(-shifted) and dim. Somewhere in Wheeler's gravitation there's a nice calculation on how long it takes something to become practically invisible (red/dim) as it plunges towards the event horizon.
What is troubling for my two cent explanation is the problem of the matter that was there when the collapse began, which would be the neutron-laden core of a supernova. That definitely seems like lost information.
Black holes do all kinds of fun things, like violate baryon conservation and lepton conservation, in big ways. They do pose some very interesting questions. Of course, we don't have any really handy to test out stuff like Hawking radiation and whatnot on, so we won't know if our theory meets reality. We've detected black holes, but we haven't gotten up close enough to really know if what we predict about them in regards to particle production is true.
Average American male loses 4 socks per year. Call it 125,000,000 million males in US. That is about a billion socks every 2 years. This has been going on for at least 50 years.
Do you think you could hide 25,000,000,000 socks without the odd one showing up every once in a while? With that many socks missing you would think we'd be tripping over them regularly.
...as everyone knows, is 42.
The real question, of course, is how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. Now _there's_ some Nobel material!
You owe Slashdot a copy of the best Oracularities...
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
haven't figured out where my other matching sock goes everytime I do the wash. Seems like a blackhole or something is created with all the water rushing around a metal cylander.
--
You're a unique individual, just like everyone else.
Sig it.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Question #4 discusses Supersymmetry. The lab group that I am part of is working with simulating supersymmetry, if you want more information on supersymmetry then go to the University of Colorado NLC group site.
We only hope that the NLC, or Tesla, is built. Right now particle physicists around the world are trying to scrape up the ~$9 billion that it would require to build one of them.
I know that some of you will say, "We already have particle accelerators that can reach TeV (Tera Electron Volts), why do we need the NLC?" The particle accelarators today that can reach TeV, like the Tevatron at Fermilabs, accelerate Hadrons like protons. Although the physics gained from accelerating Hadrons is very useful, it cannot give us the information necessary for supersymmetry. Hadrons are composed of three quarks, and therefore when they collide not all six quarks are hitting at the same time, generally only one quark hits one quark. These kind of reactions are useful but not what we need. We need a particle accelerator that can accelarate leptons, like electrons and pions, to the TeV scale. When electrons hit we are getting the entire center of mass energy at one point at one time. This allows for physics that is extremely useful to supersymmetry.
I am just an undergrad so my understanding of this next aspect is kind of shakey. From what I have been able to understand, hadron colliders are really good for understanding the forces between particles, whereas lepton colliders are really good for discovering new particles. In order to prove, or disprove, supersymmetry we need to see if sparticles (supersymmetric particles) exist, therefore we need lepton colliders. Today the most powerful lepton collider in the US is SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator).
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Ask Jeeves!
Mike Roberto
- GAIM: MicroBerto
Berto
My favorite unanswered questions like this are those which are easy to explain but relatively impossible to figure out. For example, no one has yet to discover *any* pattern in the prime numbers. I can explain that question to my grandmother. Difficult questions aren't always complicated to explain.
Source code is a lot like a parachute; it needs to be open in order to function properly.
'Can we quantitatively understand quark and gluon confinement in quantum chromodynamics and the existence of a mass gap?'
People PLEASE! Do I have to spell out everything for you? The answer is obviously 'NO'.
This is 3rd grade stuff, people.
D
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
I have only a laypersons understanding of quantum physics, so feel free to ignore me.
Whenever I read about these incredibly complex theories, like 11 dimensional superstrings, the M-theory, "sparticles", and what have you, it just reminds me of the "theories of planetary motion" that people used to come up with before they realized the earth goes around the sun.
To explain the observed motion of the planets in a way consistent with the sun going around the earth, they invented "epicycles", which were essentially loops within loops on the hypothical orbits. This went on for years, with the epicycles getting more and more complicated. They built amazing geared machines to simulate the motion of the planets. Now we look back at them and shake our heads, thinking "Why didn't they look for the simpler explanation? Why did it take so long for a Copernicus to come along?"
I don't mean to dis modern physics... but I can't help thinking that in 100 years, people will look back on M-theory and sparticles and laugh, saying "Why didn't those people realize how ridiculous those theories are? Why didn't they try harder to find a simpler explanation?"
Maybe the real world really is that complicated. But history would indicate otherwise.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
This was quite an interesting list, but let's not forget who came up with it -- a group of string theorists. The list reflects a certain... severe bias, in that ALL of the problems lie in the fields of high energy physics and cosmology. They completely ignore the equally fascinating (and much more rapidly growing) fields of condensed matter physics, biophysics, geophysics, and astrophysics (apart from cosmology). These fields promise to change our world, both in terms of the gadgets we use, to our very genetic essence, and contain problems of significant scientific merit as well.
This point reminds me of a listing posted to slashdot a couple of months ago of the top ten algorithms of all time. It just so happened that all ten were numerical algorithms, reflecting the bias of the poster in that case as well. A more objective list requires a more universal panel.
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
I think this type of think is what's needed to get the average person interested in math and science again. Math used to be a hobby for a lot of people, and many discoveries were made by people in their spare time, but unfortuneately the outer boundaries of math and science are generally too specialized and complex for the average person to understand.
A few months ago I saw a list of unsolved mathematical problems that required no special knowledge to understand and I thought it was a really good idea since it might get your average person interested in solving one of these problems. For example, Fermat's last theorem has been proven, but using very complex math that was unknown at the time he wrote his little note in the margin. The concept behind the theorem is pretty intuitive, and assuming Fermat wasn't bluffing or erred in his proof, then a simpler method awaits rediscovery.
Published lists of unsolved problems that can be comprehended by a layman may increase interest and make science "real" again for a lot of people who view things like physics and chemistry as voodoo.
Actuaries - making accountants look interesting since 1949