Stuff formed originally by graviational collapse. So they are initially formed by gravity in the first place. Now, asteroids get peppered by stuff, and breaks up. But eventually, won't these debris just recollapse back into a messy bunch (sans those which has sufficient escape velocity out of the center of mass)?
You should become a professional astronomer. For making more sense than those who are involved in the planet vs planetoid dispute (which I think is silly.) It's classification, not science!
However, your point (3) is tricky. Whether or not something is spherical (and that's another minefield : how spherical is spherical?) depends a lot on its mass and composition. A massive, but hard chunk of rock is less spherical than a small, squishy ball of dust.
We can categorize by mass of course. And I don't know why people don't do that...(anybody has any ideas?)
Well, scientists spend 5-6 extra years getting their PhDs to earn half the pay....
(A postdoc gets less than a teacher, I wager.)
And all grad students took up grad studies knowing full well of the lack of financial returns of being a scientist. But they do get "respect", though I doubt that's the motivation (nor is it very important, to me at least.)
mentioned. And people here at/. just want to talk about big bang and organic stuff from space.
Fred Hoyle was the guy who was bold enough to predict a resonance oxygen burning step in the thermonuclear cycle of stars when everybody else was saying its impossible. Willy Fowler found it, and both wrote a paper on it, solving one of the greatest problem in stellar physics.
Fowler got the Nobel, Hoyle did not. The problem is that Hoyle was a proponent of the "life from space" idea, and the Nobel Committee was embarrassed to give him that.
First they take a bunch of kids, split them into two groups. One group plays Nintendo (aside : should have chosen better game consoles...), and their brains "stunts" (based on instant brain scans done on them). The other groups do math, and their frontal lobes get simulated.
Their conclusion? Games Bad : kids become dumb. WTF? How the hell can they make this kind of slippery slope argument?!
Why not they take a bunch of kids, and have them do NOTHING BUT MATH for a year, and see if the kids become super geniuses? Most likely they will just become (a) bored to the death (b) mad.
Children needs all kinds of stimulation so they can learn to become well-rounded human beings. Too much Computer Games is Bad. Too Much Math Is Bad. Too Much *insert thing here* is Bad.
(Begin Ad Hominem) Maybe the study's "need for funding" has something to do with such "controversial new result"? (End Ad Hominem)
(a) Gravity is well understood at large scales, given the standard caveats (Universe full of dark matter, dark energy blah blah). At solar system scales, it is very well tested. G (the Grav Constant) is a true constant in General Relativity, the theory that describes gravity. What I mean is that Einstein invented a theory, and in his theory is a constant that is not constrained by theory alone. It is constrained, however by our observations (i.e. we go and measure it). Now, there indeed are "extensions" of GR that has G being not a constant. Brans-Dicke Gravity is an extension of GR that has a varying G. I am working on another that has a slightly varying G. But they have to past the crucible of observations. Brans-Dicke is dead (abeit resurrected occasionally). The theory I am working on does not look too good.:(. G is believed to be pretty fundamental, and describe the energy scale of gravity. (The fine structure constant essentially describes the energy scale of Electromagnetism).
(b) Now, on your second point about some constants may be composites, and we are ignorant about it. That is true. Which is why my caveat in my post stating "fundamental constants OF A THEORY", and emphasised "theory/physics dependent". If our current theories are wrong, then constants that are though to be "fundamental" are not. That indeed is the whole program of String Theory, which in its most ambitious form, aim to _derive_ all the 20+ "fundamental" constants of current physics in a standard framework. If we can reduce the number of fundamental constants to, say, 5, then we are really making huge progress. Well, that's the aim anyway. String Theory is no where near that.
It's creators include a Pulitzer prize winner who was Watterson's classmate and friend. It's as zany as C&H, but without the contemplative side (which is impossible to reproduce now....:'(.)
Just because you believe it doesn?t mean it?s so or makes sense.
Which, of course, applies equally well to creationists.:)
You are confusing math constants with physic ones.
on
Constants Not Constant?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Mathematical constants are "constants" in the sense that it won't change whatever the universe's physics behave. Pi, for example, is always 3.14... in a flat euclidean space (which can be defined and have nothing to do with the real universe which may not be flat, nor is it euclidean).
Physical constants, like Grav Constant (which by the way, is NOT a composite), however, are constants in the sense that they come out of a theory that needs MEASURED parameters to make it work.
The "constant" in the article refers to the fine structure constant, is a quantity that is either a constant or not dependent on which theory you believe. Currently the Standard Model (which is believed to be wrong at some level) thinks it is. If it is varying with time, like the article says it is, then the interesting thing is that it allows to speculate what the real "underlying" theory is actually is (Not the Standard Model).
YOur idea about the "Atomic constant" and "composite constant" are just plain misunderstanding of what a constant really is. There is no such jargon as "atomic constant". We use the word "fundamental constants of a theory", which is theory/physics dependent. The other constants, like Pi, are mathematical and has NOTHING to do with physics, for chrissake!
I do not think I used arguments to the effect of "computers can compute millions of moves a second, and humans can only think of...
Nope I agree....and...
Increase in computing power results in increase in playing power. This means computers can get arbitrarily good at chess in finite time.
I agree with this too....but I don't agree that it is inevitable that computers will beat the human simply because processing speed will become so overwhelmingly fast that humans will not be able to out-compute the them.
Chess is like a math problem. When I say "math problem", I mean it is a "classification problem". There are a lot of problems in math that are stated much like a chess game. Examples are the four-colour problem, the classification problem in Algebraic Topology ("what are the topological invariants that characterises a topological space?"), etc. These are very simply stated, but a computing machine will find it hard to even start to break it down into manageble pieces. An example of a recently solved "math problem" is of that of the classification problem of Group Theory. One of the "odd group" is called the Monster Group, and it has 2^46*3^20*5^9*7^6*17^2*13^2*17*19*23*29*31*41*47*5 9*71 group elements. A computer will choke if it tried to compute such a group by brute force (somebody figured this out in 1980 by piecing together a zillion theorems).
My point is that human intuition is not easily replaced by brute computer power.
Now tell me which part is improving more rapidly: computer or man. (snipped theory stuff)
The computer will always lag behind the human in terms of theory (unless it can solve the above classification problem), since it is the humans who are going to figure out the theory first before being converted into an algorithm that can be fed into the computer. Of course, Kasparov may join a computer group, and then figure out a Theoretical NOvelty (some new move) and program that in. But then, who is improving, the computer or the human?
No it's not. There are more possible chess games than all the atoms in the universe. In chess, it is a truism that the most complicated position is the initial position.
It's a fallacy to compare "my brain can compute # moves per second" vs the computer's ability to simply crunch.
The brain remember patterns, and can quickly intuit the kind of strategy to go about it. For example, if the position seems "closed", I aim for a strategic maneuvering game trying to obtain the upper hand by controlling squares or perhaps marshalling resources before a sudden opening of the position. I will spend very little time trying to look for tactics in such a position. Now a computer program that brutely analyzes the position by counting moves will have to go through an entire branch of variation that a human would simply won't think about. That's a sample of how intution works.
The thing about the 2nd game in the Kasparov vs DB match is that DB actually made a "positional" move that seemed almost human : it sacrifices a nice tactical combination for a longterm positional advantage. Old K couldn't believe it was the computer and alluded to some cheating by the DB team (very bad taste, but it was a huge compliment to the DB team).
So, waiting for the "exponential" (which is not true either) growth of computing power to play the "ultimate game" is not going to work.
Also, you ignore the fact the humans are becoming better players. The average grandmaster now can kick a lot of butts tof the previous generation. Why? Simply because a lot of theoretical (yes, they actually call them chess theory) development has occured. Some common chess themes that were vogue then are now considered bad or dubious. New ideas are overtaking the old. I grew up on the games of Fischer and Botvinnik, where the byword is clear-cut and simplicity. NOwadays, chess games are a complicated mess that I don't quite understand what's going on.
Disclaimer : I used to play lots of chess. Now I play once in a while on chess.net.
Ah, but only where the @%$!@ ESC and the : keys are (which thankfully does not change). vi is king! (If I have used emacs, I will have had my brain damaged when some idiot put the CAPSLOCK key next to A....)
...is of course Lord of the Rings. It has such coooooool names : The Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, The Return of the King (guess where Georgie ripped Jedi from...).
Attack of the Clones?! Bwahahahahahahah! Wait, that sounds like such a cool sig....
Let's assume that the bible predicts all these things (which I doubt it does, last I read it) :
(a) Expanding Universe : Did the Bible predicts the exact value of the Hubble Constant? I mean, there are some details that scientists are very keen to know...
(b) String Theory : Provided that String THeory is correct (no proof), current popular ideas thinks that we live in a 11-dimensions universe, not 10. (btw, can you tell me where in the Bible that says this? I'd like to show some of my string theorists friends here just to rub them off.)
(c) Books : Isn't checking out books "taking the opinion of others?" Especially when you believe everything a book says?
I have no problems with people believing in some being creating the Universe. I just have problems with these people thumping their beliefs into my head as though as I can't find that out for myself.
I did not state that theories are true by default. Nor did I oppose your view : I can't since they do not make sense.
The use of the word "wasted" in your sentence is an affront to the many many years of effort scientists put into their work. Nothing is wasted if something is proved wrong. Science is in the enterprise of finding out things that don't work, and keeping those that do (until the next revelation).
Do not confuse narrow-mindedness with being aware about the limitations of current theories. Science is a hard game, and the price of admittance is many years of hard work. If you want to comment and rant ('bah') about the work scientists do, then learn the subject before complaining about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok. Points taken. My bad.
One question.
Stuff formed originally by graviational collapse. So they are initially formed by gravity in the first place. Now, asteroids get peppered by stuff, and breaks up. But eventually, won't these debris just recollapse back into a messy bunch (sans those which has sufficient escape velocity out of the center of mass)?
Ah, but there is no one to sneeze on the asteroid....
You should become a professional astronomer. For making more sense than those who are involved in the planet vs planetoid dispute (which I think is silly.) It's classification, not science!
However, your point (3) is tricky. Whether or not something is spherical (and that's another minefield : how spherical is spherical?) depends a lot on its mass and composition. A massive, but hard chunk of rock is less spherical than a small, squishy ball of dust.
We can categorize by mass of course. And I don't know why people don't do that...(anybody has any ideas?)
Almost everything is held together by gravity. Including all asteroids, comets etc....
Well, scientists spend 5-6 extra years getting their PhDs to earn half the pay....
(A postdoc gets less than a teacher, I wager.)
And all grad students took up grad studies knowing full well of the lack of financial returns of being a scientist. But they do get "respect", though I doubt that's the motivation (nor is it very important, to me at least.)
mentioned. And people here at /. just want to talk about big bang and organic stuff from space.
Fred Hoyle was the guy who was bold enough to predict a resonance oxygen burning step in the thermonuclear cycle of stars when everybody else was saying its impossible. Willy Fowler found it, and both wrote a paper on it, solving one of the greatest problem in stellar physics.
Fowler got the Nobel, Hoyle did not. The problem is that Hoyle was a proponent of the "life from space" idea, and the Nobel Committee was embarrassed to give him that.
Shame. Shame on the Noble Committee.
oh right. my bad.
Well, lots of Nobel prizes in physics go to research done in Bell Labs. Which, of course, is a commercial venture....
(Ad hominem attacks are unfair.)
First they take a bunch of kids, split them into two groups. One group plays Nintendo (aside : should have chosen better game consoles...), and their brains "stunts" (based on instant brain scans done on them). The other groups do math, and their frontal lobes get simulated.
Their conclusion? Games Bad : kids become dumb. WTF? How the hell can they make this kind of slippery slope argument?!
Why not they take a bunch of kids, and have them do NOTHING BUT MATH for a year, and see if the kids become super geniuses? Most likely they will just become (a) bored to the death (b) mad.
Children needs all kinds of stimulation so they can learn to become well-rounded human beings. Too much Computer Games is Bad. Too Much Math Is Bad. Too Much *insert thing here* is Bad.
(Begin Ad Hominem) Maybe the study's "need for funding" has something to do with such "controversial new result"? (End Ad Hominem)
I sympathise with your view.....but
Please Keep those nice furry friendly animals out of your arguments!
Dogs are good things!
Two points here :
:(. G is believed to be pretty fundamental, and describe the energy scale of gravity. (The fine structure constant essentially describes the energy scale of Electromagnetism).
(a) Gravity is well understood at large scales, given the standard caveats (Universe full of dark matter, dark energy blah blah). At solar system scales, it is very well tested. G (the Grav Constant) is a true constant in General Relativity, the theory that describes gravity. What I mean is that Einstein invented a theory, and in his theory is a constant that is not constrained by theory alone. It is constrained, however by our observations (i.e. we go and measure it). Now, there indeed are "extensions" of GR that has G being not a constant. Brans-Dicke Gravity is an extension of GR that has a varying G. I am working on another that has a slightly varying G. But they have to past the crucible of observations. Brans-Dicke is dead (abeit resurrected occasionally). The theory I am working on does not look too good.
(b) Now, on your second point about some constants may be composites, and we are ignorant about it. That is true. Which is why my caveat in my post stating "fundamental constants OF A THEORY", and emphasised "theory/physics dependent". If our current theories are wrong, then constants that are though to be "fundamental" are not. That indeed is the whole program of String Theory, which in its most ambitious form, aim to _derive_ all the 20+ "fundamental" constants of current physics in a standard framework. If we can reduce the number of fundamental constants to, say, 5, then we are really making huge progress. Well, that's the aim anyway. String Theory is no where near that.
It's creators include a Pulitzer prize winner who was Watterson's classmate and friend. It's as zany as C&H, but without the contemplative side (which is impossible to reproduce now....:'(.)
Just because you believe it doesn?t mean it?s so or makes sense.
:)
Which, of course, applies equally well to creationists.
Mathematical constants are "constants" in the sense that it won't change whatever the universe's physics behave. Pi, for example, is always 3.14... in a flat euclidean space (which can be defined and have nothing to do with the real universe which may not be flat, nor is it euclidean).
Physical constants, like Grav Constant (which by the way, is NOT a composite), however, are constants in the sense that they come out of a theory that needs MEASURED parameters to make it work.
The "constant" in the article refers to the fine structure constant, is a quantity that is either a constant or not dependent on which theory you believe. Currently the Standard Model (which is believed to be wrong at some level) thinks it is. If it is varying with time, like the article says it is, then the interesting thing is that it allows to speculate what the real "underlying" theory is actually is (Not the Standard Model).
YOur idea about the "Atomic constant" and "composite constant" are just plain misunderstanding of what a constant really is. There is no such jargon as "atomic constant". We use the word "fundamental constants of a theory", which is theory/physics dependent. The other constants, like Pi, are mathematical and has NOTHING to do with physics, for chrissake!
So the Greeks cannot square the circle, ever.
Stop /.-ing the site for people who are there to buy them!
*rant over*
I do not think I used arguments to the effect of "computers can compute millions of moves a second, and humans can only think of...
5 9*71 group elements. A computer will choke if it tried to compute such a group by brute force (somebody figured this out in 1980 by piecing together a zillion theorems).
Nope I agree....and...
Increase in computing power results in increase in playing power. This means computers can get arbitrarily good at chess in finite time.
I agree with this too....but I don't agree that it is inevitable that computers will beat the human simply because processing speed will become so overwhelmingly fast that humans will not be able to out-compute the them.
Chess is like a math problem. When I say "math problem", I mean it is a "classification problem". There are a lot of problems in math that are stated much like a chess game. Examples are the four-colour problem, the classification problem in Algebraic Topology ("what are the topological invariants that characterises a topological space?"), etc. These are very simply stated, but a computing machine will find it hard to even start to break it down into manageble pieces. An example of a recently solved "math problem" is of that of the classification problem of Group Theory. One of the "odd group" is called the Monster Group, and it has 2^46*3^20*5^9*7^6*17^2*13^2*17*19*23*29*31*41*47*
My point is that human intuition is not easily replaced by brute computer power.
Now tell me which part is improving more rapidly: computer or man. (snipped theory stuff)
The computer will always lag behind the human in terms of theory (unless it can solve the above classification problem), since it is the humans who are going to figure out the theory first before being converted into an algorithm that can be fed into the computer. Of course, Kasparov may join a computer group, and then figure out a Theoretical NOvelty (some new move) and program that in. But then, who is improving, the computer or the human?
No it's not. There are more possible chess games than all the atoms in the universe. In chess, it is a truism that the most complicated position is the initial position.
It's a fallacy to compare "my brain can compute # moves per second" vs the computer's ability to simply crunch.
The brain remember patterns, and can quickly intuit the kind of strategy to go about it. For example, if the position seems "closed", I aim for a strategic maneuvering game trying to obtain the upper hand by controlling squares or perhaps marshalling resources before a sudden opening of the position. I will spend very little time trying to look for tactics in such a position. Now a computer program that brutely analyzes the position by counting moves will have to go through an entire branch of variation that a human would simply won't think about. That's a sample of how intution works.
The thing about the 2nd game in the Kasparov vs DB match is that DB actually made a "positional" move that seemed almost human : it sacrifices a nice tactical combination for a longterm positional advantage. Old K couldn't believe it was the computer and alluded to some cheating by the DB team (very bad taste, but it was a huge compliment to the DB team).
So, waiting for the "exponential" (which is not true either) growth of computing power to play the "ultimate game" is not going to work.
Also, you ignore the fact the humans are becoming better players. The average grandmaster now can kick a lot of butts tof the previous generation. Why? Simply because a lot of theoretical (yes, they actually call them chess theory) development has occured. Some common chess themes that were vogue then are now considered bad or dubious. New ideas are overtaking the old. I grew up on the games of Fischer and Botvinnik, where the byword is clear-cut and simplicity. NOwadays, chess games are a complicated mess that I don't quite understand what's going on.
Disclaimer : I used to play lots of chess. Now I play once in a while on chess.net.
Boy, that's almost like a joke except that it's very very real! TGIANAL (Thank God I Am Not A Lawyer)
Ah, but only where the @%$!@ ESC and the : keys are (which thankfully does not change). vi is king! (If I have used emacs, I will have had my brain damaged when some idiot put the CAPSLOCK key next to A....)
...is of course Lord of the Rings. It has such coooooool names : The Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, The Return of the King (guess where Georgie ripped Jedi from...).
Attack of the Clones?! Bwahahahahahahah! Wait, that sounds like such a cool sig....
You just gave me another bullet in my eternal vi war with emacs squadron here : No Need To Relearn Keyboard Layout!
Very sad. I hope the peoples of the world quickly grow up and stop this kind of backward, us vs them thinking.
Let's assume that the bible predicts all these things (which I doubt it does, last I read it) :
(a) Expanding Universe : Did the Bible predicts the exact value of the Hubble Constant? I mean, there are some details that scientists are very keen to know...
(b) String Theory : Provided that String THeory is correct (no proof), current popular ideas thinks that we live in a 11-dimensions universe, not 10. (btw, can you tell me where in the Bible that says this? I'd like to show some of my string theorists friends here just to rub them off.)
(c) Books : Isn't checking out books "taking the opinion of others?" Especially when you believe everything a book says?
I have no problems with people believing in some being creating the Universe. I just have problems with these people thumping their beliefs into my head as though as I can't find that out for myself.
but I didn't realize NASA is so strapped for cash that they are selling domains to make ends meet.....
I did not state that theories are true by default. Nor did I oppose your view : I can't since they do not make sense.
The use of the word "wasted" in your sentence is an affront to the many many years of effort scientists put into their work. Nothing is wasted if something is proved wrong. Science is in the enterprise of finding out things that don't work, and keeping those that do (until the next revelation).
Do not confuse narrow-mindedness with being aware about the limitations of current theories. Science is a hard game, and the price of admittance is many years of hard work. If you want to comment and rant ('bah') about the work scientists do, then learn the subject before complaining about it.