I'm not too surprised that they are not applying for a patent. They are a state university, so the university would hold the rights to the patent. The actual researchers would have their names attached, but they would receive little monetary gain from any licensing (assuming this is the same type of agreement I had to sign at NCSU).
In light of the recent discussions on patents and copyrights, I thought many of you might like to see what my alma mater has to say on this matter. The whole document may be accessed at http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/research_outreach_exte nsion/policies/patent_policy.html
Anyway, the preamble is a pleasant read for all of those opposed to frivilous/progress-stifling patents applications...
"North Carolina State University is dedicated to teaching, research and extending knowledge to the public.
It is the policy of the University to carry out its scholarly work in an open and free atmosphere and to publish results obtained therefrom freely, limited only by a short time delay in cases in which this is necessary to prepare and file applications. Patentable inventions sometimes arise out of research activities of its faculty, staff and students which are carried out wholly or in part with University facilities. As a public service institution, the University has an interest in assuring the utilization of such inventions for the public good. Protection must be provided for at least some of these inventions through patents and licenses to encourage their development and marketing. Patents and their exploitation, however, represent only a small part of the benefits accruing from either publicly or privately sponsored research.
A portion of the research conducted by the University is supported by government and a portion by private industry. Service to the public, including private industry, is an integral part of the University's mission. As a public institution, the University, in its agreements with private industry or other private organizations, must keep the interests of the general public in view. The rights and privileges set forth in cooperative agreements or contracts, with respect to patents and copyrights developed as a result of research partly or wholly financed by private parties, must be fair and just to the inventor(s), the sponsor and the public. Research should be undertaken by the University under support from private parties only if it is consistent with and complementary to the University's goals and responsibilities to the public."
Although, this document may be copyrighted, I'm not sure;~)
One of my biggest complaints with StarOffice (outside of the licensing issues) is that StarOffice is one large binary with many different office features. This requires you to load the entire binary into memory (a time wasting process) to utilize a single feature of the StarOffice suite. In light of Linux's appeal of being able to run on a box made up of spare parts found in one's closet, this seems counter to the mission of Linux. Granted, new machines are coming standard with at least 96 MB RAM (typically more), but I still have an old P150 with 32MB that I use from time to time... so, my question is:
Will KOffice treat each of the applications as separate binary executables, or follow the one-large-binary approach of StarOffice?
Wouldn't the last prime timestamp be 23:59:59 19/11/1999?
Certainly, but it's not odd (in the sense of all odd digits) and prime. Someone else mentioned 19:59:59 19/11/1999 would be the last prime/odd one for over a millenium.
Of course, I don't use 24:00:00 timestamp format... I prefer the use of AM/PM. My last odd/prime timestamp will be 11:59:59 PM 19/11/1999.
... was "what a bunch of crap! Who are these freaks?" Turns out these freaks are faculty members at respected institutions. Doesn't mean they are less freaky, but it is harder to dismiss offhand what they have been working on.
However, since this is in no way the type of astrophysics I am familiar with, I don't feel qualified to make many comments on the paper. I will just say that, after reading the introductory chapter, I find it hard to believe that they could have accurately done all the things they claimed to. (I forgot many of the details, but suffice it to say that they claimed to have solved just about every problem, up to and possibly including GUT!)
Anyway, I look forward to comments from those who actually have time to wade through the paper (it is 28 pages long after all).
Is everyone out there spouting off without reading the article, or am I the only one who can't get the link to work? I can't even get a ping response from www.newscientist.com...
Can someone from the Emereld Isle tell this yankee what "automatic delivery" is? Here in the states, we have to contact a third party specializing in package delivery, like UPS or FedEx, for large boxes like computers to go anywhere;)
...of the English language disturbs me. "Ergonometric" isn't a word (according to www.m-w.com). It's ergonomic, you twit!!! What is it with our recent VPs anyway?
1- Energy does not exist apart from a mass (or alternately that mass and energy are the same thing - the two statements are pretty much the same.)
It's best not to even worry about mass. Photons have energy E = hf, but have no rest mass (rest being the key word, here). They can be considered to have relativistic mass (m = E/c^2) but scientists typically are interested only in the energy transport. Two photons with energy E1 and E2 can collide and create a particle - antiparticle pair with mass m1 and m2 such that (m1+m2)c^2.le. (E1+E2). (How do you get a less than sign using html?)
2- Vacuum has no mass - it isn't a medium that can carry energy
Vacuum is merely a term used to describe the state in which there is a total absence of matter. The "vacuum" of outer space isn't a true vacuum, but has matter densities that are basically insignificant (intergalactic medium densities are of order 1 particle per 10^6 m^3 or so). However, EM waves pass through this "vacuum" and carry energy all the time (that's how we see distant objects). Having mass is certainly not a requirement to transmit energy, especially when you consider energy to be EM radiation, rather than discrete photons.
3- Gravity, like the other three forces, transports energy
No problems, here!
Using particles and waves is merely a convenience to describe the quantum world. In fact, it takes both to accurately describe it. Case in point... Photons interact with sub-atomic particles, transmitting energy via collisions, as if photons were particles. However, particles cannot create interference patterns, waves can. So, these little guys are sometimes like waves, and sometimes like particles, depending on how you look at them.
I for one cannot wait to see the results from LIGO. As a former (ie., I left academia last month!) astrophysicists, I can tell you that some of my colleagues were very interested in what LIGO might tell us about the behavior of massive, compact objects like binary neutron star systems and black holes.
So what happens if you kill the monster associated with the Doom pid? Quit? Something cool. Maybe spawning a daughter doom process, kinda like the splintered broom in Fantasia!
Oh, I nearly spewed coffee all over my monitor... Within 4) is the phrase "Windows NT utopia". Having read Sir Thomas More's Utopia, I think I'd have to classify NT as more along the lines of Dante's Inferno! *G*
I hope not! One of my favorite kitchen physics experiments involves putting a CD in the microwave for, or say 3 or 4 seconds. Just until the current in the foil reached the point where the entire foil disc pops! It makes a really cool fractal-like pattern! They make great suncatchers, too.
Anyone out there give a bit more detail about the pixelation (long vertical rows of subpixels, 5 sides, etc.)? Curious as to how subpixels (and plasma displays in general) work, subpixel density and the like...
Oh, the JIR had some exceedingly funny bits from time to time.
One I specifically remember was a parody of many experimental particle physics papers, you know, the ones where all 400 people who work on the beam line get their names on a particularly important paper...
The title was something like "The Effects of Peanut Butter on the Rotation of the Earth" After about 400 authors, including George Herman (Babe) Ruth (no less than 3 times!) the body of the paper read...
"As far as we can determine, peanut butter has no direct effect on the rotation of the Earth."
Oh, I laughed and laughed. Yeah, physics geek humor, but then again, I am a primo physics geek!
Well, if it is 30,000 AU from the Sun, it would be approximately 10% of the distance to Proxima Centauri. That star is about 1.25 parsecs away, and 1 pc == 206025 AU.
It's not all that significant in some respects, but if it is bound to the Sun, it certainly is interesting.
I, too, have some doubts about the newest candidate for Planet X... However, I want to answer/clarify some of your points.
1) IMO, 13 points is not statistically significant. However, for all 13 orbits to be altered in the same way is somewhat remarkable.
2) AFAIK, Jupiter has no nuclear reaction within it's core. The critical mass to begin nuclear fusion is 10-100 times that of Jupiter. If "Planet X" is only a few times more massive than Jupiter, it would certainly have a higher core temperature, but not necessarily high enough to fuse hydrogen.
3) The "observations" of brown dwarfs has been solely through their gravitational effect on companion stars rather than direct optical observations.
4) You are correct about the orbit. Without some observation of the objects trajectory, there is no way to know if it is elliptical (bound to the Sun) or hyperbolic (not bound).
Looks like it will be an interesting read nonetheless.
I'll add to this with a bit of sophmore-level physics on the subject...
When a light signal with intensity I0 and initial polarization of, say, 0 deg is incident on a polarizer with rotation angle x, the transmitted intensity is given as I = I0*cos(x)*cos(x). Thus, if you intercept this signal with a polarizer rotated by 45 deg, you get I0*cos(45)*cos(45) = 0.5*I0 transmitted intensity.
Using a single photon rather than a stream produces a 50% chance that the photon passes through. If Eve's polarizer blocks the photon, either the photon was initially transmitted at a 90 deg angle to her filter, or was transmitted at a 45 deg angle to her filter and failed the 50-50 chance. If her filter allows the photon through, she knows what the polarization was and can retransmit the photon. When that retransmitted photon gets to Bob, it may well fail the 50-50 chance, providing him no information (remember, you only get information on the photons that pass your filter).
As an aside... if you transmit photons with a polarization angle of 0 into a filter with angle 90 deg, nothing comes through. If, however, you put a filter rotated an angle of 45 deg between the original two, you have a 50-50 chance of a photon passing the first filter, and being repolarized with a 45 deg angle, at which point, it has a further 50-50 chance of passing through the 90 deg filter (since the relative angle between the filter and the repolarized photon is now 45 deg).
The point being that any detection of the photon stream between Alice and Bob will affect the overall signal, and simple error checking, as mentioned in the article, will detect the intrusion.
Yeah, if I was into tea and biscuits at 4pm (instead of doughnuts and coffee at 9am, being the fat lazy American slob I am), I'd really like a biscuit that didn't disintegrate the instant it got wet.
Hello! The article from last Dec was about the car flame thrower. Today's article is about the awarding of the 1999 Ig Nobel prizes, of which one of them was the aforementioned flame thrower. There were many other prizes mentioned in the article linked...
No,/. isn't going down, just the ability of the posters to read the information presented (yeah, I'm guilty of it too at times).
No, one simple statement of the HUP is that you can't simultaneously know exactly where you are AND where you are going (dx * dp >~ h). With regards to the dE * dt formulism, it simply means that lower mass particle/antiparticle pairs are allowed to live for longer times that their heavier counterparts.
A better way to state this is that, the more accurately you measure one value of a Heisenberg pair, the less accurately you can measure the other. As an analogy, consider a large object like a car. You can exactly determine where the object is by taking a snapshot (assuming you have the ideal camera with the infinitely fast shutter) and measuring the position. However, you have completely lost any information about the speed (and thus the momentum) of the car.
Conversely, if you leave the shutter open for a finite amount of time, you get a blurred image of the car, making it more difficult to figure out the position of the car, but knowing the shutter speed and the absolute length of the blurred image, you begin to get a better idea of the car's momentum.
In the quantum world, things are further blurred in that atomic and subatomic particles are described by quantum wave packets, meaning they don't have an exact position until observed. However, the act of observing an object (bouncing photons off of it) tends to change the momentum of the item. The more accurately you try to collapse the wave function and pin down the item, the more elusive it gets (by increasing its momentum, and thus moving around)!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not too surprised that they are not applying for a patent. They are a state university, so the university would hold the rights to the patent. The actual researchers would have their names attached, but they would receive little monetary gain from any licensing (assuming this is the same type of agreement I had to sign at NCSU).
e nsion/policies/patent_policy.html
;~)
In light of the recent discussions on patents and copyrights, I thought many of you might like to see what my alma mater has to say on this matter. The whole document may be accessed at
http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/research_outreach_ext
Anyway, the preamble is a pleasant read for all of those opposed to frivilous/progress-stifling patents applications...
"North Carolina State University is dedicated to teaching, research and extending knowledge to the public.
It is the policy of the University to carry out its scholarly work in an open and free atmosphere and to publish results obtained therefrom freely, limited only by a short time delay in cases in which this is necessary to prepare and file applications. Patentable inventions sometimes arise out of research activities of its faculty, staff and students which are carried out wholly or in part with University facilities. As a public service institution, the University has an interest in assuring the utilization of such inventions for the public good. Protection must be provided for at least some of these inventions through patents and licenses to encourage their development and marketing. Patents and their exploitation, however, represent only a small part of the benefits accruing from either publicly or privately sponsored research.
A portion of the research conducted by the University is supported by government and a portion by private industry. Service to the public, including private industry, is an integral part of the University's mission. As a public institution, the University, in its agreements with private industry or other private organizations, must keep the interests of the general public in view. The rights and privileges set forth in cooperative agreements or contracts, with respect to patents and copyrights developed as a result of research partly or wholly financed by private parties, must be fair and just to the inventor(s), the sponsor and the public. Research should be undertaken by the University under support from private parties only if it is consistent with and complementary to the University's goals and responsibilities to the public."
Although, this document may be copyrighted, I'm not sure
Eric
One of my biggest complaints with StarOffice (outside of the licensing issues) is that StarOffice is one large binary with many different office features. This requires you to load the entire binary into memory (a time wasting process) to utilize a single feature of the StarOffice suite. In light of Linux's appeal of being able to run on a box made up of spare parts found in one's closet, this seems counter to the mission of Linux. Granted, new machines are coming standard with at least 96 MB RAM (typically more), but I still have an old P150 with 32MB that I use from time to time... so, my question is:
Will KOffice treat each of the applications as separate binary executables, or follow the one-large-binary approach of StarOffice?
Eric
Certainly, but it's not odd (in the sense of all odd digits) and prime. Someone else mentioned 19:59:59 19/11/1999 would be the last prime/odd one for over a millenium.
Of course, I don't use 24:00:00 timestamp format... I prefer the use of AM/PM. My last
odd/prime timestamp will be 11:59:59 PM 19/11/1999.
Eric
Cool, so as another poster mentioned, 11:59:59 19/11/1999 is the last odd timestamp of our lifetimes. It's also an entirely prime timestamp!
That will be one primo second to be alive!
Eric
I second this... great job guys, both for the insightful questions, and the excellent answers!
It's nice to get informed answers, rather than a bunch of people posting "IANAL, but I think..."
Eric
... was "what a bunch of crap! Who are these freaks?" Turns out these freaks are faculty members at respected institutions. Doesn't mean they are less freaky, but it is harder to dismiss offhand what they have been working on.
However, since this is in no way the type of astrophysics I am familiar with, I don't feel qualified to make many comments on the paper. I will just say that, after reading the introductory chapter, I find it hard to believe that they could have accurately done all the things they claimed to. (I forgot many of the details, but suffice it to say that they claimed to have solved just about every problem, up to and possibly including GUT!)
Anyway, I look forward to comments from those who actually have time to wade through the paper (it is 28 pages long after all).
Eric
Is everyone out there spouting off without reading the article, or am I the only one who can't get the link to work? I can't even get a ping response from www.newscientist.com...
Eric
...why last night's episode was dedicated to her. I had no idea who she was (I'm not a diehard fan by any means). Man, what a bummer...
Eric
Can someone from the Emereld Isle tell this yankee what "automatic delivery" is? Here in the states, we have to contact a third party specializing in package delivery, like UPS or FedEx, for large boxes like computers to go anywhere ;)
Eric
Wow! You must have some freakily large hands if you can span the keyboard like that with one hand!
...of the English language disturbs me. "Ergonometric" isn't a word (according to www.m-w.com). It's ergonomic, you twit!!! What is it with our recent VPs anyway?
Eric
Well, if you wanted to hit them all with one hand, the left to right order IS alt-ctrl-del...
:)
But, I will agree with you that no one SAYS it that way
Eric
"Anabaena--We Didn't Make The Atmosphere, We Just Made It Breathable(TM)."
;)
Their slogan borders on copyright infringment. The BASF lawyers are sure to have a field day with that one...
Eric
It's best not to even worry about mass. Photons have energy E = hf, but have no rest mass (rest being the key word, here). They can be considered to have relativistic mass (m = E/c^2) but scientists typically are interested only in the energy transport. Two photons with energy E1 and E2 can collide and create a particle - antiparticle pair with mass m1 and m2 such that (m1+m2)c^2 .le. (E1+E2). (How do you get a less than sign using html?)
2- Vacuum has no mass - it isn't a medium that can carry energy
Vacuum is merely a term used to describe the state in which there is a total absence of matter. The "vacuum" of outer space isn't a true vacuum, but has matter densities that are basically insignificant (intergalactic medium densities are of order 1 particle per 10^6 m^3 or so). However, EM waves pass through this "vacuum" and carry energy all the time (that's how we see distant objects). Having mass is certainly not a requirement to transmit energy, especially when you consider energy to be EM radiation, rather than discrete photons.
3- Gravity, like the other three forces, transports energy
No problems, here!
Using particles and waves is merely a convenience to describe the quantum world. In fact, it takes both to accurately describe it. Case in point... Photons interact with sub-atomic particles, transmitting energy via collisions, as if photons were particles. However, particles cannot create interference patterns, waves can. So, these little guys are sometimes like waves, and sometimes like particles, depending on how you look at them.
I for one cannot wait to see the results from LIGO. As a former (ie., I left academia last month!) astrophysicists, I can tell you that some of my colleagues were very interested in what LIGO might tell us about the behavior of massive, compact objects like binary neutron star systems and black holes.
Eric
So what happens if you kill the monster associated with the Doom pid? Quit? Something cool. Maybe spawning a daughter doom process, kinda like the splintered broom in Fantasia!
--
Oh, I nearly spewed coffee all over my monitor...
Within 4) is the phrase "Windows NT utopia". Having read Sir Thomas More's Utopia, I think I'd have to classify NT as more along the lines of Dante's Inferno! *G*
--
I hope not! One of my favorite kitchen physics experiments involves putting a CD in the microwave for, or say 3 or 4 seconds. Just until the current in the foil reached the point where the entire foil disc pops! It makes a really cool fractal-like pattern! They make great suncatchers, too.
--
Anyone out there give a bit more detail about the pixelation (long vertical rows of subpixels, 5 sides, etc.)? Curious as to how subpixels (and plasma displays in general) work, subpixel density and the like...
--
Oh, the JIR had some exceedingly funny bits from time to time.
One I specifically remember was a parody of many experimental particle physics papers, you know, the ones where all 400 people who work on the beam line get their names on a particularly important paper...
The title was something like "The Effects of Peanut Butter on the Rotation of the Earth"
After about 400 authors, including George Herman (Babe) Ruth (no less than 3 times!) the body of the paper read...
"As far as we can determine, peanut butter has no direct effect on the rotation of the Earth."
Oh, I laughed and laughed. Yeah, physics geek humor, but then again, I am a primo physics geek!
--
Well, if it is 30,000 AU from the Sun, it would be approximately 10% of the distance to Proxima Centauri. That star is about 1.25 parsecs away, and 1 pc == 206025 AU.
It's not all that significant in some respects, but if it is bound to the Sun, it certainly is interesting.
--
I, too, have some doubts about the newest candidate for Planet X... However, I want to answer/clarify some of your points.
1) IMO, 13 points is not statistically significant. However, for all 13 orbits to be altered in the same way is somewhat remarkable.
2) AFAIK, Jupiter has no nuclear reaction within it's core. The critical mass to begin nuclear fusion is 10-100 times that of Jupiter. If "Planet X" is only a few times more massive than Jupiter, it would certainly have a higher core temperature, but not necessarily high enough to fuse hydrogen.
3) The "observations" of brown dwarfs has been solely through their gravitational effect on companion stars rather than direct optical observations.
4) You are correct about the orbit. Without some observation of the objects trajectory, there is no way to know if it is elliptical (bound to the Sun) or hyperbolic (not bound).
Looks like it will be an interesting read nonetheless.
--
I'll add to this with a bit of sophmore-level physics on the subject...
When a light signal with intensity I0 and initial polarization of, say, 0 deg is incident on a polarizer with rotation angle x, the transmitted intensity is given as I = I0*cos(x)*cos(x). Thus, if you intercept this signal with a polarizer rotated by 45 deg, you get I0*cos(45)*cos(45) = 0.5*I0 transmitted intensity.
Using a single photon rather than a stream produces a 50% chance that the photon passes through. If Eve's polarizer blocks the photon, either the photon was initially transmitted at a 90 deg angle to her filter, or was transmitted at a 45 deg angle to her filter and failed the 50-50 chance. If her filter allows the photon through, she knows what the polarization was and can retransmit the photon. When that retransmitted photon gets to Bob, it may well fail the 50-50 chance, providing him no information (remember, you only get information on the photons that pass your filter).
As an aside... if you transmit photons with a polarization angle of 0 into a filter with angle 90 deg, nothing comes through. If, however, you put a filter rotated an angle of 45 deg between the original two, you have a 50-50 chance of a photon passing the first filter, and being repolarized with a 45 deg angle, at which point, it has a further 50-50 chance of passing through the 90 deg filter (since the relative angle between the filter and the repolarized photon is now 45 deg).
The point being that any detection of the photon stream between Alice and Bob will affect the overall signal, and simple error checking, as mentioned in the article, will detect the intrusion.
--
Yeah, if I was into tea and biscuits at 4pm (instead of doughnuts and coffee at 9am, being the fat lazy American slob I am), I'd really like a biscuit that didn't disintegrate the instant it got wet.
--
Hello! The article from last Dec was about the car flame thrower. Today's article is about the awarding of the 1999 Ig Nobel prizes, of which one of them was the aforementioned flame thrower. There were many other prizes mentioned in the article linked...
/. isn't going down, just the ability of the posters to read the information presented (yeah, I'm guilty of it too at times).
No,
--
A better way to state this is that, the more accurately you measure one value of a Heisenberg pair, the less accurately you can measure the other. As an analogy, consider a large object like a car. You can exactly determine where the object is by taking a snapshot (assuming you have the ideal camera with the infinitely fast shutter) and measuring the position. However, you have completely lost any information about the speed (and thus the momentum) of the car.
Conversely, if you leave the shutter open for a finite amount of time, you get a blurred image of the car, making it more difficult to figure out the position of the car, but knowing the shutter speed and the absolute length of the blurred image, you begin to get a better idea of the car's momentum.
In the quantum world, things are further blurred in that atomic and subatomic particles are described by quantum wave packets, meaning they don't have an exact position until observed. However, the act of observing an object (bouncing photons off of it) tends to change the momentum of the item. The more accurately you try to collapse the wave function and pin down the item, the more elusive it gets (by increasing its momentum, and thus moving around)!
--