Seriously, most people might just want to know why they should give a shit that BE condensation has been observed at solid-state. Don't get me wrong, I think there is something fascinating in all this, just wish the summary would have pointed to that aspect instead of regurgitating the so-called claimes of a breakthrough.
It depends on what you find important, remember most physics is a lot less practical than most biology. In my view people are interested in BEC because it is one of the few systems in which lots of quantum particles sit around and interact strongly, and of those, it is probably the most experimentally accessible. As for BEC in solid state quasiparticles, time will tell and I can only speculate from a position of ignorance. On the one hand it might sacrifice what I called "expermantal accessiblilty", because you have to deal with all the muck inside real solids, on the other hand a high temperature condensate made of magnons seems a lot more practical than normal condensates. Maybe it is easy to interface it to electronic control and measurement, so you can create and probe all kinds of weird and wonderful quantum states. Don't be surised if someone comes up with a paper trying to plug this as the next big thing in Quantum Computation.
You are probably right, but... Deveaud-Plédran happily dismisses both assertions. "BEC is forbidden only in two dimensions for an infinite system without disorder. We have a finite system with disorder, so standard BEC is allowed. And despite the quasiparticle nature and very short lifetime, we have shown that we are able to get a thermal equilibrium."
Well the bit about disorder is prossibly a triumph of hope over experience, but they are right about the finite system size. They say 2-d systems can't have phase coherence over infinite distances, but who cares as long as the coherence is as big as the device! Still, in practice people probably will care about picosecond lifetimes, with or without thermal equilibrium.
By the way "magenets" and "Enslisigh" were not put there on purpose, out of any sense of irony. They are there because I can't write sensible English. I might give Enslisigh a try though....
They cool thing about BEC is that it violates that intuition. Until B&E published, everyone thought that "much higher than zero kelvin" meant when that (in the appropriate units) the temperature (i.e. roughly the average energy per particle) had to be (much) less than the difference in energy between lowest state and any of the the others. If you think about this assumption, you will see that it nearly comes from Bolzman's law (and if you don't know what Boltzman's law is, and are not a science or engineering student, you probably don't care).
Satyendranath (sp?) Bose came up with the bombshell that although Bolztman's law is right Bolztman's law operates differently for quantum particles. Some quantum particles (nowadays called Bosons) are more likely than expected to get into the same quantum state. They will do this wheneve the temperature is low enough that their momentum uncertainty forces their position uncertainty to be at least as large as the typical distance between partciles (i.e their wavefunctions must "overlap" coherently, and again if you don't understand, you don't care).
So even ordinary BECs happen at relatively high temeratures. Unfortunately these temperatures are still in the nanokelvin range, at least for atoms under experimental conditions.
Normal matter, including every BEC I have heard of is made of atoms, which are quantum particles. However solids, like every other kind of matter (even BECs!) support excitations, which can also be quantum particles (or quasi-particles).
It seems that they have made a BEC out of the quasi particles in in a solid (which is not itself a BEC).
Unfortunately I'm at home, so I can't read the actual articles. The main thing I am wondering about is dimensionality. I've seen lectures before where people have come up with pancake like-systems that are *like* BECs at 1 Kelvin, but unfortunately you can't meet the pedantic requirements for BEC in less than 3d.
But if these systems are 3d, then it seems reasonable. We are talking about quasi-particles here. As one of these abstracts says, their (effective) mass is much less than that of an atom, therefore for they can have much higher energies than atoms of similar momentum. Because BEC is all about getting (the uncertainty of) momentum * (uncertainty of) position down below a magic number, it seems reasonable.
(Aside: Does anyone else dislike the term "unAustralian" (or whatever nationality you please)? Simon Crean used the term and it really ticks me off.)
Pisses me off no end too. What does it mean? In general you find it refering to any kind on
offensive or dubious behaviour. As if non-Australians had no problems which such things.
Does this mean that people who say "unaustralian" beleive aussies to be inherently superior to other peoples? Of course not, that would be racist, worse, it would be unaustralian.
>No combination of bio/nano/computing technology
>is ever going to be me for the simple reason >that it will have different boundaries from me,
>and our idea of self is shaped from these
>boundaries.
Last year I couldn't swim more than about 200m.
Now I can do at least five times as much without
difficulty, I don't actually know what my
boundary is now. Have I lost my self?
"Now we are turning a problem into a feature."
on
Biotransistors
·
· Score: 1
See subject. That is how we know the idea comes from the computer industry.
That and reuse is not a simple as it often seems. Someone else in this thread said how usefull say a window INI file decoder class is for reuse.
I am writing a python script to draw plots. My previous version used exactly such a decoder (one which comes with python). Eventually the language grew beyond what INI files can do, so I wrote my own.
On the other hand, the one thing which has NOT changed, is that my program communicates whith GNUPLOT through a pipe.
Compared with OO-stlye compenentry, pipes are clunky and difficult. Nonetheless they tend more usefull, due to their simplicity.
Not that I dissagree with OOP gadgetry. That INI file decoder made my scratch version a whole lot easier to write. I'm just saying that Miguel is wrong, UNIX already allows reuse in a far more significant way than Bonobo ever will. Witness the average size of applications in a windows environment.
In Australia the main purpose has been to keep the media moghuls happy. A few other lobby groups also manage to further muck up the policy from time to time. In good times the do-gooders and media-moghuls cancel each other out.
If the article is concentrating on web pads it has missed the point. The wonderful thing about mu-C's is that you can replace a whole lot of IC's with just one IC. The task you are trying to do can often be very simple, and you competing muli-IC's can be very cheap. When is it going to be possible to put a real OS on a machine costing less than $2? These are the kind of machines which will be attracting mu-C's in the future.
They used to come with basic, but now there are better alternatives. (I guess Python is not the only one).
Also teachers will winge that programming is highly technical. I guess they are right, but the basics of programming give one a mental model of what is actually going on inside a computer. It seperates people who know what a computer is from those who don't, and eventually users from lusers.
Think about how much time people spend unproductively banging their metephorical heads against the computer. This is why I think 21st century kids should be taught a little programing.
Hmm, this is probably a bit late, but it needs to be said. DOC isn't going to be very important in a few years anyway, Microsoft are moving to XML based everything. Serialization of com services will be XML based rather binary based as they are today as well.ust don't complain when your documents are 100MB. Mine won't be. You're the one who will be using word.
Your TV probably has some little microcontroller inside, and this chipee will will have a small amount of EEPROM. 256, 512 bytes, someting like that. This is all the NVRAM they can get without adding extra chips, and no one wants to add extra chips to a design. If it worries you, then maybe OUM can be integrated onto MCU's, and replace eeprom. We could then have whole kilobytes!
I agree with the analasys above (though I too am no lawyer). Maybe contributory/vicarious copyright infringement, but still protected by fair use and other defenses. However, I don't see how it is fair use.
It is hardly a secret that a proggy is distributed under the GPL. If they didn't _volunteer_ this information, and then its Mattels own fucking fault for not checking up. I thought it was only Little Aussie Battlers with a dodgy left leg who could get away with no reading the fine print.
But the GPL doesn't actually assign the rights to the software. In fact it _disclaims_ them. Technically the right to modify/distribute etcetera is a _liberty_, the copy_right_ is what allows people to preven other's excersing that liberty in certain cases. The GPL is a statement (conditionally) relinquishing these rights.
The authors have not given anyone else the _rights_ to the software, only the _licsense_ to use/modify/distrubte it.
I've had about enough of this FTL==backwards in time buisness. BTW: sorry if this is a bit obscure for some, but its already long enough w/o explanations.
A particle moving "faster than light" moves along a SPACE-LIKE rather than TIME-LIKE line in 4-space. We all know what space like lines are, they are just what we usually call LINES. Now you can do a geometrical construction involving arrows alongs space-like lines which goes zigzaging back through time, but if someone could tell me what those lines really mean in terms of MOTION, i'll buy them a beer.
>I'm saying nothing at all with regard to the deCSS thang. Good, 'cause your comment seem irrelevant too it. They tried to prevent people "stealing" something they didn't own (I.e. the ability to decode DVDs), and they failed. They wanted to hold on to it by mere force of possession, and failed. That *is* their own bloody fault.
As for any comment about things outside the DVD realm, I'm not sure what you are talking about.
I agree with the other commenter that looking for protagonists is not very satisfying sport with Clarke. In 2001 I have to say HAL is NOT the protagonist, he might be the only fully developed character, but he is a sideshow. 2001 is about apes, humans and aliens. In this way Bowman and Moonwatcher are the only protagonists, even though Bowman neither is really a developed character.
As for you view of Childhoods end being about the Overlords, that is an good idea. Never really thought about it that way, but yes the book is a bit broader than I thought it was.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, most people might just want to know why they should give a shit that BE condensation has been observed at solid-state. Don't get me wrong, I think there is something fascinating in all this, just wish the summary would have pointed to that aspect instead of regurgitating the so-called claimes of a breakthrough.
It depends on what you find important, remember most physics is a lot less practical than most biology. In my view people are interested in BEC because it is one of the few systems in which lots of quantum particles sit around and interact strongly, and of those, it is probably the most experimentally accessible. As for BEC in solid state quasiparticles, time will tell and I can only speculate from a position of ignorance. On the one hand it might sacrifice what I called "expermantal accessiblilty", because you have to deal with all the muck inside real solids, on the other hand a high temperature condensate made of magnons seems a lot more practical than normal condensates. Maybe it is easy to interface it to electronic control and measurement, so you can create and probe all kinds of weird and wonderful quantum states. Don't be surised if someone comes up with a paper trying to plug this as the next big thing in Quantum Computation.
You are probably right, but ... Deveaud-Plédran happily dismisses both assertions. "BEC is forbidden only in two dimensions for an infinite system without disorder. We have a finite system with disorder, so standard BEC is allowed. And despite the quasiparticle nature and very short lifetime, we have shown that we are able to get a thermal equilibrium."
Well the bit about disorder is prossibly a triumph of hope over experience, but they are right about the finite system size. They say 2-d systems can't have phase coherence over infinite distances, but who cares as long as the coherence is as big as the device! Still, in practice people probably will care about picosecond lifetimes, with or without thermal equilibrium.
By the way "magenets" and "Enslisigh" were not put there on purpose, out of any sense of irony. They are there because I can't write sensible English. I might give Enslisigh a try though....
Nahh, all the magenets are there for their reasons. Even if one of the reasons was that someone was not thinking about writing sensible Enslsigh.
Carter: "Well how do *you* think it's done".
Oneil: "Magnets."
You intuation is right.
They cool thing about BEC is that it violates that intuition. Until B&E published, everyone thought that "much higher than zero kelvin" meant when that (in the appropriate units) the temperature (i.e. roughly the average energy per particle) had to be (much) less than the difference in energy between lowest state and any of the the others. If you think about this assumption, you will see that it nearly comes from
Bolzman's law (and if you don't know what Boltzman's law is, and are not a science or engineering student, you probably don't care).
Satyendranath (sp?) Bose came up with the bombshell that although Bolztman's law is right Bolztman's law operates differently for quantum particles. Some quantum particles (nowadays called Bosons) are more likely than expected to get into the same quantum state. They will do this wheneve the temperature is low enough
that their momentum uncertainty forces their position uncertainty to be at least as large as the typical distance between partciles (i.e their wavefunctions must "overlap" coherently, and again if you don't understand, you don't care).
So even ordinary BECs happen at relatively high temeratures. Unfortunately these temperatures are still in the nanokelvin range, at least for atoms under experimental conditions.
The bit about "solid state" was almost B.S.
Normal matter, including every BEC I have heard
of is made of atoms, which are quantum particles.
However solids, like every other kind of matter
(even BECs!) support excitations, which can
also be quantum particles (or quasi-particles).
It seems that they have made a BEC out
of the quasi particles in in a solid (which
is not itself a BEC).
Unfortunately I'm at home, so I can't read the actual articles.
The main thing I am wondering about is dimensionality. I've seen
lectures before where people have come up with pancake like-systems
that are *like* BECs at 1 Kelvin, but unfortunately you can't meet the
pedantic requirements for BEC in less than 3d.
But if these systems are 3d, then it seems reasonable. We are talking
about quasi-particles here. As one of these abstracts says, their
(effective) mass is much less than that of an atom, therefore for they
can have much higher energies than atoms of similar momentum. Because
BEC is all about getting (the uncertainty of) momentum * (uncertainty of)
position down below a magic number, it seems reasonable.
For the sake of Democracy in Australia I sure hope it is a committee of the parliament and it
includes all parties......
What has democracy got to do with it. This is
the Westminster system we are talking about.
Pisses me off no end too. What does it mean? In general you find it refering to any kind on
offensive or dubious behaviour. As if non-Australians had no problems which such things.
Does this mean that people who say "unaustralian" beleive aussies to be inherently superior to other peoples? Of course not, that would be racist, worse, it would be unaustralian.
>No combination of bio/nano/computing technology
>is ever going to be me for the simple reason >that it will have different boundaries from me,
>and our idea of self is shaped from these
>boundaries.
Last year I couldn't swim more than about 200m.
Now I can do at least five times as much without
difficulty, I don't actually know what my
boundary is now. Have I lost my self?
See subject. That is how we know the idea
comes from the computer industry.
That and reuse is not a simple as it often
seems. Someone else in this thread said
how usefull say a window INI file decoder
class is for reuse.
I am writing a python script to draw plots.
My previous version used exactly such a decoder
(one which comes with python). Eventually the
language grew beyond what INI files can do,
so I wrote my own.
On the other hand, the one thing which has NOT
changed, is that my program communicates whith
GNUPLOT through a pipe.
Compared with OO-stlye compenentry, pipes are
clunky and difficult. Nonetheless they tend
more usefull, due to their simplicity.
Not that I dissagree with OOP gadgetry.
That INI file decoder made my scratch version
a whole lot easier to write. I'm just saying
that Miguel is wrong, UNIX already allows
reuse in a far more significant way than
Bonobo ever will. Witness the average size
of applications in a windows environment.
In Australia the main purpose has been to
keep the media moghuls happy. A few other
lobby groups also manage to further muck
up the policy from time to time. In good times
the do-gooders and media-moghuls cancel
each other out.
If the article is concentrating on web pads it has missed the point. The wonderful thing about mu-C's is that you can replace a whole lot of IC's with just one IC. The task you are trying to do can often be very simple, and you competing muli-IC's can be very cheap. When is it going to be possible to put a real OS on a machine costing less than $2? These are the kind of machines which will be attracting mu-C's in the future.
They used to come with basic, but
now there are better alternatives. (I
guess Python is not the only one).
Also teachers will winge that programming
is highly technical. I guess they are
right, but the basics of programming give
one a mental model of what is actually
going on inside a computer. It seperates
people who know what a computer is from
those who don't, and eventually users from
lusers.
Think about how much time people spend
unproductively banging their metephorical
heads against the computer. This is why
I think 21st century kids should
be taught a little programing.
Hmm, this is probably a bit late, but it needs to be said. DOC isn't going to be very important in a few years anyway, Microsoft are moving to XML based everything. Serialization of com services will be XML based rather binary based as they are today as well.ust don't complain when your documents are 100MB. Mine won't be. You're the one who will be using word.
I misspelled .org on my way here today, and .rog TLD, Rob could
I thought "If they had a
take care of idiots like me" .
And when the page finally loaded, what did I
see up the top but a story about new TLDs.
It's a sign from God I tell you.
Your TV probably has some little microcontroller inside, and this chipee will will have a small amount of EEPROM. 256, 512 bytes, someting like that. This is all the NVRAM they can get without adding extra chips, and no one wants to add extra chips to a design. If it worries you, then maybe OUM can be integrated onto MCU's, and replace eeprom. We could then have whole kilobytes!
I agree with the analasys above (though I too am no lawyer). Maybe contributory/vicarious copyright infringement, but still protected by fair use and other defenses. However, I don't see how it is fair use.
It is hardly a secret that a proggy is
distributed under the GPL. If they didn't
_volunteer_ this information, and then its
Mattels own fucking fault for not checking
up. I thought it was only Little Aussie
Battlers with a dodgy left leg who could
get away with no reading the fine print.
But the GPL doesn't actually assign the rights
to the software. In fact it _disclaims_ them.
Technically the right to modify/distribute
etcetera is a _liberty_, the copy_right_ is
what allows people to preven other's excersing
that liberty in certain cases. The GPL is
a statement (conditionally) relinquishing
these rights.
The authors have not given anyone else the
_rights_ to the software, only the _licsense_
to use/modify/distrubte it.
I've had about enough of this FTL==backwards
in time buisness. BTW: sorry if this is a
bit obscure for some, but its already long enough
w/o explanations.
A particle moving "faster than light" moves
along a SPACE-LIKE rather than TIME-LIKE
line in 4-space. We all know what space
like lines are, they are just what we usually
call LINES. Now you can do a geometrical
construction involving arrows alongs space-like
lines which goes zigzaging back through
time, but if someone could tell me what
those lines really mean in terms of MOTION, i'll
buy them a beer.
>I'm saying nothing at all with regard to the deCSS thang.
Good, 'cause your comment seem irrelevant too
it. They tried to prevent people "stealing"
something they didn't own (I.e. the ability
to decode DVDs), and they failed. They
wanted to hold on to it by mere force
of possession, and failed. That *is* their
own bloody fault.
As for any comment about things outside the
DVD realm, I'm not sure what you are talking
about.
I agree with the other commenter that looking
for protagonists is not very satisfying sport
with Clarke. In 2001 I have to say HAL is NOT
the protagonist, he might be the only fully
developed character, but he is a sideshow. 2001
is about apes, humans and aliens. In this way
Bowman and Moonwatcher are the only protagonists,
even though Bowman neither is really a developed
character.
As for you view of Childhoods end being about the
Overlords, that is an good idea. Never really
thought about it that way, but yes the book
is a bit broader than I thought it was.