ugh...I mean the fact that GR isn't renormalizable seems to hint that the typical assumption that there is some super-dimensional theory like the strings-hypothesis flies in the face of the fact that we don't observe these extra dimensions...idk.
I'm sort of a minority, but i shutter when I hear the word graviton. Even if there is a TOE, it should be geometric just like GR, IMO. The fact that GR isn't renormalizable.
Not quite. There are some things still not quite understood...for example, there are exceptions in the periodic table that have not been solved by QM...
I'd do s/all/most on your post. Besides that, you're right.
Sorry but it isn't. I read the whole article, it's short.
I'm personally concerned about the quality of posts on this site, AC, that are becoming more and more political and click-bait than being of interest. Nonetheless, I am not and shouldn't be God to regulate the choice of submitters and editors...so if the crowd of nerds on slashdot moves in that direction, who am I to stop them?
I'd say it is the philosophical side of physics. Physics, sometimes more than the other sciences focuses on the big picture and hence, meaning of equations and less of plain facts, or at least that's what I gather from the pre-meds I tutor. It's not that meaning isn't important in biology or chemistry, it is just is that with so much information, going too deep into one topic can be a waste of time that misses the point. For physics, depending where you are on the experimental to theoretical spectrum, depth is the point, and thus, one can be philosophical about it (okay, so QED is infrared free, but why would that upset you? What does that mean? How can someone even talk about an electric field so close to, say, a point particle?)
Also, I think it is the sort of things physics talks about--the nature of space and time, the nature of systems in the quantum regimes (schrodinger's cat), it sounds very mystical. Furthermore, it isn't quite easy to understand and for some phenomena, like QM, there are few, everyday analogies one can make to understand it. So, perhaps this philosophical stuff mixed with the subject matter and served with a side of mystical sounding phenomena sort of attracts the cranks. The fact that quantum mechanics sounds counterintuitive and says (apparently) stuff like "existing and not existing" and "takes a stand only when you are observing" kind of resounds with some mystical cord in their hearts and makes them draw parrallels to eastern mysticism...only now, with science!
I've met some people who are sorta out there, but I usually try to bring them to seeing that a lot of the theories are not dreamnt by some thinker on a cot (that's reserved for mathematics: Kurt Godel), they are the result of real-life experiments: photoelectric effect, Michaelson-Morley...we aren't philosophers, we really are scientists.
Speaking of mathematics, I find mathematics mystifying; I mean, it is the study of thought itself, essentially. I think the reason that math doesn't attract cranks as much (save numerologists, squared-circles, etc) is because mathematics has no direct applications to real-life (ie., it isn't science), and thus, it misses that "nature" crap that physics attracts, although it does sometimes have the thinkers on cots. Therefore, your induced maps on cotangent bundles don't quite sell your books about the nature of time and how your ancient meditation techniques with egyptian oil will help you reach the cosmos (oil available at a low cost with the free coupon insert!). Now, if that bundle happens to be over a spacetime manifold...well, then, you are now somewhere that relates to the real-world (somewhat removed, however;) ), but now this is physics, not strictly math anymore.
May be someone just didn't tighten a fiber optic cable somewhere.
Why are some people so jumpy on the news of one experiement's measurement of a quanity that contradicts all earlier evidence? I'm not trying to be an asshole, but sorry, haven't we learned our lesson yet? I will concede that they have data dating to 2003, so we could have a real thing there and it is good to give them time to review their stuff. Still, apparently no other measurement has shown anything similar, or I'd assume that they'd have mentioned something in the article, granted they know about or even have read about other discrepancies in the literature on the size of the proton that are eerily familiar.
So, let's wait and see if anyone else can repeat it. If so, then God, are we fried.
Did you read the article you shared? The first sentence on the page:
The public's perception is that violence is increasing, but trends in violent crime reported to police since the early 1990s reveal a mixed story.
A little down in that paragraph:
Based on self-reported victimisation and reporting to police, it would seem increased reporting of assault is somewhat responsible for the rise in recorded assault rates against adult victims. However, victimisation survey data suggest there has been little change in rates of sexual assault, although reporting to police by women seems to have increased. Victimisation survey data also do not illuminate the most significant recorded increase in violent victimisation, against children, as they are collected less frequently and only apply to those aged at least over 15 years. The paper speculates that the rise could be due to better public understanding of child protection issues and increased reporting due to public awareness of what constitutes physical and sexual assault - especially within the family - but this requires further investigation to examine how many recorded violent crimes against children relate to current and/or past events and of the relationship to the offender.
Here's a nice quote:
Another factor for consideration is the change in weapon use. Since 1989-90, the proportion of homicides committed with a firearm has declined, while the proportion committed with a knife or a blunt instrument has increased. However, only the change in firearm-based homicides is significant
Although there is an increase of other weapon homicides and gun killings have decreased, only the latter is satistically significant. As any scientist should be, it is wise to not draw conclusions form the statistical outliers.
Reading these comments makes one think that this is a forum for the technophobic.
I don't know how many times I tell this to people, it just is a problem with medium. There is nothing great about the medium of a paper book. Where a e-book can easily be deleted, so a dead tree book can easily be torched in a flame. There is nothing magical about the old "interesting smelling" book that was mass produced on a printing press over one that had been copied by scribes merticulously for years (these probably smell much more interesting, mind you).
Most of this "quicker" crap is just relying on learned behavior. Honestly, I learned Quantum Field Theory from a pdf (Srednicki preprint) and General Relativity (Misner, et. al.) from a book (to Srednicki, I promise, I will buy the actual book someday!) With my study of both books, I found that I adapted different habits for both, to the point that it felt awkward reading Srednicki on my laptop screen instead of the lcd in my room because of the smaller screen. I could change the zoom to where they both have the same type size, it just felt awkward not seeing the whole page. Was there any need for such a tall view? No...I just had grown to be used to it.
I found similar issues with the other book too. A few days ago, I was running around testing coffee at various shops and I found it harsh to carry the massive Misner, et. al. around (the thing is like a telephone book, wonderful book though!) and it was embarrasing to whip it out, honestly--imagine a bunch of hipsters onlooking in horror as you take out that book and sip your coffee! I found that it was scanned on Google books, so the next time out, I just used that on my phone. Was it more awkward? You bet! Was the information any different (is an exterior derivative different on a phone screen versus a dead tree page)? No, but it did affect how I felt reading it in this new form.
Was it harder to find pages in Srednicki over Misner for me? No, for the latter, I used page tags; the former, I tended to remember page numbers or offsets from the start of chapter. Again, different habits for different media, and I understand both at the same level. In fact, I think I feel better with QFT over GR.
Look, nostalgia is nice, but that only affects you. I think the only reason that e-books are still faultering are implementation issues, such as DRM, improving (while needing improvement) reader programs/apps, and rendering issues. Imagine if they didn't print books in easy to read serif types: you can have so much nostalgia about it that you can bottle it and sell it to wanting amnesiatic, but that doesn't mean with time, you can't become more profficient with an easier to read typeface.
Slashdot is still alive, but it's slowly moving in that direction. We still have the tech stories, but the comment-baiting, political stories tend to get the most comments.
How about an interface instead of a abstract base class?
If two or more organizations feel they can do better if they pool resources together, why not make an alliance or a small partnership or such? If there is no real need for a meta-bureaucracy to handle the existing bureaucracy, why make it?
Why is this bad!? Less gubermient spending is good; I mean the large amount of gubermient subsidies always hurts the very sector they are trying to help! With China doing all this spending, surely their R&D will go down the drain (as it has), while with the US having less gubermient spending than them, the extra push from the invisible hand will bring us back to the forefront of innovation.
I have to reply to your comment even though I promised myself to stay out of this thread.
Don't become too bitter and try to understand that not everyone is simply trying to win arguments, although some are. Everyone is enraged as you are at this tragedy. However, people have colored perceptions and that affect how they will respond to what just happened. For example, if you see my posts, I'm more left than right, and my first reaction to this afternoon was, "This is terrible!" and after my emotions were riled, my next gut feeling was, "enough is enough! how can anyone justify these lax gun laws anymore?..."
However, a right-leaning person might see this and their first reaction is "This is terrible!" and after their emotions are riled, their gut feeling would be, "enough is enough! why weren't any of the adult allowed to bear arms, they could have stopped this asshole!..."
My first though wasn't, "this will score me points on slashdot!" and I'm sure no libertarian or rightie thought, "shit, now I have to make arguments on slashdot." We're all fucking mad and we're all just being emotional in our own way. At the end of the day, this didn't need to happen, and we all agree on that.
So, I'm working on a cutesy undergraduate project with a physicist who works at the LHC (he is involved in a group searching for supersymmetry, so his primary work isn't the Higgs, but yeah). The project is a prototype for a new photo-detector.
In any case, I finally got the data acquisition working just a few days ago, (it uses a maple, a sort of a faster arduino. I just use the usb serial thingy, and 'cat' and file redirection, lol) so I ran and took some data counting hits from cosmic rays and with some easy python scripting to parse the output, I had a nice rough estimate of cosmic ray flux over my detector. I did a quick wiki search, and found a rate that was within the order of my result, so I typed up a mini report and emailed him my quick and dirty results while noting they were just that, quick and dirty. I was actually kind of proud of myself.
But, then he sent back this email, if I may quote him:
Thanks for the update. The approach of checking whether the coincident rate makes sense is a good step, but you need more information. Imagine, for example, that no one had every measured this before. Then, instead of checking if your answer is compatible with Wikipedia, we would be preparing to publish the measurement, and staking our reputation on its validity. In that case, we'd want to do a variety of things to be convinced that it is correct. I can imagine a couple of things to do[...]
And he listed a number of things try so I can be really sure of my measurements.
Think about this, the ATLAS guys could have announced the possibility of two peaks in their data and blown our frickin heads off into outer space after having already blown them off our shoulders with the Higgs, but they didn't because it wasn't a sure bet, as TFAs say...it could be background, it could be statistical fluctuations... In any case, there is something very wise about physicists and scientists in general who are often very cautious and untrusting about their measurements and are more than willing for you to double check their measurements and prove them wrong. Well, it could just be for reputation's sake. Whatever the motivation, I think this is one of the strengths of the scientific method and thus, one of the reasons for its success: we aren't quick to publishing until it is just right, and therefore, perhaps our best approximation of the "truth" we can muster.
This is not to take away from the times when certain people forget to tighten their fiber optic cables...but actually, that works wonderfully for my point...I sometimes feel impatient when I hear, "we're not quite sure yet" or,"it's only preliminary" from some of these reports and I imagine some of you might too. Nonetheless, science isn't really star trek where you make a discovery, get locked into a phaser fight with it, and make peace in an hour time frame. It is a slow, careful process that at the end, as we see, yields good results in technology and the advances we have today. Therefore, it's worth the wait. So, have some patience, my reputation is on the line.
While the markings don't necessarily mean that Apple is in the midst of transferring its entire assembly operation from China to the U.S., it does indicate that at least a few of the new iMacs were substantially assembled domestically. Besides built-to-order machines, the 21.5-inch iMacs are some of the first known examples of an Apple computer being assembled in the U.S., according to Fortune.
Slashdot Mirror
ugh...I mean the fact that GR isn't renormalizable seems to hint that the typical assumption that there is some super-dimensional theory like the strings-hypothesis flies in the face of the fact that we don't observe these extra dimensions...idk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory_in_curved_spacetime
I'm sort of a minority, but i shutter when I hear the word graviton. Even if there is a TOE, it should be geometric just like GR, IMO. The fact that GR isn't renormalizable.
Not quite. There are some things still not quite understood...for example, there are exceptions in the periodic table that have not been solved by QM...
I'd do s/all/most on your post. Besides that, you're right.
Sorry but it isn't. I read the whole article, it's short.
I'm personally concerned about the quality of posts on this site, AC, that are becoming more and more political and click-bait than being of interest. Nonetheless, I am not and shouldn't be God to regulate the choice of submitters and editors...so if the crowd of nerds on slashdot moves in that direction, who am I to stop them?
I guess, this matters? :/
I'd say it is the philosophical side of physics. Physics, sometimes more than the other sciences focuses on the big picture and hence, meaning of equations and less of plain facts, or at least that's what I gather from the pre-meds I tutor. It's not that meaning isn't important in biology or chemistry, it is just is that with so much information, going too deep into one topic can be a waste of time that misses the point. For physics, depending where you are on the experimental to theoretical spectrum, depth is the point, and thus, one can be philosophical about it (okay, so QED is infrared free, but why would that upset you? What does that mean? How can someone even talk about an electric field so close to, say, a point particle?)
Also, I think it is the sort of things physics talks about--the nature of space and time, the nature of systems in the quantum regimes (schrodinger's cat), it sounds very mystical. Furthermore, it isn't quite easy to understand and for some phenomena, like QM, there are few, everyday analogies one can make to understand it.
So, perhaps this philosophical stuff mixed with the subject matter and served with a side of mystical sounding phenomena sort of attracts the cranks. The fact that quantum mechanics sounds counterintuitive and says (apparently) stuff like "existing and not existing" and "takes a stand only when you are observing" kind of resounds with some mystical cord in their hearts and makes them draw parrallels to eastern mysticism...only now, with science!
I've met some people who are sorta out there, but I usually try to bring them to seeing that a lot of the theories are not dreamnt by some thinker on a cot (that's reserved for mathematics: Kurt Godel), they are the result of real-life experiments: photoelectric effect, Michaelson-Morley...we aren't philosophers, we really are scientists.
Speaking of mathematics, I find mathematics mystifying; I mean, it is the study of thought itself, essentially. I think the reason that math doesn't attract cranks as much (save numerologists, squared-circles, etc) is because mathematics has no direct applications to real-life (ie., it isn't science), and thus, it misses that "nature" crap that physics attracts, although it does sometimes have the thinkers on cots. Therefore, your induced maps on cotangent bundles don't quite sell your books about the nature of time and how your ancient meditation techniques with egyptian oil will help you reach the cosmos (oil available at a low cost with the free coupon insert!). Now, if that bundle happens to be over a spacetime manifold...well, then, you are now somewhere that relates to the real-world (somewhat removed, however ;) ), but now this is physics, not strictly math anymore.
May be someone just didn't tighten a fiber optic cable somewhere.
Why are some people so jumpy on the news of one experiement's measurement of a quanity that contradicts all earlier evidence? I'm not trying to be an asshole, but sorry, haven't we learned our lesson yet? I will concede that they have data dating to 2003, so we could have a real thing there and it is good to give them time to review their stuff. Still, apparently no other measurement has shown anything similar, or I'd assume that they'd have mentioned something in the article, granted they know about or even have read about other discrepancies in the literature on the size of the proton that are eerily familiar.
So, let's wait and see if anyone else can repeat it. If so, then God, are we fried.
Did you read the article you shared?
The first sentence on the page:
The public's perception is that violence is increasing, but trends in violent crime reported to police since the early 1990s reveal a mixed story.
A little down in that paragraph:
Based on self-reported victimisation and reporting to police, it would seem increased reporting of assault is somewhat responsible for the rise in recorded assault rates against adult victims. However, victimisation survey data suggest there has been little change in rates of sexual assault, although reporting to police by women seems to have increased. Victimisation survey data also do not illuminate the most significant recorded increase in violent victimisation, against children, as they are collected less frequently and only apply to those aged at least over 15 years. The paper speculates that the rise could be due to better public understanding of child protection issues and increased reporting due to public awareness of what constitutes physical and sexual assault - especially within the family - but this requires further investigation to examine how many recorded violent crimes against children relate to current and/or past events and of the relationship to the offender.
Here's a nice quote:
Another factor for consideration is the change in weapon use. Since 1989-90, the proportion of homicides committed with a firearm has declined, while the proportion committed with a knife or a blunt instrument has increased. However, only the change in firearm-based homicides is significant
Although there is an increase of other weapon homicides and gun killings have decreased, only the latter is satistically significant. As any scientist should be, it is wise to not draw conclusions form the statistical outliers.
May be it isn't okay which ever foot it is on.
May be the so-called "representatives" in the government should be representing the people, and not special interests.
Reading these comments makes one think that this is a forum for the technophobic.
I don't know how many times I tell this to people, it just is a problem with medium. There is nothing great about the medium of a paper book. Where a e-book can easily be deleted, so a dead tree book can easily be torched in a flame. There is nothing magical about the old "interesting smelling" book that was mass produced on a printing press over one that had been copied by scribes merticulously for years (these probably smell much more interesting, mind you).
Most of this "quicker" crap is just relying on learned behavior. Honestly, I learned Quantum Field Theory from a pdf (Srednicki preprint) and General Relativity (Misner, et. al.) from a book (to Srednicki, I promise, I will buy the actual book someday!) With my study of both books, I found that I adapted different habits for both, to the point that it felt awkward reading Srednicki on my laptop screen instead of the lcd in my room because of the smaller screen. I could change the zoom to where they both have the same type size, it just felt awkward not seeing the whole page. Was there any need for such a tall view? No...I just had grown to be used to it.
I found similar issues with the other book too. A few days ago, I was running around testing coffee at various shops and I found it harsh to carry the massive Misner, et. al. around (the thing is like a telephone book, wonderful book though!) and it was embarrasing to whip it out, honestly--imagine a bunch of hipsters onlooking in horror as you take out that book and sip your coffee! I found that it was scanned on Google books, so the next time out, I just used that on my phone. Was it more awkward? You bet! Was the information any different (is an exterior derivative different on a phone screen versus a dead tree page)? No, but it did affect how I felt reading it in this new form.
Was it harder to find pages in Srednicki over Misner for me? No, for the latter, I used page tags; the former, I tended to remember page numbers or offsets from the start of chapter. Again, different habits for different media, and I understand both at the same level. In fact, I think I feel better with QFT over GR.
Look, nostalgia is nice, but that only affects you. I think the only reason that e-books are still faultering are implementation issues, such as DRM, improving (while needing improvement) reader programs/apps, and rendering issues. Imagine if they didn't print books in easy to read serif types: you can have so much nostalgia about it that you can bottle it and sell it to wanting amnesiatic, but that doesn't mean with time, you can't become more profficient with an easier to read typeface.
Slashdot is still alive, but it's slowly moving in that direction. We still have the tech stories, but the comment-baiting, political stories tend to get the most comments.
s/a abstract/an abstract/
slashdot needs an edit button.
How about an interface instead of a abstract base class?
If two or more organizations feel they can do better if they pool resources together, why not make an alliance or a small partnership or such? If there is no real need for a meta-bureaucracy to handle the existing bureaucracy, why make it?
Why is this bad!? Less gubermient spending is good; I mean the large amount of gubermient subsidies always hurts the very sector they are trying to help! With China doing all this spending, surely their R&D will go down the drain (as it has), while with the US having less gubermient spending than them, the extra push from the invisible hand will bring us back to the forefront of innovation.
If the newspaper published a map of all black gun owners, then you'd have a true analogy.
IANAL, but IIRC, if one can prove racist intent, the sentence can be made more severe.
But then you'd say he's abusing executive power and not letting congress legalize it as the constitution says.
I know you've already decided this guy is evil no matter what he does, but at least be happy when he gets things sort of right.
I literally almost stopped breathing due to laughter. 1000 internets to you sir.
I have to reply to your comment even though I promised myself to stay out of this thread.
Don't become too bitter and try to understand that not everyone is simply trying to win arguments, although some are. Everyone is enraged as you are at this tragedy. However, people have colored perceptions and that affect how they will respond to what just happened. For example, if you see my posts, I'm more left than right, and my first reaction to this afternoon was, "This is terrible!" and after my emotions were riled, my next gut feeling was, "enough is enough! how can anyone justify these lax gun laws anymore?..."
However, a right-leaning person might see this and their first reaction is "This is terrible!" and after their emotions are riled, their gut feeling would be, "enough is enough! why weren't any of the adult allowed to bear arms, they could have stopped this asshole!..."
My first though wasn't, "this will score me points on slashdot!" and I'm sure no libertarian or rightie thought, "shit, now I have to make arguments on slashdot." We're all fucking mad and we're all just being emotional in our own way. At the end of the day, this didn't need to happen, and we all agree on that.
So, I'm working on a cutesy undergraduate project with a physicist who works at the LHC (he is involved in a group searching for supersymmetry, so his primary work isn't the Higgs, but yeah). The project is a prototype for a new photo-detector.
In any case, I finally got the data acquisition working just a few days ago, (it uses a maple, a sort of a faster arduino. I just use the usb serial thingy, and 'cat' and file redirection, lol) so I ran and took some data counting hits from cosmic rays and with some easy python scripting to parse the output, I had a nice rough estimate of cosmic ray flux over my detector. I did a quick wiki search, and found a rate that was within the order of my result, so I typed up a mini report and emailed him my quick and dirty results while noting they were just that, quick and dirty. I was actually kind of proud of myself.
But, then he sent back this email, if I may quote him:
Thanks for the update. The approach of checking whether the coincident rate makes sense is a good step, but you need more information. Imagine, for example, that no one had every measured this before. Then, instead of checking if your answer is compatible with Wikipedia, we would be preparing to publish the measurement, and staking our reputation on its validity. In that case, we'd want to do a variety of things to be convinced that it is correct. I can imagine a couple of things to do[...]
And he listed a number of things try so I can be really sure of my measurements.
Think about this, the ATLAS guys could have announced the possibility of two peaks in their data and blown our frickin heads off into outer space after having already blown them off our shoulders with the Higgs, but they didn't because it wasn't a sure bet, as TFAs say...it could be background, it could be statistical fluctuations... In any case, there is something very wise about physicists and scientists in general who are often very cautious and untrusting about their measurements and are more than willing for you to double check their measurements and prove them wrong. Well, it could just be for reputation's sake. Whatever the motivation, I think this is one of the strengths of the scientific method and thus, one of the reasons for its success: we aren't quick to publishing until it is just right, and therefore, perhaps our best approximation of the "truth" we can muster.
This is not to take away from the times when certain people forget to tighten their fiber optic cables...but actually, that works wonderfully for my point...I sometimes feel impatient when I hear, "we're not quite sure yet" or ,"it's only preliminary" from some of these reports and I imagine some of you might too. Nonetheless, science isn't really star trek where you make a discovery, get locked into a phaser fight with it, and make peace in an hour time frame. It is a slow, careful process that at the end, as we see, yields good results in technology and the advances we have today. Therefore, it's worth the wait. So, have some patience, my reputation is on the line.
Damn slashdot, cool facts in almost every thread.
Except the political ones, of course.
While the markings don't necessarily mean that Apple is in the midst of transferring its entire assembly operation from China to the U.S., it does indicate that at least a few of the new iMacs were substantially assembled domestically. Besides built-to-order machines, the 21.5-inch iMacs are some of the first known examples of an Apple computer being assembled in the U.S., according to Fortune.
From the linked article:
What's odd about Gong's iMac is that it was a stock, off-the-shelf, entry-level model, and not in any way made-to-order.
s/ere /ere are/
749,894 are part of the government pension systems (per the article).
There 8,133,370 within voting age. Well, about a little under 10%. I guess it's plausible.
lmfao