"But if gravity is weak because gravitons are "leaking" out into other dimensions, then it makes you wonder why it wouldn't also leak in as well, which is the point he is getting at."
One idea is that the inverse square law is incorrect at great distances; look at the research of Georgi Dvali, for example.
I think of this as being like a Brownian bridge (= a Brownian motion which starts and ends at specified locations) but I could be wrong.
You can call this string theory or M-theory if you like. The claims of the grandparent post are no more or less believable than mine (or any one else's claims) unless they provide (links to good) evidence.
The assumption that "dark matter" exists is a common one based on (some of) the observations of the universe. Dark matter does not explain the increased rate of expansion of the universe at great distances. This requires another assumption - "dark energy" (or a positive "cosmological constant").
There are
versions of M-theory which do not require one or both of these.
There is also a theory, as yet
unpublished (since it upsets physics journal editors), which eliminates the "clock hypothesis" and accounts for inflation and accelerated expansion. (One has to be careful to take each new (and old) theory in physics with a big grain of salt.)
Just as the biological community "sold" the human genome project as THE ANSWER (one gene = one protein) and is trying to sell the protein folding problem as the NEW ANSWER (and it is an important problem), the (majority of) the (astro)physics community is trying to sell "dark" (matter or energy). "Dark" may well exist. I believe that it is important to allow a variety of views in the physics community to be heard (i.e. published) and let scientists design experiments to test various hypotheses. The "popular" theory may (or may not) correspond to observations.
This sounds like the argument "Well, our tires do tend to blow-out at high speeds but why should we be held responsible? The EULA which comes with our tires specifically says that we are not liable for any damages and you agreed to our EULA by using our tires."
"What would *you* do to fix Windows?"
Delete it? Open source it but keep the "humor rights" to the source code?
Hire virus writers to make Windows a "big league" virus? Make M$ employees rewrite it in APL (one LONG line of code)?
Presidents often decide not to spend certain funds. The absence of a line item veto does nor mean that all appropriated funds are spent.
A google search gave me an interesting site
with the following comments:
"The Bush administration was directly responsible for the 9/11 security failure, one of the greatest and most inexcusable in U.S. history. The Administration had been warned by the outgoing Clinton team of the al Qaeda threat and essentially ignored that warning in its eight months in office before 9/11. The Administration failed to take any action based on a host of subsequent warning signals, including information on the flight training of suspicious individuals and explicit advisories of a threatened "spectacular" terrorist action provided by the intelligence agencies of half-a-dozen allied countries. Bush's August 6, 2001 intelligence briefing included an item, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," which noted the "FBI judgment about pattern of activity consistent with preparation for hijackings and other types of attack." The Bush administration did nothing in response to these warnings in the way of checking out threatening "patterns of activity" like flight training or trying to strengthen airport security. On September 10, 2001, Attorney-General John Ashcroft submitted a Justice Department budget that reduced by $58 million FBI requests that would have provided for 149 counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts, and 54 translators; and he proposed a $65 million cut for state and local governments for counterterrorism supplies, including radios and decontamination equipment. Ashcroft's priorities did not include terrorism; they featured "securing the rights of victims of crimes," immigration control, dealing with drug trafficking, and the threat of prostitutes in Louisiana."
(I have no information about this site. However, the claim here - "On September 10, 2001, Attorney-General John Ashcroft submitted a Justice Department budget that reduced by $58 million..." is either true or false. If it is true, then the intent of the Bush administration was to reduce resources to use against terrorism.)
"Posts with "go ahead mod me down" are posturing. If you really want it modded down, say something good about Microsoft." ... something good about Microsoft ?? I know: "Microsoft does not make cars!" This is very good; if I owned a car made by Microsoft, I would probably be dead (from an accident) or broken down in Nevada (=dead).
I was at a Max Planck Institute in Germany for two months last summer. Our computers were from Sun and, did they suck! I hate CDE!
I went to Linux Tag in Karlsruhe (2003) and talked with some of the Sun employees at their booth. They were mostly clueless. Most of them had never heard of gnome (and CDE seemed like a foreign idea). One guy knew something about gnome but had no idea when it would be available on Sun's in Germany.
By the way, why is it that you can say (in German) "How warm is it?" and people will understand you but if you say (in German) "How hot is it?" they just look at you like you are crazy?
Bush based his "reform" of education on his "success" in Texas. Houston schools did extremely well using Bush's plan (and never cheated even once).
"No child left behind" is a huge mess and a public joke. There may have been a time when Republicans cared about the public at large. That time is past. The future for Republicans is "Arnold", anti-abortion, corporate greed, no public resources, etc. I think it will soon be illegal to be a moderate Republican; the ones I know are very upset with Bush.
If your comment had any validity, then W (President W) would not have run up such a huge budget deficit by supporting "any" tax cut in sight and "any" military spending plan proposed. (Perhaps a slight overstatement.) There was a time when "conservative" meant "leave people alone, be fiscally responsible, maintain a strong economy and defense, etc". Now "conservative" means "oppose abortion, eliminate taxes so that the next President & Congress will not have any resources, treat people like criminals (e.g. Patriot act & libraries), etc".
I do not know what a "total partison" is. If you are referring to me, then you should know that, although I am a Democrat, I have worked as a volunteer for more Republican (state) candidates than Democratic candidates over the years; I support the individual, independent of their party. (I might support John McCain, for example, because I believe he is honest, smart and open minded.)
The things I have said about Bush, Clinton, etc. are MY opinion of the facts.
Clinton lied (under oath) about his sexual activities; Bush lied about WMD and people in his administration (e.g. Cheney) are attacking people like Clark rather than answering the questions being posed. Some of these things are objective facts (e.g. Cheney's activity). Some of these may have to be left to the judgment of the public and of history (e.g. WMD).
I said that I believe you were lying because of the nature of your reply. You seemed to suggest that you are interested in the truth ("Bush was wrong about WMD, I think he lied about it") and yet you attacked Clark in your next post;
Clark may well be a rotten scumbag but 9/11 did occur and he raises important questions to which, I believe, a person interested in the truth would want answers. (I suspect you participated in debate in the past and know the "tricks.") You seem to want your views to be accepted because you do not plan to vote for Bush ("BTW what part of Im not going to vote for bush because I suspect he lied did you not get??"). It looks very strange (i.e. insincere) to criticize Bush and attempt to segue into an attack on Kerry ("but I sure wont vote for the most liberal man in the senate (kerry) either who averages more than 20 votes for a tax increase per year for 16 years! so I guess Im going third party this year.."). You seem to have an agenda (and, it appears, agenda=FUD.)
I do not see any mention of Clinton in the post by demachina. This post states:
"Kind of standard procedure for the Bush administration. Lie, deceive and when caught accuse your critics of being terrorists, unpatriotic, lairs, etc."
I do not care how you plan to vote (and I think you are lying and spreading political FUD). You are doing the same thing as the Republicans; attack the messenger and ignore the message. Clark has raised serious questions which need to be answered. Clinton had many flaws and probably shares some blame for the continued existence of al-Qaida. This does not mean Bush gets a free ride. I believe history will show that he "screwed up" very badly and that demachina's comment above is correct.
If you want to determine who to blame for the idiot bin Laden, you might start with Carter and include Reagan, (grownup) Bush, Clinton and (baby) Bush. Perhaps Nixon and Ford need to be considered.
Do you remember how everyone said Wag the Dog when Clinton tried to do something about al-Qaida and Usama bin Laden? Are you proud that so much time and effort went into investigating Clinton's sex life and his lies about sex?
Are you proud of the great way Bush protected us from terrorist attacks?
Actually, U. Texas (Austin), Rice, Texas A&M, and others are good. I am not from Texas and have never lived there but it is foolish to ignore the good qualities of any state (even Arkansas and Mississippi).
I recall "stage 2" air polution warnings (and the ability to see a building up to an entire block away). Granted this was about 15 years ago in Phoenix. My youngest brother just moved away from the Phoenix area. (Back to California for all of us ??).
I plan to spend my sabbatical in Australia next fall. At home, I use a cable modem which costs (US)$30-$40 (I forget), has no bandwidth limitation (to the best of my knowledge) and is fairly fast (sometimes faster than the university's Internet2 connection, although the "IT tsars" on campus are probably causing problems). What should I expect (wrt Internet) at a university like ANU?
"If you are not a liberal at 20 you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 40 you have no brain."
Considering the current US government budget deficits, you have no brain if you are a "Bush conservative" or if you support "Bush conservatives."
(Remember when Greenspan said we would have such a large budget surplus that we would not be able to use or invest it?... Right.)
In high school, my cross country/track coach was a math teacher. As a coach, he was great (not like a football coach but just kind of "crazy" (in a fun way)) but I never had a math class from him and cannot say if he was good or bad. In K-12, my best math teacher was my ninth grade algebra teacher. He had been a wrestler (Olympic ?) in eastern europe and he was "tough"; he started my interest in math. (I found out later from my folks that he followed my academic career and, for example, attended some event when I placed first in a local/regional math event; I did not realize this until years later.)
In college (at university for those in the UK), I had a great advisor; his PhD was from UC Berkeley and his area was mathematical logic (and he works at Sun Microsystems now, I believe).
Anyway, math is much easier than almost any other discipline. Compare math with english; how many "subjective" term papers did you write in math? (Who was "better", Po or Joyce? Why will Science Fiction never be considered serious literature? Explain lines 3916-3919 in Kaufmann's version of Faust whose words, in translation, begin "How queer..."; please write your reply in German and provide an English translation.) IT people need math. Why not learn to love it?
It turns out that Singer is my "PhD grandfather"; he was my PhD advisor's PhD advisor. (He is the "PhD grandfather" of many matheticians.) The Atiyah-Singer index theorem is a tremendous accomplishment and this prize is a good way to recognize the importance of their theorem.
Some of the comments here bring to mind a complaint I have, even if these comments are funny (e.g. "Now all they have to do is derive a theorem that can solve the conundrum that is, how to share the trophy between them equally each week which as you all know contains a number which, wait for it.. is not divisable by two without remainder!").
A person (friend) earned a MS in math from us and, after teaching for a few years, applied for a job in IT in (approximately) 1997. At the job interview, people gave him a very hard time about knowing math and having a masters in math. When they gave him programming tasks, they found out that he was an excellent programmer (and they hired him). (After some time, he left and now heads the IT department for a moderately large legal firm.)
This is just one example which makes me think many programmers (and IT people in general) are afraid of math. When you consider that Don Knuth's PhD is in mathematics and the contributions of mathematicians like Gene Golub, it would seem to be difficult to justify the negative feelings toward mathematics which sometimes occurs in IT. Can you explain this to me?
I completely agree with your comment
'saying "it will never happen to me/us!" is bad policy.'
The previous poster's comments, however, seemed to imply that there is an immediate risk.
"This could just as easily have been us. From my root logs I patched my servers for the OpenSSL vulnerability on Sunday 21st, which was four days after it had been announced [us-cert.gov]. If the Witty worm had attacked OpenSSL, it would have got me. I suspect it would get most of us."
Do you know of an "actual" (i.e. spread automatically and widely in a short period of time and take over or cause damage) Linux virus or worm? Most of the security problems I recall are things which might upgrade a local user to root (so an attacker needs some privileges first in the unusual case that the security problem can even be exploited), DOS attacks, etc. I do not keep careful track of theoretical Linux security problems and I may be missing something here. Am I?
I do not think we have serious disagreements but this is an interesting question.
Before going on with this, I am happy to note that my "PhD grandfather" just received the Abel prize.
Anyway, we can use systems of ODEs or PDEs to model populations and evolution or we can use stochastic process models (or other things). In some of these models, stable (local) equilibria may not exist and more intertesting things can happen. Do we have data on what actually happens in "nature"? My research involves PDEs and systems of PDEs but applications to biological systems is of great interest.
Slashdot Mirror
"But if gravity is weak because gravitons are "leaking" out into other dimensions, then it makes you wonder why it wouldn't also leak in as well, which is the point he is getting at."
One idea is that the inverse square law is incorrect at great distances; look at the research of Georgi Dvali, for example. I think of this as being like a Brownian bridge (= a Brownian motion which starts and ends at specified locations) but I could be wrong.
You can call this string theory or M-theory if you like. The claims of the grandparent post are no more or less believable than mine (or any one else's claims) unless they provide (links to good) evidence.
The assumption that "dark matter" exists is a common one based on (some of) the observations of the universe. Dark matter does not explain the increased rate of expansion of the universe at great distances. This requires another assumption - "dark energy" (or a positive "cosmological constant").
There are versions of M-theory which do not require one or both of these. There is also a theory, as yet unpublished (since it upsets physics journal editors), which eliminates the "clock hypothesis" and accounts for inflation and accelerated expansion. (One has to be careful to take each new (and old) theory in physics with a big grain of salt.)
Just as the biological community "sold" the human genome project as THE ANSWER (one gene = one protein) and is trying to sell the protein folding problem as the NEW ANSWER (and it is an important problem), the (majority of) the (astro)physics community is trying to sell "dark" (matter or energy). "Dark" may well exist. I believe that it is important to allow a variety of views in the physics community to be heard (i.e. published) and let scientists design experiments to test various hypotheses. The "popular" theory may (or may not) correspond to observations.
This sounds like the argument "Well, our tires do tend to blow-out at high speeds but why should we be held responsible? The EULA which comes with our tires specifically says that we are not liable for any damages and you agreed to our EULA by using our tires."
"What would *you* do to fix Windows?"
Delete it? Open source it but keep the "humor rights" to the source code? Hire virus writers to make Windows a "big league" virus? Make M$ employees rewrite it in APL (one LONG line of code)?
Presidents often decide not to spend certain funds. The absence of a line item veto does nor mean that all appropriated funds are spent.
..." is either true or false. If it is true, then the intent of the Bush administration was to reduce resources to use against terrorism.)
A google search gave me an interesting site with the following comments:
"The Bush administration was directly responsible for the 9/11 security failure, one of the greatest and most inexcusable in U.S. history. The Administration had been warned by the outgoing Clinton team of the al Qaeda threat and essentially ignored that warning in its eight months in office before 9/11. The Administration failed to take any action based on a host of subsequent warning signals, including information on the flight training of suspicious individuals and explicit advisories of a threatened "spectacular" terrorist action provided by the intelligence agencies of half-a-dozen allied countries. Bush's August 6, 2001 intelligence briefing included an item, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," which noted the "FBI judgment about pattern of activity consistent with preparation for hijackings and other types of attack." The Bush administration did nothing in response to these warnings in the way of checking out threatening "patterns of activity" like flight training or trying to strengthen airport security. On September 10, 2001, Attorney-General John Ashcroft submitted a Justice Department budget that reduced by $58 million FBI requests that would have provided for 149 counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts, and 54 translators; and he proposed a $65 million cut for state and local governments for counterterrorism supplies, including radios and decontamination equipment. Ashcroft's priorities did not include terrorism; they featured "securing the rights of victims of crimes," immigration control, dealing with drug trafficking, and the threat of prostitutes in Louisiana."
(I have no information about this site. However, the claim here - "On September 10, 2001, Attorney-General John Ashcroft submitted a Justice Department budget that reduced by $58 million
I talked with NSA recruiters at the AMS meeting in Phoenix in January.
"Posts with "go ahead mod me down" are posturing. If you really want it modded down, say something good about Microsoft."
... something good about Microsoft ?? I know: "Microsoft does not make cars!" This is very good; if I owned a car made by Microsoft, I would probably be dead (from an accident) or broken down in Nevada (=dead).
I was at a Max Planck Institute in Germany for two months last summer. Our computers were from Sun and, did they suck! I hate CDE!
I went to Linux Tag in Karlsruhe (2003) and talked with some of the Sun employees at their booth. They were mostly clueless. Most of them had never heard of gnome (and CDE seemed like a foreign idea). One guy knew something about gnome but had no idea when it would be available on Sun's in Germany.
By the way, why is it that you can say (in German) "How warm is it?" and people will understand you but if you say (in German) "How hot is it?" they just look at you like you are crazy?
Bush based his "reform" of education on his "success" in Texas. Houston schools did extremely well using Bush's plan (and never cheated even once).
"No child left behind" is a huge mess and a public joke. There may have been a time when Republicans cared about the public at large. That time is past. The future for Republicans is "Arnold", anti-abortion, corporate greed, no public resources, etc. I think it will soon be illegal to be a moderate Republican; the ones I know are very upset with Bush.
If your comment had any validity, then W (President W) would not have run up such a huge budget deficit by supporting "any" tax cut in sight and "any" military spending plan proposed. (Perhaps a slight overstatement.) There was a time when "conservative" meant "leave people alone, be fiscally responsible, maintain a strong economy and defense, etc". Now "conservative" means "oppose abortion, eliminate taxes so that the next President & Congress will not have any resources, treat people like criminals (e.g. Patriot act & libraries), etc".
I do not know what a "total partison" is. If you are referring to me, then you should know that, although I am a Democrat, I have worked as a volunteer for more Republican (state) candidates than Democratic candidates over the years; I support the individual, independent of their party. (I might support John McCain, for example, because I believe he is honest, smart and open minded.) The things I have said about Bush, Clinton, etc. are MY opinion of the facts. Clinton lied (under oath) about his sexual activities; Bush lied about WMD and people in his administration (e.g. Cheney) are attacking people like Clark rather than answering the questions being posed. Some of these things are objective facts (e.g. Cheney's activity). Some of these may have to be left to the judgment of the public and of history (e.g. WMD).
I said that I believe you were lying because of the nature of your reply. You seemed to suggest that you are interested in the truth ("Bush was wrong about WMD, I think he lied about it") and yet you attacked Clark in your next post; Clark may well be a rotten scumbag but 9/11 did occur and he raises important questions to which, I believe, a person interested in the truth would want answers. (I suspect you participated in debate in the past and know the "tricks.") You seem to want your views to be accepted because you do not plan to vote for Bush ("BTW what part of Im not going to vote for bush because I suspect he lied did you not get??"). It looks very strange (i.e. insincere) to criticize Bush and attempt to segue into an attack on Kerry ("but I sure wont vote for the most liberal man in the senate (kerry) either who averages more than 20 votes for a tax increase per year for 16 years! so I guess Im going third party this year.."). You seem to have an agenda (and, it appears, agenda=FUD.)
I do not see any mention of Clinton in the post by demachina. This post states:
"Kind of standard procedure for the Bush administration. Lie, deceive and when caught accuse your critics of being terrorists, unpatriotic, lairs, etc."
I do not care how you plan to vote (and I think you are lying and spreading political FUD). You are doing the same thing as the Republicans; attack the messenger and ignore the message. Clark has raised serious questions which need to be answered. Clinton had many flaws and probably shares some blame for the continued existence of al-Qaida. This does not mean Bush gets a free ride. I believe history will show that he "screwed up" very badly and that demachina's comment above is correct.
If you want to determine who to blame for the idiot bin Laden, you might start with Carter and include Reagan, (grownup) Bush, Clinton and (baby) Bush. Perhaps Nixon and Ford need to be considered.
Do you remember how everyone said Wag the Dog when Clinton tried to do something about al-Qaida and Usama bin Laden? Are you proud that so much time and effort went into investigating Clinton's sex life and his lies about sex?
Are you proud of the great way Bush protected us from terrorist attacks?
50 largest cities (2002) (from New York to Wichita)
276 Metropolitan Areas (2000) (from New York--Northern New Jersey--Long Island, NY--NJ--CT--PA CMSA to Enid, OK MSA).
Actually, U. Texas (Austin), Rice, Texas A&M, and others are good. I am not from Texas and have never lived there but it is foolish to ignore the good qualities of any state (even Arkansas and Mississippi).
I recall "stage 2" air polution warnings (and the ability to see a building up to an entire block away). Granted this was about 15 years ago in Phoenix. My youngest brother just moved away from the Phoenix area. (Back to California for all of us ??).
Unless I cannot read this morning, Texas is 23 (Kansas is 26, Michigan is 25, Ohio is 24).
I plan to spend my sabbatical in Australia next fall. At home, I use a cable modem which costs (US)$30-$40 (I forget), has no bandwidth limitation (to the best of my knowledge) and is fairly fast (sometimes faster than the university's Internet2 connection, although the "IT tsars" on campus are probably causing problems). What should I expect (wrt Internet) at a university like ANU?
"If you are not a liberal at 20 you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 40 you have no brain." ... Right.)
Considering the current US government budget deficits, you have no brain if you are a "Bush conservative" or if you support "Bush conservatives." (Remember when Greenspan said we would have such a large budget surplus that we would not be able to use or invest it?
The Novikov conjecture (or here) is worth mentioning.
In high school, my cross country/track coach was a math teacher. As a coach, he was great (not like a football coach but just kind of "crazy" (in a fun way)) but I never had a math class from him and cannot say if he was good or bad. In K-12, my best math teacher was my ninth grade algebra teacher. He had been a wrestler (Olympic ?) in eastern europe and he was "tough"; he started my interest in math. (I found out later from my folks that he followed my academic career and, for example, attended some event when I placed first in a local/regional math event; I did not realize this until years later.) In college (at university for those in the UK), I had a great advisor; his PhD was from UC Berkeley and his area was mathematical logic (and he works at Sun Microsystems now, I believe). ..."; please write your reply in German and provide an English translation.) IT people need math. Why not learn to love it?
Anyway, math is much easier than almost any other discipline. Compare math with english; how many "subjective" term papers did you write in math? (Who was "better", Po or Joyce? Why will Science Fiction never be considered serious literature? Explain lines 3916-3919 in Kaufmann's version of Faust whose words, in translation, begin "How queer
Look at some of the books by Keith Devlin or Martin Gardner.
It turns out that Singer is my "PhD grandfather"; he was my PhD advisor's PhD advisor. (He is the "PhD grandfather" of many matheticians.) The Atiyah-Singer index theorem is a tremendous accomplishment and this prize is a good way to recognize the importance of their theorem.
Some of the comments here bring to mind a complaint I have, even if these comments are funny (e.g. "Now all they have to do is derive a theorem that can solve the conundrum that is, how to share the trophy between them equally each week which as you all know contains a number which, wait for it.. is not divisable by two without remainder!").
A person (friend) earned a MS in math from us and, after teaching for a few years, applied for a job in IT in (approximately) 1997. At the job interview, people gave him a very hard time about knowing math and having a masters in math. When they gave him programming tasks, they found out that he was an excellent programmer (and they hired him). (After some time, he left and now heads the IT department for a moderately large legal firm.)
This is just one example which makes me think many programmers (and IT people in general) are afraid of math. When you consider that Don Knuth's PhD is in mathematics and the contributions of mathematicians like Gene Golub, it would seem to be difficult to justify the negative feelings toward mathematics which sometimes occurs in IT. Can you explain this to me?
I completely agree with your comment 'saying "it will never happen to me/us!" is bad policy.'
The previous poster's comments, however, seemed to imply that there is an immediate risk.
"This could just as easily have been us. From my root logs I patched my servers for the OpenSSL vulnerability on Sunday 21st, which was four days after it had been announced [us-cert.gov]. If the Witty worm had attacked OpenSSL, it would have got me. I suspect it would get most of us."
Do you know of an "actual" (i.e. spread automatically and widely in a short period of time and take over or cause damage) Linux virus or worm? Most of the security problems I recall are things which might upgrade a local user to root (so an attacker needs some privileges first in the unusual case that the security problem can even be exploited), DOS attacks, etc. I do not keep careful track of theoretical Linux security problems and I may be missing something here. Am I?
I do not think we have serious disagreements but this is an interesting question.
Before going on with this, I am happy to note that my "PhD grandfather" just received the Abel prize.
Anyway, we can use systems of ODEs or PDEs to model populations and evolution or we can use stochastic process models (or other things). In some of these models, stable (local) equilibria may not exist and more intertesting things can happen. Do we have data on what actually happens in "nature"? My research involves PDEs and systems of PDEs but applications to biological systems is of great interest.