The quantum simple harmonic oscillator (SHO), a baby among useful quantum phsyics problems has an infinite number of states. The states it may occupy have energies, (1/2 + n)*h-bar*omega_0, for all non-negative integers n. [omega_0 is a property determined by your configuration.] Virtually every useful quantum physics problem also has an infinite number of states, including the electron configuration of atoms.
Higher energy states occur with increasing rareness, and thus for practical purposes scientists often truncate and only deal with the first several states. This does not however mean that nature doesn't concern itself with all of them. (Perhaps, nature truncates too, but Wolfram sure hasn't shown that, and QED experiments would imply that nature sure doesn't truncate early on.)
This has NOTHING to do with a state's spatial extent. Of course everything has to fit inside the universe. So what? Suppose I only cared about a 1x1 square, there are still an infinite number of ways to draw a curve from one corner to the opposite corner while staying inside the box. Likewise, you can have infinite variety in quantum states in only a limited volume.
It sounds like you want to cheat and invoke the quantitization of space and say that the electron has some position in space. This simply isn't true, the various proofs of the "No Hidden Variables Theorem" shows that the electron really has no position when not being "measured" and that you truly do have to work in terms of the whole (usually infinite) array of wave functions. The universe simply doesn't operate in terms of point particles.
Actually it's never even been shown that time and space are discrete, though a number of theorists would like them to be. On the other hand though, I don't see any reason why the universe having infinite numbers of states would be an impediment to the use of CAs. Anything being modelled on computer has to be an approximation anyway.
Sorta like how for math to be relevant you need to assume the universe has a finite number of numbers? After all my computer could never really represent all the numbers there are, and thus it will never do useful mathematics.
Well, I'm hardly an expert, but off hand I'd say it's worth seriously asking whether you would even notice?
Obviously these carry huge kinetic energies and it would only take only a small percentage of that energy to totally fry a human being. The real question is how much of the energy can a human actually absorb?
These things have enormous amounts of momentum, and keep in mind that the whole EARTH isn't enough to stop one of these. How much could the soft tissues or even the bones of a human really do to stop one? Passing through at 900,000 mph, these would certainly leave a pollen grain sized hole straight through your body, but how much does it disrupt the surrounding tissues?
I have been told (though perhaps someone can verify this?) that exit wounds decrease in size as a) bullet size decreases, b) velocity increases, c) less tissue is disrupted along the bullet path. In fact, IIRC exit wounds are larger primarily because of fragementation of the bullet and fragments of bones that get carried out with it. Entry wounds of course just reflect the cross-section of the bullet.
So a very tiny, very massive, and very fast projectile might well have an exit wound of similar size to the entry wound. In which case the soft tissues of the body might just fill in and you'd never actually know that a pollen grain hole had been made through your body.
Reading the article one will observe that most of the deaths involved people between age 45-64. The death rate for this group from the disaster center is 708 deaths per 100,000 people for all causes. Subtracting out the death rates given for medical conditions that almost certainly don't apply, that leaves us 200 deaths per 100,000.
Now the article states that there are 20,000 microbiologists working in the US. Let us suppose that 1/2 of those are over 40. And perhaps 1/2 of those are "important" enough to attract attention. That's a pool of 5,000 people.
Based on the rate of 200 / 100,000 we would expect 10 deaths annually, or about 4.2 over a five month period. Applying Poisson statistics, the probability of seeing 11 or more random events when 4.2 are expected is about 0.2%. In other words this really is a strange occurence, probably having some underlying cause and not just a statistical aberration.
Of course, not knowing much about microbiology, I might be seriously underestimating (or overestimating) how important these scientists were. If they are in the top 5% of their profession, as opposed to the top half, then the coincidence would be even more startlingly unlikely.
Your post makes me wonder about something. Perhaps someone on that list did have something to do with the anthrax attack. Four or five of those deaths could be potential suicides, and a stroke could be stress-related. Suppose it was a US researcher that made the anthrax, but that he was intending to make people wake up to the threat rather than kill anyone. It is certainly possible that such a person could suffer a severe fit of guilty conscience.
Alternatively, someone might have found out what the person responsible for anthrax had done and killed him or her. I wouldn't even put it past the US government to do such a thing if they felt the guy would spill national security secrets or they would have to divulge too much classified info to pin the crime on him.
On the other hand there might just be some anthrax crazed vigilante who is whacking high profile microbiologists.
Some of the deaths are almost certainly just coincidental, and maybe they all are, but I do hope that the FBI is at least taking a serious look at whether there is some connection.
Excuse me? Why should a nationally renowned university maintain diverse high quality computer labs for their students?
Students don't pay $14 a year for computer access, the university pays $14 per license and even if that amounts to 4000 licenses at UMD that's still less than $2 per student per year to maintain the computer lab software. Futhermore, they have this great deal where a student or faculty member can buy MS software for personal use for only $14.
In the technology age, big universities have to maintain computer labs in order to justify classes that require computer use even if not everyone can afford their own PC. If you would step back for one moment and realize that this is software they intend to run anyway, then you'll realize that it's a great deal for the university.
As far as being a tax, why not? This is about raising the general level of education. Just like my taxes pay for roads that I never use but I assume that they help support the community. Very few, if any, colleges make only students that use the computer labs pay for their maintance.
If you want a far more contentious issue, then let me tell you, every student in UMD residence halls is assessed a cable surcharge even if they don't even have a TV.
Remember that FAST already recieves legitmate complaints from people using the older and more cumbersome submission process. Obviously there are people out there who, for whatever reason, like to report on warez sites.
Re:Quark Matter is Not New
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Quark Stars
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· Score: 2
At the popular level, the books by Hawking are very good, as is the Elegant Universe by Brian Greene dealing primarily with string theory. In the area of particle physics, you might look for The Particle Century by Gordon Fraser, who wrote a good history of the subject. Historical overviews make good reading becuase they tend to convey a large amount of information without being too mathematically sophisticated. It's also nice to hear about the experiments that led to certain theories.
If you have knowledge of calculus and want to try something more technical but not overwhelming, you might consider An Introduction to Quantum Physics by French and Taylor. It's very verbose, which should make it more reasonable for independant study. The flip side is that it's not very deep, which means it's a poor choice for teaching a serious class in the subject.
Re:Is any of this real?
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Quark Stars
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Something that one gets used to in science is that you don't know anything in the absolute sense, but you probably do "know" things to the degree that you're willing to base your life's work off of them. On the other hand, if you spend too much time around philosophers, you might end up wondering if the world really exists, or if your senses are accurate, etc.
Doubt goes hand in hand with wisdom. Once one accepts that there is room to question absolutely everything, then you just have to accept the attitude of estimating what is the most likely truth and working from there. In my (admittedly biased) estimation the laws of physics, as currently understood, are almost certainly a good approximation of truth, though certainly not the last word.
In science, careers are made by showing that the established beliefs are wrong. There are lots of people itching to overturn current theories. Sometimes there is resistance if the evidence is weak or the argument complicated, but in the long run scientists are often more likely to admit their mistaken beliefs than the public in general.
If there really is a right answer to the universe then an independant thinker should arrive at similar conclusions to the ones we already have. Unfortunately no man ever born could even learn all the science we have now, so it's nigh impossible to believe that any single person could have the capacity to independantly arrive at more than a very small part of what has already become established doctrine. On the other hand, Ramanujan did quite well, and without being shunned or killed.
If some day we do contact an intelligent alien race, that would be other best chance to study an independant notion of science. However, I doubt that they'll offer too many surprises among the areas of science that have been studied in detail.
Quark Matter is Not New
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Quark Stars
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Quark stars are a new and interesting idea, but quark matter in general is not a new idea. "Quark matter", more usually "quark plasma" or "quark-gluon plasma", is believed to be the dominant form of matter in the universe just following the big bang. There is also early evidence that it's been witnessed in some of the largest particle accelerators.
In normal matter quarks group together in sets of 3 to form protons and nuetrons. Rare particles, like pions, can be formed from pairs of quarks, but quarks never appear in isolation, for them it's always in groups of 2 or 3. In quark plasmas though there aren't any distinct groups of twos and threes. All the quarks are smushed into a single substance with arbitrarily large numbers of quarks.
One analogy is if atoms are built out of "solid" quarks (in the from of protons and nuetrons), then the quark plasma is like melting them so they all run together. Prior to this announcement the only time that quark plasmas were expected to appear was in the presence of extraordinarily high energies and temperatures.
We could predict that nuetrons stars should exist because the "nuetron degeneracy pressure" which makes them possible was well understood theoretically. The theory that governs quark interaction is known as quantum chromodynamics and is far more complicated. I'm not sure whether anyone knows how to apply it to massive collapsing stars, and it doesn't surprise me if no one ever tried. It will be interesting to see if the existing theory can be made to justify quark stars. If not, well that's when things really start to get exciting.
A brief survey of google pages on the Slashdot effect gives values of 50-500 hits per minute during the period immediately following a post on/.
To my mind that is a lot of traffic, but then my only firsthand experience is with "Mickey Mouse" servers that would probably melt under that load. (Assumming that the connection could actually carry that kinda volume in the first place.)
Well technically, manipulating all reality through the power of will alone is a pretty good functional definition of what it means to BE God. Only important thing missing is knowing everything, but that probably comes along with all events playing out according to one's will.
As you no doubt know, "playing god" is what the disdainful call it every time man gains control over an aspect of reality that was previously ruled by chance/God alone.
Since God created us with intellect, reason and the ability to learn moral judgment, I for one, believe that we should "play God". Man is created in the image of God, and if we are to fulfill that destiny than it means learning to act with as much wisdom, knowledge and moral judgment as humanly possible, which certainly includes scientific exploration.
Maybe that should say that you fear the use of technology that you don't understand.
The risks and complexities of delivering genes that every non-"Bubble Boy" person has anyway isn't high on the list of scientific achievements. That they did so only to marrow precursor cells is sensible since they are the only ones that need express the genes and it's easier to target specfic cell groups than the entire body. The surprising part would have been if all the technology worked as advertised and he wasn't cured.
There are reasons to worry about genetic manipulation, but there is no reason to cry about a new plague in a situation that is well understood, and which any reasonable geneticist would tell you is very low risk. GM foods are far higher risk, and none of those have yet had an effect even approaching that caused by the transplantation of species into environments where they have no competitors.
Many of the founders of the United States believed, as you do, in inalienable or God-given rights. While I believe in God personally, I think it is very hard to defend on the one hand a religiously diverse society and on the other a particular set of fundemental human rights.
Certainly I could pick up the Bible, or the Koran, or the Rg Veda, etc., and find an enumeration of moral values and accompanying human rights. Perhaps they even agree to considerable extent, but then what of the atheist, or the man who believes he has a divine right of kingship? God-given rights are hard to defend in religiously pluralistic society. Similarly, the dog eat dog, survival of the fittest conditions of the natural world provide little, if any, justification for most of the rights that humanity seeks to hold.
Personally, I'm not sure that there is any such thing as inalienable or natural right belonging to man. For me all rights are those that we create for ourselves. I believe that all people are created equal (though I doubt I could offer any good secular argument for believing it). Since all people are created equal it follows, that any right I wish to enjoy for myself, I must be equally willing to offer to everyone else. Perhaps simply an extention of the golden rule: Treat others as you wish to treated yourself.
Government is a creation of man, which in its ideal incarnation, codifies for a society the freedoms that each individual should be ready to offer his neighbor in order that he too should reap the bounty of that freedom. In a secular society, the proliferation of rights might well be viewed in terms of the realization that the whole is benefitted by the freedoms bestowed upon each individual.
Goverment does "give" rights, and does have a duty to "protect" these rights, but this is simple consequence of that fact the government is made up of the people. It is from the people that all rights emanate and each is responsible for protecting those rights for if I fail to allow you to exercise a right than I can not righteously claim that right for myself.
Yes, there is a relatively small chance of seeing a planet pass in front of a given star. In estimating how many systems have planets, which you just happened not to see, the most important quantities are average number of gas giants per system and the average distribution of those planets within the system. If most planetary systems are like ours, and the gas giants are relatively far from the star then it's rather unlikely to see a crossing. If on the other hand there are lots of places with gas giants near the star, then witnessing these events gets much more likely.
I attempted to estimate the multiplier for unobserved planetary systems. If we only concern ourselves to star systems that are like our own (similar star size and 4 gas giants), then it's not hard to estimate how many systems you'd have to look at before seeing one crossing (during the period in question.
I'll spare you the multiple integrals, but the result I got was that if gas giants are evenly distributed over the system then you'd see one crossing per 30 such stars under observation. On the other hand if they are confined to the outer solar system (as in our case), then you'd see only 1 crossing per 16000 stars.
Depending on how many stars they were observing, this may well add to the case that many stars have gas giants much closer in than we do.
At least it doesn't melt.
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Homemade Gauss Gun
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· Score: 4, Interesting
When I read the title, I couldn't help thinking about burned spot in one of my old dorm's carpeting. A classmate of mine build a small rail gun using electromagnets, unfortunately during a test the coils melted, which left a very interesting splotch of solidified metal and burnt carpet.
I have a message that's little more than a week old sitting in my box from "Tony Sanchez, Democrat for Texas Governor in 2002".
"The Internet and email has made it possible for you and I to communicate in ways that we could have only dreamed of a few short years ago. As a result, from time to time, I would like to send you an email keeping you up to date with: the latest news regarding the 2002 election, my stance on important issues and the progress made by the campaign."
Though I must give him credit, I am a Texan. Interestingly enough the email has my mother's name in it, as if it was intended for her. This is very interesting since I am quite sure that she doesn't even know about this particular address (it's a throw away account for registrations and collecting spam.) For that matter I have serious doubt over whether she'd be savvy enough to register for political email even if she wanted to.
Geez, I just went over to his website and the guy even has wallpaper and a screensaver to promote his campaign. I know it's the internet age, but are there really people out there that would want a screensaver image of a politician??
In communities with active extended families, genetic effects that occur after childbearing do exert an evolutionary pressure (albeit generally a small one).
For instance, if I was financially responsible for the care of parents who had become senile at the same time I was planning a family, then I would probably want fewer kids to help moderate the financial burdens.
Conversely if my parents were active, healthy, and available to babysit and otherwise help with caring for my children, then I might be comfortable having a larger family.
Obviously there are ways around these effects and people may not have active extended families, but I just want to illistrate that in modern interconnected society, genetic influences can have an evolutionary impact even long after childrearing age.
Think of all the famous people who made great contributions to humanity who wouldn't have even been born if we do this nonsense widely in the future!
That's not a meaningful argument unless you include reasons why genetically selected or modified offspring won't make at least the same contributions as the people they are displacing. Just because mankind starts selecting against disease or for intellect and atheleticism, doesn't mean that these children would be less capable of making great contributions to humanity. In fact, many advocates of GM would argue that they would be more likely to make great contributions than their randomly created counterparts.
If you look at the Bell Labs page which someone linked in a lower comment, then you'll see that's it's not really emitting from a broad range of light.
There are lots of layers of slightly different sizes, and the size of the layer largely determines the color (wavelength) of the light emitted. In effect it's like there are lots of lasers on different frequencies located in nearly the same space. Since they are all firing at the same time the net effect is a broad distributed band of coherent light, but you can still make out individual peaks.
It's mostly the same stuff, but there are a couple of quotes that I found highly interesting which are missing from the version/. linked.
"...the study shows that longer sleep is a risk factor for cancer as well as heart disease and stroke... Heart disease was the most common cause of death, followed by stroke and cancer."
"...some sleep loss actually acts as an antidepressant."
It's correlation certainly, but at least the other version of the story tells you what lots of sleep has been correllated to.
No, no, there is quite a strong body of evidence that global temperatures fluctuate and that they have been slightly higher as of late.
Most scientists at current seem to agree that there is some degree of global warming. The real questions are what are the causes and what are the effects. It's also quite clear that man has been increasing the CO2 levels on earth since the industrial revolution. Whether this or any other man-made process is responsible for the observed warming is a much harder thing to establish.
Even if we are to blame (at least in part), then the question becomes, do we care? Dire predications get a lot of press, but there are still groups of scientists that believe the warming will have a neglible or even net positive effect on the Earth (from the point of view of an environment for sustaining man).
The car analogy doesn't work. In the automotive world it often would be cheaper to engineer a new car than to retrofit an old one, but that's rarely true for software.
Assuming their source is reasonably modular then you should be able to plug security holes in any part without tearing the whole thing down. It would be nice if the bugs weren't there in the first place, but nothing says you can't succeed at finding and patching most of them.
You're right, it is about how you build things, and how software is built predisposes one to a method of incremental improvements.
I don't know where you live, but I certainly don't see any mining or agriculture on my city block. Population is sustainable based on the resources it has access to, not based on the resources that happen to lie on it's slice of land.
Increasing global infrastructure has made it so that any area can potentially have access to resources from any where on Earth. Things like war, natural disasters, pricing gouging and apathy distort the global interconnections, but the potential for disruptions will only decrease with time. The sustainablity of populations is very much a global question, not a local one.
Slashdot Mirror
BBzzzt. Wrong.
The quantum simple harmonic oscillator (SHO), a baby among useful quantum phsyics problems has an infinite number of states. The states it may occupy have energies, (1/2 + n)*h-bar*omega_0, for all non-negative integers n. [omega_0 is a property determined by your configuration.] Virtually every useful quantum physics problem also has an infinite number of states, including the electron configuration of atoms.
Higher energy states occur with increasing rareness, and thus for practical purposes scientists often truncate and only deal with the first several states. This does not however mean that nature doesn't concern itself with all of them. (Perhaps, nature truncates too, but Wolfram sure hasn't shown that, and QED experiments would imply that nature sure doesn't truncate early on.)
This has NOTHING to do with a state's spatial extent. Of course everything has to fit inside the universe. So what? Suppose I only cared about a 1x1 square, there are still an infinite number of ways to draw a curve from one corner to the opposite corner while staying inside the box. Likewise, you can have infinite variety in quantum states in only a limited volume.
It sounds like you want to cheat and invoke the quantitization of space and say that the electron has some position in space. This simply isn't true, the various proofs of the "No Hidden Variables Theorem" shows that the electron really has no position when not being "measured" and that you truly do have to work in terms of the whole (usually infinite) array of wave functions. The universe simply doesn't operate in terms of point particles.
Actually it's never even been shown that time and space are discrete, though a number of theorists would like them to be. On the other hand though, I don't see any reason why the universe having infinite numbers of states would be an impediment to the use of CAs. Anything being modelled on computer has to be an approximation anyway.
Sorta like how for math to be relevant you need to assume the universe has a finite number of numbers? After all my computer could never really represent all the numbers there are, and thus it will never do useful mathematics.
Well, I'm hardly an expert, but off hand I'd say it's worth seriously asking whether you would even notice?
Obviously these carry huge kinetic energies and it would only take only a small percentage of that energy to totally fry a human being. The real question is how much of the energy can a human actually absorb?
These things have enormous amounts of momentum, and keep in mind that the whole EARTH isn't enough to stop one of these. How much could the soft tissues or even the bones of a human really do to stop one? Passing through at 900,000 mph, these would certainly leave a pollen grain sized hole straight through your body, but how much does it disrupt the surrounding tissues?
I have been told (though perhaps someone can verify this?) that exit wounds decrease in size as a) bullet size decreases, b) velocity increases, c) less tissue is disrupted along the bullet path. In fact, IIRC exit wounds are larger primarily because of fragementation of the bullet and fragments of bones that get carried out with it. Entry wounds of course just reflect the cross-section of the bullet.
So a very tiny, very massive, and very fast projectile might well have an exit wound of similar size to the entry wound. In which case the soft tissues of the body might just fill in and you'd never actually know that a pollen grain hole had been made through your body.
Well let's play the game, what are the chances?
Reading the article one will observe that most of the deaths involved people between age 45-64. The death rate for this group from the disaster center is 708 deaths per 100,000 people for all causes. Subtracting out the death rates given for medical conditions that almost certainly don't apply, that leaves us 200 deaths per 100,000.
Now the article states that there are 20,000 microbiologists working in the US. Let us suppose that 1/2 of those are over 40. And perhaps 1/2 of those are "important" enough to attract attention. That's a pool of 5,000 people.
Based on the rate of 200 / 100,000 we would expect 10 deaths annually, or about 4.2 over a five month period. Applying Poisson statistics, the probability of seeing 11 or more random events when 4.2 are expected is about 0.2%. In other words this really is a strange occurence, probably having some underlying cause and not just a statistical aberration.
Of course, not knowing much about microbiology, I might be seriously underestimating (or overestimating) how important these scientists were. If they are in the top 5% of their profession, as opposed to the top half, then the coincidence would be even more startlingly unlikely.
Your post makes me wonder about something. Perhaps someone on that list did have something to do with the anthrax attack. Four or five of those deaths could be potential suicides, and a stroke could be stress-related. Suppose it was a US researcher that made the anthrax, but that he was intending to make people wake up to the threat rather than kill anyone. It is certainly possible that such a person could suffer a severe fit of guilty conscience.
Alternatively, someone might have found out what the person responsible for anthrax had done and killed him or her. I wouldn't even put it past the US government to do such a thing if they felt the guy would spill national security secrets or they would have to divulge too much classified info to pin the crime on him.
On the other hand there might just be some anthrax crazed vigilante who is whacking high profile microbiologists.
Some of the deaths are almost certainly just coincidental, and maybe they all are, but I do hope that the FBI is at least taking a serious look at whether there is some connection.
Excuse me? Why should a nationally renowned university maintain diverse high quality computer labs for their students?
Students don't pay $14 a year for computer access, the university pays $14 per license and even if that amounts to 4000 licenses at UMD that's still less than $2 per student per year to maintain the computer lab software. Futhermore, they have this great deal where a student or faculty member can buy MS software for personal use for only $14.
In the technology age, big universities have to maintain computer labs in order to justify classes that require computer use even if not everyone can afford their own PC. If you would step back for one moment and realize that this is software they intend to run anyway, then you'll realize that it's a great deal for the university.
As far as being a tax, why not? This is about raising the general level of education. Just like my taxes pay for roads that I never use but I assume that they help support the community. Very few, if any, colleges make only students that use the computer labs pay for their maintance.
If you want a far more contentious issue, then let me tell you, every student in UMD residence halls is assessed a cable surcharge even if they don't even have a TV.
Remember that FAST already recieves legitmate complaints from people using the older and more cumbersome submission process. Obviously there are people out there who, for whatever reason, like to report on warez sites.
At the popular level, the books by Hawking are very good, as is the Elegant Universe by Brian Greene dealing primarily with string theory. In the area of particle physics, you might look for The Particle Century by Gordon Fraser, who wrote a good history of the subject. Historical overviews make good reading becuase they tend to convey a large amount of information without being too mathematically sophisticated. It's also nice to hear about the experiments that led to certain theories.
If you have knowledge of calculus and want to try something more technical but not overwhelming, you might consider An Introduction to Quantum Physics by French and Taylor. It's very verbose, which should make it more reasonable for independant study. The flip side is that it's not very deep, which means it's a poor choice for teaching a serious class in the subject.
Something that one gets used to in science is that you don't know anything in the absolute sense, but you probably do "know" things to the degree that you're willing to base your life's work off of them. On the other hand, if you spend too much time around philosophers, you might end up wondering if the world really exists, or if your senses are accurate, etc.
Doubt goes hand in hand with wisdom. Once one accepts that there is room to question absolutely everything, then you just have to accept the attitude of estimating what is the most likely truth and working from there. In my (admittedly biased) estimation the laws of physics, as currently understood, are almost certainly a good approximation of truth, though certainly not the last word.
In science, careers are made by showing that the established beliefs are wrong. There are lots of people itching to overturn current theories. Sometimes there is resistance if the evidence is weak or the argument complicated, but in the long run scientists are often more likely to admit their mistaken beliefs than the public in general.
If there really is a right answer to the universe then an independant thinker should arrive at similar conclusions to the ones we already have. Unfortunately no man ever born could even learn all the science we have now, so it's nigh impossible to believe that any single person could have the capacity to independantly arrive at more than a very small part of what has already become established doctrine. On the other hand, Ramanujan did quite well, and without being shunned or killed.
If some day we do contact an intelligent alien race, that would be other best chance to study an independant notion of science. However, I doubt that they'll offer too many surprises among the areas of science that have been studied in detail.
Quark stars are a new and interesting idea, but quark matter in general is not a new idea. "Quark matter", more usually "quark plasma" or "quark-gluon plasma", is believed to be the dominant form of matter in the universe just following the big bang. There is also early evidence that it's been witnessed in some of the largest particle accelerators.
In normal matter quarks group together in sets of 3 to form protons and nuetrons. Rare particles, like pions, can be formed from pairs of quarks, but quarks never appear in isolation, for them it's always in groups of 2 or 3. In quark plasmas though there aren't any distinct groups of twos and threes. All the quarks are smushed into a single substance with arbitrarily large numbers of quarks.
One analogy is if atoms are built out of "solid" quarks (in the from of protons and nuetrons), then the quark plasma is like melting them so they all run together. Prior to this announcement the only time that quark plasmas were expected to appear was in the presence of extraordinarily high energies and temperatures.
We could predict that nuetrons stars should exist because the "nuetron degeneracy pressure" which makes them possible was well understood theoretically. The theory that governs quark interaction is known as quantum chromodynamics and is far more complicated. I'm not sure whether anyone knows how to apply it to massive collapsing stars, and it doesn't surprise me if no one ever tried. It will be interesting to see if the existing theory can be made to justify quark stars. If not, well that's when things really start to get exciting.
A brief survey of google pages on the Slashdot effect gives values of 50-500 hits per minute during the period immediately following a post on /.
To my mind that is a lot of traffic, but then my only firsthand experience is with "Mickey Mouse" servers that would probably melt under that load. (Assumming that the connection could actually carry that kinda volume in the first place.)
Well technically, manipulating all reality through the power of will alone is a pretty good functional definition of what it means to BE God. Only important thing missing is knowing everything, but that probably comes along with all events playing out according to one's will.
As you no doubt know, "playing god" is what the disdainful call it every time man gains control over an aspect of reality that was previously ruled by chance/God alone.
Since God created us with intellect, reason and the ability to learn moral judgment, I for one, believe that we should "play God". Man is created in the image of God, and if we are to fulfill that destiny than it means learning to act with as much wisdom, knowledge and moral judgment as humanly possible, which certainly includes scientific exploration.
Maybe that should say that you fear the use of technology that you don't understand.
The risks and complexities of delivering genes that every non-"Bubble Boy" person has anyway isn't high on the list of scientific achievements. That they did so only to marrow precursor cells is sensible since they are the only ones that need express the genes and it's easier to target specfic cell groups than the entire body. The surprising part would have been if all the technology worked as advertised and he wasn't cured.
There are reasons to worry about genetic manipulation, but there is no reason to cry about a new plague in a situation that is well understood, and which any reasonable geneticist would tell you is very low risk. GM foods are far higher risk, and none of those have yet had an effect even approaching that caused by the transplantation of species into environments where they have no competitors.
Many of the founders of the United States believed, as you do, in inalienable or God-given rights. While I believe in God personally, I think it is very hard to defend on the one hand a religiously diverse society and on the other a particular set of fundemental human rights.
Certainly I could pick up the Bible, or the Koran, or the Rg Veda, etc., and find an enumeration of moral values and accompanying human rights. Perhaps they even agree to considerable extent, but then what of the atheist, or the man who believes he has a divine right of kingship? God-given rights are hard to defend in religiously pluralistic society. Similarly, the dog eat dog, survival of the fittest conditions of the natural world provide little, if any, justification for most of the rights that humanity seeks to hold.
Personally, I'm not sure that there is any such thing as inalienable or natural right belonging to man. For me all rights are those that we create for ourselves. I believe that all people are created equal (though I doubt I could offer any good secular argument for believing it). Since all people are created equal it follows, that any right I wish to enjoy for myself, I must be equally willing to offer to everyone else. Perhaps simply an extention of the golden rule: Treat others as you wish to treated yourself.
Government is a creation of man, which in its ideal incarnation, codifies for a society the freedoms that each individual should be ready to offer his neighbor in order that he too should reap the bounty of that freedom. In a secular society, the proliferation of rights might well be viewed in terms of the realization that the whole is benefitted by the freedoms bestowed upon each individual.
Goverment does "give" rights, and does have a duty to "protect" these rights, but this is simple consequence of that fact the government is made up of the people. It is from the people that all rights emanate and each is responsible for protecting those rights for if I fail to allow you to exercise a right than I can not righteously claim that right for myself.
Yes, there is a relatively small chance of seeing a planet pass in front of a given star. In estimating how many systems have planets, which you just happened not to see, the most important quantities are average number of gas giants per system and the average distribution of those planets within the system. If most planetary systems are like ours, and the gas giants are relatively far from the star then it's rather unlikely to see a crossing. If on the other hand there are lots of places with gas giants near the star, then witnessing these events gets much more likely.
I attempted to estimate the multiplier for unobserved planetary systems. If we only concern ourselves to star systems that are like our own (similar star size and 4 gas giants), then it's not hard to estimate how many systems you'd have to look at before seeing one crossing (during the period in question.
I'll spare you the multiple integrals, but the result I got was that if gas giants are evenly distributed over the system then you'd see one crossing per 30 such stars under observation. On the other hand if they are confined to the outer solar system (as in our case), then you'd see only 1 crossing per 16000 stars.
Depending on how many stars they were observing, this may well add to the case that many stars have gas giants much closer in than we do.
No, no.
It's Physics is Phun!
When I read the title, I couldn't help thinking about burned spot in one of my old dorm's carpeting. A classmate of mine build a small rail gun using electromagnets, unfortunately during a test the coils melted, which left a very interesting splotch of solidified metal and burnt carpet.
Look who else is spamming...
I have a message that's little more than a week old sitting in my box from "Tony Sanchez, Democrat for Texas Governor in 2002".
"The Internet and email has made it possible for you and I to communicate in ways that we could have only dreamed of a few short years ago. As a result, from time to time, I would like to send you an email keeping you up to date with: the latest news regarding the 2002 election, my stance on important issues and the progress made by the campaign."
Though I must give him credit, I am a Texan. Interestingly enough the email has my mother's name in it, as if it was intended for her. This is very interesting since I am quite sure that she doesn't even know about this particular address (it's a throw away account for registrations and collecting spam.) For that matter I have serious doubt over whether she'd be savvy enough to register for political email even if she wanted to.
Geez, I just went over to his website and the guy even has wallpaper and a screensaver to promote his campaign. I know it's the internet age, but are there really people out there that would want a screensaver image of a politician??
In communities with active extended families, genetic effects that occur after childbearing do exert an evolutionary pressure (albeit generally a small one).
For instance, if I was financially responsible for the care of parents who had become senile at the same time I was planning a family, then I would probably want fewer kids to help moderate the financial burdens.
Conversely if my parents were active, healthy, and available to babysit and otherwise help with caring for my children, then I might be comfortable having a larger family.
Obviously there are ways around these effects and people may not have active extended families, but I just want to illistrate that in modern interconnected society, genetic influences can have an evolutionary impact even long after childrearing age.
Think of all the famous people who made great contributions to humanity who wouldn't have even been born if we do this nonsense widely in the future!
That's not a meaningful argument unless you include reasons why genetically selected or modified offspring won't make at least the same contributions as the people they are displacing. Just because mankind starts selecting against disease or for intellect and atheleticism, doesn't mean that these children would be less capable of making great contributions to humanity. In fact, many advocates of GM would argue that they would be more likely to make great contributions than their randomly created counterparts.
If you look at the Bell Labs page which someone linked in a lower comment, then you'll see that's it's not really emitting from a broad range of light.
There are lots of layers of slightly different sizes, and the size of the layer largely determines the color (wavelength) of the light emitted. In effect it's like there are lots of lasers on different frequencies located in nearly the same space. Since they are all firing at the same time the net effect is a broad distributed band of coherent light, but you can still make out individual peaks.
I tried submitting the Reuters version a couple days ago.
/. linked.
It's mostly the same stuff, but there are a couple of quotes that I found highly interesting which are missing from the version
"...the study shows that longer sleep is a risk factor for cancer as well as heart disease and stroke... Heart disease was the most common cause of death, followed by stroke and cancer."
"...some sleep loss actually acts as an antidepressant."
It's correlation certainly, but at least the other version of the story tells you what lots of sleep has been correllated to.
No, no, there is quite a strong body of evidence that global temperatures fluctuate and that they have been slightly higher as of late.
Most scientists at current seem to agree that there is some degree of global warming. The real questions are what are the causes and what are the effects. It's also quite clear that man has been increasing the CO2 levels on earth since the industrial revolution. Whether this or any other man-made process is responsible for the observed warming is a much harder thing to establish.
Even if we are to blame (at least in part), then the question becomes, do we care? Dire predications get a lot of press, but there are still groups of scientists that believe the warming will have a neglible or even net positive effect on the Earth (from the point of view of an environment for sustaining man).
Why?
The car analogy doesn't work. In the automotive world it often would be cheaper to engineer a new car than to retrofit an old one, but that's rarely true for software.
Assuming their source is reasonably modular then you should be able to plug security holes in any part without tearing the whole thing down. It would be nice if the bugs weren't there in the first place, but nothing says you can't succeed at finding and patching most of them.
You're right, it is about how you build things, and how software is built predisposes one to a method of incremental improvements.
Well, duh.
I don't know where you live, but I certainly don't see any mining or agriculture on my city block. Population is sustainable based on the resources it has access to, not based on the resources that happen to lie on it's slice of land.
Increasing global infrastructure has made it so that any area can potentially have access to resources from any where on Earth. Things like war, natural disasters, pricing gouging and apathy distort the global interconnections, but the potential for disruptions will only decrease with time. The sustainablity of populations is very much a global question, not a local one.