So what is the problem with this reasoning? And could the sterile neutrino from this story be actually such a right-handed neutrino?
First: it cannot be dark matter because neutrinos are too light and hence move too fast. The result is that the WMAP cosmic microwave background would be blurred out far more than it is so we know that, whatever the dark matter is, it is slow moving and so not a light neutrino.
Second: MiniBoone has interesting results but have not BY ANY STRETCH of the imagination confirmed the existence of a 4th gen of neutrinos. Their signal is only 0.6% incompatible with background. To claim evidence the standard in the field is 3 std. dev. (or 0.27%) and to claim a discovery it is 5 sigma (0.000057%). Effects like this go away all the time and can easily be caused by errors. This is not a guarantee that theirs will but, to make claims like this you need solid, statistical evidence and they do not yet have that.
Third: we already know that right handed neutrinos exist because the neutrino has a non-zero mass. Any mass term in the Lagrangian mixes left and right helicity states. Effectively what this means is that if you have a left handed neutrino but chase after it faster than it is moving (which you can do because it has a mass) it will be a right handed neutrino to you. So, if there is anything interesting happening here, it is not a "normal" right handed neutrino.
When you can store energy as densely as liquid hydrocarbon, you'll have a successful electric car.
Correction: when the energy density times usage efficiency for electricity is comparable to that of a liquid hydrocarbon fuelled car THEN you'll have a successful electric car. Petrol engines are far less efficient at converting the stored energy into mechanical motion, and recapturing that mechanical energy when breaking, than electric motors which is the only reason that electric cars are even thinkable with current technology.
The weight of the Earth comes in useful in calculating how many space habitats you could build from it.
No it does not. The mass of the Earth might be useful to know though. Since imperial units like pounds and tons measure weight, not mass, you cannot use the normal conversion of one metric ton (mass) to imperial ton (weight) for this because it assumes a constant gravitational field of 9.81m/s^2 which is clearly not the case when dealing with space habitats.
When it comes to constructing real-world things maths alone is not enough and you do actually need some basic physics as well.
Really? I find it is done so badly that it gives me a headache. Instead of actually projecting two images with different polarizations and having glasses with two differently aligned polaroid filters they instead project one image at twice the brightness and have a simple tinted filter for one eye. While this might save money on the glasses it means that one image has a ghostly shadow which I find extremely distracting and irritating.
Done right - with two separately polarized images - the technique works very well. I've seen demos of educational systems using computer projectors which do it properly and it looks very good (it would be great for visualizing 3D physics systems in a lecture). However like most things when they hit the commercial world nowadays they have managed to devalue it by cutting corners.
Children below age 8-9 don't even really get the sense of "right" and "wrong".
They certainly do. What they can't do is always think about the consequences of their actions nor control their emotions. The result is that they probably knew after the fact that hitting the old lady was wrong but did not think that racing down the path towards on the bikes would lead to that.
What if it wasn't accidental? That will be determined. I too hate the litigious nature of folks now days, but sometimes it may be the only way to have others take responsibility for themselves.
So you expect a 4 year old's thought process to be "I'd better not do X because otherwise I will be sued for my pocket money."? Really? Perhaps they'd better start teaching "courts and the law" in kindergarten so they can learn about this stuff.
Yes there is a general problem with kid's discipline today but this is absolutely the wrong way to fix it. Remember that they will end up hiring a lawyer to defend the child who will make up any possible believable excuse for the child so the message the child will get is that their actions were justified because their parents and other adults said they were. Even if they lose the case the consequence is financial so the child will likely be unaware of it because of their young age so the only result I see is that it will make things a LOT worse.
If there's a physicist out there, I get the impression that somehow leptons are being converted to fermions?
Leptons (e..g electron) are fermions. However there is something very fishy with this paper. For example 10^6 m/s is not relativistic. If you calculate the gamma factor (gamma=1 is what Newtonian physics assumes) you get 1.0000056. This means they are very non-relativistic and Schrodinger should work fine for them unless there is some subtle effect at play. Indeed to give electrons this energy you need to accelerate them through a potential of 2.8 volts so rather than needed a particle accelerator any one with a vacuum pump, a vacuum-tight container, some wire and two AA batteries can experience the fun of "relativistic" electrons.
What I suspect is happening is that the conditions on graphene have altered the electron behaviour so, rather than test anything fundamental, you are testing the properties of electrons on graphene. You cannot do real relativistic physics with this because if you get an unexpected result you have no idea whether it is because there is some new, unexpected physics at work or whether your approximation of the environment is simply wrong and you need to use a different model for it. Hence, while interesting, this is not the way to do real, relativistic physics: for that you need something that is truly relativistic, not just something which might, under certain conditions, act like something relativistic.
banning people from talking to or associating with known bad influences especially during probation is hardly a new thing for courts
...and if they had banned him from talking to named individuals that might be more understandable (although the trust issue still stands). As it is he can talk to whomever he likes just as long as be doesn't use a computer to do it.
the judge could have ordered the thief not associate with those people.
Correct me if I am wrong but doesn't the US constitution have something about "freedom of association" in it? and not passing laws to restrict this? My point still stands though - if he is so easily led astray that associating with people will cause him to break the law then how can you possibly trust him to follow those rules? Afterall those bad influences could ring him up and tell him to ignore it couldn't they?
The last time I saw something like this, it was because people online where encouraging the criminal behavior.
So if they had been talking to him in real life the kid would have been banned from talking to anyone? Sorry but it is utterly ridiculous for a judge to be able to make up arbitrary rules like this. If the kid cannot be trusted in society then he should be removed from it for a period. Afterall if you don't trust him not to listen to people online telling him to break the law how can you possibly trust him not to ignore the arbitrary rules of one judge and go online anyway?
Raw size does matter here. A larger receptor is better.
If you RTFA (yes I know it is Slashdot but hope springs eternal) you'll see that the system uses a GRID of flat antenna which it combines to simulate a larger antenna. By altering how the signals are combined i.e. the delays between them you can "point" the antenna at different sources. Hence you not only have a large detector from combining several smaller one but you can also point the thing without having to mechanically move it. It's brilliant idea and one that radio astronomers have been using for quite a while.
In addition, the curriculum of the 'Wiki-ized University' would be intellectually fluid, and instead of tenure, professors' longevity 'would be determined by the community.
So forget about this 'Wiki-ized University' ever producing any sensible research because if your research disagreed with what the community readily believed you'd be out on your ear. Communities need to hear the truth no matter how uncomfortable or unhappy it makes them and that means making sure researchers are free to choose what they research as well as publish the results, whatever they are, of that research, no matter how unpopular those results might be.
It doesn't....but tacking an english word onto a french makes a lot of sense if you want to expand into Canada. However since there are more letters in 'office' than 'libre' they may still fall foul of the Quebec language police for being more english than french.
While Oracle is not playing nice how exactly do they have a conflict of interest? In fact it seems exactly the opposite - they only have a very short term interest in their bottom line and don't care about anything else at all.
Much as I hate to say it I think Oracle has a valid point here. The goals of the new LO will likely be very different from OOo under Oracle. I realize they were trying to make a foundation to take over OOo but that failed (thanks to Oracle) so they forked hence there is very clearly a difference in opinion about the aims and goals of the projects - otherwise why fork?...and if you agree with that then they very clearly have a conflict of interest since it would be their best interest to drive OOo users to LO which is not in the best interest of OOo. In fact their apparent reluctance to leave may suggest that they are not confident about the success of LO which also harms that project as well.
In addition nuclear plants cannot cause nuclear explosions so while the US may have come close to contaminating areas there was zero danger of a nuclear explosion in such cases.
....to get the total number events that you should see.
Actually that gives you the number of event that should be produced. The number that you should see also depends on your detector's acceptance and efficiency.
What we need is less technology in Elementary School. Not more.
No, we need better, more sensible use of technology. This does not necessarily mean less but it does require teachers who both understand technology AND how to use it properly to enhance teaching. For example, several years ago, I was in doing a demo of an orrery to show my kid's primary school class about the solar system, phases of the moon and seasons and finished off with showing them Google Earth. The teacher and kids were amazed and I quickly had them doing trips to anywhere in the world, seeing the Pyramids, flying down the Grand Canyon etc. It's an excellent way to teach geography and get the kids interested in learning.
Sadly though I more typically see teachers using calculators so early it hampers development of basic arithmetic skills, or playing games which are little more than interactive ads for toys (WebKinz!) "because it teaches them how to use the web"! This is not entirely their fault either when you look at the quality of the technology training they get - although some of it is. I being, temporarily, on the technology subgroup of my daughter's school council the overwhelming feeling I got was that the school knew technology was "good" and so they wanted some but had no clue (or plan) for how they would use it.
Until we can correct this ignorance and get teachers better educated in the use of technology (there are some out there, although these are usually not the ones involved in training others!) it is hard to argue that there should be any technology in a grade 5 classroom because if it is used in ignorance it is far more likely to get in the way of learning rather than enhancing it.
You are missing the point. They haven't got internet for their citizens to use, they have it to tell the world know how wonderful things are in North Korea. Its a shame they did not go with '.nk' though - there are far more interesting domain name possibilities for that domain...
Since the time in which the energy is measured is of necessity finite
No it is not necessarily finite. If the universe expands forever then the electron's state could exist forever thus there is no minimum uncertainty on the energy.
And the same goes for the universe itself; it has a bounded number of observable states.
That is not clear. A free electron has no quantized energy and, since current evidence points to the universe expanding for ever, there is no limit to the accuracy with which we can measure that energy (as boring as that measurement may be). Hence a single free electron has an infinite set of states as long as the universe's lifetime is unbounded.
Interacting with the thing is going to be just about impossible. All we need now is for the marketing guys to describe it as a "quantum leap" and their utter failure to understand the physics terms they are using will be complete...particularly ironic given that the owner of RIM financed the creation of the Perimeter Institute for theoretical physics in Canada!
No - judges create precedence, not law i.e. they interpret the law one way and then that way is supposed to be followed in later trials for consistency. They are NOT supposed to go around making up laws or interpreting things the way they want them. They are supposed to attempt to interpret the law in the way intended by the legislators when they passed it or as society would expect it to be interpreted.
Slashdot Mirror
So what is the problem with this reasoning? And could the sterile neutrino from this story be actually such a right-handed neutrino?
First: it cannot be dark matter because neutrinos are too light and hence move too fast. The result is that the WMAP cosmic microwave background would be blurred out far more than it is so we know that, whatever the dark matter is, it is slow moving and so not a light neutrino.
Second: MiniBoone has interesting results but have not BY ANY STRETCH of the imagination confirmed the existence of a 4th gen of neutrinos. Their signal is only 0.6% incompatible with background. To claim evidence the standard in the field is 3 std. dev. (or 0.27%) and to claim a discovery it is 5 sigma (0.000057%). Effects like this go away all the time and can easily be caused by errors. This is not a guarantee that theirs will but, to make claims like this you need solid, statistical evidence and they do not yet have that.
Third: we already know that right handed neutrinos exist because the neutrino has a non-zero mass. Any mass term in the Lagrangian mixes left and right helicity states. Effectively what this means is that if you have a left handed neutrino but chase after it faster than it is moving (which you can do because it has a mass) it will be a right handed neutrino to you. So, if there is anything interesting happening here, it is not a "normal" right handed neutrino.
Well not at least for the last 5 minutes...I'm still waiting for it to load.
When you can store energy as densely as liquid hydrocarbon, you'll have a successful electric car.
Correction: when the energy density times usage efficiency for electricity is comparable to that of a liquid hydrocarbon fuelled car THEN you'll have a successful electric car. Petrol engines are far less efficient at converting the stored energy into mechanical motion, and recapturing that mechanical energy when breaking, than electric motors which is the only reason that electric cars are even thinkable with current technology.
The weight of the Earth comes in useful in calculating how many space habitats you could build from it.
No it does not. The mass of the Earth might be useful to know though. Since imperial units like pounds and tons measure weight, not mass, you cannot use the normal conversion of one metric ton (mass) to imperial ton (weight) for this because it assumes a constant gravitational field of 9.81m/s^2 which is clearly not the case when dealing with space habitats.
When it comes to constructing real-world things maths alone is not enough and you do actually need some basic physics as well.
A bunch of us happen to like it.
Really? I find it is done so badly that it gives me a headache. Instead of actually projecting two images with different polarizations and having glasses with two differently aligned polaroid filters they instead project one image at twice the brightness and have a simple tinted filter for one eye. While this might save money on the glasses it means that one image has a ghostly shadow which I find extremely distracting and irritating.
Done right - with two separately polarized images - the technique works very well. I've seen demos of educational systems using computer projectors which do it properly and it looks very good (it would be great for visualizing 3D physics systems in a lecture). However like most things when they hit the commercial world nowadays they have managed to devalue it by cutting corners.
Children below age 8-9 don't even really get the sense of "right" and "wrong".
They certainly do. What they can't do is always think about the consequences of their actions nor control their emotions. The result is that they probably knew after the fact that hitting the old lady was wrong but did not think that racing down the path towards on the bikes would lead to that.
What if it wasn't accidental? That will be determined. I too hate the litigious nature of folks now days, but sometimes it may be the only way to have others take responsibility for themselves.
So you expect a 4 year old's thought process to be "I'd better not do X because otherwise I will be sued for my pocket money."? Really? Perhaps they'd better start teaching "courts and the law" in kindergarten so they can learn about this stuff.
Yes there is a general problem with kid's discipline today but this is absolutely the wrong way to fix it. Remember that they will end up hiring a lawyer to defend the child who will make up any possible believable excuse for the child so the message the child will get is that their actions were justified because their parents and other adults said they were. Even if they lose the case the consequence is financial so the child will likely be unaware of it because of their young age so the only result I see is that it will make things a LOT worse.
A person can be born in the US and raised and educated speaking a non-english language.
If there's a physicist out there, I get the impression that somehow leptons are being converted to fermions?
Leptons (e..g electron) are fermions. However there is something very fishy with this paper. For example 10^6 m/s is not relativistic. If you calculate the gamma factor (gamma=1 is what Newtonian physics assumes) you get 1.0000056. This means they are very non-relativistic and Schrodinger should work fine for them unless there is some subtle effect at play. Indeed to give electrons this energy you need to accelerate them through a potential of 2.8 volts so rather than needed a particle accelerator any one with a vacuum pump, a vacuum-tight container, some wire and two AA batteries can experience the fun of "relativistic" electrons.
What I suspect is happening is that the conditions on graphene have altered the electron behaviour so, rather than test anything fundamental, you are testing the properties of electrons on graphene. You cannot do real relativistic physics with this because if you get an unexpected result you have no idea whether it is because there is some new, unexpected physics at work or whether your approximation of the environment is simply wrong and you need to use a different model for it. Hence, while interesting, this is not the way to do real, relativistic physics: for that you need something that is truly relativistic, not just something which might, under certain conditions, act like something relativistic.
banning people from talking to or associating with known bad influences especially during probation is hardly a new thing for courts
the judge could have ordered the thief not associate with those people.
Correct me if I am wrong but doesn't the US constitution have something about "freedom of association" in it? and not passing laws to restrict this? My point still stands though - if he is so easily led astray that associating with people will cause him to break the law then how can you possibly trust him to follow those rules? Afterall those bad influences could ring him up and tell him to ignore it couldn't they?
The last time I saw something like this, it was because people online where encouraging the criminal behavior.
So if they had been talking to him in real life the kid would have been banned from talking to anyone? Sorry but it is utterly ridiculous for a judge to be able to make up arbitrary rules like this. If the kid cannot be trusted in society then he should be removed from it for a period. Afterall if you don't trust him not to listen to people online telling him to break the law how can you possibly trust him not to ignore the arbitrary rules of one judge and go online anyway?
That's easy to take care of, spell it LibreOfice.
Sorry, but calling something "LibreOfIce" probably won't help in the Canadian market.
Raw size does matter here. A larger receptor is better.
If you RTFA (yes I know it is Slashdot but hope springs eternal) you'll see that the system uses a GRID of flat antenna which it combines to simulate a larger antenna. By altering how the signals are combined i.e. the delays between them you can "point" the antenna at different sources. Hence you not only have a large detector from combining several smaller one but you can also point the thing without having to mechanically move it. It's brilliant idea and one that radio astronomers have been using for quite a while.
In addition, the curriculum of the 'Wiki-ized University' would be intellectually fluid, and instead of tenure, professors' longevity 'would be determined by the community.
So forget about this 'Wiki-ized University' ever producing any sensible research because if your research disagreed with what the community readily believed you'd be out on your ear. Communities need to hear the truth no matter how uncomfortable or unhappy it makes them and that means making sure researchers are free to choose what they research as well as publish the results, whatever they are, of that research, no matter how unpopular those results might be.
It doesn't....but tacking an english word onto a french makes a lot of sense if you want to expand into Canada. However since there are more letters in 'office' than 'libre' they may still fall foul of the Quebec language police for being more english than french.
While Oracle is not playing nice how exactly do they have a conflict of interest? In fact it seems exactly the opposite - they only have a very short term interest in their bottom line and don't care about anything else at all.
...and if you agree with that then they very clearly have a conflict of interest since it would be their best interest to drive OOo users to LO which is not in the best interest of OOo. In fact their apparent reluctance to leave may suggest that they are not confident about the success of LO which also harms that project as well.
Much as I hate to say it I think Oracle has a valid point here. The goals of the new LO will likely be very different from OOo under Oracle. I realize they were trying to make a foundation to take over OOo but that failed (thanks to Oracle) so they forked hence there is very clearly a difference in opinion about the aims and goals of the projects - otherwise why fork?
In addition nuclear plants cannot cause nuclear explosions so while the US may have come close to contaminating areas there was zero danger of a nuclear explosion in such cases.
....to get the total number events that you should see.
Actually that gives you the number of event that should be produced. The number that you should see also depends on your detector's acceptance and efficiency.
What we need is less technology in Elementary School. Not more.
No, we need better, more sensible use of technology. This does not necessarily mean less but it does require teachers who both understand technology AND how to use it properly to enhance teaching. For example, several years ago, I was in doing a demo of an orrery to show my kid's primary school class about the solar system, phases of the moon and seasons and finished off with showing them Google Earth. The teacher and kids were amazed and I quickly had them doing trips to anywhere in the world, seeing the Pyramids, flying down the Grand Canyon etc. It's an excellent way to teach geography and get the kids interested in learning.
Sadly though I more typically see teachers using calculators so early it hampers development of basic arithmetic skills, or playing games which are little more than interactive ads for toys (WebKinz!) "because it teaches them how to use the web"! This is not entirely their fault either when you look at the quality of the technology training they get - although some of it is. I being, temporarily, on the technology subgroup of my daughter's school council the overwhelming feeling I got was that the school knew technology was "good" and so they wanted some but had no clue (or plan) for how they would use it.
Until we can correct this ignorance and get teachers better educated in the use of technology (there are some out there, although these are usually not the ones involved in training others!) it is hard to argue that there should be any technology in a grade 5 classroom because if it is used in ignorance it is far more likely to get in the way of learning rather than enhancing it.
You are missing the point. They haven't got internet for their citizens to use, they have it to tell the world know how wonderful things are in North Korea. Its a shame they did not go with '.nk' though - there are far more interesting domain name possibilities for that domain...
Since the time in which the energy is measured is of necessity finite
No it is not necessarily finite. If the universe expands forever then the electron's state could exist forever thus there is no minimum uncertainty on the energy.
And the same goes for the universe itself; it has a bounded number of observable states.
That is not clear. A free electron has no quantized energy and, since current evidence points to the universe expanding for ever, there is no limit to the accuracy with which we can measure that energy (as boring as that measurement may be). Hence a single free electron has an infinite set of states as long as the universe's lifetime is unbounded.
The OS is built on the QNX Neutrino architecture
Interacting with the thing is going to be just about impossible. All we need now is for the marketing guys to describe it as a "quantum leap" and their utter failure to understand the physics terms they are using will be complete...particularly ironic given that the owner of RIM financed the creation of the Perimeter Institute for theoretical physics in Canada!
In the common law system judges create law.
No - judges create precedence, not law i.e. they interpret the law one way and then that way is supposed to be followed in later trials for consistency. They are NOT supposed to go around making up laws or interpreting things the way they want them. They are supposed to attempt to interpret the law in the way intended by the legislators when they passed it or as society would expect it to be interpreted.