Those people have all had books, plays and high school essays written about them. If you're looking for unsung scientests, look at Maxwell, Lagrange or Dirac.
What's really missing is media attention to what is going on right now, and what kind of people are today's scientests. I say I study physics at a party, and everyone assumes I'm either like Einstein (far smarter than everyone else) or Nash (unbalanced and antisocial). Neither are true of most physicists I've met. Stereotypes die hard.
This puts my political views in conflict with my professional views.
Politically speaking, I don't think the government should be paying for anything that isn't directly related to protecting the country and enforcing the laws. It's the job of corporations and universities to do this research.
On the other hand, as a physicist, I know that corporations and universities can't or won't pay for all the research that is currently done. One could argue that most of it is useless; however, one never knows what research is going to pay off. If we did, it wouldn't be research.
Simply put, if we want things like cheap, clean energy, real cures to cancer, and profitable space technology, the government is going to have to lay down some cash to get things going. You might point at all the companies doing research in those areas (such as General Atomics, Armadillo/John Carmack, and countless biotechs), but they are all using technology that was originally poineered through support of the government. Consider environmental research, which most private sources have very little economic reason to support, but the government has very real political and economic reasons to support.
Ideally, these things would all be done with private money, AND they would be done in an open manner. Science is no good if everyone doesn't have access to it. Once science is done purely with private money, science could end up "closed source". Some areas, like computer research and health care, alreay are.
Look at what is discussed on this site regarding the control companies want to have over the research they have done in these areas. Do we want everything to end up like that? Imagine if the government started funding more open source software research. Would that NOT lead to some great things?
Private donations might work for the Ivy leages, but for most research universities, government support allows us to take the risks that lead to the really big payoffs, without completely screwing the students with tuition.
I'm obviously biased, but in my opinion, there are very few ways money could be better spent than on basic research. For those who say the government shouldn't be paying for this stuff, I agree with your principles, but from a utilitarian point of view, it needs to happen.
We've been desperate in San Diego for something... ANYTHING, for a long, long time. We have a "trolly" that has two stops.
You might have heard of FastTrak, where you pay to use the carpool lanes. No one was using the carpool lanes on I-15 so we started selling a limited number of passes for it to fund public transit. The first idea was for a train that would run along the same route... but the usual complaints of room, cost and "needing more study" came up and the money ended up paying for busses.
Insurance politics in California is just about as corrupt as politics can possibly get. I have much more faith in the transportation people.
Wait... I just remembered that the state had decided about 15 years ago that by 2005 every new car sold in California would not run on gasoline. Now not only is that not happening, Davis is making Bush look like an environmentalist by refusing to conform to gas additive standards simply because the old additive is manufactured here.
Perhaps you should actually look at what is planned.
I am one of the people who take the existing train regularly (various places from San Diego to Chatsworth), it's quite nice, but very, very slow. It is faster for me to drive.
You complain that the train won't cover those popular routes... the reason the train is so slow right now is that it stops every 15 minutes to let people on and off. When you have to cover 150 miles, that can get really old. The planned train covers the exact same route the existing train does, but without stopping at EVERY neighborhood. (There are ONLY 11 stops planned in the LA/OC area right now.)
But wait, there's more!
It also goes to LAX, and the Bay Area! It even will link up with the excellent transit system they already have there. The bill we just passed was to fund specifically the San Francisco/LA link.
For some reason, you seem to object the train stopping Barstow... even though it's the only thing in between Los Angeles and Fresno! (It does stop in Fresno by the way. In fact... the whole thing is the work of the state Senate representative from Fresno - Jim Costa!) You should look at the geography of the state some time... look at how much space there is between Fresno and Barstow. They're not exactly right next to eachother.
Additionally, I don't know if you've been to Barstow, but it's not exactly an upscale community. (By the way... you'll notice there is NO stop in Palm Springs.)
I grew up in San Diego, and I fully support the train simply for what it will do there.
I don't know how you got your ideas on this bill. You suspect "a big land owner with some pull in Sacramento is behind this". It's actually a farmer from Fresno who is "behind this". He does have pull in Sacramento though... he's a Senator there.
The Senators have read the bill, and they know what's going on. It's their communications as well as ours that could be under scrutiny.
Most of the issues with the law havn't been over these real type of problems (rights and such), but more that the law is very specific and some people want to loosen it up a little.
Personally, I have to agree with Senator Byrd... do we really need a new agency? We already have quite a few agencies, and military branches, whose jobs are to protect the country.
I don't know... given how easy it was for anyone to do what they needed to do at any time from any access point on the ship, I would have to say it wasn't.
Is this really going to be an issue? I don't know, that's why I'm asking. Generally speaking, it seems like you're not going to get noise that's large enough to mess with a computer too much.
People use all sorts of clear plastics on "normal" case mods and don't seem to be suffering any ill effects.
If it is a problem, then couldn't you just tack some aluminum foil to the inside?
She was the one who got me introduced to Harry Potter. We saw that and both really liked it, but she had never read Tolkien (despite managing to get an engineering degree).
She didn't quite jump up at the end, but made it very clear she wouldn't be seeing the others until she could see the story all the way through.
For those of you trying to support the physics community here, note that this article is not just useless physics bashing. It is about a real problem in all scientific disciplines.
This article is not about criticism of the system, but rather specific criticism of specific people in the system. It is responsibility of the schools and journals, and especially thesis advisors to make sure people are doing adaquate work.
There was an excuse given by these guys' advisor in the article about these guys working for 10 years and they should get a degree for that, even if they didn't exactly display a command of the mathmatics behind their theory.
This is absolute bullshit!
I don't care how long or hard you are working on something. If you want a degree in theoretical physics, you'd damn well better be able to understand your own thesis. If you can't AT LEAST explain it to your advisor, there is no way I can see to give you a PhD.
We all remember BECs, right? That's where you cool bosons down to the point that they are all in the exact same (lowest) energy state. This leads to interesting stuff, that's kind of important.
This is similar. The difference between Bosons and Fermions is that no two fermions can be in the exact same state. (The Pauli exclusion principle.) So you cool fermions down in a way similar to the way you cool Bosons down to get BEC, and instead of all the atoms being in the same state, they each take the lowest state that's not already occupied. This is very similar to what happens in semiconductors... you CAN understand this. They are basically using atoms to do the same thing that happens in semiconductors with electrons.
This is a very big deal, as this type of "degenerate fermi gas" is everywhere. From neutron stars to the center of Jupiter, this stuff shows up in theories all over the place.
If you do decently, you'll be ok, if not, I stongly recommend you consider giving up.
Schools tend to put a lot of emphasis on that test, so if you do well, you have a chance at getting in. If you really want to go through getting a BS, and then applying... that's means it's going to be 10 years before you're done... and then you'll probably post-doc for another few years... it could take a while.
Don't listen to all the doubting computer scientests out there, they forget that computer science and engineering are branches of physics. There are some branches where jobs are plentiful (optics, materials), and some where they're not so plentiful (particle, cosmology).
If it helps, I do know one physics PhD who recieved his degree when he was in his forties. It can be done.
I've done something similar for a computer music programming course. We had to come up with a creative final project, and at the time, I was working on a fueling model for General Atomics. So I basically plugged in some simplified data from that program into another one that would output graphics and sound based on the data. What I forgot to take into account is that my GA program ran on awesome computers optimized for those type of calculations, and my music software was running on a G4 (now... I know that's *technically* a supercomputer... but). In any case, it really sucked.
So, I turned the particle count down by a few orders of magnitude until I think there was a maximum of about a dozen at any time... tweaked the reaction data to scale for that, and in the end, I actually had a really cool audio/visual model of what a deuterium atom sees as it goes from the wall of a fusion reactor to the core. In an added bonus, it even sounded interesting.
I think the most fun I had in that project was designing the frequency mixtures that would accompany the various things happening in the program.
Tablet PCs aren't really optimized for the "geek" market. Where they are really usefull is for the "real world".
For example: There are not very many general contractors (construction workers) out there using laptops. If they need to get an idea across of what they need, they probably need to draw a picture, and they're not going to take the time to open up *Cad and diagram the thing out.
Now... this isn't a new idea. Next time you get a delivery from UPS, look at the thing the delivery guy is carrying, that's basically a tablet PC.
The problem with the Tablet PC market right now is that only big companies really use them. It's not been out there enough for your average person to know where to get one, or even that they could. The reason MS doing this is great is that it opens up another large group of people to the digital age.
This guys project would make a neato high school science fair project. The most difficult thing seemed to be keeping the water contained. The only thing that saves this from being a joke is that it was done in the "Future of Learning Group". This works well as a demonstration of how computers work for elementary school kids, and makes the whole thing worthwhile (assuming that's what they use it for).
You're misinterpreting "market forces". It doesn't necessarily mean that it is worth it for corporations to get involved in a project.
A better way of stating market forces would be to say that it is in the best interest of commerce in general. All of the things you mentioned led to increased economic opportunity and increased efficiancy.
The government has be involved in the beggining stages of anything in space. The problem is, with the issues we have down here, no one in the government is going to throw a lot of support into space unless there is a definite payoff.
There was a social payoff during the Cold War, but without that now, we need some promises of technological or material payoffs.
A number of people have pointed out that the government is immune to most lawsuits. You're on the right track though, in that you CAN sue governmental agencies who are not carrying out thier duties. The idea is that you can force them to enforce the laws that Congress has passed. At this point, I think it's pretty clear they're acting in a negligent manner letting stuff like this go through.
People don't care about quality, but they care about size.
A videotape is a lot larger than a CD, and 10 videotapes weigh a LOT more than ten CDs. CDR, DVDR or something similar will eventually replace videotapes simply for that reason. You make an excellent point that people care a lot more about what is easy and what everyone else is using, but those same lazy people don't want to deal with something clunky and heavy when small and light will do.
I will agree that most people won't use CDR type media until it's as easy to use and as commercially available as VHS. Until then, it will be like most people are unaware you can even use a CD to record video.
It doesn't have to be in science, you just have to make money. You have college ahead of you, and if you plan on doing anything serious, you're going to be there for at least 8 years. You'll need the money, and a little humbling experiance in fast food never hurt anyone.
I've worked in labs that use liquid helium. Basically, we use liquid nitrogen to get things down pretty cold so that we don't waste any helium. We really don't care about the nitrogen. We pour it out and after you've been there for a few days you don't even notice it splashing around. You don't do anything stupid with it... but it's just not a problem.
Liquid helium, on the other hand, is some crazy shit. We always use gloves when transfering helium, and we try to keep it as isolated from the atmosphere as possible.
If it might sound cool to do liquid helium cooling on a CPU, forget it, it's not worth it, especially if you don't REALLY know what you're doing.
Sounds like the original stealth fighter to me. It was a precursor to the stealth bomber, and was all sharp edges and black. Viewed from the right angle, it could look violin shaped.
Slashdot Mirror
Math lives in that world too.
They just generally don't tell everyone. I have no idea why, as it's nice knowing that stuff.
I mean, really, if you had only taken a graduate level classical mechanics course you might have done the realistic version of this problem already.
Those people have all had books, plays and high school essays written about them. If you're looking for unsung scientests, look at Maxwell, Lagrange or Dirac.
What's really missing is media attention to what is going on right now, and what kind of people are today's scientests. I say I study physics at a party, and everyone assumes I'm either like Einstein (far smarter than everyone else) or Nash (unbalanced and antisocial). Neither are true of most physicists I've met. Stereotypes die hard.
This puts my political views in conflict with my professional views.
Politically speaking, I don't think the government should be paying for anything that isn't directly related to protecting the country and enforcing the laws. It's the job of corporations and universities to do this research.
On the other hand, as a physicist, I know that corporations and universities can't or won't pay for all the research that is currently done. One could argue that most of it is useless; however, one never knows what research is going to pay off. If we did, it wouldn't be research.
Simply put, if we want things like cheap, clean energy, real cures to cancer, and profitable space technology, the government is going to have to lay down some cash to get things going. You might point at all the companies doing research in those areas (such as General Atomics, Armadillo/John Carmack, and countless biotechs), but they are all using technology that was originally poineered through support of the government. Consider environmental research, which most private sources have very little economic reason to support, but the government has very real political and economic reasons to support.
Ideally, these things would all be done with private money, AND they would be done in an open manner. Science is no good if everyone doesn't have access to it. Once science is done purely with private money, science could end up "closed source". Some areas, like computer research and health care, alreay are.
Look at what is discussed on this site regarding the control companies want to have over the research they have done in these areas. Do we want everything to end up like that? Imagine if the government started funding more open source software research. Would that NOT lead to some great things?
Private donations might work for the Ivy leages, but for most research universities, government support allows us to take the risks that lead to the really big payoffs, without completely screwing the students with tuition.
I'm obviously biased, but in my opinion, there are very few ways money could be better spent than on basic research. For those who say the government shouldn't be paying for this stuff, I agree with your principles, but from a utilitarian point of view, it needs to happen.
We've been desperate in San Diego for something... ANYTHING, for a long, long time. We have a "trolly" that has two stops.
You might have heard of FastTrak, where you pay to use the carpool lanes. No one was using the carpool lanes on I-15 so we started selling a limited number of passes for it to fund public transit. The first idea was for a train that would run along the same route... but the usual complaints of room, cost and "needing more study" came up and the money ended up paying for busses.
That's the best we've got.
Insurance politics in California is just about as corrupt as politics can possibly get. I have much more faith in the transportation people.
Wait... I just remembered that the state had decided about 15 years ago that by 2005 every new car sold in California would not run on gasoline. Now not only is that not happening, Davis is making Bush look like an environmentalist by refusing to conform to gas additive standards simply because the old additive is manufactured here.
Right... never mind, it will never happen.
Wow...
Perhaps you should actually look at what is planned.
I am one of the people who take the existing train regularly (various places from San Diego to Chatsworth), it's quite nice, but very, very slow. It is faster for me to drive.
You complain that the train won't cover those popular routes... the reason the train is so slow right now is that it stops every 15 minutes to let people on and off. When you have to cover 150 miles, that can get really old. The planned train covers the exact same route the existing train does, but without stopping at EVERY neighborhood. (There are ONLY 11 stops planned in the LA/OC area right now.)
But wait, there's more!
It also goes to LAX, and the Bay Area! It even will link up with the excellent transit system they already have there. The bill we just passed was to fund specifically the San Francisco/LA link.
For some reason, you seem to object the train stopping Barstow... even though it's the only thing in between Los Angeles and Fresno! (It does stop in Fresno by the way. In fact... the whole thing is the work of the state Senate representative from Fresno - Jim Costa!) You should look at the geography of the state some time... look at how much space there is between Fresno and Barstow. They're not exactly right next to eachother.
Additionally, I don't know if you've been to Barstow, but it's not exactly an upscale community. (By the way... you'll notice there is NO stop in Palm Springs.)
I grew up in San Diego, and I fully support the train simply for what it will do there.
I don't know how you got your ideas on this bill. You suspect "a big land owner with some pull in Sacramento is behind this". It's actually a farmer from Fresno who is "behind this". He does have pull in Sacramento though... he's a Senator there.
The Senators have read the bill, and they know what's going on. It's their communications as well as ours that could be under scrutiny.
Most of the issues with the law havn't been over these real type of problems (rights and such), but more that the law is very specific and some people want to loosen it up a little.
Personally, I have to agree with Senator Byrd... do we really need a new agency? We already have quite a few agencies, and military branches, whose jobs are to protect the country.
I don't know... given how easy it was for anyone to do what they needed to do at any time from any access point on the ship, I would have to say it wasn't.
Is this really going to be an issue? I don't know, that's why I'm asking. Generally speaking, it seems like you're not going to get noise that's large enough to mess with a computer too much.
People use all sorts of clear plastics on "normal" case mods and don't seem to be suffering any ill effects.
If it is a problem, then couldn't you just tack some aluminum foil to the inside?
I had the same problem with my girlfriend.
She was the one who got me introduced to Harry Potter. We saw that and both really liked it, but she had never read Tolkien (despite managing to get an engineering degree).
She didn't quite jump up at the end, but made it very clear she wouldn't be seeing the others until she could see the story all the way through.
For those of you trying to support the physics community here, note that this article is not just useless physics bashing. It is about a real problem in all scientific disciplines.
This article is not about criticism of the system, but rather specific criticism of specific people in the system. It is responsibility of the schools and journals, and especially thesis advisors to make sure people are doing adaquate work.
There was an excuse given by these guys' advisor in the article about these guys working for 10 years and they should get a degree for that, even if they didn't exactly display a command of the mathmatics behind their theory.
This is absolute bullshit!
I don't care how long or hard you are working on something. If you want a degree in theoretical physics, you'd damn well better be able to understand your own thesis. If you can't AT LEAST explain it to your advisor, there is no way I can see to give you a PhD.
We all remember BECs, right? That's where you cool bosons down to the point that they are all in the exact same (lowest) energy state. This leads to interesting stuff, that's kind of important.
This is similar. The difference between Bosons and Fermions is that no two fermions can be in the exact same state. (The Pauli exclusion principle.) So you cool fermions down in a way similar to the way you cool Bosons down to get BEC, and instead of all the atoms being in the same state, they each take the lowest state that's not already occupied. This is very similar to what happens in semiconductors... you CAN understand this. They are basically using atoms to do the same thing that happens in semiconductors with electrons.
This is a very big deal, as this type of "degenerate fermi gas" is everywhere. From neutron stars to the center of Jupiter, this stuff shows up in theories all over the place.
No one appears to be commenting on this.
Probably because it's so depressing.
As a civilian, I would feel a lot better about my house and family being turned to rubble than I would about possibly being blinded.
Ok, sarcasm aside, I know what you mean about the reflections... but really, what else are you going to do? Civilians always lose in war.
Take the physics sybject GRE.
If you do decently, you'll be ok, if not, I stongly recommend you consider giving up.
Schools tend to put a lot of emphasis on that test, so if you do well, you have a chance at getting in. If you really want to go through getting a BS, and then applying... that's means it's going to be 10 years before you're done... and then you'll probably post-doc for another few years... it could take a while.
Don't listen to all the doubting computer scientests out there, they forget that computer science and engineering are branches of physics. There are some branches where jobs are plentiful (optics, materials), and some where they're not so plentiful (particle, cosmology).
If it helps, I do know one physics PhD who recieved his degree when he was in his forties. It can be done.
I've done something similar for a computer music programming course. We had to come up with a creative final project, and at the time, I was working on a fueling model for General Atomics. So I basically plugged in some simplified data from that program into another one that would output graphics and sound based on the data. What I forgot to take into account is that my GA program ran on awesome computers optimized for those type of calculations, and my music software was running on a G4 (now... I know that's *technically* a supercomputer... but). In any case, it really sucked.
So, I turned the particle count down by a few orders of magnitude until I think there was a maximum of about a dozen at any time... tweaked the reaction data to scale for that, and in the end, I actually had a really cool audio/visual model of what a deuterium atom sees as it goes from the wall of a fusion reactor to the core. In an added bonus, it even sounded interesting.
I think the most fun I had in that project was designing the frequency mixtures that would accompany the various things happening in the program.
Tablet PCs aren't really optimized for the "geek" market. Where they are really usefull is for the "real world".
For example: There are not very many general contractors (construction workers) out there using laptops. If they need to get an idea across of what they need, they probably need to draw a picture, and they're not going to take the time to open up *Cad and diagram the thing out.
Now... this isn't a new idea. Next time you get a delivery from UPS, look at the thing the delivery guy is carrying, that's basically a tablet PC.
The problem with the Tablet PC market right now is that only big companies really use them. It's not been out there enough for your average person to know where to get one, or even that they could. The reason MS doing this is great is that it opens up another large group of people to the digital age.
This guys project would make a neato high school science fair project. The most difficult thing seemed to be keeping the water contained. The only thing that saves this from being a joke is that it was done in the "Future of Learning Group". This works well as a demonstration of how computers work for elementary school kids, and makes the whole thing worthwhile (assuming that's what they use it for).
You're misinterpreting "market forces". It doesn't necessarily mean that it is worth it for corporations to get involved in a project.
A better way of stating market forces would be to say that it is in the best interest of commerce in general. All of the things you mentioned led to increased economic opportunity and increased efficiancy.
The government has be involved in the beggining stages of anything in space. The problem is, with the issues we have down here, no one in the government is going to throw a lot of support into space unless there is a definite payoff.
There was a social payoff during the Cold War, but without that now, we need some promises of technological or material payoffs.
A number of people have pointed out that the government is immune to most lawsuits. You're on the right track though, in that you CAN sue governmental agencies who are not carrying out thier duties. The idea is that you can force them to enforce the laws that Congress has passed. At this point, I think it's pretty clear they're acting in a negligent manner letting stuff like this go through.
People don't care about quality, but they care about size.
A videotape is a lot larger than a CD, and 10 videotapes weigh a LOT more than ten CDs. CDR, DVDR or something similar will eventually replace videotapes simply for that reason. You make an excellent point that people care a lot more about what is easy and what everyone else is using, but those same lazy people don't want to deal with something clunky and heavy when small and light will do.
I will agree that most people won't use CDR type media until it's as easy to use and as commercially available as VHS. Until then, it will be like most people are unaware you can even use a CD to record video.
I recommend you get a job.
It doesn't have to be in science, you just have to make money. You have college ahead of you, and if you plan on doing anything serious, you're going to be there for at least 8 years. You'll need the money, and a little humbling experiance in fast food never hurt anyone.
I've worked in labs that use liquid helium. Basically, we use liquid nitrogen to get things down pretty cold so that we don't waste any helium. We really don't care about the nitrogen. We pour it out and after you've been there for a few days you don't even notice it splashing around. You don't do anything stupid with it... but it's just not a problem.
Liquid helium, on the other hand, is some crazy shit. We always use gloves when transfering helium, and we try to keep it as isolated from the atmosphere as possible.
If it might sound cool to do liquid helium cooling on a CPU, forget it, it's not worth it, especially if you don't REALLY know what you're doing.
Sounds like the original stealth fighter to me. It was a precursor to the stealth bomber, and was all sharp edges and black. Viewed from the right angle, it could look violin shaped.
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http://www.af.mil/news/factsheets/F_117A_Nighthaw
I don't need chemical supplements to reach my peak performance level.