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  1. Re:Bottom/Anti-Bottom Hypernuclei? on First Creation of Anti-Strange Hypernuclei · · Score: 1

    It's not an ignorant question at all. I think the answer would indeed be that bottom quarks are so heavy they decay too quickly for us to observe them in bound states like hypernuclei.

    The question is basically the same as - you can read up on that one quite well on Wikipedia - "Why do we observe charm quarks and bottom quarks in bound states such as the J/Psi or Bottomonium, but no Topponium?"

  2. Re:Has anyone noticed? on First Creation of Anti-Strange Hypernuclei · · Score: 1

    It's simple, really: We know about most of the matter that is common around here, which is matter that exists under the conditions that we have here.

    Now, when we go ahead and try to create hitherto unknown forms of matter, we create extreme conditions not normally encountered around us. A way to do this that we understand fairly well is to create extreme pressures and extreme temperatures, as in RHIC collisions.

    As it happens, those are the conditions inside collapsed stars, so when we discover new forms of matter this way, it's likely that it exist there, as well.

    Your friendly neighborhood hopefully-soon-to-be astrophysicist

  3. Re:Negatively strange anti-hypernucleus? on First Creation of Anti-Strange Hypernuclei · · Score: 1

    He shits you not!

    Shed and outhouse are uncommon these days, but only a year back, I calculated stuff in femtobarns in my exam of Particle Physics.

  4. Re:"Anti-strange"? on First Creation of Anti-Strange Hypernuclei · · Score: 3, Informative

    Wouldn't an Anti-Strange Hypernuclei just be a Normal Hypernuclei?

    No.

    "Strange", in this context, means "having the attribute of positive strangeness", which means that these hypernuclei are composed of at least one nucleon which, in turn, is composed of at least one strange quark (as opoosed to "ordinary" up and down quarks).

    Thus, "anti-strange" means "having the attribute of negative strangeness", which stands for all the ablove blah-blah, but with "strange anti-quark" inserted instead of "strange quark".

  5. Misleading summary on First Creation of Anti-Strange Hypernuclei · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hypernuclei with negative strangeness haven't been "created for the first time". They've been produced in RHIC collisions for as long as they've been running (with sufficient energy), and it's only now that we've been able to see them.

    That, however, is quite the accomplishment, as relativistic heavy ions collisions are so complex that we're hardly begun to understand what happens in them. Think a two-hundred-truck collision at 1,000 mph, and you're interested in what screw came from which truck and how the drivers' shoes were tied.

    [No truck drivers were hurt in the writing of this comment!]

  6. Re:My Strange Quark on Fermilab Detects "Doubly Strange" Particle · · Score: 2, Funny

    Now anyone think this story was posted just because the quark happens to be named "strange"?

    Well, you certainly won't find Truth or Beauty here!

    RIMSHOT!

  7. Re:Digital Hadron Calorimeter?!? on Fermilab Detects "Doubly Strange" Particle · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, it makes sense to someone familiar with accelerator design, but it's pretty redundant:

    A calorimeter measures the deposition of energy along the trajectory of particles created in or scattered by a collision. Since other, more precise or better suited methods for measuring electromagnetic particles such as electron and muons exist, calorimeters are mostly used for hadrons. And it is highly likely that it be digital, because without a trigger for choosing ~200 events per second to be saved and processed out of hundreds of thousands that actually ocur every second, you'd have yourself a nice, useless analog calorimeter.

    So yeah, "Digital Hadron Calorimeter" is a bit of a buzzword-fest, but it gets the message across.

  8. Re:Probably forbidden by international treaties on Better Living Through Nukes? · · Score: 1

    I kindly invite you to RTFC to the end. The CTBT's article I reads: "Each State Party undertakes not to carry out any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion, and to prohibit and prevent any such nuclear explosion at any place under its jurisdiction or control."

  9. Probably forbidden by international treaties on Better Living Through Nukes? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is a Treaty banning Nuclear Weapon Tests In The Atmosphere, In Outer Space And Under Water (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTBT), which would probably hold and prevent this from happening, even though the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NNPT) still allows nuclear explosions for "peaceful purposes". Anyway, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTBT), which stands on much better fotting again since Obama supports it, would definitely prevent it.

  10. Re:Multiple monopoles? on Making Magnetic Monopoles and Other Physics Exotica · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm not sure it was ever supposed to apply to photons in any case.

    Probably not, since photons, being their own antiparticles, never had arrows attached to them in Feynman graphs to begin with.

  11. Re:nobel on Making Magnetic Monopoles and Other Physics Exotica · · Score: 5, Informative
    It wouldn't matter much at all to Maxwell's equations. The model is well fit to accommodate magnetic monopoles, if the

    div B = 0

    equation were modified to read, say

    div B = rho_m / mu_0

    in analogy to Gauss' law. The defining qualities of Maxwell's model, such as the compliance with relativity, would remain intact.

    For further reading on this, David J. Griffiths' 'Introduction to Electrodynamics' is many a professor's first recommendation to students.

  12. Re:How much is your soul worth? on Getting Paid To Abandon an Open Source Project? · · Score: 1

    I code for a living - I MAKE MONEY for selling the product of my skills. Welcome to the real world, folks. [...]
    Does the amount you will make adequately compensate you for the loss of your ability to continue working on a "fun" project?

    It would appear from the original question that there will be more at stake than the loss of fun to one person. Signing that contract in the middle of developing his new codebase would be tantamount to jumping out of a truck he himself took out on the freeway.

    In my opinion, you should at least be allowed to park the truck somewhere it can be picked up by someone else, i.e. continue on the project by writing free code until the codebase is complete and you're not the only person able to maintain it anymore.

  13. Re:Insurance? on How Do I Prevent Lan Party Theft? · · Score: 1

    You Sir, just made me jealous enough to almost ruin my day.

  14. Re:Get off his nuts on Pickens Plans On Wind Power · · Score: 1

    There are no more communities. There are just places where people live. Most people are dirtbags.

    Take that attitude and get off my planet.

  15. Re:General intro to physics books on Book Recommendations For Maths To Astrophysics? · · Score: 1

    Physicists keep expanding stuff in Taylor series and keeping only 1 or 2 terms, without worrying about what they left out, [...]

    I'm sorry to say, but sometimes even the equations of motion of a simple pendulum are analytically unsolvable unless expanded to nothing but the second order, so sometimes us physicists don't have a choice. But I do agree that, in general, we disregard the finer aspects of the mathematics we use - and gladly ;-)

  16. Re:Get off his nuts on Pickens Plans On Wind Power · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That is why people should realize that renewable energies are best run independently. Solar panels on rooftops or a small wind farm can easily be paid for and operated by households or small communities and make them more independent of the energy corporations.

  17. Re:Pringles cans suck. on Pringles Can Designer Dies, Buried In a Pringles Can · · Score: 1

    They make excellent cheap Darth Vader voice modulators! Try speaking into an empty one with your best James Earl Jones impression to do a Darth Vader. Take the plastic foil off of the bottom of a pack of cigarettes, insert your index and middle finger and spread the foil, press against your mouth and speak agitated German - Tadaa, imitation of the 1936 Olympic Games opening ceremony broadcast (or any radio show with our favorite Austrian dictator).
  18. Re:Well, for one thing.. on Why Buy a PC Preloaded With Linux? · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes; I went over to Best Buy the other day to get a meatspace look at an eee. I had no intention of leaving with one, of course. But I made sure to let the (unusually knowledgeable this time) personnel know that the XP edition was useless to me. Whenever I visit our biggest local electronic supermarket for some reason, on at least one showcase laptop, I open the Windows Vista editorand type in font size 72; "use linux". Never got caught.
  19. Re:I wish this one wasn't killed.... on DARPA Celebrates 50 Years of Pushing the Envelope · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A market for medical knowledge gained unethically, for example.

    Who would get hurt if there was a market of this type? If anything, it would save lives.

    Right! Actually, Dr Mengele was saving lives when he took Auschwitz inmates and subjected them to the most outrageously inhuman procedures for medical insight (and a bit of sick pleasure, no doubt). Nothing bad could come of a system that would allow such people to even make a profit out of such practices!

    And don't you try and tell me such things could only happen in a dictatorship. I'd bet you anything that somewhere out there is a CIA agent that enjoys waterboarding so much he'd be more than willing to keep records of how long the 'terrorists' can take the torture for an extra buck.

    You, Sir, are a sickening egoist.

  20. They want to analyze _what_? on NASA Builds a Cheap Standardized Space Probe · · Score: 1

    The moon's _atmosphere_?
    Boy, those Apollo astronauts might actually have been up there, what with the waving flag and all!

    [Readers are strongly advised to turn their irony detectors on]

  21. Re:It was a dumb concept on Goodbye To the SPOT Watch · · Score: 2, Funny

    iWatch Apple would probably decide that didn't sound cool enough. I think they would go with iTime. iAgree
  22. Mod parent _way_ up on Upgrade Trick Still Present In Vista SP1 · · Score: 1

    "Some people look down on others because of the operating system, brand of computer, or programming language of your choice. Whenever this happens, I want you to say "Fuck you" to them. Why? Because it doesn't matter what operating system, brand of computer, or programming language you use. As long as it enables you to get done what you need and want to get done, then use it. Whenever someone looks down on your for your technology choices, just picture them as a grumpy old man at a rich country club telling you that you arent good enough for their tee times. That's ok; you don't want to be around those kinds of people. Stay away from them."

    I salute you and your dad. His metaphor was prefectly well chosen and fitting.

    I consider myself something of a Linux zealot, but I FULL ACK the idea of respecting another's choice if he's okay with it. It's only when people start complaining even though they have viable alternatives available for a little extra work that I get angry.

  23. Re:Circuit City shoppers are the Slashdot standard on Hostile ta Vista, Baby · · Score: 1

    RTFA. He makes very valid points about changes for the worse which have happened in the UI and their psychological effect on users that switch over. Also, he makes important points about Virtual PC, overall system performance and confusing user interface settings (e.g. ClearType).

  24. Re:Acrobat on Driver Update Can Cause Vista Deactivation · · Score: 1

    Hmm... An application from 2001 (5) or 2003 (6) doesn't work on an operating system that is from 2007? And the company doesn't want to support an application that is 3 versions and 6 years old? Gee, that is a shocker.

    Given the release cycle (around every three years) and the price of this thing (400€ and up), I think you as a customer you can expect them to release patches for at least one version back to work with the latest version of the market leader of desktop operating systems.

  25. Re:Think of the memory on A Mozilla Desktop Environment? · · Score: 1

    Ever run Firefox on a Linux box with 64MB?

    Not quite, but I'm running FF2 on a Sun with 64MB of RAM on Solaris 9, and it crawls.