GGP is correct that you could describe the motion of the planets (and sun) in terms of complicated orbits about the earth.
However, as others have pointed out in the thread, there is a preferred (inertial) frame -- that of the fixed stars (cf. the Mach principle). The sun moves with respect to that frame, carrying the solar system with it. So the frame of the sun (or, more correctly, that of the center of mass of the solar system, which happens to pretty much be the sun) is objectively closer to being inertial than that of the earth. So to suggest that the reasons for favoring the sun as the origin of the system are purely technical (as opposed to physical) is perhaps a little disingenuous.
Actually, its even possible for the group velocity to exceed the speed of light, without violating relativity/causality. See for e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0101068
Well, at the time they came up with 0-k, they thought so as well, as that is the point that atomic motion stopped. Then they went and discovered that while atomic motion stopped at that temp, sub atomic motion did not. They went on further to discover that they could 'cool' things further and reduce/stop some of the sub-atomic motion. I think they have given up on a true absolute-zero at this point, and simply use it as an arbitrary point where one is needed.
This is really wrong. Temperature has a precise mathematical definition (relation between system energy and entropy), which is universal. Applied to most systems, this yields the concept of temperature familiar from everyday life. Indeed, some systems are such that they can be manipulated to a state of `negative temperature', in the formal mathematical sense. However it is definitely not the case that the concept of absolute zero is tied to the motion of atoms in particular, or that it is merely 'a reference point' that has later been surpassed.
(I kinda hope you're just trolling, otherwise please just STFU when you don't know WTF you're talking about. )
Thinking about those lasers which are used to cool small particles to near zero temperatures. Can the photons from those lasers be considered to have a negative temperature, because of the energy they remove from the particles being cooled?
Not really... negative temperature can be a 'meaningful' concept in some scenarios, but it's not necessary to invoke it here. Temperature is a property of an object such that two objects in contact (or exchanging radiation, etc) with different temperatures will exchange energy (heat) so as to try and 'meet each other in the middle', i.e., hot one loses energy to the colder one until the the temperatures become equal. Basically the character of laser beams is that they are not-very-thermal-at-all, so you can think of the incident beam as having some temperature very close to absolute zero, much less than the particles they're being shone on. Statistically speaking, the temperature of the particles will lower towards that of the incident laser beam, and the scattered laser photons will be 'heated', and carry away some of the original thermal energy of the cooled particles.
No, it shows that bloggers and reporters (and slashdot editors) need to sensationalize preliminary results or possible explanations to get readers.
Of course they need to sensationalize. Otherwise these reports are just, well, preprints! And preprints that aren't in your field probably won't be of interest to you.
The arXiv blog is cool, and it's nice to see some interesting preprints from outside my field pointed out, but I only take this to mean that this could possibly be a bit more interesting to me than the other ten-thousand-odd astro-ph preprints I won't be reading this year.
Dioxin and phenol levels 7 orders of magnitude above the safe limit, an annual death rate exceeding the birth rate by 260% (life expectancies: M=42, F=47) and generally more soviet era chem-weapons-chem than you can shake a mutant-whatever at.
The wiki doesn't really do it justice...I saw the BBC doco once, and it was appalling. There's a `pond' so choked with chemicals that it appears to have a consistency closer to foam rubber than water, and a huge pit in the ground with hundreds of barrels of toxic waste spilling out the top of it. It's hard to believe that people actually live there. Truly tragic.:(
From the wiki:
Mills' hydrino theory was inspired by a physics paper by MIT electrical engineering professor, Herman Haus. This paper used classical physics to model radiation arising from the free electron laser. Mills reasoned that if classical physics could model radiation of the free electron it should be able to model radiation and non-radiation of the bound electron in an atom.
OK, so essentially, because the classical approximation to the quantum mechanical model largely reproduces the observed experimental results in the free electron laser, it must apply to a bound electron also. This guy is fucking clue-repellent. You can model atomic radiation classically (certain aspects of, up to a point), but the quantum mechanical description is much more accurate, ridiculously accurate in fact, and there are inherently quantum mechanical effects that arise only in a formal QED treatment, and are commonly observable.
Making crude approximations to the complete quantum mechanical description and getting a reasonable description of the system is what a whole lot of theoretical physics is about. Finding exactly how truthful the model must be to predict the correct (experimental) results is half the game.
Here's a clue: a free electron is often essentially particulate in behaviour, and quantum mechanics (largely) provides no correction to the classical calculations. When you bind an electron in a potential, is when it starts to behave quantum mechanically (i.e., wavefunction wrapped around the nucleus). That's why it's OK to model it classically in the one regime, but not the other, geddit?
He surprised professors by explaining the Schroedinger equation, which is of central importance to the theory of quantum mechanics.
But what exactly did he explain about it, ah? Explanations could be to any degree of depth, some would possibly be indicative of brilliance, and others, not so much. If his explanation of it was similar to that given by TFA,
Experts say the equation, proposed by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schroedinger in 1925, plays a role analogous to Newton's second law in classical mechanics.
then I'm not necessarily convinced.
OK, so I'm being hard on the lad, but some guy being impressed by what he had to say about the Schrodinger equation? Physics is a pretty tough field to be anybody in, let alone be newsworthy, and the kid's got a long way to go yet. Past returns are no guarantee...
If anybody remembers Dr. Sbaitso, it was an old computer psychiatrist sort of thing that came with old school Sound Blaster Pro cards. Messing with by using curse words and asking it about sex was about as much fun as I remember having at 8 years old.
Who could forget Dr Sbaitso? I seem to remember that if you continued to curse at it it would act more and more annoyed and eventually it would go mental and pages of gibberish would scroll past (and be synthesized by the card of course). You can download it from here. The site claims it's abandonware, as it probably oughta be, but...IANAL. The text side of it works (on XP), but you'd be optimistic to expect any sound out of it.
So the ratio is 63.4 spam messages per second of prison time
9 years jail time = 78,840 hours
Estimated profit = $24,000,000
So hourly rate = $304/hr
Good rate, but very long hours (24-7), not the most glamorous position, and little possibility of advancement.;)
I saw an interview with some of the members explaining that the implication is that cash doesn't rule me, just because it rules everything else. Interesting, if perhaps at odds with some of the other lyrics.;)
This "statistic" just sounds plain wrong based on my personal experience, as I've only one lost data by malfunction, but on many occasions I have accidentally deleted something.
Can anyone confirm or deny that malfunction is the most common cause?
No, but I can state the obvious:
People are a lot more likely to go around telling about their hardware failing, than to tell about their own screw ups.
The Feigenbaum Number is itself interesting. It was first observed by Michael Feigenbaum, when he examined chaotic systems that were in an oscillating state. (Chaotic systems, when given insufficient initial conditions to become chaotic will oscillate.) As you increase the inputs, the oscillations exactly double. They don't change smoothly.
The dude's name was actually Mitchell Feigenbaum. He was working at LANL at the time. A good read if anyone is interested in the (convoluted) chronology of chaos theory and non-linear dynamics is Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick. It gives a feel for how the seperate contributions of people like Lorenz, Julia, Feigenbaum, Mandelbrot, Serpiensky, etc, came together, and the battle Chaos theory fought to be recognized as a legitimate field of mathematics in the 20th century.
Well, this may be the way you feel, but most libertarian and green voters lean closer to the dems.
I watched an interview of a British MP the other night, whose was a 'left-libertarian'. This was considered to be somewhat of a contradiction apparently. However, the world's smallest political quiz puts libertarianism diametrically opposite statism, on a different axis from conservatism-liberalism.
I always thought that libertarianism was about individual freedoms, and not so much economic policy? Couldn't a libertarian quite legitimately have left- OR right- leanings in terms of economic policy, without compromising their libertarianism? (Note that I'm talking about what they believe in, not who would be more prudent to vote for given both those beliefs and present circumstance)
This would make an incredibly formidable cruise missile. You could launch it basically from anywhere in the world and it would arrive on target within a couple of hours.
I don't think that's on the cards, seeing as they're phasing out cruise missiles in favour of railguns anyway.
The Swedish fighter jet, Viggen (which is built by SAAB) was the first fighter plane to ever get a "lock" on the blackbird.
The Swedish radar systems got it on radar. The Viggen flew to intercept it with after burners on the whole time.
They would have had to have picked it up on radar (on approach) a LONG way out, given how insanely fast SR-71s are. From the wiki:
On July 28, 1976, an SR-71 set two world records for its class: an absolute speed record of 2,193.167 mph (3,529.56 km/h) and an absolute altitude record of 85,068.997 feet (25,929 m). When the SR-71 was retired in 1990, one was flown from Palmdale Airbase to go on exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute's National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., setting a coast-to-coast speed record at an average 2,124 mph (3,418 km/h). The entire trip took only 68 minutes.
The aircraft flew so fast and so high that if the pilot detected that a surface-to-air missile had been launched, the standard process of evasive action was, simply, "accelerate". No SR-71 aircraft are known to have been shot down.
They ranged from obscure baseball facts from 50 years ago, to a student standing up, stating his name and hometown and asking for his address and phone number. No-one succeeded in stumping Peek.
So, what I want to know is, if I had several of this guy's brain, could I form a RAID array from them?
memory capacity does not equate intelligence. that is why these folks are "savants" he can recall everything he reads, but he can't really extrapolate new data from it. that's the issue.
Maybe we should resurrect William Sidis then, and ask him?
Kudos to the people who figured this out, but clearly it is costing Best Buy money. These are customers that should be weeded out. It's Best Buy's fault for allowing this scenario to happen.
Frankly, if they're not being evil, they're atleast being a bit cheeky. From TFA:
They ["devils"] slap down rock-bottom price quotes from Web sites and demand that Best Buy make good on its lowest-price pledge.
If they don't want to sell things at the lowest-price, then they shouldn't pledge to. Problem solved. But of course, that's no good, because what they really want is to give people the perception that they can get things for the lowest prices, without actually following through on it. My heart bleeds for them.
Sell air plane fuel? Install one of these puppies near an airport. Ideally a faily busy one like LAX or O'Hare. Turn on the machine. As it takes more fuel for the planes to take off.... profit!!!
Then cough up for the energy used to start and keep the thing running. Declare bankruptcy. Move onto street, drink from liquor bottle in brown paper bag.
Slashdot Mirror
GGP is correct that you could describe the motion of the planets (and sun) in terms of complicated orbits about the earth. However, as others have pointed out in the thread, there is a preferred (inertial) frame -- that of the fixed stars (cf. the Mach principle). The sun moves with respect to that frame, carrying the solar system with it. So the frame of the sun (or, more correctly, that of the center of mass of the solar system, which happens to pretty much be the sun) is objectively closer to being inertial than that of the earth. So to suggest that the reasons for favoring the sun as the origin of the system are purely technical (as opposed to physical) is perhaps a little disingenuous.
Actually, its even possible for the group velocity to exceed the speed of light, without violating relativity/causality. See for e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0101068
Well, at the time they came up with 0-k, they thought so as well, as that is the point that atomic motion stopped. Then they went and discovered that while atomic motion stopped at that temp, sub atomic motion did not. They went on further to discover that they could 'cool' things further and reduce/stop some of the sub-atomic motion. I think they have given up on a true absolute-zero at this point, and simply use it as an arbitrary point where one is needed.
This is really wrong. Temperature has a precise mathematical definition (relation between system energy and entropy), which is universal. Applied to most systems, this yields the concept of temperature familiar from everyday life. Indeed, some systems are such that they can be manipulated to a state of `negative temperature', in the formal mathematical sense. However it is definitely not the case that the concept of absolute zero is tied to the motion of atoms in particular, or that it is merely 'a reference point' that has later been surpassed.
(I kinda hope you're just trolling, otherwise please just STFU when you don't know WTF you're talking about. )
Thinking about those lasers which are used to cool small particles to near zero temperatures. Can the photons from those lasers be considered to have a negative temperature, because of the energy they remove from the particles being cooled?
Not really... negative temperature can be a 'meaningful' concept in some scenarios, but it's not necessary to invoke it here. Temperature is a property of an object such that two objects in contact (or exchanging radiation, etc) with different temperatures will exchange energy (heat) so as to try and 'meet each other in the middle', i.e., hot one loses energy to the colder one until the the temperatures become equal. Basically the character of laser beams is that they are not-very-thermal-at-all, so you can think of the incident beam as having some temperature very close to absolute zero, much less than the particles they're being shone on. Statistically speaking, the temperature of the particles will lower towards that of the incident laser beam, and the scattered laser photons will be 'heated', and carry away some of the original thermal energy of the cooled particles.
Of course they need to sensationalize. Otherwise these reports are just, well, preprints! And preprints that aren't in your field probably won't be of interest to you.
The arXiv blog is cool, and it's nice to see some interesting preprints from outside my field pointed out, but I only take this to mean that this could possibly be a bit more interesting to me than the other ten-thousand-odd astro-ph preprints I won't be reading this year.
Dzerzhinsk FTW!
:(
Dioxin and phenol levels 7 orders of magnitude above the safe limit, an annual death rate exceeding the birth rate by 260% (life expectancies: M=42, F=47) and generally more soviet era chem-weapons-chem than you can shake a mutant-whatever at.
The wiki doesn't really do it justice...I saw the BBC doco once, and it was appalling. There's a `pond' so choked with chemicals that it appears to have a consistency closer to foam rubber than water, and a huge pit in the ground with hundreds of barrels of toxic waste spilling out the top of it. It's hard to believe that people actually live there. Truly tragic.
From the wiki: Mills' hydrino theory was inspired by a physics paper by MIT electrical engineering professor, Herman Haus. This paper used classical physics to model radiation arising from the free electron laser. Mills reasoned that if classical physics could model radiation of the free electron it should be able to model radiation and non-radiation of the bound electron in an atom.
OK, so essentially, because the classical approximation to the quantum mechanical model largely reproduces the observed experimental results in the free electron laser, it must apply to a bound electron also. This guy is fucking clue-repellent. You can model atomic radiation classically (certain aspects of, up to a point), but the quantum mechanical description is much more accurate, ridiculously accurate in fact, and there are inherently quantum mechanical effects that arise only in a formal QED treatment, and are commonly observable.
Making crude approximations to the complete quantum mechanical description and getting a reasonable description of the system is what a whole lot of theoretical physics is about. Finding exactly how truthful the model must be to predict the correct (experimental) results is half the game.
Here's a clue: a free electron is often essentially particulate in behaviour, and quantum mechanics (largely) provides no correction to the classical calculations. When you bind an electron in a potential, is when it starts to behave quantum mechanically (i.e., wavefunction wrapped around the nucleus). That's why it's OK to model it classically in the one regime, but not the other, geddit?
He surprised professors by explaining the Schroedinger equation, which is of central importance to the theory of quantum mechanics.
...
But what exactly did he explain about it, ah? Explanations could be to any degree of depth, some would possibly be indicative of brilliance, and others, not so much. If his explanation of it was similar to that given by TFA,
Experts say the equation, proposed by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schroedinger in 1925, plays a role analogous to Newton's second law in classical mechanics.
then I'm not necessarily convinced.
OK, so I'm being hard on the lad, but some guy being impressed by what he had to say about the Schrodinger equation? Physics is a pretty tough field to be anybody in, let alone be newsworthy, and the kid's got a long way to go yet. Past returns are no guarantee
If anybody remembers Dr. Sbaitso, it was an old computer psychiatrist sort of thing that came with old school Sound Blaster Pro cards. Messing with by using curse words and asking it about sex was about as much fun as I remember having at 8 years old.
Who could forget Dr Sbaitso? I seem to remember that if you continued to curse at it it would act more and more annoyed and eventually it would go mental and pages of gibberish would scroll past (and be synthesized by the card of course). You can download it from here. The site claims it's abandonware, as it probably oughta be, but...IANAL. The text side of it works (on XP), but you'd be optimistic to expect any sound out of it.
So the ratio is 63.4 spam messages per second of prison time
/hr ;)
9 years jail time = 78,840 hours
Estimated profit = $24,000,000
So hourly rate = $304
Good rate, but very long hours (24-7), not the most glamorous position, and little possibility of advancement.
Cash Rules Everything Around Me.
;)
I saw an interview with some of the members explaining that the implication is that cash doesn't rule me, just because it rules everything else. Interesting, if perhaps at odds with some of the other lyrics.
This "statistic" just sounds plain wrong based on my personal experience, as I've only one lost data by malfunction, but on many occasions I have accidentally deleted something. Can anyone confirm or deny that malfunction is the most common cause?
No, but I can state the obvious:
People are a lot more likely to go around telling about their hardware failing, than to tell about their own screw ups.
Calling it star wars?
Yes, except this time, America shoots first.
The Feigenbaum Number is itself interesting. It was first observed by Michael Feigenbaum, when he examined chaotic systems that were in an oscillating state. (Chaotic systems, when given insufficient initial conditions to become chaotic will oscillate.) As you increase the inputs, the oscillations exactly double. They don't change smoothly.
The dude's name was actually Mitchell Feigenbaum. He was working at LANL at the time. A good read if anyone is interested in the (convoluted) chronology of chaos theory and non-linear dynamics is Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick. It gives a feel for how the seperate contributions of people like Lorenz, Julia, Feigenbaum, Mandelbrot, Serpiensky, etc, came together, and the battle Chaos theory fought to be recognized as a legitimate field of mathematics in the 20th century.
Well, this may be the way you feel, but most libertarian and green voters lean closer to the dems.
I watched an interview of a British MP the other night, whose was a 'left-libertarian'. This was considered to be somewhat of a contradiction apparently. However, the world's smallest political quiz puts libertarianism diametrically opposite statism, on a different axis from conservatism-liberalism.
I always thought that libertarianism was about individual freedoms, and not so much economic policy? Couldn't a libertarian quite legitimately have left- OR right- leanings in terms of economic policy, without compromising their libertarianism? (Note that I'm talking about what they believe in, not who would be more prudent to vote for given both those beliefs and present circumstance)
(unless there is some other feature that IE lacks and other browsers have).
Security?
This would make an incredibly formidable cruise missile. You could launch it basically from anywhere in the world and it would arrive on target within a couple of hours.
I don't think that's on the cards, seeing as they're phasing out cruise missiles in favour of railguns anyway.
The Swedish fighter jet, Viggen (which is built by SAAB) was the first fighter plane to ever get a "lock" on the blackbird.
The Swedish radar systems got it on radar. The Viggen flew to intercept it with after burners on the whole time.
They would have had to have picked it up on radar (on approach) a LONG way out, given how insanely fast SR-71s are. From the wiki:
On July 28, 1976, an SR-71 set two world records for its class: an absolute speed record of 2,193.167 mph (3,529.56 km/h) and an absolute altitude record of 85,068.997 feet (25,929 m). When the SR-71 was retired in 1990, one was flown from Palmdale Airbase to go on exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute's National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., setting a coast-to-coast speed record at an average 2,124 mph (3,418 km/h). The entire trip took only 68 minutes.
The aircraft flew so fast and so high that if the pilot detected that a surface-to-air missile had been launched, the standard process of evasive action was, simply, "accelerate". No SR-71 aircraft are known to have been shot down.
'Course, he always refered to 'em as "a collection of mis-matched parts flying in loose formation", but he meant it in the best possible way.
;)
Just as the airforce refers to plane as a BUFF(Big Ugly Fat Fucker), meaning it in the best possible way?
Let them eat flour. --Marie Antoinette
That's not right either, she said brioche.
They ranged from obscure baseball facts from 50 years ago, to a student standing up, stating his name and hometown and asking for his address and phone number. No-one succeeded in stumping Peek.
So, what I want to know is, if I had several of this guy's brain, could I form a RAID array from them?
memory capacity does not equate intelligence. that is why these folks are "savants" he can recall everything he reads, but he can't really extrapolate new data from it. that's the issue.
Maybe we should resurrect William Sidis then, and ask him?
1. Set up electronics store chain /. evidently loves
2. Name after a cartoon character which every geek on
[You know the rest...]
Kudos to the people who figured this out, but clearly it is costing Best Buy money. These are customers that should be weeded out. It's Best Buy's fault for allowing this scenario to happen.
Frankly, if they're not being evil, they're atleast being a bit cheeky. From TFA:
They ["devils"] slap down rock-bottom price quotes from Web sites and demand that Best Buy make good on its lowest-price pledge.
If they don't want to sell things at the lowest-price, then they shouldn't pledge to. Problem solved. But of course, that's no good, because what they really want is to give people the perception that they can get things for the lowest prices, without actually following through on it. My heart bleeds for them.
Sell air plane fuel? Install one of these puppies near an airport. Ideally a faily busy one like LAX or O'Hare. Turn on the machine. As it takes more fuel for the planes to take off .... profit!!!
Then cough up for the energy used to start and keep the thing running. Declare bankruptcy. Move onto street, drink from liquor bottle in brown paper bag.