I can understand why you would think the guy was a crackpot if he was on Art Bell. Had I not been familiar with his work and theories beforehand I'd probably have the same knee jerk impression. Not having heard the interivew I can't comment on if he sounded "crazy" or not:) but I've been very interested in his Transactional Interpretation of Quantum for quite some time having come across it while I was researching Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory in grad school. I even came across it recently as a well known physicist's (Lee Smolin I think, the loop quantum gravity guy, although I guess the Super String guys would consider him a crackpot:) favored interpretation in a mainstream physics book I just read.
I'd suggest you guys also look into the controversy over the various interpretations of QM among physicsists nowadays. Hell how anyone ever thought Copenhagen made any sense is beyond me.:)
Oh awesome, this is guy that came up with the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics which is an alternative interpretative of quantum mechanics (and my personal favorite!) based on Wheeler-Feynman's absorber theory of Electrodynamics involving waves going both forward and backward in time (half-retarded, half-advanced, which he explains in his Lectures on Physics). Originally Cramer only proposed it as a teaching tool that gives the same answers as other interpretations, but I guess he's now trying to find experimental evidence that would actually distinguish it from the others.
The Transactional Interpretation makes *much* more sense than Copenhagen in my opinion (I still dig the Many Worlds interpretation though). Time symmetric theories like this also seem to the answer the question as to why there is an arrow of time. The laws of physics are completely time symmetric. For example, both "retarded" (those going forward in time) and "advanced" (going backward in time) waves are solutions for the electromagnetic wave equation, but the advanced ones are just "thrown out" for being unphysical because "obviously" you don't see waves converging onto an accelerating particle anymore than an egg will reassemble itself after being dropped, despite the fact neither is prohibited by the laws of physics. In these theories the direction of time is determined by the boundary conditions of the universe at it's beginning and end.
Feynman worked out the math in his absorber theory and found that if the universe where a "perfect future absorber" meaning all the waves sent into the future were cancelled all the advanced waves would be cancelled out except at the point of origin, so you never see them and the universe would have a defined arrow of time. In this theory when you push an electron it sends out waves which interact with every other particle in the universe that then send waves back in time to push on the electron at the exact instance you start pushing on it. In the transactional interpretation, there are these "offer" waves and "transactions" that work similary to entangle particles and give the "spooky action at a distance". In no case is information ever sent superluminarly (i.e. faster than light) or acausally. IMHO it also makes the universe appropriately "Machian" as well.
I didn't take the statement "some Asian dude" as racist either, people are being way too touchy about this crap. Yeah sure if it had been a white male (or plain looking female) 18-35, he probably would've just said "some dude/chick" but that's just his idea of an "average" person "like him" (I presume), that's just human nature. If we were in an Asian or African country, I'm sure it would be "some white dude" and "some dude" would refer to an Asian or African.
I'll offer my somewhat unconventional advice, find yourself a unique overlooked little niche area to work in. Mine is Mac programming and even more specifically game development. Sure they're aren't too many jobs in that particular market, but on the flip side you have even less competition because there are even less developers with that specific skillset applying for those positions. I've had absolutely no problem finding employment in my 10 years as a professional programmer and have never once had to use a PC as my primary dev box, and I make pretty good money too. Not quite a much as some poor wretched cog in an MS corporate machine somewhere, but I have fun, love what I do and make more than enough to live comfortably. Just my 2 cents.
Actually I think particle physicists are happy there's all this exotic unknown matter floating out there. Most modern particle theories practically scream for there to be (as of yet undiscovered) supersymmetric partners of all known particles. If dark matter turns out to be SUSY particles that would be a great experimental confirmation. If I had to bet, that would be my guess as to what dark matter will turn out to be. The great thing about science is there's always something unexpected around the corner, it would be really boring if we knew everything already.
There is also plenty of blame to go to the graphics card card devs as well if you want to talk about stuff being in continual beta. 3rd graphics were the worst thing to happen to games, I say that only half jokingly.:) I love when you need to update the driver to work with a certain game only to have it break with another. Just this weekend, I got the urge to reinstall AvP and I had to find the magic nVidia driver version that worked, previous and later versions broke the game.
Well mathematical constants like pi really are constant which I would hope would be obvious.:) Pi doesn't have anything to do with the warping of space, it's just a value that is defined to be the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter in flat Euclidean space.
Fundamental "constants" are just values plugged into physics equations that we just happen to assume to be constant. If we find that they're not constant then we really shouldn't be calling them constants.
Don't think some Paramount executive somewhere hasn't given that idea some serious consideration at some point. Corporate synergy! New paradigms! "High-profile tentpoles!"
Assuming the density is the same as the Earth's, 5 times more massive means its radius and surface gravity would only be 1.7 times Earth's. Finding a planet this small is cause for excitement despite the fact it's climate is most decidely not Earth-like.
In some sense, "virtual" particles are mathematical artifacts of perturbative theories, at least that's how I've heard Feynman explain it. Yes they do have a "real" effect, but they can never actually be observed. Now a "real" gravition (assuming they exist) could be produced in the same way as a "real" photon, i.e. by wiggling something to make a wave (the only difference in the case of gravity is that you'd have to at least change the quadrupole moment of the configuration since there's only one gravitational "charge", that is, gravity is always attractive)
As I understand it, the Higg's Boson only gives rest mass to fundamental particles (at least most of them, I don't think they give mass to Majorona particles). As you know from relativity, energy and mass are equivalent and gravity couples to this mass-energy. For example, the mass of the proton is much greater than the constiuent masses of the quarks inside. Most of the mass of a hadron comes from the binding energy of the strong nuclear force between the quarks. You can think of the rest mass of a particle as just the length of its energy-momentum 4-vector, E^2 - p^2= m^2 with gravity coupling to the E part.
Requiem for a Dream was released as NC-17 I believe. I assume for just that sex scene near the end.
And of course, South Park and Team America (for marionette sex!) had to be cut down to get an R rating. One of the changes to the South Park movie was changing horse sex to a german scheisse video, yet that's much better.
Hmm, I wonder how that went...
Steve Jobs: "...and that's the new iPod nano."
Kayne West: "George Bush doesn't care about iPod users!"
BTW, am I the only person that had no idea who this guy was until a few days ago?
I don't believe non-compete clauses are legally enforceable in right to work states. Too bad google isn't incorporated in Texas so they could tell Microsoft to #$!@ off.:)
The reason I found it so funny was because I had the *exact* same discussion of this plot hole with my friends when we were last watching Star Wars right before we went to see Episode III. It's funny 'cuz it's true! I sometimes wonder what movies would be like if logically thinking people made them. How do you miss an enormous plot hole like that? Is it just lazy writing?
Something I don't think a lot of people really grok is that the laws of physics are time symmetric (actually the full symmetry is CPT, charge+parity+time, an electron going back in time would be a positron for example) so the fundamental weirdness is why we perceive time to flow in one direction in the first place. That's why I've always loved Feynman's absorber theory and it's associated spin-off the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics. Those theories don't discard the so-called "advanced" (that is, backwards in time)solutions and work out how in a universe with appropriate boundary conditions you get an arrow of time. The advanced solutions actually exist but because of the boundary conditions they cancel each other out except where they "count".
So according to the theory, when you go to push an electron every other particle in the universe sends waves back in time in response to push back on the electron at the exact instant you push it! The advanced waves only manifest themselves as the normal radiation resistance we observe when accelerating charged particles. The transactional interpretation takes this line of thinking with regards to the collaspe of the wave function. When one particle of a two particle entangled system wave function collapses it sends an advance wave back in time to collapse the wave function of the other particle. So in the EPR experiment there is no instanteous "spooky action at a distance" but travel exactly at the speed of light but in the opposite direction in time.
Eh, who needs planets? They are such a waste of mass for the surface area, as any member of The Culture would tell you, Orbitals are a much more elegant and efficient use of resources. Leave the planets alone.:)
If there was ever a comment to be modded "Insightful" it's the parent post. The simple fact is that when an average computer user goes to buy a computer whether it be a Mac or a PC, the OS is already on it. The cost of the OS and apps bundled with it is essentially "hidden". Other than maybe automatic upgrades for the version of the OS initially installed, most computer users won't ever upgrade the OS of the machine, so the OS *is* free as far as the majority of the public is concerned. A case could be made of the advantages of free apps and open formats, but not really for the OS itself, because it's *already* "free".
They're simulating the *visual* effect which is much different than just the Lorentz transformation because of the differing light travel times from various parts of the object to your eyes. For example, a body actually appears *rotated* instead of just Lorentz contracted.
Slashdot Mirror
Lloyd Braun? Michael Richards? What is this, an episode of Seinfeld? Serenity now, insanity later.
I can understand why you would think the guy was a crackpot if he was on Art Bell. Had I not been familiar with his work and theories beforehand I'd probably have the same knee jerk impression. Not having heard the interivew I can't comment on if he sounded "crazy" or not :) but I've been very interested in his Transactional Interpretation of Quantum for quite some time having come across it while I was researching Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory in grad school. I even came across it recently as a well known physicist's (Lee Smolin I think, the loop quantum gravity guy, although I guess the Super String guys would consider him a crackpot :) favored interpretation in a mainstream physics book I just read.
o de2.htmlr etation
:)
a ntum_mechanics
http://www.npl.washington.edu/ti/
http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/dtime/n
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cramer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interp
I'd suggest you guys also look into the controversy over the various interpretations of QM among physicsists nowadays. Hell how anyone ever thought Copenhagen made any sense is beyond me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_qu
Oh awesome, this is guy that came up with the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics which is an alternative interpretative of quantum mechanics (and my personal favorite!) based on Wheeler-Feynman's absorber theory of Electrodynamics involving waves going both forward and backward in time (half-retarded, half-advanced, which he explains in his Lectures on Physics). Originally Cramer only proposed it as a teaching tool that gives the same answers as other interpretations, but I guess he's now trying to find experimental evidence that would actually distinguish it from the others.
o de2.html
The Transactional Interpretation makes *much* more sense than Copenhagen in my opinion (I still dig the Many Worlds interpretation though). Time symmetric theories like this also seem to the answer the question as to why there is an arrow of time. The laws of physics are completely time symmetric. For example, both "retarded" (those going forward in time) and "advanced" (going backward in time) waves are solutions for the electromagnetic wave equation, but the advanced ones are just "thrown out" for being unphysical because "obviously" you don't see waves converging onto an accelerating particle anymore than an egg will reassemble itself after being dropped, despite the fact neither is prohibited by the laws of physics. In these theories the direction of time is determined by the boundary conditions of the universe at it's beginning and end.
Feynman worked out the math in his absorber theory and found that if the universe where a "perfect future absorber" meaning all the waves sent into the future were cancelled all the advanced waves would be cancelled out except at the point of origin, so you never see them and the universe would have a defined arrow of time. In this theory when you push an electron it sends out waves which interact with every other particle in the universe that then send waves back in time to push on the electron at the exact instance you start pushing on it. In the transactional interpretation, there are these "offer" waves and "transactions" that work similary to entangle particles and give the "spooky action at a distance". In no case is information ever sent superluminarly (i.e. faster than light) or acausally. IMHO it also makes the universe appropriately "Machian" as well.
Check it out, very cool stuff:
http://www.npl.washington.edu/ti/
http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/dtime/n
I didn't take the statement "some Asian dude" as racist either, people are being way too touchy about this crap. Yeah sure if it had been a white male (or plain looking female) 18-35, he probably would've just said "some dude/chick" but that's just his idea of an "average" person "like him" (I presume), that's just human nature. If we were in an Asian or African country, I'm sure it would be "some white dude" and "some dude" would refer to an Asian or African.
I'll offer my somewhat unconventional advice, find yourself a unique overlooked little niche area to work in. Mine is Mac programming and even more specifically game development. Sure they're aren't too many jobs in that particular market, but on the flip side you have even less competition because there are even less developers with that specific skillset applying for those positions. I've had absolutely no problem finding employment in my 10 years as a professional programmer and have never once had to use a PC as my primary dev box, and I make pretty good money too. Not quite a much as some poor wretched cog in an MS corporate machine somewhere, but I have fun, love what I do and make more than enough to live comfortably. Just my 2 cents.
pulling out of the US as well. :)
Actually I think particle physicists are happy there's all this exotic unknown matter floating out there. Most modern particle theories practically scream for there to be (as of yet undiscovered) supersymmetric partners of all known particles. If dark matter turns out to be SUSY particles that would be a great experimental confirmation. If I had to bet, that would be my guess as to what dark matter will turn out to be. The great thing about science is there's always something unexpected around the corner, it would be really boring if we knew everything already.
There, let's just drop the whole "planet" thing altogether and call them what they are. :)
There is also plenty of blame to go to the graphics card card devs as well if you want to talk about stuff being in continual beta. 3rd graphics were the worst thing to happen to games, I say that only half jokingly. :) I love when you need to update the driver to work with a certain game only to have it break with another. Just this weekend, I got the urge to reinstall AvP and I had to find the magic nVidia driver version that worked, previous and later versions broke the game.
Well mathematical constants like pi really are constant which I would hope would be obvious. :) Pi doesn't have anything to do with the warping of space, it's just a value that is defined to be the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter in flat Euclidean space.
Fundamental "constants" are just values plugged into physics equations that we just happen to assume to be constant. If we find that they're not constant then we really shouldn't be calling them constants.
Don't think some Paramount executive somewhere hasn't given that idea some serious consideration at some point. Corporate synergy! New paradigms! "High-profile tentpoles!"
Assuming the density is the same as the Earth's, 5 times more massive means its radius and surface gravity would only be 1.7 times Earth's. Finding a planet this small is cause for excitement despite the fact it's climate is most decidely not Earth-like.
In some sense, "virtual" particles are mathematical artifacts of perturbative theories, at least that's how I've heard Feynman explain it. Yes they do have a "real" effect, but they can never actually be observed. Now a "real" gravition (assuming they exist) could be produced in the same way as a "real" photon, i.e. by wiggling something to make a wave (the only difference in the case of gravity is that you'd have to at least change the quadrupole moment of the configuration since there's only one gravitational "charge", that is, gravity is always attractive)
As I understand it, the Higg's Boson only gives rest mass to fundamental particles (at least most of them, I don't think they give mass to Majorona particles). As you know from relativity, energy and mass are equivalent and gravity couples to this mass-energy. For example, the mass of the proton is much greater than the constiuent masses of the quarks inside. Most of the mass of a hadron comes from the binding energy of the strong nuclear force between the quarks. You can think of the rest mass of a particle as just the length of its energy-momentum 4-vector, E^2 - p^2= m^2 with gravity coupling to the E part.
Requiem for a Dream was released as NC-17 I believe. I assume for just that sex scene near the end. And of course, South Park and Team America (for marionette sex!) had to be cut down to get an R rating. One of the changes to the South Park movie was changing horse sex to a german scheisse video, yet that's much better.
Actually when I first read that I thought they were talking about one of his kids. I was thinking to myself, why is this news? :)
Hmm, I wonder how that went... Steve Jobs: "...and that's the new iPod nano." Kayne West: "George Bush doesn't care about iPod users!" BTW, am I the only person that had no idea who this guy was until a few days ago?
I don't believe non-compete clauses are legally enforceable in right to work states. Too bad google isn't incorporated in Texas so they could tell Microsoft to #$!@ off. :)
The reason I found it so funny was because I had the *exact* same discussion of this plot hole with my friends when we were last watching Star Wars right before we went to see Episode III. It's funny 'cuz it's true! I sometimes wonder what movies would be like if logically thinking people made them. How do you miss an enormous plot hole like that? Is it just lazy writing?
In terms of destructive power, it's actually a lot less dangerous than you'd think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter_weapon
Something I don't think a lot of people really grok is that the laws of physics are time symmetric (actually the full symmetry is CPT, charge+parity+time, an electron going back in time would be a positron for example) so the fundamental weirdness is why we perceive time to flow in one direction in the first place. That's why I've always loved Feynman's absorber theory and it's associated spin-off the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics. Those theories don't discard the so-called "advanced" (that is, backwards in time)solutions and work out how in a universe with appropriate boundary conditions you get an arrow of time. The advanced solutions actually exist but because of the boundary conditions they cancel each other out except where they "count". So according to the theory, when you go to push an electron every other particle in the universe sends waves back in time in response to push back on the electron at the exact instant you push it! The advanced waves only manifest themselves as the normal radiation resistance we observe when accelerating charged particles. The transactional interpretation takes this line of thinking with regards to the collaspe of the wave function. When one particle of a two particle entangled system wave function collapses it sends an advance wave back in time to collapse the wave function of the other particle. So in the EPR experiment there is no instanteous "spooky action at a distance" but travel exactly at the speed of light but in the opposite direction in time.
Eh, who needs planets? They are such a waste of mass for the surface area, as any member of The Culture would tell you, Orbitals are a much more elegant and efficient use of resources. Leave the planets alone. :)
If there was ever a comment to be modded "Insightful" it's the parent post. The simple fact is that when an average computer user goes to buy a computer whether it be a Mac or a PC, the OS is already on it. The cost of the OS and apps bundled with it is essentially "hidden". Other than maybe automatic upgrades for the version of the OS initially installed, most computer users won't ever upgrade the OS of the machine, so the OS *is* free as far as the majority of the public is concerned. A case could be made of the advantages of free apps and open formats, but not really for the OS itself, because it's *already* "free".
As I understand it, just rotated. Here's a paper on the subject: http://web.mit.edu/8.20/iap05/weisskopf.pdf
They're simulating the *visual* effect which is much different than just the Lorentz transformation because of the differing light travel times from various parts of the object to your eyes. For example, a body actually appears *rotated* instead of just Lorentz contracted.