Men will nail anything and the women really control sexual interactions. The cost of mating is far lower for men than for women therefore women are far more choosy.
Probably for most of our 100000+ years as a species this was true. But with birth and disease control advances in the past 50 years, great strides have been made to allow the relative coupling risks for women to drop considerably, at least in principle. Some men and women embrace this sexual symmetry by choice and this has given women more sexual freedom than ever before in history (i.e. they don't have to be so choosy), but for many, I guess old evolutionary habits are (understandably) hard to break since certain behaviors are essentially embedded in our wetware.
Funny that. Another piece of science fiction engineering, Ringworld, is unstable too. Nevertheless, I still think the space elevator is a ponder-worthy pipe dream.
According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well I'm glad we finally determined who invented 'word of mouth.' Wow. No generation before every did anything like that. Email and video links sent through online social networks make it easier and faster to propagate noise, but the amount of raw signal out there is about the same as it always was.
The article was written about what the world would be like Nov. 18, 2008 -- sheesh, people, last time I checked, that's still the future! It's still MONTHS away. Who knows what we can accomplish if we just put our minds to it. I think we get at least get the plastic road thing going before then...
Why a recent spate? Mods are now given 10 points to allocate rather than 5. Mods who, before, were inclined to save their precious points to only mod up can now go get revenge on foes and still have some points left over in the end. Notice your growing Freaks list. You have about 2000 comments spanning many years and any/. user that gets people to actively tag them as a foe is going to get the treatment you described from time to time (I'm not saying it is the people on your freaks list, just that for every person willing to tag you as a foe, there are 10 others thinking the same thing). I'm sympathetic to your statements because your posts on average are of good quality and it is a shame you were targeted. There is probably some movement afoot to squelch you. However, to be honest, I'm not convinced it is Apple related because you have said enough things about enough topics (albeit non trollish critique or funny jabs) over the years it could be anyone (Harry Potter fans, Star Trek fans, etc. etc.).
In spite of his study, Dr. Grim, who said he would on occasion enjoy more than 12 beers in a night, is not on a campaign to decrease beer drinking among scientists. Drinking must be so high and productivity so low amongst Czech biologists, someone was actually concerned enough about the connection to fund the study -- yet still allow it to be headed by a beer swilling ornithologist. Definitely a good nominee for an Ig Nobel Prize. Does the success of this paper change the results of his study or does it say something about the nature of beer guzzling referees?
As an atheist, I've dated Christians, spiritualists, as well as other atheists. In the end, while I enjoyed the company of people who believe in the supernatural, I knew I could only spend the rest of my life with another atheist. But I wouldn't have known that unless I got to know other people too. The whole point of dating is to get to know other people. Date as many different kinds of people who will date you. Learn about other people and what you dislike, like etc. However, I suggest being very selective about who you marry based on the data you collect while dating.
Please explain to me where "a cartoon version of SR", or SR at all, was used. Everything the OP said was correct within GR. I see your point. Let me make it clear that I enjoyed *your* physics analysis (which I would have personally modded informative). However, I think you gave the original poster far too much credit. It seems to me that he has a final result which happened to have some merit through a path of incorrect physics.
Physics problem 1:
As we know, time dilation means that a spaceship flying for a year at a high enough speed could return to Earth only to find that the crew's families have been dead for a thousand years due to local time passing at different rates for objects moving at different speeds. This is *not* a correct description of time dilation. As you know, if time dilation was the only issue, both the earth's clocks relative to the ship and the ship's clocks relative to the earth would run at *slower* rates. Everyone would age slower wrt to everyone else on earth and on the ship. It is the ship shifting reference frames to turn around that causes the time variable of the earth's clock to hop forward relative to the ship's clock. Time dilation alone works *against* the classic effects of the twin paradox.
Nevertheless, after this totally incorrect description of time dilation, it is indeed something like time dilation that gives the effect you correctly described. However, the original post seems to have gotten this correct by sheer luck because they don't even know the difference between the twin paradox and time dilation. At this point I'm already not convinced the original poster has any idea what he is talking about.
Physics problem 2:
For this reason, a photon moves at the speed of light no matter how fast you are moving relative to that photon. The phrase "for this reason" follows the previous paragraph and implies he believes *because of the twin paradox* (or is he talking about time dilation?) the speed of light is constant in all reference frames. This is backwards. As you know, the twin paradox and/or time dilation are consequences of the speed of light being constant in all frames.
Physics problem 3:
from our frame of reference inside the Universe, 13.73 billion years have elapsed. From another frame of reference, it is 6000 years old and not a minute more. From this phrase he is defining "our reference frame inside the universe" as giving a result of 13.73 billion years. Not homogenous/isotropic frames at rest wrt to the cmb. This implies he is using a "another" reference frame outside the universe to give 6000 years. This is why I originally questioned his use of SR outside of space-time.
As one physicist to another we can have discussions about the conditions and assumptions for different observers to claim the age of the universe to be roughly 13 billion years. For example, I do appreciate your pointing out the homogeneity/isotropic and cmb reference frame issues in your original post. However, I can assure you, this is NOT what the original poster was thinking. They made only vaguely correct statements, merely by sheer luck, acting as "age of the universe revisionist/apologist," using just a cartoon version of SR to support their claim. I find your efforts to so zealously defend their physics mysterious.
The age of the universe is obtained from an analysis of the background radiation and all observers analyzing the data would obtain the same result (i.e. this is not a "special age" with respect to the earth's frame). Unfortunately, most of what the parent post said is an incorrect application of special relativity. The twin "paradox" ("return to Earth...") has to do with switching reference frames, not time dilation. Also, it is spurious to apply special relativity outside of space-time. If the parent was being funny, I'd say it was pretty good. But "informative," no.
I did read the article but, as another user commented, their use of language is rather misleading. Contrast this with physicists at the LHC who will try to create and measure real black holes in the lab (although this is still an area of debate/discussion).
Another user in this thread has posted several interesting references which deserve some attention. It seems what they have created is a cavity made of light which is behaving analogously to a black _body_ (not hole) by effectively not permitting other light pulses to escape. Then this "cavity of light" is radiating with some effective temperature which has some superficial analogies with Hawking radiation. This is very interesting, especially since it is made of light, and there may be great utility, but as far as I can tell they are no more creating an "event horizon" than the interface of any other black body like the surface of pinhole on a closed box.
The experiment is cool, but as far as I can tell, this is nothing like a black hole in the cosmological sense. Simply reproducing one superficial property of black hole ("light cannot escape") does not make it a gravitational singularity with an event horizon and its associated properties. For example, I seriously doubt electron-positron conversions in their light cavity would behave at all like said conversions at a real event horizon since the charged particles would be subject to very different kinds of forces from those near a real black hole. Also, Hawking radiation is related to black hole evaporation. This would not occur with the lasers in an analogous way because the mechanics of this light bubble "evaporation" is totally different. It sounds to me like a case of one subfield (photonics) sexing up their lingo by adopting the lingo of another subfield (general relativity) to get press. IAAP, but not a cosmologists/GR expert, so I'm willing to stand corrected.
Scientists research, they discover, they do not invent. Engineers invent. Doesn't anybody in journalism know the difference between a scientist and an engineer? I'm guessing since you just invented that distinction you are an engineer then? Seriously, I know plenty of scientists and engineers who do a healthy mix of research, discovery, and invention. Science journalism may have other problems, but I don't think this is one of them.
Point well taken, but you must realize the irony of posting your message on blog. True, money and legislation do talk. But, sadly, marches, protests, and tire-burning serve the same function you claim the internet serves: is makes people feel like they are making a difference when they really aren't. It is rare such things bring about meaningful change. Classic example: the Vietnam War, famous for its ability to incite healthy civil disobedience in the US, went on 4 more years after the major protests fizzled. Protest and marches usually have the effect of polarizing and hardening existing official positions, not promoting change. I still think people should participate in civil disobedience (but not burn tires), not because it is effective but because it provides a sense of self-satisfaction. Nevertheless, real social change doesn't require it and protest still needs to be coupled to legislation, power, and money to actually work.
Also, in a follow-up article linked to the main article the inventor is quoted as saying: "What I can say with full confidence is that our system violates the law of conservation of energy." The guy doesn't believe he is just building a more clever or efficient induction motor, but sadly believes his pushing beyond the laws of physics.
'US expert Dr Lawrence Krauss, from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, points out that the idea rests on untested assumptions. Keep in mind, this the same guy who wrote The Physics of Star Trek and who recently was claiming that scientists consciously observing supernovae might shorten the lifetime of the universe. All that aside, Krauss is respected, but I think his statement above is a little bit of the ol'
Both of Britain's main sports (Football and Cricket) are played quite widely internationally You might find it amusing to know that the first official international cricket match was between the US and Canada in 1844. I guess it was all downhill for us from there:)
Its a good question actually. You might be surprised at how popular soccer and rugby are in the US. Almost every kid grows up playing in a local soccer leagues for many years and quite a few men and women play rugby in college (cricket, like fencing, has yet to catch on except in exotic and shunned geeky college clubs). But these are considered niche hobby sports, not activities ripe for big business. I think the popularity of (American) football and baseball is like obtaining weird phases of water like Ice IX. You can get to it under sufficiently extreme pressures and temperatures, but nature doesn't hand it to you easily. Once you have the conditions to get it, you have to change everything all over again to get rid of it. As the US women's soccer advocates discovered a few years ago, it isn't easy even under fairly ideal conditions to get people to adapt a new large scale cultural sports fixation (even with sports-bra ripping dramas). If everyone woke up Monday thinking "you know, cricket is really a much better sport than baseball, and we could even play our buddies across the Atlantic and Pacific in a multitrillion dollar sports big business madhouse only rivaled by the international cocaine smugglers," I'm pretty sure it would still take years to overcome the cultural inertia since there is so much money and emotional energy currently invested by many Americans in traditional US sports.
On the cable map, Greenland looks only slightly less vulnerable than Asia (its like I'm playing Risk). Good thing that kind of redundancy was clearly thought out from the start. Wouldn't want to lose communications with the metropolis of Nuuk or the 12 faculty members at the University of Greenland.
Today in a speech the pope denounced human cloning, embryonic stem cell research and artificial insemination, citing them as a violation of 'human dignity.' I suppose since wanton hypocrisy, irrationality, large scale misguided socio-political/emotional/economic manipulation, extreme imposition of conveniently self-created "absolute" morals, and sanctioned belief in the supernatural are perhaps amongst the greatest philosophical affronts to human dignity there are, the pope should know quite a bit about what violates it. In other news, I'm not sure I can recall the last time the church made the right call on either of the qualifiers "dignified" or "human" in any context.
Slashdot Mirror
Men will nail anything and the women really control sexual interactions. The cost of mating is far lower for men than for women therefore women are far more choosy.
Probably for most of our 100000+ years as a species this was true. But with birth and disease control advances in the past 50 years, great strides have been made to allow the relative coupling risks for women to drop considerably, at least in principle. Some men and women embrace this sexual symmetry by choice and this has given women more sexual freedom than ever before in history (i.e. they don't have to be so choosy), but for many, I guess old evolutionary habits are (understandably) hard to break since certain behaviors are essentially embedded in our wetware.Funny that. Another piece of science fiction engineering, Ringworld, is unstable too. Nevertheless, I still think the space elevator is a ponder-worthy pipe dream.
The article was written about what the world would be like Nov. 18, 2008 -- sheesh, people, last time I checked, that's still the future! It's still MONTHS away. Who knows what we can accomplish if we just put our minds to it. I think we get at least get the plastic road thing going before then...
Why a recent spate? Mods are now given 10 points to allocate rather than 5. Mods who, before, were inclined to save their precious points to only mod up can now go get revenge on foes and still have some points left over in the end. Notice your growing Freaks list. You have about 2000 comments spanning many years and any /. user that gets people to actively tag them as a foe is going to get the treatment you described from time to time (I'm not saying it is the people on your freaks list, just that for every person willing to tag you as a foe, there are 10 others thinking the same thing). I'm sympathetic to your statements because your posts on average are of good quality and it is a shame you were targeted. There is probably some movement afoot to squelch you. However, to be honest, I'm not convinced it is Apple related because you have said enough things about enough topics (albeit non trollish critique or funny jabs) over the years it could be anyone (Harry Potter fans, Star Trek fans, etc. etc.).
As an atheist, I've dated Christians, spiritualists, as well as other atheists. In the end, while I enjoyed the company of people who believe in the supernatural, I knew I could only spend the rest of my life with another atheist. But I wouldn't have known that unless I got to know other people too. The whole point of dating is to get to know other people. Date as many different kinds of people who will date you. Learn about other people and what you dislike, like etc. However, I suggest being very selective about who you marry based on the data you collect while dating.
As we know, time dilation means that a spaceship flying for a year at a high enough speed could return to Earth only to find that the crew's families have been dead for a thousand years due to local time passing at different rates for objects moving at different speeds. This is *not* a correct description of time dilation. As you know, if time dilation was the only issue, both the earth's clocks relative to the ship and the ship's clocks relative to the earth would run at *slower* rates. Everyone would age slower wrt to everyone else on earth and on the ship. It is the ship shifting reference frames to turn around that causes the time variable of the earth's clock to hop forward relative to the ship's clock. Time dilation alone works *against* the classic effects of the twin paradox.Physics problem 1:
Nevertheless, after this totally incorrect description of time dilation, it is indeed something like time dilation that gives the effect you correctly described. However, the original post seems to have gotten this correct by sheer luck because they don't even know the difference between the twin paradox and time dilation. At this point I'm already not convinced the original poster has any idea what he is talking about.
For this reason, a photon moves at the speed of light no matter how fast you are moving relative to that photon. The phrase "for this reason" follows the previous paragraph and implies he believes *because of the twin paradox* (or is he talking about time dilation?) the speed of light is constant in all reference frames. This is backwards. As you know, the twin paradox and/or time dilation are consequences of the speed of light being constant in all frames.Physics problem 2:
from our frame of reference inside the Universe, 13.73 billion years have elapsed. From another frame of reference, it is 6000 years old and not a minute more. From this phrase he is defining "our reference frame inside the universe" as giving a result of 13.73 billion years. Not homogenous/isotropic frames at rest wrt to the cmb. This implies he is using a "another" reference frame outside the universe to give 6000 years. This is why I originally questioned his use of SR outside of space-time.Physics problem 3:
As one physicist to another we can have discussions about the conditions and assumptions for different observers to claim the age of the universe to be roughly 13 billion years. For example, I do appreciate your pointing out the homogeneity/isotropic and cmb reference frame issues in your original post. However, I can assure you, this is NOT what the original poster was thinking. They made only vaguely correct statements, merely by sheer luck, acting as "age of the universe revisionist/apologist," using just a cartoon version of SR to support their claim. I find your efforts to so zealously defend their physics mysterious.
You need to re-read the original post which is pure relativistic nonsense.
The age of the universe is obtained from an analysis of the background radiation and all observers analyzing the data would obtain the same result (i.e. this is not a "special age" with respect to the earth's frame). Unfortunately, most of what the parent post said is an incorrect application of special relativity. The twin "paradox" ("return to Earth...") has to do with switching reference frames, not time dilation. Also, it is spurious to apply special relativity outside of space-time. If the parent was being funny, I'd say it was pretty good. But "informative," no.
Very cool. Thanks for the response.
Another user in this thread has posted several interesting references which deserve some attention. It seems what they have created is a cavity made of light which is behaving analogously to a black _body_ (not hole) by effectively not permitting other light pulses to escape. Then this "cavity of light" is radiating with some effective temperature which has some superficial analogies with Hawking radiation. This is very interesting, especially since it is made of light, and there may be great utility, but as far as I can tell they are no more creating an "event horizon" than the interface of any other black body like the surface of pinhole on a closed box.
The experiment is cool, but as far as I can tell, this is nothing like a black hole in the cosmological sense. Simply reproducing one superficial property of black hole ("light cannot escape") does not make it a gravitational singularity with an event horizon and its associated properties. For example, I seriously doubt electron-positron conversions in their light cavity would behave at all like said conversions at a real event horizon since the charged particles would be subject to very different kinds of forces from those near a real black hole. Also, Hawking radiation is related to black hole evaporation. This would not occur with the lasers in an analogous way because the mechanics of this light bubble "evaporation" is totally different. It sounds to me like a case of one subfield (photonics) sexing up their lingo by adopting the lingo of another subfield (general relativity) to get press. IAAP, but not a cosmologists/GR expert, so I'm willing to stand corrected.
Point well taken, but you must realize the irony of posting your message on blog. True, money and legislation do talk. But, sadly, marches, protests, and tire-burning serve the same function you claim the internet serves: is makes people feel like they are making a difference when they really aren't. It is rare such things bring about meaningful change. Classic example: the Vietnam War, famous for its ability to incite healthy civil disobedience in the US, went on 4 more years after the major protests fizzled. Protest and marches usually have the effect of polarizing and hardening existing official positions, not promoting change. I still think people should participate in civil disobedience (but not burn tires), not because it is effective but because it provides a sense of self-satisfaction. Nevertheless, real social change doesn't require it and protest still needs to be coupled to legislation, power, and money to actually work.
Also, in a follow-up article linked to the main article the inventor is quoted as saying: "What I can say with full confidence is that our system violates the law of conservation of energy." The guy doesn't believe he is just building a more clever or efficient induction motor, but sadly believes his pushing beyond the laws of physics.
but then again 10 would be 100.010221222212... which is a little awkward.
Its a good question actually. You might be surprised at how popular soccer and rugby are in the US. Almost every kid grows up playing in a local soccer leagues for many years and quite a few men and women play rugby in college (cricket, like fencing, has yet to catch on except in exotic and shunned geeky college clubs). But these are considered niche hobby sports, not activities ripe for big business. I think the popularity of (American) football and baseball is like obtaining weird phases of water like Ice IX. You can get to it under sufficiently extreme pressures and temperatures, but nature doesn't hand it to you easily. Once you have the conditions to get it, you have to change everything all over again to get rid of it. As the US women's soccer advocates discovered a few years ago, it isn't easy even under fairly ideal conditions to get people to adapt a new large scale cultural sports fixation (even with sports-bra ripping dramas). If everyone woke up Monday thinking "you know, cricket is really a much better sport than baseball, and we could even play our buddies across the Atlantic and Pacific in a multitrillion dollar sports big business madhouse only rivaled by the international cocaine smugglers," I'm pretty sure it would still take years to overcome the cultural inertia since there is so much money and emotional energy currently invested by many Americans in traditional US sports.
On the cable map, Greenland looks only slightly less vulnerable than Asia (its like I'm playing Risk). Good thing that kind of redundancy was clearly thought out from the start. Wouldn't want to lose communications with the metropolis of Nuuk or the 12 faculty members at the University of Greenland.
$1.5M/CD? Hey, its only about $0.00027/bit. After a couple bucks, you might even recognize the data stream as music!