BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV

Subject: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 12:29 AM

There is a remote chance this could be extremely important. Controlling the connection between entangled particles means there is a conceivable path to remote control of matter, teleportation and FTL drives. Just maybe.

A

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From the current edition of Nature magazine:

Deterministic quantum teleportation of atomic qubits

M. D. BARRETT1,*, J. CHIAVERINI1, T. SCHAETZ1, J. BRITTON1, W. M. ITANO1, J. D. JOST1, E. KNILL2, C. LANGER1, D. LEIBFRIED1, R. OZERI1 & D. J. WINELAND1

1 Time and Frequency Division, NIST, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA
2 Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division, NIST, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA
* Present address: Department of Physics, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand

Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to D.J.W. ([e-mail])

Quantum teleportation provides a means to transport quantum information efficiently from one location to another, without the physical transfer of the associated quantum-information carrier. This is achieved by using the non-local correlations of previously distributed, entangled quantum bits (qubits). Teleportation is expected to play an integral role in quantum communication and quantum computation. Previous experimental demonstrations have been implemented with optical systems that used both discrete and continuous variables, and with liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance. Here we report unconditional teleportation of massive particle qubits using atomic (9Be+) ions confined in a segmented ion trap, which aids individual qubit addressing. We achieve an average fidelity of 78 per cent, which exceeds the fidelity of any protocol that does not use entanglement. This demonstration is also important because it incorporates most of the techniques necessary for scalable quantum information processing in an ion-trap system.

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Regards,

A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 10:23 AM

Gee -- it didn't look all H3'd in Preview! ANyone want to find the onesided bracket in there?

Thanks,

A

anything to oblige! joeclone

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Tracey Dragonsfriend
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 10:47 AM

You never know - we could see the Start Trek Transporter yet!

Cheers
Tracey Dragonsfriend
Scorch's Pyrography

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Pied Piper
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 10:53 AM

Psychomotor peripheral wave function collapse clearly prevents, even in ionised baryonic matter state transfer, as the Eigen functions would be would be inversely commutable unless identically phased.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 11:48 AM

You do, and you'll clean it up!

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 11:55 AM

I'm not so sure of that PP. Eigenstates may be less chaotic than they seem especially with the tangling mapped.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Pied Piper
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 12:00 PM

I though it was obvious

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: M.Ted
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 02:18 PM

I am a bit confused--doesn't the Coherent Ramen Effect come in to play here?

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: GUEST, Dr Trokenbeerenauseliese
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 02:31 PM

And what about the implication of saprificational formalditude?

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 02:32 PM

LOL!!

A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Pied Piper
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 03:05 PM

To put it another way, state variable synchronous particle tunnelling at the macro level, is prevented by the semi-chaotic bifurcation of phase space geometry.
And you can't say it any simpler than that.
PP

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 03:31 PM

Here's the NIST press release for everyone except PP and Amos.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 03:51 PM

The NIST Ion Storage Group also has a really nice poster available in PDF called "Dense Coding Demonstration and Microfabricated Ion Traps" which explains it all.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 04:34 PM

They think about women, career, salary, prestige, promotion...the usual stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 04:51 PM

Sex.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 05:43 PM

Speaking of which, Bruce, type "Real Dolls" into Google and have a look. Astounding! And expensive. What really burns me is they don't make any goats, and there is no Hillary Clinton model available yet.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 06:46 PM

you could inquire here, Little Hawk

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 06:58 PM

and if you don't care about its size, gender or Military allegence this is available

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 07:28 PM

You guys are scary. How do you find these sites? Whew.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 07:38 PM

The funniest thing on Real Dolls is, they have a glowing testimonial from Howard Stern regarding some...umm...time he spent testing one. Very funny reading. That Howard Stern is one crazy guy.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 09:29 PM

Wolfgang, is there any hope for this thread? Or have the barbarians completely run away with it...??



A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 09:47 PM

Amos, et al.: Consider the implications of this discovery!

"We discuss the relative importance of several possible hadron-hadron interaction mechanisms and review a coupled-channel Schrödinger model incorporating some of these mechanisms. Its application to pseudoscalar-pseudoscalar S-wave scattering is reviewed and updated to include new insights about the underlying intermeson interactions. We find that s-channel resonance formation and quark-exchange processes are sufficient to reproduce experimental observations, and that the new predictions are qualitatively consistent with the earlier results. New results for exotic K+K+ scattering are also presented and compared with a Born-level quark-exchange calculation."

Quark-level computing! A trit-based system, even!

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jun 04 - 10:59 PM

That's what q-bits are all about, Doctor!! Well, that's quantum level, anyway...I am unsure about the scale when we are talking quark-level. It doesn't sound like he is talking about hadrons forming any kind of storable logic structure of data structure. But then, I don't understand a lot of the words in your post, either...

A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Jun 04 - 02:29 AM

I met a physicist today and had a most interesting conversation with him. His father was in the diplomatic service so the family lived in many different places- Germany, France, Norway, more- so until recently when his seventh-year sabbatical has come up he has usually gone to Europe for the year.

But lately he has gone to Hawaii instead, to the telescope station atop an extinct volcano.

I learned a lot, mostly because I knew so little.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 18 Jun 04 - 03:12 AM

Are they worried about matter and anti matter mixing, cos then it does neh matter anymore.

Where can i buy one of these to get me to the pub quicker?

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Gurney
Date: 18 Jun 04 - 03:49 AM

Might see 78% of you there, me old Chinois.

Not a few think about the plot of the next Sci-Fi novel they are writing.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Pied Piper
Date: 18 Jun 04 - 05:25 AM

Not to mention clusters of quasi-autonomous-non-geometric-oscillators.
Obviously synchronous bi-polar stochastic resonance in a time variable non-Euclidian domain is not gaussian.
Therefore
Binary Unregulated Linear Lepton State Hinged Ion Transfer, is inevitable.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Jun 04 - 08:50 AM

My God, PP, but you're on to something there!

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jun 04 - 10:27 AM

SIgh...just can't stay away....


A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 07 Jul 04 - 10:11 PM

Meanwhile, another scale of anomaly altogether:

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Nature 430, 184 - 187 (08 July 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02668

Old galaxies in the young Universe

A. CIMATTI1, E. DADDI2, A. RENZINI2, P. CASSATA3, E. VANZELLA3, L. POZZETTI4, S. CRISTIANI5, A. FONTANA6, G. RODIGHIERO3, M. MIGNOLI4 & G. ZAMORANI4


1 INAF - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Largo E. Fermi 5, I-50125, Firenze, Italy
2 European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, D-85748, Garching, Germany
3 Dipartimento di Astronomia, Università di Padova, Vicolo dell'Osservatorio, 2, I-35122 Padova, Italy
4 INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, I-40127, Bologna, Italy
5 INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, via Tiepolo 11, I-34131 Trieste, Italy
6 INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, via dell'Osservatorio 2, Monteporzio, Italy

Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to A.C. ([e-mail]).

More than half of all stars in the local Universe are found in massive spheroidal galaxies, which are characterized by old stellar populations with little or no current star formation. In present models, such galaxies appear rather late in the history of the Universe as the culmination of a hierarchical merging process, in which larger galaxies are assembled through mergers of smaller precursor galaxies. But observations have not yet established how, or even when, the massive spheroidals formed, nor if their seemingly sudden appearance when the Universe was about half its present age (at redshift z 1) results from a real evolutionary effect (such as a peak of mergers) or from the observational difficulty of identifying them at earlier epochs. Here we report the spectroscopic and morphological identification of four old, fully assembled, massive (1011 solar masses) spheroidal galaxies at l.6 < z < 1.9, the most distant such objects currently known. The existence of such systems when the Universe was only about one-quarter of its present age shows that the build-up of massive early-type galaxies was much faster in the early Universe than has been expected from theoretical simulations.

© 2004 Nature Publishing Group

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Regards,

A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Jul 04 - 10:27 PM

well, physicists in the RIGHT field think about very interesting things

....in fact, many of the worlds greatest had things to contemplate when they got together.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Rapparee
Date: 07 Jul 04 - 10:33 PM

She's always thinking about P-N junctions and gateways and such. Never gives a thought to things like beer and music and general fooling around. Never knew a semiconductor physicist who could either sing OR play the banjo worth a damn.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Jul 04 - 11:22 PM

that's 'cause all the GOOD musicians are in String Theory

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jul 04 - 11:37 AM

Bill,

That was a thread-killing string theory remark...Are threads and strings incompatible?

A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Jul 04 - 11:56 AM

naaww, Amos....I suspect that too much thinking is incompatible with thread theory ;>) (durn, I MISS Bruce O!)

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Rapparee
Date: 08 Jul 04 - 03:08 PM

They think about D and F strings. An extract:

"String theory presupposes nine or 10 spatial dimensions, that is six or seven more spatial dimensions than have heretofore been assumed to exist in addition to the one dimension of time. Some of the "extra" dimensions are thought to be curled up or compactified and therefore exceedingly small; and some, to be larger, perhaps infinite.

"In his attempts to understand Inflation in terms of string theory, Tye and collaborators envisioned our reality as contained in a three-dimensional "brane" sitting in higher dimensional space.

"Branes, a key conceptual breakthrough discovered by Polchinski in 1995, are essential structures in string theory in addition to strings. Instead of being only one-dimensional like strings, branes can have any dimensionality, including one. One-dimensional branes are called "D1 branes or D strings." So there are essentially two types of strings-- the heterotic string or "F" (for "fundamental") string, which physicists knew about prior to 1995, and the "D string," or one-dimensional brane.

"Tye and collaborators explained Inflation in terms of a brane and an anti-brane separating from each other and then attracting back together and annihilating. So a brane and an anti-brane existing in the extra dimensions would thereby provide the energy responsible for Inflation. Everything existing afterwards--our universe--is the product of their annihilation. And, according to the Tye models, at the end of Inflation, when brane and anti-brane annihilate, not only does their annihilation produce heat and light, but also long closed strings that could grow with the expansion of the universe."

Most any day now you'll find physicists thinking about G strings.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Jul 04 - 01:25 PM

I thought that was why they welcomed Britney into their midst....

Violinists and physicists may be on a collision course ...with theologians close behind...

"Paganini's Moses Fantasy, played entirely on the G string"

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jul 04 - 02:56 PM

If they did welcome her, it might well have been for religous reasons, a number of the world's fo0remost phsyicists being memeber of the Temple of the Golden Curve, and quite upfront about it, too.

A

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: GUEST,observer
Date: 09 Jul 04 - 06:29 PM

Most physicists are quite up front about Dolly Parton, too.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: mack/misophist
Date: 10 Jul 04 - 12:15 AM

My brother-inlaw is an atomic chemist, not a physicist. I can assure you that he thinks of little besides peanut-butter fudge.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Jul 04 - 11:11 PM

My cousin in law works in planetary magnetospherics at Goddard. His specialty is plasma physics. His team is looking for help:

"The Laboratory for Extraterrestrial Physics (LEP) at the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA's designated Center of Excellence for Space Science, is seeking scientists with outstanding research and leadership potential.

"We seek creative entrepreneurial scientists with research interests overlapping the broad range of LEP programs in space physics and planetary science. LEP space physics programs include heliospheric, magnetospheric, and ionospheric physics. LEP scientists are involved in a wide variety of space physics missions, including IMAGE, ACE, the Solar Terrestrial Probes (STEREO, MMS, etc.), and others. In planetary science, LEP scientists are team leaders on the Mars Global Surveyor, NEAR, Cassini, and MESSENGER missions. LEP scientists also propose, develop and fly instruments on balloons, sounding rockets, and the Space Shuttle, and acquire and analyze ground-based and laboratory data in support of NASA objectives. The LEP has active instrumentation, data analysis, and theory programs in both space and planetary physics; especially magnetic and electric fields, plasmas, long-wavelength radio waves, and infrared, x-ray and gamma ray spectroscopy. LEP scientists are pursuing emerging areas of research such as space weather, astrobiology, low frequency radio imaging of solar and magnetospheric processes, and the detection and characterization of extra-solar planets. Successful applicants will have opportunities to participate in all aspects of LEP research, including instrument development, data analysis, laboratory experiments, numerical simulations, and theory, and community leadership roles such as project scientists and study scientists."

PM me if you're interested. (Actually, I'd kinda like to shoot up them sounding rockets.)

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: freda underhill
Date: 10 Jul 04 - 11:25 PM

www.abc.net.au/science/morebigquestions/stories/s540211.htm

this is an interesting interview with Professor Paul Davies. He currently holds the positions of Visiting Professor of Physics at Imperial College London, Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland and Adjunct Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University, Sydney.

Professor Davies has published over 100 research papers in specialist journals, in the fields of cosmology, gravitation, and quantum field theory, with particular emphasis on black holes and the origin of the universe. His monograph Quantum Fields in Curved Space, co-authored with former student Nicholas Birrell, remains a seminal text in the field of quantum gravity. Davies is also interested in the nature of time, high-energy particle physics, the foundations of quantum mechanics, the origin of life and the nature of consciousness. He was nominated as one of Australia's ten most creative people by The Bulletin in December 1996.

In addition to his research, Professor Davies is well known as an author, broadcaster and public lecturer. He has written over twenty-five books, both popular and specialist works. They have been translated into more than twenty languages. Among his better-known works are God and the New Physics, The Cosmic Blueprint, The Mind of God, The Last Three Minutes, About Time, Are We Alone? and The Fifth Miracle: the search for the origin of life. His latest book is How to Build a Time Machine. In recognition of his work as an author, he was elected as Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature in 1999.

Davies was once described by the Washington Times as "the best science writer on either side of the Atlantic". His books explain advanced scientific concepts in simple terms, and explore the philosophical consequences of the latest ideas at the forefront of research. He likes to focus on the deep questions of existence, such as how the universe came into existence and how it will end, the nature of human consciousness, the possibility of time travel, the relationship between physics and biology, the status of the laws of physics and the interface of science and religion.

The journalist interviewing him, Philip Adams, is an athiest and a humanist.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/morebigquestions/stories/s540593.htm

there are severaql interviews here, all fascinating, check them out!

freda

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: GUEST,freda in a parallel universe
Date: 22 Jul 04 - 12:39 AM

and some more from the Professor

The multiverse theory has spawned another - that our universe is a simulation, writes Paul Davies.

If you've ever thought life was actually a dream, take comfort. Some pretty distinguished scientists may agree with you. Philosophers have long questioned whether there is in fact a real world out there, or whether "reality" is just a figment of our imagination.
Then along came the quantum physicists, who unveiled an Alice-in-Wonderland realm of atomic uncertainty, where particles can be waves and solid objects dissolve away into ghostly patterns of quantum energy.

Now cosmologists have got in on the act, suggesting that what we perceive as the universe might in fact be nothing more than a gigantic simulation. The story behind this bizarre suggestion began with a vexatious question: why is the universe so bio-friendly? Cosmologists have long been perplexed by the fact that the laws of nature seem to be cunningly concocted to enable life to emerge. Take the element carbon, the vital stuff that is the basis of all life. It wasn't made in the big bang that gave birth to the universe. Instead, carbon has been cooked in the innards of giant stars, which then exploded and spewed soot around the universe.

The process that generates carbon is a delicate nuclear reaction. It turns out that the whole chain of events is a damned close run thing, to paraphrase Lord Wellington. If the force that holds atomic nuclei together were just a tiny bit stronger or a tiny bit weaker, the reaction wouldn't work properly and life may never have happened.
The late British astronomer Fred Hoyle was so struck by the coincidence that the nuclear force possessed just the right strength to make beings like Fred Hoyle, he proclaimed the universe to be "a put-up job". Since this sounds a bit too much like divine providence, cosmologists have been scrambling to find a scientific answer to the conundrum of cosmic bio-friendliness.

The one they have come up with is multiple universes, or "the multiverse". This theory says that what we have been calling "the universe" is nothing of the sort. Rather, it is an infinitesimal fragment of a much grander and more elaborate system in which our cosmic region, vast though it is, represents but a single bubble of space amid a countless number of other bubbles, or pocket universes.
Things get interesting when the multiverse theory is combined with ideas from sub-atomic particle physics. Evidence is mounting that what physicists took to be God-given unshakeable laws may be more like local by-laws, valid in our particular cosmic patch, but different in other pocket universes. Travel a trillion light years beyond the Andromeda galaxy, and you might find yourself in a universe where gravity is a bit stronger or electrons a bit heavier.
The vast majority of these other universes will not have the necessary fine-tuned coincidences needed for life to emerge; they are sterile and so go unseen. Only in Goldilocks universes like ours where things have fallen out just right, purely by accident, will sentient beings arise to be amazed at how ingeniously bio-friendly their universe is.

It's a pretty neat idea, and very popular with scientists. But it carries a bizarre implication. Because the total number of pocket universes is unlimited, there are bound to be at least some that are not only inhabited, but populated by advanced civilisations - technological communities with enough computer power to create artificial consciousness. Indeed, some computer scientists think our technology may be on the verge of achieving thinking machines.
It is but a small step from creating artificial minds in a machine, to simulating entire virtual worlds for the simulated beings to inhabit. This scenario has become familiar since it was popularised in The Matrix movies.

Now some scientists are suggesting it should be taken seriously. "We may be a simulation ... creations of some supreme, or super-being," muses Britain's astronomer royal, Sir Martin Rees, a staunch advocate of the multiverse theory. He wonders whether the entire physical universe might be an exercise in virtual reality, so that "we're in the matrix rather than the physics itself".Is there any justification for believing this wacky idea? You bet, says Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, who even has a website devoted to the topic ( http://www.simulation-argument.com). "Because their computers are so powerful, they could run a great many simulations," he writes in The Philosophical Quarterly.

So if there exist civilisations with cosmic simulating ability, then the fake universes they create would rapidly proliferate to outnumber the real ones. After all, virtual reality is a lot cheaper than the real thing. So by simple statistics, a random observer like you or me is most probably a simulated being in a fake world. And viewed from inside the matrix, we could never tell the difference. Or could we? John Barrow, a colleague of Martin Rees at Cambridge University, wonders whether the simulators would go to the trouble and expense of making the virtual reality foolproof. Perhaps if we look closely enough we might catch the scenery wobbling.

He even suggests that a glitch in our simulated cosmic history may have already been discovered, by John Webb at the University of NSW. Webb has analysed the light from distant quasars, and found that something funny happened about 6 billion years ago - a minute shift in the speed of light. Could this be the simulators taking their eye off the ball?

I have to confess to being partly responsible for this mischief. Last year I wrote an item for The New York Times, saying that once the multiverse genie was let out of the bottle, Matrix-like scenarios inexorably follow. My conclusion was that perhaps we should retain a healthy scepticism for the multiverse concept until this was sorted out. But far from being a dampener on the theory, it only served to boost enthusiasm for it. Where will it all end? Badly, perhaps. Now the simulators know we are on to them, and the game is up, they may lose interest and decide to hit the delete button. For your own sake, don't believe a word that I have written.

www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/21/1090089219062.html?oneclick=true

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Wolfgang
Date: 22 Jul 04 - 08:59 AM

Yesterday, Stephen Hakwins, in a much awaited address has renounced his own idea that our world is not the only one. Of course, he may be wrong.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 22 Jul 04 - 10:14 AM

the things you learn on mudcat.
Some out there is a physicist and when you meet one do they become a metaphysicist?

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: mooman
Date: 22 Jul 04 - 11:51 AM

This has been answered already on previous threads I, II and III..!

..unattainable women

(i.e. the same as biologists!)

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: GUEST,freda (still in parallel universe)
Date: 22 Jul 04 - 10:27 PM

... now at last we know what physicists think about....

baseball!..

07/22/2004 2:30 Black-hole physicist pays up, By Brian Wilson   

After 30 years of arguing that a black hole was basically a cosmic version of Brooks Robinson, Dr. Stephen Hawking has lost his bet, and the stakes were a baseball encyclopedia. The Cambridge University physicist had to pay up on a 1997 bet with a California Institute of Technology physicist, when he admitted his original assertion, that anything "swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden and can never be revealed," was incorrect.

Dr. Hawking spoke Wednesday at the 17th International Conference of General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin. His revision now states that eventually some of the information about the black hole can be determined from what it emits. His original offer of a cricket encyclopedia was turned down in favor of "Total Baseball: The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia" -- from which the winning physicist, Dr. John Preskill, can recover information at will.

Preskill told the assembled media he'd always hoped there'd be witnesses when Hawking conceded, but "this really exceeds my expectations."

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 10:01 PM

Nature Magazine(Nature 430, 525 - 528 (29 July 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02750) reports:

The nonlinear nature of friction

MICHAEL URBAKH1, JOSEPH KLAFTER1, DELPHINE GOURDON2 & JACOB ISRAELACHVILI2

1 School of Chemistry, Raymond and Beverley Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel
2 Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA

Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to M.U. ([e-mail]).

Tribology is the study of adhesion, friction, lubrication and wear of surfaces in relative motion. It remains as important today as it was in ancient times, arising in the fields of physics, chemistry, geology, biology and engineering. The more we learn about tribology the more complex it appears. Nevertheless, recent experiments coupled to theoretical modelling have made great advances in unifying apparently diverse phenomena and revealed many subtle and often non-intuitive aspects of matter in motion, which stem from the nonlinear nature of the problem.

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 10:39 PM

So, what does this do to the way I rub two sticks together to make fire?

Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Jul 04 - 11:31 PM

...and will 17 trillion gallons of Mazola poured down the San Andreas fault save California?