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 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. WINELAND11 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. (djw@boulder.nist.gov) 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. 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: Nature 430, 184 - 187 (08 July 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02668Old galaxies in the young UniverseA. 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. (cimatti@arcetri.astro.it). 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 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. (urbakh@post.tau.ac.il). 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? |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Celtaddict Date: 28 Jul 04 - 11:37 PM Back to brucie, 17 June, 4:54. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Wolfgang Date: 29 Jul 04 - 06:25 AM Now what has Brucie said in this thread at 4:54, 17 June? It doesn't show on my screen. But maybe he had something to say and had meant to post and that only shows on screens of people with an open mind? Can the mere intention to post something of deep value leave a trace in the system that is observable for just some of us tuned to similar thoughts? Celtaddict, you have opened a Pandora box of metaphysical questions for me. One of the deepest metaphysical questions on Mudcat for me is when I have posted and find no trace of that post. Have I merely dreamt I have posted? Can I only refind my post when I am in the same state of mind? Can others read my post of which I find no trace? What do you say? I may only have mixed up the 'submit' button and the 'back' button for the umpteenth time? Shame on you. I'm speaking about metaphysics and you dare to hint I just made a minor slip. That's not fair. Wolfgang (whose number of slips of this type per day cannot be counted by the fingers of both hands) |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 29 Jul 04 - 08:56 AM 17 June 4:51, not 4, brucie said, succinctly, "Sex". But I think that is obvious. Or perhaps it is brucie's answer to "If a physicist, what would you think about?" A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 18 Aug 04 - 10:00 PM From the current edition of Nature, something really worth thinking about--the uses of quantum entanglement!! Communications: Quantum teleportation across the Danube |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Cluin Date: 19 Aug 04 - 05:04 PM "Be afraid... Be very afraid." |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Rapparee Date: 19 Aug 04 - 05:57 PM Photons across the Danube! Hands across the sea! Da da, Photons across the Danube! Hands across the the sea! de de de.... |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Bill D Date: 19 Aug 04 - 07:22 PM "... the high-fidelity teleportation of photons..." "Praise the Lord, I saw the light" -------------------------------------------------- " Our result is a step towards the implementation of a quantum repeater,..." how dey do dat? Any details? |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 19 Aug 04 - 08:11 PM Bill: I don't have any because I don't subscribe to Nature, so all I get is the summaries. If you find any let me know -- it has to do with entanglement of quanta in remote locations such that the direction of one will determine instanter the direction of the other regardless of distance. Kind of like love or prayer or something....wooo-woooo! A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Bill D Date: 19 Aug 04 - 09:49 PM I ask because it is the closest thing I have seen to Whitehead's concept of the "actual entity" as the smallest unit of reality possible, and how certain 'conditions' can influence it to go this way or that... Whitehead was trying to explain how 'free will' might be explained, but if a particle smaller than a quark can be influenced, maybe it can be ......ummmmm..... moved? if, if, if....my ol' brain always sees the chain of 'ifs'. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Bill D Date: 19 Aug 04 - 09:52 PM well, here is a bit more " By separating the entangled pair, the scientists successfully transported information about the state of one photon to the other" now, I am not sure how one goes about 'separating a pair of photons'...*grin*... |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 19 Aug 04 - 10:19 PM Photons go where you send them, just like a beam of lased light. The "entangled pair" are not physically linked to each other, but their fate is bound up so they must somehow always reflect each others' states. This kind of "instant information" looks like FTL transportation of actual objects but it is not. However it does imply an information system that could be instant or nerar-instant. Unlike the slow ones of today which take nanoseconds or milliseconds to transfer information. I am groping in ignorance here. How'm I doin'?? A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Cluin Date: 19 Aug 04 - 11:15 PM Fiberoptic superconductors? |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Cluin Date: 19 Aug 04 - 11:19 PM Thoughts of sex for physicists involve vectors bumping up against each other, discharging their Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle all over the place. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: mack/misophist Date: 20 Aug 04 - 02:17 AM Back in the 70's (I think) Alain Aspect of the University of Paris, South did much the same thing by shooting electrons at a blob of mercury hanging magneticaly in mid vacuum. That was only 3-6 mm, though. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Rapparee Date: 20 Aug 04 - 09:44 AM I thought mercury was non-magnetic???? Given the stuff that passes for information these days, I'm not at all sure I either need or want to get it any faster. All I'd do is ignore it faster. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Rapparee Date: 20 Aug 04 - 04:37 PM The more I think about it, the angrier I get. It's both morally and ethically repugnant to thinking, caring people. This experiment is disgusting. How DARE anyone even CONSIDER it! Two photons, their union branded as "entaglement" and then torn asunder by an unfeeling, inhuman physicist who feels a need to vindicate his or her manhood. At a time when divorce rates are at a record high, too! PETP will hear of this outrage, this vile abuse! In the meantime, cherish your photons. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: GUEST,Amos Date: 21 Aug 04 - 12:04 PM Rapaire, I am afraid you misunderstand the nature of entanglement. As I understand it it is not physical linkage in the sense you mean and it does not preclude photons moving great distances from each other without any diminution to the entanglement. Entanglement is not inversely proportional to the square of distance. This is important because it says something about the nature of space. Entanglement is permanent and instantaneous -- that is when one of the pair is determined to have turned left the other one will predictably have turned left also (or perhaps it is right), over 90% of the time. This is more like love than it is like gravity -- the link is ineluctable regardless of distance, response is instantaneous, confidence is high, and life is glorious. A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: GUEST,Amos Date: 21 Aug 04 - 02:32 PM n the meantime, cherish your photons. Ye sir, certainly sir...would that be one by one? At ordinary rates, payable in advance? Or all at once? A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: GUEST,A Cookieless Rapaire Date: 21 Aug 04 - 11:58 PM Even worse! Entangled, they hope, forever and then brutally ripped apart to satisfy the warped and morbid curiousity of some physicist who probably wears a coat made from the skins of baby harp seals and eats veal. Cherish all your photons, individually and collectively. And pray that these amoral "scientists" soon see the light. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 22 Aug 04 - 12:30 AM Rapaire, I don't know how to tell you this, but there is NO BRUTALITY in these experiments. NO PHOTONS HAVE BEEN HARMED IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE. If you persist in this obstreperous Grundyism I will be forced to bitchslap you. Please come to your senses! A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 22 Aug 04 - 06:53 PM Cryptography system goes underground (Aug 19) http://physicsweb.org/article/news/8/8/13 A group of scientists in Austria and Germany has installed an optical fibre quantum cryptography system under the streets of Vienna and used it to perform the first quantum secure bank wire transfer (A Poppe et al. 2004 Optics Express 12 3865). The quantum cryptography system consisted of a transmitter (Alice) at Vienna's City Hall and a receiver (Bob) at the headquarters of an Austrian bank. The sites were linked by 1.45 kilometres of single-mode optical fibre. So! leaps undt bounds are higher and faster than ever!! A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Rapparee Date: 22 Aug 04 - 09:17 PM My brother had a fiber problem. Metamucil fixed him right up. I probably could have watched, but I'm not that into fiber optics. I don't think he watched, either. He's just not that kind of guy. The idea of watching the results of fiber for some sort of code is rather disquieting, to say the least. Certainly supplies a new middle word for the abbreviation "NSA" though. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 22 Aug 04 - 09:42 PM I have sent der information aboudt your obsessive facetiousness and intentional refusal to underschtand about der fiber in a shecret Memo to Alice andt Bob, Rapaire. You should be receiving a brown paper wrapped parschel in der mail schoon, mebbe ticking. A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Rapparee Date: 23 Aug 04 - 09:29 AM Dang it! If copper wire was good enough fer folks like Tom Jefferson and Sam Colt to use fer THEIR computers, it's by God good enough fer me! |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Rapparee Date: 23 Aug 04 - 10:14 AM Which, to bring this back to music, reminds me of the Monk's Aria from Bach's Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice: Et expecto resurrecreation; Et in unum Dominos and checkers; Qui tollis peccata mundi morning. Mea culpa kyrie elei- Sonny Tufts et Allah in Pompeii; Donna nobis pacem cum what mei; Agnus and her sister Doris Dei; Lord, have mercy on my solo. Et in terra chicken pox romana; Sic sic transit gloria mañana; Sanctus estes Kefauviridiana In flagrante delicto Svetlana; Lord, have mercy on my solo. Credo in, at most, unum deum; Caveat nabisco mausoleum; Coitus interruptus bonus meum; Kimo sabe watchum what you sayum; Lord, have mercy on my soul so low. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 23 Aug 04 - 10:17 AM Maybe you should look in to having your memory circuits rewired with optic fiber ! A |
Subject: Holy-Moly! A Light Antennae From: Amos Date: 20 Sep 04 - 04:47 PM It seems we may be closer than ever to a roof that can eneergize a house. See this picture. A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 23 Oct 04 - 01:48 AM A Nobel Prizewinner discusses at length the outstanding Important Topics for scientists in this New York Times article. Very interesting stuff. A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Rapparee Date: 23 Oct 04 - 09:08 AM And I can't wait. I think it would be great. But the IgNobel prizewinner for this just is: PHYSICS Ramesh Balasubramaniam of the University of Ottawa, and Michael Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Haskins Laboratory, for exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping." Check out their award-winning, internationally recognized work here. (You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader, so if you don't have it go get it. It's free.) Physicists gots lots on their minds these days. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 02 Feb 05 - 12:15 AM This is important, I believe, for reasons which may not be visible for some time: How noise protects entire marine ecosystems Monday 31 January 2005 http://www.iop.org/news/887 Noise is usually nothing more than a disturbance, but sometimes it can be useful. Researchers have discovered that noise could bring order to chaotic systems, protect and maintain entire marine ecosystems, and even make the chemical industry greener. This research is reported today in a special Einstein Year issue of the New Journal of Physics (www.njp.org) published jointly by the Institute of Physics and the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft). Changsong Zhou and a group of physicists at the University of Potsdam, Germany, are studying chaotic systems, known as excitable media. The firing of neurons in the brain is an example of such a system, as is the growth and receding of blooms of plankton in the sea. Such systems do not become excited by small signals but if they are stimulated above a threshold amount, then they give it their all: neurons fire and plankton blooms. "Similarly, excitable non-linear behaviour is also found in chemical reactions", explains Zhou, "where an external pressure or light can push a reaction down one route instead of another." Zhou and his colleagues have found that the key to this sort of excitation is chaotic mixing and noise. The researchers demonstrated how a non-linear system can be controlled to become synchronized even when its stimulus is below the threshold by the addition of noise to the system. The results based on their model study imply that oscillatory behaviour in many natural systems, rather than being disturbed by noise, is thus sustained by it. For instance, the "noise" in a marine ecosystem due to temperature changes, ocean currents, wind-driven waves, fluctuations in nutrient levels, the movement of schools of fish, and wind-driven waves affect how plankton blooms grow and recede. If the conditions are below an optimum the plankton do not grow, but they can be forced into action by noise, and once they are stimulated the whole system is activated and a marine landscape is quickly blanketed by the bloom. Zhou's results suggest that without noise such blooms might be physically unable to flourish in some areas or might not follow the usual seasonal cycles. "Noise might be essential to maintaining the stability and the persistence of marine ecosystems," Zhou says. This research might therefore help environmental scientists predict or even prevent toxic plankton blooms by observing the natural noise that affects them. Zhou and his colleagues also suggest that noise might usefully be used to control chemical reactions. They explain that random disturbances in industrial mixing tanks could be promoted to make a reaction proceed more efficiently and so reduce chemical waste, making the chemical industry a little more environmentally friendly. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: GUEST,Rapaire Date: 02 Feb 05 - 09:02 AM ...studying chaotic systems, known as excitable media.... Shucks, 'round here ALL the media is both chaotic and excitable. Mostly we ignore it, though, 'cest durin' an election year, an' then we cuss at it. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: GUEST,Amos Date: 02 Feb 05 - 09:17 AM Laugh while you can, sir; the day will come when the importance of this observation is elevated to its proper place in applied technology. Then we'll see which side of your mouth you are laughing out of. A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: GUEST,Rapaire Date: 02 Feb 05 - 03:23 PM I know a use for Rap and Rock and loud car stereos! |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: GUEST,Joe_F Date: 02 Feb 05 - 09:17 PM The following quotation from Isaac Newton (who, it should be remembered was an experimenter as well as a theorist) clearly belongs her: Only those bodies which are absolutely hard are exactly reflected according to these rules. Now the bodies here amongst us (being an aggregate of smaller bodies) have a relenting softnesse and springynesse, which makes their contact be for some time and in more points than one. And the touching surfaces during the time of contact doe slide one upon another more or lesse or not at all according to their roughnesse. And few or none of these bodyes have a springyness soe strong as to force them one from another with the same vigor that they came together. I wish the same to this company in this winter. --- Joe Fineman joe_f@verizon.net ||: If you never do anything stupid, you're not as smart as you :|| ||: think. :|| |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 02 Feb 05 - 10:52 PM New precision has been obtaine din measurement scritical to physics:G (the gravitational constant) and the mass of the Earth and of the Sun: BEST MEASUREMENT OF THE GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT. At this week's American Physical Society Meeting in Long Beach, Jens H. Gundlach of the University of Washington (paper P11.3) reported a long-awaited higher precision measurement of the gravitational constant, usually denoted by the letter G. Although G has been of fundamental importance to physics and astronomy ever since it was introduced by Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century (the gravitational force between two objects equals G times the masses of the two objects and divided by their distance apart squared), it has been relatively hard to measure, owing to the weakness of gravity. Now a group at the University of Washington has reduced the uncertainty in the value of G by almost a factor of ten. Their preliminary value is G=6.67390 x 10-11 m3/kg/s2 with an uncertainty of 0.0014%. Combining this new value of G with measurements made with the Lageos satellite (which uses laser ranging to keep track of its orbital position to within a millimeter) permits the calculation of a brand new, highest precision mass for the earth: 5.97223 (+/- .00008) x 1024 kg. Similarly the new mass of the sun becomes 1.98843 (+/- .00003) x 1030 kg. Gundlach's (206-543-4080, jens@phys.washington.edu) The setup is not unlike Cavendish's venerable torsion balance of two hundred years ago: a hanging pendulum is obliged to twist under the influence of some nearby test weights. But in the Washington experiment measurement uncertainties are greatly reduced by using a feedback mechanism to move the test weights, keeping pendulum twisting to a minimum. (See Gundlach's written summary; figures at Physics News Graphics.) |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 25 Feb 05 - 01:57 PM From the Physics News Update: THE BIGGEST SPLASH OF LIGHT FROM OUTSIDE THE SOLAR SYSTEM to be recorded here at Earth occurred on December 27, 2004. The light came from an object called SGR 1806-20, about 50,000 light years away in our own galaxy. SGR stands for "soft gamma repeater," a class of neutron star possessing a gigantic magnetic field. Such "magnetars" can erupt violently, sending out immense bolts of energy in the form of light at gamma rays and other wavelength regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The eruption was first seen with orbiting telescopes at the upper end of the spectrum over a period of minutes and then by more and more telescopes; at radio wavelengths emissions were monitored for months. For an instant the flare was brighter than the full moon. (NASA press conference, 18 February; www.nrao.edu/pr/2005/sgrburst/; www.ras.org.uk/html/press/pn0505ras.html; many telescopes participated in the observations and results will appear in a forthcoming issue of Nature.) |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Rapparee Date: 25 Feb 05 - 04:22 PM And I missed it? December 27 -- wait, it was snowing here that night. Darn, I never get to see the really cool stuff! |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 02 Mar 05 - 09:36 AM Most distant galaxy cluster yet is revealed 08:00 02 March 2005 NewScientist.com news service Maggie McKee (Excerpt) The most distant cluster of galaxies ever found has been revealed by astronomers - and it bears an uncanny resemblance to those nearby. The technique used to discover the cluster promises further discoveries at similar distances, which would help constrain cosmological models. The cluster of galaxies spotted by astronomers lies 9 billion light-years away. That beats the 8.5 billion light-years' distance of the previous record holder - a jump that represents a "significant fraction of a galaxy's lifespan", says Christopher Mullis, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, US, who led the team. The universe's first galaxies probably formed a few hundred million years after the big bang. They then began assembling into "proto-clusters", or groups of several hundred, within a billion years. The new-found cluster, which may harbour thousands of galaxies, appears to have started growing when the universe was roughly 2.5 billion years old and stopped about 2 billion years later. At that time, it had already grown very massive. Only colossal objects can contain the searing, 70-million-degree gas detected by astronomers - the gas is heated as the galaxies fall toward each other. Images from Europe's XMM-Newton spacecraft, launched to study X-rays in 1999, also reveal the gas has taken on a spherical shape - suggesting it has settled into portly middle age. "We would have thought characters [from so early in the Universe] would have been a bit more youthful," Mullis told New Scientist. "But this guy looks quite old." ... |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Wolfgang Date: 02 Mar 05 - 12:45 PM 'Methusalem of galaxies found' was the headline in Germany. 'Youngster' I'd said. But age is relative depending upon from where you look: Here's a very old picture showing me as a very young man. Wolfgang (sometimes wondering if we one day can see a very old picture of our own galaxy in statu nascendi coming to us from far away across the curved space) |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: John Hardly Date: 02 Mar 05 - 02:24 PM originally posted by brucie: sex I think what Amos is, as a physicist, contemplating here, is a new means to.....er.......deliver.........er......something. That would, in my estimation, take some of the fun out of it, but that's a physicist for you. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 02 Mar 05 - 02:35 PM Don't be easily fooled -- I am one of those characters from so early in the universe that you would expect me to be more youthful than I am. Go figger. Cf Dawkins on memetics in The Selfdish Gene A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Rapparee Date: 02 Mar 05 - 03:22 PM I think that we're now peering so far into the Universe that we're looking clean around the curve and peeking at ourselves. Don't be shocked by a drive-by mooning. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 03 Mar 05 - 07:59 AM This is a big wow revisit to a classic physics conundrum, the double-slit experiment: New look for classic experiment 2 March 2005 Physicists in Europe and the US have performed a novel version of the double-slit quantum-interference experiment with single electrons. In the classic version of the experiment, electrons pass through a mask containing two parallel slits and produce a pattern of bright and dark interference fringes on a screen. Now, Gerhard Paulus of Texas A&M University and co-workers in Berlin, Munich, Sarajevo and Vienna have observed an interference pattern with electrons that pass through a double slit in time, not space, as a result of being ejected from an atom at one of two possible times by a laser pulse. The double-slit experiment was first performed with light by Thomas Young over 200 years ago.The formation of the fringes can be explained by the interference of waves travelling from the two slits. When the peaks of the two waves coincide on the screen, the interference is constructive and the result is a bright fringe. However, if the peak of one wave coincides with the trough of the other, destructive interference results in a region of darkness. Double-slit experiments The spacing between the fringes depends on the wavelength of the light and the separation of the slits. Similar interference fringes have also been observed with electrons, atoms and molecules, with the fringe spacing depending on the de Broglie wavelength of the particles. Experiments have also shown that an interference pattern builds up even if there is only one particle in the apparatus at any time, and that the pattern disappears if we try to determine which slit it passes through. This process is now understood in terms of interference between the two possible paths through the apparatus, rather than between two waves or particles: if we know "which way" the electron passes through the slits, we do not see interference, and vice versa. The latest experiment is radically different because the slits exist in time not space, and because the interference pattern appears when the number of electrons at the detector is plotted as a function of their energy rather than their position on a screen. The work was performed at the Technical University of Vienna in collaboration with physicists from the Max Born Institute in Berlin, the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Munich and the University of Sarajevo. Paulus and co-workers focused a train of pulses from a Ti:sapphire laser into a chamber containing a gas of argon atoms. The pulses were so short – just 5 femtoseconds – that each one contained just a few cycles of the electric field. The team was able to control the output of the laser so that all the pulses were identical. The researchers could, for example, ensure that each pulse contained two maxima of the electric field (thatis, two peaks with large positive values) and one minimum (a peak with a large negative value). There was a small probability that an atom would be ionized by one or other of the maxima, which therefore played the role of the slits, with the resulting electron being accelerated towards a detector. If the atom was ionized by the minimum, the electron travelled in the opposite direction towards a second detector. The team registered the arrival times of the electrons at both detectors and then plotted the number of electrons as a function of energy. The researchers observed interference fringes at the first detector because it was impossible to know if an electron counted by the detector was produced during the first or second maximum. There was no interference pattern at the second detector because all the electrons were produced at the same time at the minimum. However,when the phase of the laser was changed so that there was one maximum and two minima, interference fringes were seen at the second detector but not at the first. "We have complete which-way information and no which-way information at the same time for the same electron," says Paulus. "It just depends on the direction from which we look at it." Other physicists are impressed by the work. "This experiment should be included in every textbook on quantum mechanics," says Wolfgang Schleich, a quantum physicist at the University of Ulm in Germany. "It certainly will be in mine." |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 03 Mar 05 - 08:30 AM A lovely summary by the Times of Science's Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, a pleasant read for us smug and complacent heirs to all the good of Western civ. :>) A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: GUEST,Joe_F Date: 03 Mar 05 - 09:54 AM Is it possible to entangle two radioactive nuclei so that the times of their decay will be correlated? --- Joe Fineman joe_f@verizon.net ||: It's much more fun to imagine how I might have behaved worse than how I might have behaved better. :|| |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 03 Mar 05 - 11:51 AM I doubt it. I don't think nuclei get entangled. Entanglement occurs at a much smaller scale -- it is a quantum physics phenomenon that correlates the axis of spin of two photons no matter how separate they become. A good explanation of entanglement can be found in this article. But I am not qualified to answer the question, really. A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 16 Mar 05 - 12:06 AM DEGENERATE GAS STUCK IN OPTICAL LATTICE. The forces that govern the motions of macroscopic objects like planets and tennis balls are complicated enough. Forces among atoms at ultracold temperatures are even more complicated. In this regime atoms (pictured as being waves) spread out so much that they overlap with neighboring atoms. If the atoms are bosons (that is, if the total spin of each atom is an integer) then they all fall into a single quantum state, namely a Bose Einstein condensate (BEC). If, however, the atoms are fermions (the total spin is half-integral-valued), then quantum reality, in the form of the Pauli exclusion principle, also decrees a special status: not a single ensemble BEC state (all atoms having the same energy), but a state in which none of the atoms has the same energy. In this "Fermi degenerate" state the atoms fill up all possible quantum energy levels, one by one (or two by two, providing that the two atoms sharing a level have opposite spins), until the last atom is accounted for. (For the first demonstration of a Fermi degenerate state in atoms, see www.aip.org/pnu/1999/split/pnu447-1.htm.) Now, physicists at the ETH lab in Zurich have, for the first time, not only made a quantum degenerate Fermi gas but have been able to load the atoms into the criss-cross interstices of an optical lattice, an artificial 3D crystal in which atoms are held in place by the electric fields of well-aimed laser beams. Then, by adjusting an external magnetic field, the pairs of atoms lodged in their specified sites can be made to interact (courtesy of the "Feshbach resonance") with a varying strength. According to Tilman Esslinger (41-1-633-2340, esslinger@phys.ethz.ch), it is this ability to put atoms where you want them in a crystal-like scaffolding, and then to make them interact with a strength that you can control, that makes this setup so useful. It might be possible to test various condensed matter theories, such as those that strive to explain high-temperature superconductivity, on a real physical system. (Kohl et al., Physical Review Letters, March 4; lab site, www.quantumoptics.ethz.ch ) |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: GUEST,Joe_F Date: 16 Mar 05 - 11:58 AM A doctor, a lawyer, and a physicist (all male) are having a drink, and the topic of conversation is: Is it better to have a wife, or a mistress? A wife, says the doctor: there are various diseases you are more likely to get from a mistress. A mistress, says the lawyer: then, if it doesn't work out, you are spared the agony of a divorce. A wife *and* a mistress, says the physicist: then, when your wife thinks you're with your mistress, and your mistress thinks you're with your wife, you can do *physics*. --- Joe Fineman joe_f@verizon.net ||: An ill-defined boundary invites tactile exploration. :|| |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: JohnInKansas Date: 16 Mar 05 - 03:04 PM Amos said it, back at 21 Aug 04 - 12:04 PM "This is more like love than it is like gravity" Recognizing the gravity of the situation, the following has been proposed: Quoting: The following proposition to amend the constitution of the state of Kansas shall be submitted to the qualified electors of the state for their approval or rejection: Article 15 of the constitution of the state of Kansas is amended by adding a new section thereto to read as follows: ''§ 16. Entanglement. (a) The entanglement contract is to be considered in law as a civil contract. Entanglement shall be constituted by one male particle and one female particle only. All other entanglements are declared to be contrary to the public policy of this state and are void. ''(b) No relationship, other than an entanglement, shall be recognized by the state as entitling the particles to the rights or incidents of entanglement.'' Sec. 2. The following statement shall be printed on the ballot with the amendment as a whole: ''Explanatory statement. There is currently no constitutional provision regarding entanglement. There is a statute, enacted by the legislature, that defines entanglement as a civil contract between two particles who are of opposite sex and declares all other entanglements to be contrary to public policy and void. ''A vote for this proposition would amend the Kansas constitution to incorporate into it the definition of entanglement as a civil contract between one male particle and one female particle only and the declaration that any other entanglement is contrary to public policy and void. The proposed constitutional amendment also would prohibit the state from recognizing any other legal relationship that would entitle the particles in the relationship to the rights or incidents of entanglement. ''A vote against this proposition would not amend the constitution, in which case the current statute that defines entanglement would remain unchanged but could be amended by future acts of the legislature or modified by judicial interpretation.'' Endquote. Noted scientist Rev. Phelps has commented "We've got to stop these queer particles from entangling. I'd kill any queer particle that tried to entangle with me." The more moderate Rev. Wright asserts that this amendment will not infringe the rights of any particle, since "those queer particles can get a court order, or legislative relief, for any one of the 2,187 individual "implied rights of entanglement" enumerated in official US Census studies. All they've got to do is get a lawyer. But they'll all go to hell anyway." State Senator Phil Journey disagrees with Rev. Wright, and states "Entanglement must be protected." He objects that without the second (b) part, added by a late change, the amendment "doesn't stop gay and lesbian particles from drawing up legal agreements, such as wills and deeds." It appears to be his interpretation that queer particles should have, and with this amendment would have, no rights at all. A spot poll by one Kansas newspaper indicates that 74% of the people sureyed agree with the statement that "all of the letters in e n t a n g l e m e n t appear in the BIBLE, and so does the word ABOMINATION so it is our SACRED DUTY to shit on all these queer particles." Watch for further progress on this bill. Thanks Amos. You tipped them off. (At least one Kansas Representative is known to have "grave suspicions" about anything with double slits, and will be investigating soon.) John |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Leadfingers Date: 16 Mar 05 - 04:41 PM Hey Ted !!I think I've just got a 100 !! |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Paco Rabanne Date: 17 Mar 05 - 04:02 AM Well done Terence, I hope you read ALL this thread first! |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: heric Date: 22 Mar 05 - 11:20 AM This is fun: 13 things that do not make sense |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: freda underhill Date: 03 Jul 05 - 09:45 AM List of 25 questions Science journal considers could be solved in the next 25 years: - What is the universe made of? - What is the biological basis of consciousness? - Why do humans have so few genes? - To what extent are genetic variation and personal health linked? - Can the laws of physics be unified? - How much can human life span be extended? - What controls organ regeneration? - How can a skin cell become a nerve cell? - How does a single cell become a whole plant? - How does earth's interior work? - Are we alone in the universe? - How and where did life on earth arise? - What determines species diversity? - What genetic changes made us uniquely human? - How are memories stored and retrieved? - How did cooperative behaviour evolve? - How will big pictures emerge from a sea of biological information? - How far can we push chemical self-assembly? - What are the limits of conventional computing? - Can we selectively shut off immune responses? - Do deeper principles underlie quantum uncertainty and nonlocality? - Is an effective HIV vaccine feasible? - How hot will the greenhouse world be? - What can replace cheap oil and when? - How can a growing world population live sustainably on the planet? |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 03 Jul 05 - 11:03 AM I would suggest that asking "what is the biological basis of consciousness" is a pretty biased question. It assumes its own answer. It is perfectly possible that the question should be "what is the consciousness-based source of biological manifestation?". I know that will not sit well with the bottom-up materialist section, and I am simply bringing it up to point out that (as far as I know) this issue has not been clearly decided by replicable science one way or the other. The fact that you can change some aspects of consciousness by altering brain circuits is interesting but inconclusive. You can distort communication by snipping some of the tiny wires inside a phone, too; but that doesn't prove that the phone is the source of communication. Some would argue that in a broad sense it was communication that brought the phone into existence. A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Bill D Date: 03 Jul 05 - 07:42 PM ?? kinda stretching the metaphors there, Amos...*grin* -'phone wires'?? No doubt that IF we had no need to communicate, Alexander Graham Bell might have taken up......no.....I can't even speculate, but we wouldn't have needed phones, I guess....But that is sort of a tautology - and suggesting that the desire to communicate is a 'cause' of phones is a bit hollow, even if logically true. If unwarrented assumptions are to be questioned, how about the ones that posit some universal 'consciousness' as a given? At least the materialists can point to most of their referents. I still wonder how the word 'is' can be applied to NON-material referents, except as shared linguistic/semantic concepts..(truth, beauty, happiness)... |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 03 Jul 05 - 09:49 PM I never said it was the desire, Bill; you are scrambling the logic of what I am saying in order to stay in your shell. However, if you approach what I said from "all thought is local material phenomena" of course your assumption proves itself. The day you show me how understanding in the full and lively sense that we all experience daily can be produced by molecules, I'll buy you a keg and a bag of chips. I did not posit universal consciousness; I said consciousness. It might be individual consciousness multiplied by the number of conscious viewpoints in the current space-time continuum, for all I know. I think we both agree, at least, that consciousness does exist. Use a wireless phone, if you like that metaphor better -- if you are having a conversation, and then fuse a couple of the leads, the conversation will garble. But that won't prove it was the communicating to you. With no wires, if you only believed in solid connections you'd have to believe it was the phone. The idea of a source outside the immediately apparent material system would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Bill D Date: 03 Jul 05 - 10:38 PM my shell? Why, Amos....I prefer to think I sit, perched on an outcropping of Whitehead's actual entities, open to all input and attuned to the nuances of the cosmos!...do I have one of those zapped circuits that prevent me from receiving on a bunch of wavelengths? *shrug*....I dunno, if I don't 'hear' it, I don't hear it. yeah, yer right...I did add something to your 'conciousness' concept, and in these exchanges we'd best be careful what we attribute to each other... " I think we both agree, at least, that consciousness does exist.".. indeed- but then it gets interesting. I once posted on the Dept. of Phil. bulletin board, two quotes, one from Kant and one from Hume, almost identical in phrasing, agreeing that 'all knowlege begins with experience'....then below, I wrote, "Well, so far, so good..." I'd REALLY like to win that keg & chips from you, but I suppose that any purported proof I might suggest could be disputed (or refuted), much as Dr. Johnson refuted Berkley's solipsism ...by kicking a stone. But then, perhaps MY theory could refute yours the same way.*grin* It just boils down to what one accepts as basic truth and first principles. When a Christian says "I believe that the Bible is literal truth and Jesus was sent to....etc, etc..., there's really no way to tell him he can't believe that...and no way to 'prove' it isn't so.....except by dying, and if you're right, you don't even get to say "I told you so!" I have **NO** trouble accepting that " ..all experience daily can be produced by molecules.." (or atoms, or quarks...whatever)....it's a very complex production, to be sure, but if I don't believe that, I might as well accept the religious doctrine of "intelligent design". When you get right down to it, you and I both must 'act' in a similar way when eating those chips and drinking and enjoying that keg..(I guess we'll see in Oct., huh?) If anything really different goes on inside our respective heads/brains/conciousnesses, I don't know how we'd tell. After all these years of debate and mumbling, the question that fascinates me is....How can two (or more) people look at the same data and arrive at totally different conclusions? I suppose the answer is that it is impossible to present identical data/input to different conciousnesses....and that situation allows us to agree about G.W. Bush, but disagree about the basis of reality...*grin* not boring, is it? |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: dianavan Date: 03 Jul 05 - 10:45 PM Since I will need a new roof and a new furnace in about five years, I wonder when it will be ready to heat my home. I like the idea but I am also wondering about its texture. Any hints? Reading all of the above makes me realize my daughter was right to question the primary, science curriculum in B.C. Why do we continue to teach about matter (solids, liquids and gasses)? Is there an easier way to explain the transfer of energy? Must I continue to boil water to make vapour and then freeze water to make ice? Somehow, it all seems insignificant. Perhaps the process is far more important than the content. Thats my best hope. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Wolfgang Date: 29 May 06 - 11:31 AM What was before the Big Bang? Some physicists consider that a metaphysical question that should not be asked and studied by science. Other physicists try to find an answer to that question: Quantum Nature of the Big Bang Roughly: There was no Big Bang, but 'only' a Big Bounce when a previous universe collapsed and bounced back into becoming our universe. They think that not all information about the former universe may have been lost in the Big Bounce. Wolfgang |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Bill D Date: 29 May 06 - 11:46 AM Isn't that the way the "Cities in Flight" Sci-fi series by James Blish ended? A bunch of guys floating in 'space' thought the next universe into existence? BOOM! |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 29 May 06 - 12:18 PM That paper is amazingly denser, Wolfgang; thanks for extrapolating the underlying concept. It does seem to make sense, but the math is a jungle to me. A |
Subject: RE: BS: Further on the Multicerse From: Amos Date: 10 May 07 - 05:51 PM Some scientists are approaching the multiverse theory seriously and looking for the anomalies in the Cosmic Microwave Background which would support the notion of collisions or intersections between universes. This may the answer to the alien conundrum. :D A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Bill D Date: 10 May 07 - 07:05 PM The notion that other universes may be somehow 'out there' (in here?), and 'sort of' interacting with ours is really difficult to wrap one's head around. If another universe is capable of interacting, it seems like it would be, by definition, part of THIS universe....and if it is, by definition, defined by different spatio-temporal parameters, it seems as if we could not 'know' anything about it or interact with it. I suppose I am not familiar enough with the math and hypotheses well enough to see why they are taking this seriously, but it seems as if this might be just another attempt to resolve problems like 'missing matter' from the Big Bang. The alien conundrum (if I understand what you refer to) doesn't bother me at all. If aliens exist and we 'can' communicate with them, we are rather in the position of someone like Vikings...or better, Chinese, in 1000 AD, wondering if there were 'others' out across the oceans.....we simply haven't the technology to go look, or we haven't looked in the right places with the right tools yet. It is pretty smug to imagine that OUR magnificent achievements are sufficient to see/hear 'em if they're there. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 10 May 07 - 09:53 PM I was thinking more of the conundrum of testimony like Whit Streiber, for example who has written several books about interactions with aliens (one of them was quite a hit). The conundrum is that (a) he gathers vivid subjective anecdotes from many poeple (including himself) (b) who have never met each other or shared and information and (c) whose stories are remarkably similar in their descriptins of certain realities yet (d) no empirical evidence has been firmly identified of such realities and a lot of people including me have never experienced them. A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Bill D Date: 10 May 07 - 10:56 PM I think a lot of those 'similar' anecdotes stem from the early news stories of aliens and descriptions of them--plus the almost generic shape and size of most of the descriptions...much as a child might draw. Small...no sex organs...simplistic faces...etc. I believe someone has actually made a timeline of 'alien' images, showing how almost all after a certain point follow the pattern. It's really amazing how much the stereotyped 'aliens' resemble human fetuses, standing up straight with semi-expressions. It's almost as if no one can imagine other possible configurations now....(well...except Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: GUEST,PMB Date: 11 May 07 - 05:09 AM Convergent evolution can throw up some remarkable similarities- like between fish, plesiosaurs, cetaceans and phocids for example- but that is because of the similarity of the environment- the physics of swimming haven't changed in half a billion years. As far as we know (working from a sample of one) there's no specific evolutionary pressure that engineers intelligent beings to be of a particular shape. So it would be an astounding coincidence if extra- terrestrial intelligent beings were humanoid in form. Let's try to "design" an alien from scratch. Anything that has to face up to gravity (how much gravity?) needs a supporting scaffolding. Ours is internal and built like a sailing ship's rigging (spars tensioned by muscular "ropes"), arthropods have external tubular supports. Those are the only two designs that have made it to any size out of water, but there could be others- an internal or external space-frame, for example. The segmented form shared by almost all animals big enough to see is not a given, but is an easy thing for evolution to work on- grow in complexity by adding segments, use specialised modified segments for particular purposes- so it's a probable form for an alien. And similarly bilateral symmetry is likely though not certain. The alien will need sensors of various sorts. The sensible place to put at least some of them is at the front- you want to sense what's coming- and the sensible place for the processing unit is near them. And it's precious, and represents a huge and probably ireplaceable investment, and so needs to be protected. So our alien will have a hard head at the forward- going end. Eyes- photosensors- have evolved in many patterns, and they are an obvious evolutionary move, so the alien will have them. The frequency response will be designed for the planet where they originated, but there is an astounding choice of possible structures, from insect- style compound eyes, through pinhole cameras, to several different sorts of lensed designs. And although vertebrates normally have the two that we inherited from fish, that's just contingent. Aliens will probably have a minimum of two, but there could be several more. They will have in some degree most of the other senses we have, as information is evolutionarily useful. They might not have all of ours, just as some of our senses are vestigial compared to other animals. And they might have others- electrostatic or magnetic sensors. Locomotion is necessary. Legs are better than wheels, as they work on more surfaces. There needn't be only two, and one or none is a possibility- but an intellient being will need manipulators as intelligence evolves out of curiosity and the ability to alter the world. And arms are an obvious form. They needn't be modified legs- they could be modified mouthparts for example, and elephants have trunks. Communications- we use sound, air pressure variations- most of us, that is. Deaf people use manual signs, and that seems to work very well. An alien could also use, for example, colour changing (their colour) light patches to talk to each other. Or have a magnetic generator that works with their magnetic sensor- we would think they communicated by telepathy. They would probably reproduce sexually- this has great, though not absolutely overwhelming, evolutionary advantages- see bdelloid rotifers. Or they might have a different way of sharing their genetic information (which probably wouldn't be DNA). They might even do it like kids used to swap cigarette cards. So here's my alien- a tube with an internal space-frame a bit like a sponge but jointed for flexibility, with a domelike head at the front end with two flexible trunks and six lensed eyes. They see in the near infra- red. It has six legs and two arms with graspers. They appear to communicate telepathically. |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Wolfgang Date: 11 May 07 - 11:48 AM Whitley Strieber is a writer of fiction. Some of his novels have been advertised and sold as reports. Wolfgang |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Amos Date: 11 May 07 - 11:51 AM Wolf: Is that your assessment, or is it his acknowledged role? A |
Subject: RE: BS: What Do Physicists Think About?? IV From: Wolfgang Date: 22 May 07 - 12:44 PM My assessment. How to survive in a black hole? Now that's real life advice. The good thing is we will live forever in that case for those who watch us. Wolfgang |