The Large Hadron Collider shut off for the winter a few days ago, and there was a conference announcing their most recent results today.
(This is a link to the liveblog (http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/12/13/higgs-liveblog/) of it that I was following)
The conference was almost entirely to do with the Higg's boson. So here's a quick reminder of why it is so difficult to find:
First, it is only detectable at high energies. This is why we need such a powerful machine to look for it.
Second, the theoretical results that predict the existence of the Higgs do not predict its mass. So we do not know at exactly what energy to start looking. This makes things more difficult when combined with the next point.
Third, it does not exist for long. The LHC produces new particles by smashing old ones together very fast. The new high-mass particles do not exist long enough for the detectors to register them. What they do register are the results of how the high-mass particles decay. The decay modes of the Higgs are very well-understood, so they know what to look for. For example; two high energy photons moving in opposite directions perpendicular to the proton beam. The problem then, is that these photons may also have arisen from other "background" effects from normal Standard Model processes. The scientists deal with this by using a lot of statistical analysis. Fortunately, they have vast amounts of data to work with. The LHC can produce 40,000 collisions per second.
So what have they found this year? The conference presented results from the two main detectors; CMS and ATLAS. They both narrowed down the energy range at which the Higgs may be found.
ATLAS has excluded 112.7-115.5GeV and 131-453GeV. (GeV stands for Giga-electronvolt, which is a unit of energy) This leaves a gap between 115.5 and 131GeV The current theoretical prediction for the Higgs is between 114 and 149GeV, so this is in line with what was expected.
So that's where the Higgs isn't. What's more tantalising is an indication that there may be something at an energy of 126GeV. Because of all the statistical analysis necessary to come to this result, this is very much not an announcement that the Higgs has been found. But it is a definite sign that this energy should be probed much more next year. (The 126GeV measurement has an excess of 3.6 sigma)
CMS has excluded energies from 129-238GeV and has seen a small excess at around 125GeV, with a lower confidence of 2.6 sigma. The fact that the two detectors are seeing the same small bulge in their graphs is obviously very exciting, and it is becoming much more likely with these results that the Higgs exists. It seems very likely that more definite results will confirm these preliminary findings next year.
Thanks for the heads up!
It would be awesome if we found it in our lifetime. It would also be awesome if we proved it didn't exist in our lifetime.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on December 13, 2011, 03:38:18 PM
Thanks for the heads up!
It would be awesome if we found it in our lifetime. It would also be awesome if we proved it didn't exist in our lifetime.
It would be even more awesome if we could make a death ray out of it.
I mean, if we can't, I'm not seeing a practical application, here.
http://profmattstrassler.com/ is a really good site if you want to learn about this but don't have the desire/time to really learn about all the math needed to understand it.
We will almost certainly find it or prove it doesn't exist within the next few years.
Then the real work starts: finding the Higgs Boson is the first step to studying the Higgs field, which is what we really care about.
Wait, they have a bulge of 3sigma confidence? That's a lot more then a hunch.
I assume they are going for a 6sigma undeniable proof before making the announcement?
From what I read, last year they seemed to have 3-4 sigma proof at 145GeV, but after more data taking this was dismissed, so I guess they are just being cautious.
(ETA: Though stats has never been my strong point)
In particle physics, >5 sigma is considered a discovery, though they still want multiple labs to confirm. 2.5 sigma is a vague hint of a signal. 99.5% chance that what you're seeing is real simply isn't good enough for the systems involved. There are too many other reactions that could produce the same detector outputs.
Also, the 2.8 sigma two-photon signal at ATLAS is not accounting for the look-elsewhere effect, it drops to 1.5 sigma when you do. When combine with other signals you regain some confidence.
Remember, you need the probability of an event happening, the probability of a false positive, and the probability of a false negative to make any judgements about what happened. These experiments have shown a high probability that a higgs was produced around 125 GeV, but they also have rather high false positive rates. Remember that we're talking about around 5 events at each detector, so +-1 event from false positives/negatives will cause significant changes.
The following is a nice article on the arguments for and against this being a real detection.
http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/the-higgs-particle/holiday-higgs-hints-confidence-inspiring-or-not/
Bump for this mornings announcement!
The OP (and Peregrine's post) still stand as an explanation of what's happening, the real news is that the confidence in the results are now over 5 sigma!
So the Higgs exists (and has an energy of 125 GeV), what remains is to discover whether it is the expected Standard Model version of the Higgs, or if its something slightly different.
More about that near the end of this article:
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-cern-physicists-strong-evidence-particle.html
Quote from: Igor on July 04, 2012, 11:58:03 AM
Bump for this mornings announcement!
The OP (and Peregrine's post) still stand as an explanation of what's happening, the real news is that the confidence in the results are now over 5 sigma!
So the Higgs exists (and has an energy of 125 GeV), what remains is to discover whether it is the expected Standard Model version of the Higgs, or if its something slightly different.
More about that near the end of this article:
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-cern-physicists-strong-evidence-particle.html
I believe in God, the Particle Almighty, Creator of mass and whatever else it does...
Teleporters and warp drives nao or god particles can gtfo :argh!:
Quote from: Igor on July 04, 2012, 11:58:03 AM
Bump for this mornings announcement!
The OP (and Peregrine's post) still stand as an explanation of what's happening, the real news is that the confidence in the results are now over 5 sigma!
So the Higgs exists (and has an energy of 125 GeV), what remains is to discover whether it is the expected Standard Model version of the Higgs, or if its something slightly different.
More about that near the end of this article:
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-cern-physicists-strong-evidence-particle.html
Vegetta, what do the statistics say about our confidence of discovery?
\
(https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSWg0b5F3388ndXo4pg-VsoLm0fRxlmJSXRLr7gtOv9q9M4UF5olQ)
It's over FIVE SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! \
(http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_londgtIMCZ1qa9689.jpg)
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on July 04, 2012, 09:15:52 PM
Quote from: Igor on July 04, 2012, 11:58:03 AM
Bump for this mornings announcement!
The OP (and Peregrine's post) still stand as an explanation of what's happening, the real news is that the confidence in the results are now over 5 sigma!
So the Higgs exists (and has an energy of 125 GeV), what remains is to discover whether it is the expected Standard Model version of the Higgs, or if its something slightly different.
More about that near the end of this article:
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-cern-physicists-strong-evidence-particle.html
Vegetta, what do the statistics say about our confidence of discovery?
\
(https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSWg0b5F3388ndXo4pg-VsoLm0fRxlmJSXRLr7gtOv9q9M4UF5olQ)
It's over FIVE SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
\
(http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_londgtIMCZ1qa9689.jpg)
(http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/Smileys/default/roglol.gif)
might be the best LHC joke I've heard so far :)
:lulz: :lulz: :lulz:
I was kind of hoping this would kick String Theory in the nuts, but because ST is a "God in the Gaps" argument (i.e. the theory itself is currently untestable), they're still chugging along, saying that the HB supports ST.
Still, chalk up another point for the Standard Model.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 05, 2012, 06:08:07 PM
I was kind of hoping this would kick String Theory in the nuts, but because ST is a "God in the Gaps" argument (i.e. the theory itself is currently untestable), they're still chugging along, saying that the HB supports ST.
Still, chalk up another point for the Standard Model.
It sounds like String Theory is a religion.
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on July 05, 2012, 06:19:37 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 05, 2012, 06:08:07 PM
I was kind of hoping this would kick String Theory in the nuts, but because ST is a "God in the Gaps" argument (i.e. the theory itself is currently untestable), they're still chugging along, saying that the HB supports ST.
Still, chalk up another point for the Standard Model.
It sounds like String Theory is a religion.
Religion's easier to understand. :lulz:
Pretty much. They extrapolate on the existing numbers, and form wild 10-dimensional models. There was an attempt to test one of the predictions it makes about entaglement, but a brief search couldn't find if there have been any results so far.
I really don't get String Theory stuff. I mean, what's wrong with "some things are very small, and other things are very big, and nobody is really sure which is which" as a model? Why do we need eleventy billion dimensions? Is any of this getting us any closer to teleporters and flying cars, for fuck's sake? Why are physicists not asking the TOUGH QUESTIONS?
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 04, 2012, 06:39:04 PM
Teleporters and warp drives nao or god particles can gtfo :argh!:
:lulz:
Quantumz. I think the problem is thta people are trying to make sense of a universe that has two sets of seemingly conflicting rules depending on how big you are. I dont understand it though.
:pope: not sure if thats the right emote.
The impression I get is that physicists think that there must be something wrong with the models unless they remove the conflict and get them to tie up so, in essence, one or both of the models has a mistake in it. Kinda like how Newtonian physics works great for building bridges and stuff but sucks at predicting where mars is going to be. Is this a fair assessment?
And more importantly - will there be teleporters?
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 06, 2012, 09:30:42 AM
The impression I get is that physicists think that there must be something wrong with the models unless they remove the conflict and get them to tie up so, in essence, one or both of the models has a mistake in it. Kinda like how Newtonian physics works great for building bridges and stuff but sucks at predicting where mars is going to be. Is this a fair assessment?
And more importantly - will there be teleporters?
a) Kinda like Euclid?
b) I want to know that too. More importantly I want FTL NOW.
Also, that was the emote I was going for. Now that I can see it.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 06, 2012, 09:30:42 AM
The impression I get is that physicists think that there must be something wrong with the models unless they remove the conflict and get them to tie up so, in essence, one or both of the models has a mistake in it. Kinda like how Newtonian physics works great for building bridges and stuff but sucks at predicting where mars is going to be. Is this a fair assessment?
Yeah, exactly.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 06, 2012, 09:30:42 AM
And more importantly - will there be teleporters?
Probaby not. :/
I mean, teleporters seem to require suicide, right? You have to dissolve yourself in one place and then transmit the "blueprints" of your body to be reconstituted elsewhere. The dissolved body is still dead.
As for string theory, as far as I can tell, it seems to have become more an area of maths than physics. Mathematicians love it, it apparently has lots of interesting structures and tie-ins to other obscure topics in abstract maths. The idea of actually testing it against reality seems to have taken a back seat.
Hopefully the Higgs boson discovery is just the start of a lot more concrete results for theoreticians to examine. For a very long time (like 20 years?) Theory has been racing way ahead of Experiment. And so Theory kind of lost the run of itself. These new Experiments will hopefully bring it back to a more practical level.
Brief sidebar. Looks like Stephen Hawking lost a $100 bet upon the discovery of the Boson: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/05/12587515-higgs-big-loser-why-stephen-hawking-is-such-a-bad-gambler?lite
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 06, 2012, 12:17:00 AM
Quantumz. I think the problem is thta people are trying to make sense of a universe that has two sets of seemingly conflicting rules depending on how big you are. I dont understand it though.
Sounds like America.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 06, 2012, 09:30:42 AM
The impression I get is that physicists think that there must be something wrong with the models unless they remove the conflict and get them to tie up so, in essence, one or both of the models has a mistake in it. Kinda like how Newtonian physics works great for building bridges and stuff but sucks at predicting where mars is going to be. Is this a fair assessment?
And more importantly - will there be teleporters?
Not so much a mistake, it's more like the Standard Model is a jigsaw puzzle that has a bunch of pieces missing, and physicists have been guessing at what shapes the missing pieces are. The Higgs Boson is one of those missing pieces, and it fits the puzzle really well. The String Theorists got bored of the puzzle, and started playing Pictionary instead.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on July 06, 2012, 02:04:08 PM
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 06, 2012, 12:17:00 AM
Quantumz. I think the problem is thta people are trying to make sense of a universe that has two sets of seemingly conflicting rules depending on how big you are. I dont understand it though.
Sounds like America.
:horrormirth:
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 06, 2012, 02:31:56 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 06, 2012, 09:30:42 AM
The impression I get is that physicists think that there must be something wrong with the models unless they remove the conflict and get them to tie up so, in essence, one or both of the models has a mistake in it. Kinda like how Newtonian physics works great for building bridges and stuff but sucks at predicting where mars is going to be. Is this a fair assessment?
And more importantly - will there be teleporters?
Not so much a mistake, it's more like the Standard Model is a jigsaw puzzle that has a bunch of pieces missing, and physicists have been guessing at what shapes the missing pieces are. The Higgs Boson is one of those missing pieces, and it fits the puzzle really well. The String Theorists got bored of the puzzle, and started playing Pictionary instead.
So what's the next piece or pieces of the puzzle? Dark matter?
The big one would be gravity as per general relativity. But yeah, dark matter is somewhere in there.
Quote from: Igor on July 06, 2012, 11:41:47 AMAs for string theory, as far as I can tell, it seems to have become more an area of maths than physics. Mathematicians love it, it apparently has lots of interesting structures and tie-ins to other obscure topics in abstract maths. The idea of actually testing it against reality seems to have taken a back seat.
DING DING DING
of course it's easier to dismiss it as "religion" when a certain type of research is completely incomprehensible even in it's simplest form.
there's nothing wrong with tests against reality taking a back seat in maths, it's been often enough that new discoveries in math only gained practical application half a century later. and it's still quite more solid than certain aspects of other sciences, because of mathematical proofs generally being somewhat more rigorous than most experimental proofs.
I'm not entirely sure if what they're doing now is strictly string theory, though. My friend's Masters thesis used only 5 or 6 dimensions--or was it 9... I forget, anyway it was incomprehensible, but I don't think it was "string theory" specifically.
That's fine, as long as they've stopped advocating for it as a GUT.
Only thing I've ever heard claimed was "if we manage to figure this out, it might help us find that GUT". I mean it's just mathematical powerhousing, and everybody in theoretical physics are doing the dimensional reduction these days whether they call it string theory or not :)
It's not the job of physicists to verify the speculations of mathematicians, but the job of mathematicians to verify the speculations of physicists.
Quote from: PROFOUNDLY RETARDED CHARLIE MANSON on July 07, 2012, 06:37:50 AM
It's not the job of physicists to verify the speculations of mathematicians, but the job of mathematicians to verify the speculations of physicists.
Mathematics is a useful language to describe reality. But that's all it is, a language. Reality is not mathematics. Mathematics can express things that are, as far as we can tell, impossible. Hell, we have a number called infinity. As far as we can tell, the only thing that is infinite is nothingness. There is a finite amount of matter, and there is a finite amount of time for it to have its heyday. There is an infinite amount of time for two particles to basically chill out 20 light years away from each other.
The future is bleak. I'm glad I'll be way fucking dead before that.
Quote from: PROFOUNDLY RETARDED CHARLIE MANSON on July 07, 2012, 06:37:50 AM
It's not the job of physicists to verify the speculations of mathematicians, but the job of mathematicians to verify the speculations of physicists.
FINE BY ME
being currently opposed to both camp's This:
what they did was make a field, lemme say Magnetic
then they next tell you the Found a Particle.
you can believe them if you like.
i prefur not to.
My reason is this | THEY | &i do me they
hold the S{second) as a non variable
hypotheosizzing that every S is the same
& its pure BS. {Basic Science) & that
it extends into all branches Q r s & T
so issue 1 is the S itself
issue 2 is the $ D'nomination boo2them2
Quote from: PROFOUNDLY RETARDED CHARLIE MANSON on July 07, 2012, 06:37:50 AM
It's not the job of physicists to verify the speculations of mathematicians, but the job of mathematicians to verify the speculations of physicists.
That's just arguing semantics.
No actually it's worse.
The only difference between a theoretical physicist and a mathematician is whatever they did the first few years of university. And of course astronomers often end up mathematically bending dimensions as well. Multidisciplinary research is all the thing, most of the math they learned for that kind of stuff is easily picked up given the rigorous background they all (ought to) have.
At the time one is doing that type of research it matters fuck all whether you started out as a physicist, mathematician or astronomer (some of them even get degrees in two, the smartypances). None of them would argue what they're
doing is theoretical physics, however. And if you'd say "well it's basically just maths, isn't it?" they might smile and agree like a dentist that gets told he's basically doing a type of masonry, right?
I'm not sure what you're basing your ideas of "the job of physicists" and "the job of mathematicians" on. Nobody actually doing this research is making these kinds of distinctions, it's stupid. The only reason to make a distinction like that is when one field has experience and knowledge the other just doesn't have, like our cooperation with biologists in the Machine Learning projects I was part of: the biologists were really good at doing the grunt work classifying biological things into datasets and the computer scientists were really good at taking those datasets and writing and running computer programs on those numbers. See in that case it was kind of a clear-cut division of tasks, first the one, then the other. Of course it wasn't really like that because some of them were "bio-informaticians" so the lines were rather blurred anyway.
Oh! And my professor leading the whole group, guess what, has his background in physics! I guess he'd LOVE to hear what you think his "job"
really is.
Specifically, his field originally was is in Statistical Mechanics (thermodynamics, entropy, etc), a completely different field of theoretical physics. When
they do math, the number of dimensions is often equal to the number of particles in the system--that's WAY more than 9--but you never hear anybody complain about that! To give another example how silly it is to restrict people to their specialisations, the connection between Statistical Mechanics and Machine Learning is really kind of odd. On the one hand, they have a lot of overlap in the mathematical tools they use (minimizing energy potential functions in hundreds of dimensions--and unlike the string theory, I can actually explain why that makes sense) but they use it for completely different purposes. Really different. For Physics you get a numerical representation of particles that you can distill certain aggregate quantities from, for Computer Science you get parameters for a computer program that'll answer classification questions for you with a certain amount of accuracy. But we speak the same language and do realize why one is useful to the other. We've been doing that ever since Computer Science became a serious scientific field, in fact, Statistical Mechanics might have even been one of the first fields that profited from CS, when Feynmann started building computers specially fitted for simulations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_machine) in the 80s.
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 07, 2012, 07:22:29 AMQuote from: PROFOUNDLY RETARDED CHARLIE MANSON on July 07, 2012, 06:37:50 AMIt's not the job of physicists to verify the speculations of mathematicians, but the job of mathematicians to verify the speculations of physicists.
Mathematics is a useful language to describe reality. But that's all it is, a language.
Are you just repeating this because Roger said it once? Because I disagreed then, and I still do.
You could say exactly the same thing about physics.
QuoteReality is not mathematics. Mathematics can express things that are, as far as we can tell, impossible. Hell, we have a number called infinity.
"Infinity" is a symbol, it's not a number (or as we say in CS, "NaN"). Numbers elements of a set, generated by axioms, such as the Peano axioms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms#The_axioms) for the natural numbers, which if you care to read them, clearly do not generate "Infinity" as a symbol. Just "zero" and "the successor of X" and a few operations and rules on them. You can make arbitrarily high numbers, but not "Infinity". I once had a huge and stupid fight about this with an ex-gf who studied Mathematics, she insisted that "Infinity" was part of
N as well. I was right. Though the fight was probably more about that where she came from (Vienna), CS students didn't get as much formal math as I did.
QuoteAs far as we can tell, the only thing that is infinite is nothingness.
What does that mean? Please define what you mean by having a certain amount of nothingness in a way that makes it make sense to state whether we have an infinite amount of it, or not.
I'm not sure if either a physicist or a mathematician would agree with such a statement, depending on what it even means.
QuoteThere is a finite amount of matter, and there is a finite amount of time for it to have its heyday. There is an infinite amount of time for two particles to basically chill out 20 light years away from each other.
So?
If you say Mathematics is not real because it's got "Infinity", then may I point you at the mythical physical entity that is called "a closed system" or "a system in a vacuum" .. or hell, even the physical "vacuum" does not exist, anywhere. Also not between the stars. And not because particles randomly pop in and out of existence in a vacuum, no the interstellar medium is in fact quite a lot denser than anything approaching a theoretical vacuum. Still quite a lot emptier than any kind of vacuum we've managed to produce on Earth too :)
Fortunately, Mathematics actually got one up on these matters. Math has the power to introspect itself and fix what may not actually be Really Real and see if we can build the same kind of things via simpler axioms. I believe it's called Mathematical constructivism, or soemthing like that. That particular field of math doesn't use "Infinity" as a symbol, at all, because it can't be constructed. They also disallow certain types of induction proofs, since those can also be used to prove things that aren't really real. And of course none of that Axiom of Choice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_choice) thing, as reasonable as it may sound (cause it leads, among other things, to the Banach-Tarski paradox).
Go here, if you dare: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zermelo–Fraenkel_set_theory <-- That's the current most commonly used
foundation of mathematics and if you omit the Axiom of Choice from it, it'll produce things that--as far as I'm aware--are strictly "real". And if they don't, well, let's just say that the field of fundamental math is vigorously attacking such problems (that kind of stuff usually goes right over my head, so I can't say for sure).
Just as much as the scientific field of Physics will jump at anything that seems like a disconnect between their models and Reality, so does Math.
But just like parts of Physics research will happily use Newtonian mechanics if they can get away with it because it's a very convenient short-cut, in the same way many mathematicians happily work with the set of "Real" Numbers, implicitly assume the Axiom of Choice in their proofs, et cetera, because it takes a fuckload of effort to formulate everything in ZF. Just like a physicist wouldn't use Schrodinger's wave equation for everything.
And that's the thing maybe. If you're smart, which you are, the everyday-maths you were taught in school, you can poke at it and figure out a few of the inconsistencies all by yourself. Such as "Infinity" or "the set of all sets that do not contain themselves". That's an advantage over Physics, because it's quite a bit harder to encounter an every day situation that shows how Newtonian physics aren't really accurate. And while you heard about the Quantums they came up with to solve THAT, you might have never heard about ZFC or the Axiom of Choice, maybe you heard about Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, but not about the attempts to "fix" it, because if Math's broken, so is Reality.
Quote from: Triple Zero on July 07, 2012, 11:47:30 AM
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 07, 2012, 07:22:29 AMQuote from: PROFOUNDLY RETARDED CHARLIE MANSON on July 07, 2012, 06:37:50 AMIt's not the job of physicists to verify the speculations of mathematicians, but the job of mathematicians to verify the speculations of physicists.
Mathematics is a useful language to describe reality. But that's all it is, a language.
Are you just repeating this because Roger said it once? Because I disagreed then, and I still do.
Um. No. I wasn't even aware Roger had said it once. I'll read the rest of your post when I get over the suggestion that I'm Roger's pet parrot.
Trip, the reason I said that is because if you ask a mathematician what the math describes, most of them don't really care. They care whether the math WORKS. I've had this exact conversation with a few mathematicians now, and no, it's not semantics. And the exact words used the last time I had this conversation was "Physicists come to us to say "This works, and I need you to describe why". We just do the math. Mathematicians don't give a fuck".
So that's how, according to some mathematicians I know, they identify themselves as separate from physicists. :lulz:
I'm not sure I follow your explanation that mathematics is not a language. How is it not a language?
Oh this is the thread?
Might as well cross post this so:
This argument as a concept doesn't really mean anything. Mathematician and physicist are umbrella terms. For instance someone calling themselves a physicist working exclusively with Fourier modelling could be almost if not exclusively a mathematician. Then there are areas of statistics that are indistinguishable from control engineering etc... actually googling Joseph Fourier has brought up this argument and it seems to be a couple of hundred years old and isn't really resolved.
Quote from: Triple Zero on July 07, 2012, 11:47:30 AM
QuoteReality is not mathematics. Mathematics can express things that are, as far as we can tell, impossible. Hell, we have a number called infinity.
"Infinity" is a symbol, it's not a number (or as we say in CS, "NaN"). Numbers elements of a set, generated by axioms, such as the Peano axioms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms#The_axioms) for the natural numbers, which if you care to read them, clearly do not generate "Infinity" as a symbol. Just "zero" and "the successor of X" and a few operations and rules on them. You can make arbitrarily high numbers, but not "Infinity". I once had a huge and stupid fight about this with an ex-gf who studied Mathematics, she insisted that "Infinity" was part of N as well. I was right. Though the fight was probably more about that where she came from (Vienna), CS students didn't get as much formal math as I did.
Infinity is or is not a number, depending purely on your definition of "number". The natural numbers and infinity is a perfectly good set of things to call "numbers": it has all of the numbers you normally use for counting stuff, plus you can answer questions like "How many numbers are there?" with a number, which is useful. You lose a bit because you can't do a lot of algebra (is infinity equal to itself? is infinity equal to infinity + 2?), but if you just want to count stuff everything works well enough.
This works exactly the same way as answering "If you have three apples, and then lose three apples, how many apples do you have?" with "Zero apples." Zero is used here to mean a numerical quantity indicating how many apples you have, so the person answering it clearly understands zero to be a number. If you go back to a culture that didn't use zero as a number, you'd get a response like "That's a trick question - at that point, you don't have any apples!" because in his system, you don't have a quantity of apples, which is different from having a quantity (which happens to be zero) of apples.
@Trip - NaN is totally a number, it's just terribly named. Pull up your nearest Javascript console and type
typeof(NaN) You are correct that the Peano Axioms do not generate anything resembling infinity as an element, and all elements of ℕ are finite - but the more commonly used ZF axiomatically includes ℕ itself as a set. ℕ (more commonly referred to as ω or ℵ
0 in this context) is therefore the least/first "infinite number" in the set of Ordinals and the set of Cardinals (a generalization of ℕ, which might have been what your ex-gf was thinking of), and a perfectly good numeric answer to questions like "What's a number bigger than any integer?" or "How many prime numbers are there?"
I had a feeling I'd get some good responses if I posted the question on Facebook, since I know some of each, and one of the first things I ever noticed about mathematicians and physicists is that they like to make it clear that they are different from each other even if you don't ask them.
A couple of people said, to paraphrase, that all physicists are mathematicians, but not all mathematicians are physicists. My favorite response was one dashingly handsome fella who said that physicists use math to explain the physical universe, while mathematicians use math to explain other math.
My thought is that you have to use math intensively in quite a few professions, but that doesn't make you a mathematician, any more than someone who uses computers intensively in their profession is a computer engineer.
Quote from: PROFOUNDLY RETARDED CHARLIE MANSON on July 07, 2012, 09:57:32 PM
A couple of people said, to paraphrase, that all physicists are mathematicians, but not all mathematicians are physicists. My favorite response was one dashingly handsome fella who said that physicists use math to explain the physical universe, while mathematicians use math to explain other math.
My thought is that you have to use math intensively in quite a few professions, but that doesn't make you a mathematician, any more than someone who uses computers intensively in their profession is a computer engineer.
That sounds about right. Physicists are always making statements that mathematicians would say are false, to which the physicists respond "Yeah, well, I guess you can construct a counter example, but a counter example like that doesn't actually occur in the real world, so we don't care." Here's a quote from a quantum physics textbook introducing Hilbert space:
Quote from: Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Second Edition (David J Griffiths)
... moreover, the inner product of f(x) with itself, <f|f> = ∫|f(x)|2dx, is real and non-negative; it's zero only* when f(x) = 0...
*What about a function that is zero everywhere except at a few isolated points? The integral would still vanish, even though the function itself does not. If this bothers you, you should have been a math major. In physics such pathological functions do not occur, but in any case, in Hilbert space two functions that have the same square integral are considered equivalent. Technically, vectors in Hilbert space represent equivalence classes of functions.
There's no actual thing called Hilbert space outside of physics. In mathematics, Hilbert space
s are mathematical spaces with a particular structure; the set of all square-integrable functions, with the additional structure that two points are equivalent if they have the same square integral, is a particular example of a Hilbert space. It so happens to be the only Hilbert space that quantum physicists care about, so they use the phrase "Hilbert space" to refer to that particular one. If this had been a textbook on quantum physics written by a mathematician, the author would have pointed out that the elements of this space are equivalence classes rather than functions
first, because that's the kind of detail that mathematicians consider really important (and which physicists think is acceptable to gloss over as more confusion than it's worth.)
Quote from: Triple Zero on July 07, 2012, 11:47:30 AM
"Infinity" is a symbol, it's not a number (or as we say in CS, "NaN").
I love this. I read it once sober, and once on 90 proof rum, and could still understand it. THAT'S MATH.
Quote from: PROFOUNDLY RETARDED CHARLIE MANSON on July 07, 2012, 09:57:32 PM
one dashingly handsome fella who said that physicists use math to explain the physical universe, while mathematicians use math to explain other math.
:lol:
:cn:
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 09, 2012, 03:06:43 PM
Quote from: PROFOUNDLY RETARDED CHARLIE MANSON on July 07, 2012, 09:57:32 PM
one dashingly handsome fella who said that physicists use math to explain the physical universe, while mathematicians use math to explain other math.
:lol:
:cn:
:*
Quote from: Triple Zero on July 07, 2012, 11:47:30 AM
Are you just repeating this because Roger said it once?
:kingmeh:
I am really, really tired of this shit.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on July 09, 2012, 06:27:09 PM
Quote from: Triple Zero on July 07, 2012, 11:47:30 AM
Are you just repeating this because Roger said it once?
:kingmeh:
I am really, really tired of this shit.
Missed that. Yeah, that was messed up, trip.
I didnt miss that. My response was something along the lines about being mad at the implication that im rogers pet parrot.
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 09, 2012, 07:46:37 PM
I didnt miss that. My response was something along the lines about being mad at the implication that im rogers pet parrot.
And my response is..."It's Roger's fault, even if he's not even part of the conversation. Again. Just like fucking always. Also, Roger is a cult leader. You are all my zombies. Or words to that effect. Again. Just like always."
I have to take this shit from pissed off wannbe savior-type noobs. Now I can take it from established board members. Between that and having crickets chirp after any given post I make, I am really, really feeling the love here.
Yeah- im not mad about it anymore. Intense pain will do that. But i am still hoping that we both get an apology. I just was also hoping i wouldnt have to mention it first. Especially where trip said you had said it once. Once? Once when? Did i read it? Was i even here yet? Just because i said something that roger once said means that im aping you? I mean hypothetically its possible that you and i could independently come to the same conclusion right? The telephone got invented twice after all.
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 09, 2012, 08:02:24 PM
Yeah- im not mad about it anymore. Intense pain will do that. But i am still hoping that we both get an apology. I just was also hoping i wouldnt have to mention it first. Especially where trip said you had said it once. Once? Once when? Did i read it? Was i even here yet? Just because i said something that roger once said means that im aping you? I mean hypothetically its possible that you and i could independently come to the same conclusion right? The telephone got invented twice after all.
I think you'll probably get one. Me? Who the fuck apologizes to a corpse? I mean, outside of bathos-heavy scenes in bad movies or Shakespeare plays?
Well i hope you get one too. I wont accept mine otherwise on principle. It was an unfair statement against both of us.
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 09, 2012, 08:12:44 PM
Well i hope you get one too. I wont accept mine otherwise on principle. It was an unfair statement against both of us.
I really can't bring myself to care at the moment.
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 09, 2012, 08:02:24 PM
...
The telephone got invented twice after all.
I invented it two
more times, and i
never get any credit.
:sad:
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 06, 2012, 05:05:38 PM
The big one would be gravity as per general relativity. But yeah, dark matter is somewhere in there.
It seems that figuring out the speed at which gravity operates would be an excellent way to start. The big hypothesis is that it's the same as the speed of light, or that's what I've heard)
My grandfather has been attempting to get at this problem since he finished his time dilation research years ago. First step was figuring out the density of the earth. I remember him working with equations associated with the flattening of the Earth's crust and the reduction in flattening caused by slowing rotation. Don't think he ever got beyond diagramming the equipment involved.
Im trying to wrap my head around how fast is gravity. It makes sense but its hard to think of gravity having a speed. Or potentially a particle. Or that it propagates infinitely.
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on July 10, 2012, 10:14:58 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 06, 2012, 05:05:38 PM
The big one would be gravity as per general relativity. But yeah, dark matter is somewhere in there.
It seems that figuring out the speed at which gravity operates would be an excellent way to start. The big hypothesis is that it's the same as the speed of light, or that's what I've heard)
My grandfather has been attempting to get at this problem since he finished his time dilation research years ago. First step was figuring out the density of the earth. I remember him working with equations associated with the flattening of the Earth's crust and the reduction in flattening caused by slowing rotation. Don't think he ever got beyond diagramming the equipment involved.
And the really hard part of figuring out the speed at which gravity operates is that it tends to veer towards infinity. Even if you have the exact known mass of something large enough to have a measurable effect on an other object in a vacuum you still have to find a way to make the maths renormalise without getting that annoying infinity result.
If a graviton exists and it doesnt have mass then it would be permitted to have infinite speed no?
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 10, 2012, 10:39:01 PM
If a graviton exists and it doesnt have mass then it would be permitted to have infinite speed no?
Remember all the fuss a couple of months back about those neutrinos that supposedly showed up too soon, it was a mistake but it sparked a lot of debate. photons don't have mass but they obey the speed of light conventions.
With gravity it's more tricky because as a carrier force, it's range does not seem to have a limit. If that is true than a graviton would have to be faster than light.
It's why renormalisation is so hard difficult, with the other carrier forces we were able to plug in observed measurements for them and get pretty accurate equations. How do you do that on something with such a large range on influence?
Okay here's my idea (dumb layman shit) we got a field of these boson things and when particles move through the field the bosons give them mass, right? So how are the bosons arranged? Like before an particle goes bombing through they're all just sitting there. So what if the field is like a lattice, with some string or force or some shit holding them together, like a net. So when a particle moves through the field it's not so much getting these bosons stuck to it, it's more like it's deforming the lattice so that things that are also caught in the lattice get pulled that way. Bing - gravity.
Quote from: Faust on July 10, 2012, 10:48:13 PM
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 10, 2012, 10:39:01 PM
If a graviton exists and it doesnt have mass then it would be permitted to have infinite speed no?
Remember all the fuss a couple of months back about those neutrinos that supposedly showed up too soon, it was a mistake but it sparked a lot of debate. photons don't have mass but they obey the speed of light conventions.
With gravity it's more tricky because as a carrier force, it's range does not seem to have a limit. If that is true than a graviton would have to be faster than light.
It's why renormalisation is so hard difficult, with the other carrier forces we were able to plug in observed measurements for them and get pretty accurate equations. How do you do that on something with such a large range on influence?
True. Yeah, I forgot about the neutrino thing.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 10, 2012, 11:16:14 PM
Okay here's my idea (dumb layman shit) we got a field of these boson things and when particles move through the field the bosons give them mass, right? So how are the bosons arranged? Like before an particle goes bombing through they're all just sitting there. So what if the field is like a lattice, with some string or force or some shit holding them together, like a net. So when a particle moves through the field it's not so much getting these bosons stuck to it, it's more like it's deforming the lattice so that things that are also caught in the lattice get pulled that way. Bing - gravity.
I think that's how gravity works anyway, with or without bosons being added to the equation. I've heard it described that spacetime can be thought of a rubber sheet, and that an object with mass will push down on it, causing other objects to fall towards it. Except the sheet is three dimensional in gets pinched in three dimensions. And that yet the universe is still flat....
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 11, 2012, 12:20:31 AM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 10, 2012, 11:16:14 PM
Okay here's my idea (dumb layman shit) we got a field of these boson things and when particles move through the field the bosons give them mass, right? So how are the bosons arranged? Like before an particle goes bombing through they're all just sitting there. So what if the field is like a lattice, with some string or force or some shit holding them together, like a net. So when a particle moves through the field it's not so much getting these bosons stuck to it, it's more like it's deforming the lattice so that things that are also caught in the lattice get pulled that way. Bing - gravity.
I think that's how gravity works anyway, with or without bosons being added to the equation. I've heard it described that spacetime can be thought of a rubber sheet, and that an object with mass will push down on it, causing other objects to fall towards it. Except the sheet is three dimensional in gets pinched in three dimensions. And that yet the universe is still flat....
Yeah, but it's still useful to look at it as a 2 dimensional thing, because you then can understand it without your brain kinking up.
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 11, 2012, 12:20:31 AM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 10, 2012, 11:16:14 PM
Okay here's my idea (dumb layman shit) we got a field of these boson things and when particles move through the field the bosons give them mass, right? So how are the bosons arranged? Like before an particle goes bombing through they're all just sitting there. So what if the field is like a lattice, with some string or force or some shit holding them together, like a net. So when a particle moves through the field it's not so much getting these bosons stuck to it, it's more like it's deforming the lattice so that things that are also caught in the lattice get pulled that way. Bing - gravity.
I think that's how gravity works anyway, with or without bosons being added to the equation. I've heard it described that spacetime can be thought of a rubber sheet, and that an object with mass will push down on it, causing other objects to fall towards it. Except the sheet is three dimensional in gets pinched in three dimensions. And that yet the universe is still flat....
Yes, P3nt has intuited the basics of the Einstein model. It's not that objects get "pulled", but more that they have linear inertia (tendency to travel in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force), and that gravity then _bends_ the space-time lattice so that "linear vectors" just
aren't straight anymore. Weird, huh? (...and, again, only a model/abstraction.)
Quote from: Telarus on July 11, 2012, 12:23:46 AM
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 11, 2012, 12:20:31 AM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 10, 2012, 11:16:14 PM
Okay here's my idea (dumb layman shit) we got a field of these boson things and when particles move through the field the bosons give them mass, right? So how are the bosons arranged? Like before an particle goes bombing through they're all just sitting there. So what if the field is like a lattice, with some string or force or some shit holding them together, like a net. So when a particle moves through the field it's not so much getting these bosons stuck to it, it's more like it's deforming the lattice so that things that are also caught in the lattice get pulled that way. Bing - gravity.
I think that's how gravity works anyway, with or without bosons being added to the equation. I've heard it described that spacetime can be thought of a rubber sheet, and that an object with mass will push down on it, causing other objects to fall towards it. Except the sheet is three dimensional in gets pinched in three dimensions. And that yet the universe is still flat....
Yes, P3nt has intuited the basics of the Einstein model. It's not that objects get "pulled", but ore that they have linear inertia (tendency to travel in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force), and that gravity then _bends_ the space-time lattice so that "linear vectors" just aren't straight anymore. Weird, huh? (...and, again, only a model/abstraction.)
That's how the Earth goes around the sun without flinging everyone off. It's traveling in a perfectly straight line, on bent space.
Which is cheating.
Quote from: The Dead Reverend Roger on July 11, 2012, 12:24:59 AM
That's how the Earth goes around the sun without flinging everyone off. It's traveling in a perfectly straight line, on bent space.
Which is cheating.
:lulz: Exactly
Quote from: Telarus on July 11, 2012, 12:31:43 AM
Quote from: The Dead Reverend Roger on July 11, 2012, 12:24:59 AM
That's how the Earth goes around the sun without flinging everyone off. It's traveling in a perfectly straight line, on bent space.
Which is cheating.
:lulz: Exactly
I don't believe in the God of the Gaps. He did ALL of this shit, and HE DID IT
ON PURPOSE. It's a fucking shell game. "Hey, monkeys! Is it a particle or a wave? HAW HAW!"
Quote from: The Dead Reverend Roger on July 11, 2012, 12:33:36 AM
Quote from: Telarus on July 11, 2012, 12:31:43 AM
Quote from: The Dead Reverend Roger on July 11, 2012, 12:24:59 AM
That's how the Earth goes around the sun without flinging everyone off. It's traveling in a perfectly straight line, on bent space.
Which is cheating.
:lulz: Exactly
I don't believe in the God of the Gaps. He did ALL of this shit, and HE DID IT ON PURPOSE. It's a fucking shell game. "Hey, monkeys! Is it a particle or a wave? HAW HAW!"
:lulz:
Quote from: The Dead Reverend Roger on July 11, 2012, 12:21:55 AM
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 11, 2012, 12:20:31 AM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 10, 2012, 11:16:14 PM
Okay here's my idea (dumb layman shit) we got a field of these boson things and when particles move through the field the bosons give them mass, right? So how are the bosons arranged? Like before an particle goes bombing through they're all just sitting there. So what if the field is like a lattice, with some string or force or some shit holding them together, like a net. So when a particle moves through the field it's not so much getting these bosons stuck to it, it's more like it's deforming the lattice so that things that are also caught in the lattice get pulled that way. Bing - gravity.
I think that's how gravity works anyway, with or without bosons being added to the equation. I've heard it described that spacetime can be thought of a rubber sheet, and that an object with mass will push down on it, causing other objects to fall towards it. Except the sheet is three dimensional in gets pinched in three dimensions. And that yet the universe is still flat....
Yeah, but it's still useful to look at it as a 2 dimensional thing, because you then can understand it without your brain kinking up.
That's for sure. I had to stop myself from doing so.
ETA: fixed jumbled up multiquote.
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 11, 2012, 12:36:17 AM
That's for sure. I had to stop myself from doing so.
That's the worst. You then have to explain like a hundred times a day why you're doing everything sideways.
Quote from: The Dead Reverend Roger on July 11, 2012, 12:40:06 AM
Quote from: Bruce Twiddleton on July 11, 2012, 12:36:17 AM
That's for sure. I had to stop myself from doing so.
That's the worst. You then have to explain like a hundred times a day why you're doing everything sideways.
Oh god I'm thinking about it again!!!
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 10, 2012, 11:16:14 PM
Okay here's my idea (dumb layman shit) we got a field of these boson things and when particles move through the field the bosons give them mass, right? So how are the bosons arranged? Like before an particle goes bombing through they're all just sitting there. So what if the field is like a lattice, with some string or force or some shit holding them together, like a net. So when a particle moves through the field it's not so much getting these bosons stuck to it, it's more like it's deforming the lattice so that things that are also caught in the lattice get pulled that way. Bing - gravity.
I don't think Higgs bosons have anything to do with gravity, based on what I've read in the past ~15 minutes.
Quote from: Faust on July 10, 2012, 10:35:33 PM
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on July 10, 2012, 10:14:58 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 06, 2012, 05:05:38 PM
The big one would be gravity as per general relativity. But yeah, dark matter is somewhere in there.
It seems that figuring out the speed at which gravity operates would be an excellent way to start. The big hypothesis is that it's the same as the speed of light, or that's what I've heard)
My grandfather has been attempting to get at this problem since he finished his time dilation research years ago. First step was figuring out the density of the earth. I remember him working with equations associated with the flattening of the Earth's crust and the reduction in flattening caused by slowing rotation. Don't think he ever got beyond diagramming the equipment involved.
And the really hard part of figuring out the speed at which gravity operates is that it tends to veer towards infinity. Even if you have the exact known mass of something large enough to have a measurable effect on an other object in a vacuum you still have to find a way to make the maths renormalise without getting that annoying infinity result.
The problem seems to be that we don't have rapid, large changes in mass happen often enough. That's how we figured out the speed of light. Electromagnetic waves traveling between two electrons over great distances in a discrete manner (i.e. we can watch them from start to stop and time them) is a normal part of our universe. If mass appeared or disappeared in space time we'd have some better idea of it, but these changes in mass and proximity are gradual and continuous.
I can't get my head around how gravity can have a speed :eek: Like the Einstein space-time curvature was explained to me like a pool table that gets bent so the balls roll in toward the heavy things? So the idea that the pool table has a speed is confusing to me - surely it's the balls that have a speed? Can someone pls explain in dumb baby language why gravity needs a speed :?
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on July 11, 2012, 02:44:38 AM
Quote from: Faust on July 10, 2012, 10:35:33 PM
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on July 10, 2012, 10:14:58 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 06, 2012, 05:05:38 PM
The big one would be gravity as per general relativity. But yeah, dark matter is somewhere in there.
It seems that figuring out the speed at which gravity operates would be an excellent way to start. The big hypothesis is that it's the same as the speed of light, or that's what I've heard)
My grandfather has been attempting to get at this problem since he finished his time dilation research years ago. First step was figuring out the density of the earth. I remember him working with equations associated with the flattening of the Earth's crust and the reduction in flattening caused by slowing rotation. Don't think he ever got beyond diagramming the equipment involved.
And the really hard part of figuring out the speed at which gravity operates is that it tends to veer towards infinity. Even if you have the exact known mass of something large enough to have a measurable effect on an other object in a vacuum you still have to find a way to make the maths renormalise without getting that annoying infinity result.
The problem seems to be that we don't have rapid, large changes in mass happen often enough. That's how we figured out the speed of light. Electromagnetic waves traveling between two electrons over great distances in a discrete manner (i.e. we can watch them from start to stop and time them) is a normal part of our universe. If mass appeared or disappeared in space time we'd have some better idea of it, but these changes in mass and proximity are gradual and continuous.
Exactly and thus there is no way to come up with an experimental setup.
so, if gravity has a speed, then wouldn't a mass oscillating in space (as in translation) set up a gravitational wave? why does the mass itself have to change rather than just the distance?
P3nT: wouldn't it seem stranger if it was instantaneous? a 'spooky action at a distance'?
Quote from: Elder Iptuous on July 11, 2012, 01:30:27 PM
so, if gravity has a speed, then wouldn't a mass oscillating in space (as in translation) set up a gravitational wave? why does the mass itself have to change rather than just the distance?
P3nT: wouldn't it seem stranger if it was instantaneous? a 'spooky action at a distance'?
I'm seeing a tin can, deforming as you kick it. It deforms at the speed the boot is moving. Would seem stranger if it had it's own speed of deformation, independent of the velocity of the boot. Surely gravity should work at whatever speed the mass is moving at? Gravity is a shape, affecting the motion of things. Shapes neither have nor require speed, that's the job of the moving things.
I'm not seing a spooky action, I'm seeing a deformation
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 11, 2012, 02:52:20 PM
Quote from: Elder Iptuous on July 11, 2012, 01:30:27 PM
so, if gravity has a speed, then wouldn't a mass oscillating in space (as in translation) set up a gravitational wave? why does the mass itself have to change rather than just the distance?
P3nT: wouldn't it seem stranger if it was instantaneous? a 'spooky action at a distance'?
I'm seeing a tin can, deforming as you kick it. It deforms at the speed the boot is moving. Would seem stranger if it had it's own speed of deformation, independent of the velocity of the boot. Surely gravity should work at whatever speed the mass is moving at? Gravity is a shape, affecting the motion of things. Shapes neither have nor require speed, that's the job of the moving things.
I'm not seing a spooky action, I'm seeing a deformation
The can does have its own speed of deformation, actually - the speed of sound (or any other physical wave) in tin. The speed of sound in metal is really fast relative to how a boot moves (and at small distances might be more determined by other physical properties, including boot velocity) so it's not something you can observe by eye, but it's there.
In general, the speed of a wave is determined
only by the matter it's travelling through, and nothing else. It doesn't matter if you yell louder or sing at a higher / lower pitch, the speed of sound is determined only by the properties of the air (temperature, humidity, density). It's easier to observe directly in water waves - go to a swimming pool and start punching water in the middle. How hard you hit the water affects the amplitude and wavelengths of the resulting water wave, but outside of the initial splash zone (think the area immediately around the boot) the crests will travel at the same velocity.
gravity is a field, right?
so the change in the field would propagate out with some speed, no?
so i guess it's not really the 'speed of gravity', but the speed of a gravitational wave. like the speed of light is the speed that EM waves propagate.
For gravity specifically - imagine that you're on a space ship and a pirate three light-minutes away has fired a cannonball at you. It will take three minutes for the muzzle flash to reach you. If you could detect a change in gravity (from the cannonball getting closer) instantaneously, then you'd be able to detect that you were being fired upon three whole minutes before the light from the shot reached you - which would mean information was moving faster than the speed of light. If the pirate also had gravity sensors, you could set up FTL communication between the two of you by shooting cannonballs at each other! That opens up all kinds of causality paradoxes with relativity, so theoretical physicists are pretty sure that gravity travels at most as fast as light in a vacuum, possibly less (which is the scenario were you see muzzle flash -> detect gravity waves -> get hit by a cannonball.)
Quote from: Elder Iptuous on July 11, 2012, 03:35:56 PM
gravity is a field, right?
so the change in the field would propagate out with some speed, no?
so i guess it's not really the 'speed of gravity', but the speed of a gravitational wave. like the speed of light is the speed that EM waves propagate.
Exactly.
Supernovae might generate gravity waves. Though, who wants to be close enough to a supernova to find out.
Minor planets moving to proximity with each other may generate small gravity waves. That's a far more feasible thing, but they would have to be moving very quickly towards each other.
:eek: So gravity is a wave? WTF? Waves make things bob up and down, they do not suck things toward the source of the wave.
Any macro-world metaphor you create is false. The quantum world does not behave intuitively.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 11, 2012, 04:31:20 PM
:eek: So gravity is a wave? WTF? Waves make things bob up and down, they do not suck things toward the source of the wave.
a water wave will make things bob up and down orthogonally to the direction of the wave.
and a transverse EM wave will do the same with a charged object.
but, a longitudinal EM wave will certainly suck a charged object back and forth.
and a sound wave will vibrate things back and forth.
a wave is anything that follows a wave equation, which has various forms
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 11, 2012, 04:41:31 PM
Any macro-world metaphor you create is false. The quantum world does not behave intuitively.
Got ya. Didn't realise we weren't talking about macro scale. Was Kai's supernova thing that threw me.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 11, 2012, 04:31:20 PM
:eek: So gravity is a wave? WTF? Waves make things bob up and down, they do not suck things toward the source of the wave.
Yes they do. Look at lines of magnetic flux for the magnetic effect.
Quote from: Faust on July 11, 2012, 05:51:14 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 11, 2012, 04:31:20 PM
:eek: So gravity is a wave? WTF? Waves make things bob up and down, they do not suck things toward the source of the wave.
Yes they do. Look at lines of magnetic flux for the magnetic effect.
Are you talking about when you put a magnet under a bunch of iron filings? If so then I didn't realise that was a wave that made that happen. Is it a static wave of some kind or is that how iron filings look when there's a moving wave going through them?
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 11, 2012, 07:16:11 PM
Quote from: Faust on July 11, 2012, 05:51:14 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 11, 2012, 04:31:20 PM
:eek: So gravity is a wave? WTF? Waves make things bob up and down, they do not suck things toward the source of the wave.
Yes they do. Look at lines of magnetic flux for the magnetic effect.
Are you talking about when you put a magnet under a bunch of iron filings? If so then I didn't realise that was a wave that made that happen. Is it a static wave of some kind or is that how iron filings look when there's a moving wave going through them?
I'm not sure what you mean? Magnets are a little different from the electromagnetic effect which is a waves but I imagine its the same for the ferrormagnetic effect just from a different cause.
Yeah, I'm kinda lost now :sad: I'll just duck out this thread before I pollute it any more with dumbass questions
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 11, 2012, 07:42:40 PM
Yeah, I'm kinda lost now :sad: I'll just duck out this thread before I pollute it any more with dumbass questions
No man don't say that, I'm not great at explaining it. They are both waves. Magnets have that attractive force because of alignment of electrons in the material, the electromagnetic radiation is a little different but both operate as a wave.
I had a look at magnetic flux on wiki and my brain puked up glittery snot all over the inside of my cranium. I can get my head around some of these things, up to a point but, as soon as the dumbed down metaphor shit breaks down, I'm done. I have no head for maths and I'm pretty sure this is a huge part of the problem.
I think a lot of it is because I don't get quantum tiny stuff at all. I can visualise air because it's pretty much just water with the bits spread out a lot more and I've spent most of my life observing and learning how water behaves when forces act on or through it. when I heard about spacetime and the examples were saying to visualise it in 2 dimensions I didn't really need to I can see it as vortices in air or water, just radial instead of linear. So that shit all makes perfect sense to me.
When I heard about the Higgs field I was thinking that what was going on was similar but now I realise that what's actually going on, the bit that they're talking about at least, is at the quantum scale which doesn't seem to translate to "real world" macro stuff at all.
No big deal, really. I find this shit interesting and I enjoy when I come to understand something new but it really doesn't affect me one way or another if I don't get it. Building teleporters and antigravity boots is someone else's department, I'm just here to put the shit to nefarious purposes for shits and giggles.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 11, 2012, 08:23:39 PM
I think a lot of it is because I don't get quantum tiny stuff at all.
It's easy. The universe cheats to balance the books.
If you aren't offended by quantum physics, you didn't understand it. So when you get pissed off, you're there.
I think im going to start cracking into that mit open course ware stuff.
Problem is where to start? Maybe brush up on algebra finally learn calculus and hit up whatever itro to physics they have up there?
Math might help, but I'd honestly suggest LessWrong http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/ and, not surprisingly, my Dad's book http://www.amazon.com/Constructing-Reality-Quantum-Particle-Physics/dp/1107004837
There is some math, but you can get by without it. The biggest hurdle to overcome is to stop thinking in analogies and metaphors. Both Dad and Elizer do their damndest to try to explain Quantum Physics without them.
Hardcover price for your dads book is 17.23 :fnord:
yeah man- ill order it. Its been a while since ive gotten a new book.
It pisses me off that quantum physics is as interesting as it is completely unintelligible to me.
To be perfectly honest I'm excited enough by the idea that people somewhere are finding the answers to these questions that I feel I don't need to understand it myself. I'm struck by the fact that the people who do "get" it have all spent significant chunks of their existence learning lots of stuff that enables them to understand it.
That said, I understand enough or I'm smart enough that, every now and again, a little bit of it will make sense to me. I dig it when that happens which is why I ask all the dumbass questions, in the hope that I might get my head around another little chunk. I dont dig it enough that I'm motivated to study tons of complicated shit so I can get the whole picture and then come up with my own equations, tho. I have computer programming for that :lol:
Yeah once in a while I'll get a little piece of it, but too often I get stuck in the map and have no sense of the territory. I understand that's part of it. Humans have no frame of reference for an actual 4D space, for example, so all we have are maps. I just want to understand completely. Unfortunately, it's way too hard to find that much LSD these days.
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on July 11, 2012, 08:23:39 PMWhen I heard about the Higgs field I was thinking that what was going on was similar but now I realise that what's actually going on, the bit that they're talking about at least, is at the quantum scale which doesn't seem to translate to "real world" macro stuff at all.
I remember a thread around here about The Secret and someone came up with the idea that everyone's wishes would cock-block each other so that nothing would actually come true. From my (admittedly facile) understanding of the trajectory of particles, they fuck with each other from all the way across the universe so that boring shit like light reflecting at the same angle as incidence becomes normal on a large scale. This is the hippy equivalent of Jesus being sent to Earth to pioneer a regulatory mandate for safer water treatment procedures.
I feel the same as you, Pent...but luckily Fermilab is about twenty minutes north of me and they conduct public tours on the first Sunday of every month. I have to go to this...I'd love to ask some questions but, to be honest, I'm not sure which questions to ask.
"What's a particle?"
:lulz:
Quote from: Triple Zero on July 07, 2012, 11:47:30 AM
Are you just repeating this because Roger said it once?
Oh, yeah, and bump for the asshole comment of the fiscal quarter.
I hope you enjoy your membership in Citizens Against Roger. Eartha and Charley should be along with your welcome wagon gifts before too long.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 16, 2012, 03:11:45 PM
"What's a particle?"
the 1 & only electron in its ICE {aka solid {{aka parked state of being
that is to say | not in its Liquid or gasIOUs states {Comprenda'?
& it really does like to park & bark a lot :
Quote from: Igor on December 13, 2011, 03:28:04 PM
The Large Hadron Collider
(This is a link to the liveblog (http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/12/13/higgs-liveblog/) of it that I was following)
Higg's boson.
So here's a quick reminder of why it is so difficult to find:
First, it is only detectable at high energies. This is why we need such a powerful machine to look for it.
Second, the theoretical results that predict the existence of the Higgs do not predict its mass. So we do not know at exactly what energy to start looking. This makes things more difficult when combined with the next point.
Third, it does not exist for long. The LHC produces new particles by smashing old ones together very fast. The new high-mass particles do not exist long enough for the detectors to register them. What they do register are the results of how the high-mass particles decay. The decay modes of the Higgs are very well-understood, so they know what to look for. For example; two high energy photons moving in opposite directions perpendicular to the proton beam. The problem then, is that these photons may also have arisen from other "background" effects from normal Standard Model processes. The scientists deal with this by using a lot of statistical analysis. Fortunately, they have vast amounts of data to work with. The LHC can produce 40,000 collisions per second.
So what have they found this year? The conference presented results from the two main detectors; CMS and ATLAS. They both narrowed down the energy range at which the Higgs may be found.
ATLAS has excluded 112.7-115.5GeV and 131-453GeV. (GeV stands for Giga-electronvolt, which is a unit of energy) This leaves a gap between 115.5 and 131GeV The current theoretical prediction for the Higgs is between 114 and 149GeV, so this is in line with what was expected.
So that's where the Higgs isn't. What's more tantalising is an indication that there may be something at an energy of 126GeV. Because of all the statistical analysis necessary to come to this result, this is very much not an announcement that the Higgs has been found. But it is a definite sign that this energy should be probed much more next year. (The 126GeV measurement has an excess of 3.6 sigma)
CMS has excluded energies from 129-238GeV and has seen a small excess at around 125GeV, with a lower confidence of 2.6 sigma. The fact that the two detectors are seeing the same small bulge in their graphs is obviously very exciting, and it is becoming much more likely with these results that the Higgs exists. It seems very likely that more definite results will confirm these preliminary findings next year.
yeah?YEAH
I SAW ON TV?/?
that they did find the GOd particle?
which is fine i guess ?/? IF U believe in Particle in the First Place { i'V A Doubt
20121203 10454647 Read 1814 times
in solid state = Particle,| in liquid state = WAVE,| &Gas=æŧħÆŖ
Quote from: hirley0 on August 16, 2012, 09:59:05 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 16, 2012, 03:11:45 PM
"What's a particle?"
the 1 & only electron in its ICE {aka solid {{aka parked state of being
that is to say | not in its Liquid or gasIOUs states {Comprenda'?
& it really does like to park & bark a lot :