Gosh, is it really a fortnight since the last Physics Chat Session? Doesn't time fly.

i lold

@John yeah, they do seem to creep up

(sorry to be late, I had a bit of a network problem)

Is there a discssion topic? Fractional quark charges perhaps :-)

:-P

I don't have anything in particular to discuss

so, I guess, if anyone else has anything? Any interesting physics news?

Interesting physics news? Hell yes! I understand those astronomers have just found their missing baryons.

iopscience.iop.org/2041-8205/756/1/L8?fromSearchPage=true

ooh, cool

Or arxiv.org/abs/1205.5037

I didn't realize that this gas cloud was so big

Actually that does raise a PhysicsSE question. Terry Bollinger recently posted a (very interesting) self-answered question. In effect using the PhysicsSE as a blog. To what extent is this approved of or frowned on?

It's fine, as long as the question and answer are actually a question and an answer, respectively - that is, as long as the question is something that would be reasonable as a question without the corresponding answer having been posted, and as long as the answer is a legitimate answer to the question

This is something the SE overlords are trying to encourage, ever since they've added the "answer your own question" checkbox to the asking page

I'm not sure how much I agree with it being a good idea, but as long as the self-answers people post are useful, I can't complain

I must admit that I've occasionally come across a really elegant explanation of some bit of Physics, usually on someone's blog, and wished someone would ask on the PhysicsSE so I could share it.

Having said that, if you wait long enough they usually do ask :-)

Yeah, this is true - but if you don't feel like waiting, asking the question yourself just so you can post the answer would be fine

John would you say that the missing mass problem is slowly disappearing?

Well, baryon mass is supposed to be 4% of the total but only 2% has been accounted for. If the paper is correct then we've probably found the rest so baryonic matter is all accounted for. That leaves the dark matter and dark energy unaccounted for of course.

I've had a glance through the paper, but it's way outside my expertise so I have no way of judging it. It seems pretty convincing though.

Ah, that makes sense, I thought the 4% was the stuff we already knew about

I first saw the paper mentioned on www.theregister.co.uk, which is an IT related site. I guess there are a lot of ex-physicists working in IT, and of course anything you're not being paid to do is far more interesting than your own work ;-)

It is interesting how mainstream this sort of story is becoming.

hehe, indeed

there does seem to be a lot going on with particle physics and astrophysics recently, perhaps building off the interest generated by the Higgs boson discovery and the Curiosity rover landing

I think there is an insatiable public appetite for leading edge physics as long as it can be made digestible. That's why the sort of cocumentary made by Brian Cox is so popular (have his programmes been screend in the US) even though the programmes love to make physicists seem eccentric. Few physicists I know have ever played in a chart hitting pop band!

Oops, "documentry" not "cocumentary".

That wasn't a Freudian slip, honest!

lol ;-)

It would be great if the Physics SE could step into this role. I think we have an extraordinary range of talent available for answering questions, ranging from the "I know nothing about physics but ..." type questions through to questions I can't even understand let alone answer.

I don't know if I've ever seen any of his work, but Brian Cox does enjoy some popularity in the US so I'm sure his programs do air here sometimes

Brian Cox is very good and doesn't dumb down too much. He wrote a recent pop science book on QFT, though for me his metaphor of clocks (to represent phase) missed the mark a bit and I'd be surprised if many non-physicists understood it.

Hm, good to know

Still, even attempting a pop sci level explanation of a path integral is a valiant effort!

Yeah, and it's really hard to come up with good explanations for some of these things so I wouldn't fault him for missing the mark once in a while

I was a bit disappointed in the Cox and Forshaw book too.

@John do you think there is anything we should be doing differently to enhance Physics SE's role in satiating all this curiosity from the public?

@twistor59 I think it was a good try though. Only Feynmann has ever managed a reasonable pop sci level explanation of QFT, and I think his books are a bit much for most people.

Re the SE - I think it's just a matter of publicity. We do get questions from the interested public and I feel they generally go away happy with the answers.

I have been wondering if we should try another round of reaching out to science bloggers

@DavidZaslavsky How do you do that?

Maybe we should get on to people on the Horizon editorial team. In the US I guess you'd try to contact the Sky documentary channel.

@John sure, couldn't hurt, though not something I'm personally familiar with

@twistor59 we can just email bloggers and ask them to look over the site and recommend it to their readers if they think it's useful (which they hopefully will)

We did already get a recommendation from Sean Carroll when we were in beta, so it's not without precedent

Oh I see. Yes Lubos frequently refers back to this site. Maybe others could be persuaded too...

That's something we can perhaps organize on meta over the coming days/weeks

and/or in chat

I suspect most blog followers already know about the site. Getting at the TV audience would be much more effective, though I suppose we risk being swamped if it works.

yeah, that's a good point

The thing I always think about when we talk about publicity is that, while more traffic is better, we do want to remain an "expert level" site - which means not getting swamped with questions which clearly show no relevant background knowledge

Well, anyway, it's time for the scheduled chat session to end, and I actually do have to run, but thanks everyone for showing up! Sorry again to be here late (but you don't need to wait for me to start!)

One parting though: SO has officially abolished the homework tag

Bye all

meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/147100/…

Bye @John

Bye folks

bye