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Brandon Enright

12:00 AM

@ManishEarth So on my "Advanced" tab in preferences there is no spelling option other than "check spelling as I type"

Currently running FF 26. Lemme compile 27

ManishEarth

@BrandonEnright nono

I just looked at the code, it's not there

As in, the preference is exposed in the UI, but not with full glory of the 2 option

142     var pref = document.getElementById("layout.spellcheckDefault");
143     this._storedSpellCheck = pref.value;
144
145     return (pref.value != 0);

Brandon Enright

@ManishEarth Ah yes well that's why mine was set to 1 :-)

ManishEarth

..I probably should have just opened my build and had a look :p

but, too lazy

Also, Nightly/whatever I use tends to have a larger feature set than any of the releases

Brandon Enright

Well I've needed to compile 27 for a while now anyways so now is a good time to do that.

ManishEarth

@BrandonEnright what's your system?

As in, whydya need to compile it?

Brandon Enright

12:07 AM

@ManishEarth It's a Gentoo machine. I build everything from source.

ManishEarth

nice

I had to build all my utilities, including screen and python2.7 and latest gfortran, on the high performance computer cluster. Because they all just use ifort

Brandon Enright

I've been using Gentoo for about 10 years now. I can make it do what I want and it doesn't get in my way so I'm quite please with it. It's not for everyone though.

hwlau

12:22 AM

23

A: Is it usual for finished PhD students to send out physical copies of their thesis to unknown persons?

This is not uncommon in the country where I did my PhD (the Netherlands). There you have to print a reasonably large amount of hardcopies anyway, typically people get around 200-300 copies in my field. It is not uncommon to send some copies to researchers that you genuinely believe may be interes...

^Printing 200 copies of thesis! That's a lot

user54412

12:36 AM

yeah, someone should inform those poor students in the Netherlands that the rest of the world thinks that's a very strange tradition

user54412

also, I'd be surprised if 10 people in the world even skim through my thesis

Brandon Enright

Uncle Al must spend a lot of time trying to make his sentences so cryptic.

dmckee

1:03 AM

@hwlau I gave one to my Adviser and one to my parents. My brother and best friend both turned down my offer (neither wanted the physical book clutter up their life, but I think my buddy read part of it from the PDF).

user54412

@BrandonEnright I get a distinct Markov chain text generator feel from them

user54412

they also use the imperative voice in a way reminiscent of John Wheeler's books

Brandon Enright

@ChrisWhite That and sometimes he intentionally(?) uses abbreviations and leaves contextual detail out of a sentence. I wonder how many folks go on a wild google scavenger hunt trying to figure out what he means.

hwlau

@dmckee @ChrisWhite That is why I am surprised that someone really printed few hundred copies of their thesis. I suspect how many of them would like to even know what I am doing

dmckee

1:24 AM

@BrandonEnright This user shares a handle with a rather well known usenet ... uhm ... personality. No certainty that they are the same person, but the style is similar.

user109534

1:46 AM

do nucleons have specific arrangement in atomic nucleus?

dmckee

9

Q: Are the protons and neutrons in the nucleus arranged in any particular way?

I was wondering this: suppose you have two oxygen atoms. They will both have 8 protons and 8 neutrons in the nucleus (at least if they are the most common isotope). Now, will all those particles be arranged in the same way in both atoms? If they are, why would that be, and if not, does that affec...

nuclear-physics

I recovered that link by using the on-site search with nucleons arrangement nucleus.

Short-short answer: yes.

David Z

2:47 AM

@BrandonEnright woo Gentoo :-)

user109534

thanks dmckee. i can't find any answer to how/why electron spin generates a magnetic field. i know spin can't be thought of in the traditional sense, but even if it could, electrons seem to be pointlike (i'm confused about this for all fundamental particles, because wouldn't that imply that they're singularities?), so there is not any actual movement of charge, and thus no change in electric field to produce magnetic field.

user54412

3:10 AM

@Noah you can ask that on the main site (assuming it's not a duplicate - check for related questions like this)

user54412

but also keep in mind that one can self-consistently posit the "fundamental" existence of magnetic dipoles along with electric monopoles

user54412

or, heuristically, you can imagine taking an extended charge distribution, giving it some spin, and shrinking it while keeping its angular momentum constant

user54412

in the limit of becoming a point, all the higher order magnetic moments would vanish, but the dipole would remain

user109534

3:36 AM

@ChrisWhite i did see that question. many of the things i want to ask i don't think worthy of a public entry. one such is does the electron cloud of an atom maintain a certain orientation with relation to the nucleus?

David Z

4:27 AM

@Noah that sounds like a perfectly reasonable question

user54412

5:23 AM

Now this is the kind of question I wish I could write a good answer for. I understand what the OP is saying, and I understand the connection being sought, but I'd be hard pressed enough to explain myself in person, and I'm pretty sure I can't do the question justice with static, written words.

user54412

Actually, I think I feel that way about every question involving entropy.

Physics Meta

7:05 PM

0

Q: What happens if some ground breaking, novel, noble prize winning ideas are posted in this website?

What happens if some ground breaking, novel, noble prize winning ideas are posted in this website? Does the person posting the idea get credit ? Is there a risk of ideas being stolen from this website and plagiarized ?

discussion

ManishEarth

11:10 PM

don't believe 'im, the Andromeda isn't that large

9gag.com/gag/a44ADrZ

> 9gag.com/gag/a44ADrZ

Brandon Enright

11:30 PM

@ManishEarth Yeah I was really surprised when I learned how large Andromeda is compared to the moon. It's really too bad we can't see it.

ManishEarth

@BrandonEnright but the Andromeda can be seen by the aked eye

or is that just a portion?

Brandon Enright

@ManishEarth I think just the galactic core

I can't imagine what seeing Andromeda there big and bright and always in the same location would have done for the world's religions, geocentric views, and other bullshit that fucked up the world for centuries (or maybe millennia)

ManishEarth

@BrandonEnright meh, people would have just assumed that it's another orbiting body

Brandon Enright

I seriously doubt it since it's essentially fixed compared to us

although maybe it wouldn't have been more important than any other fixed star

Who knows, maybe it would have become "heaven" or something else and not helped us at all.

ManishEarth

Hey, it looks like the two galaxies might collide in 4.5 billion years. Which is less than the time it will take for the Sun to swallow us up

Brandon Enright

11:35 PM

@ManishEarth Yeah but aren't estimates that the expected number of star collisions in the merger is less than 1?

ManishEarth

@BrandonEnright neither is the band of the Milky way, and that's larger

@BrandonEnright true

Physics Meta

0

Q: Question "clarity" confusion

I recently answered the following question: Differentiating a vector product and although I don't think it's written in the clearest possible way, I (and another answerer) had no trouble understanding the question. The question was nonetheless put on hold (due to the votes of a number of users...

discussion

ManishEarth

@vardhanamdaga Are you familiar with the levi-civita symbol and writing the cross product in terms of it? — joshphysics 5 hours ago

lol

If the person doesn't know the product rule, fat chance :p

dmckee

@BrandonEnright You can see the whole thing is (1) you get out to truly dark country (2) you spend at least 45 minutes adapting your sight and (3) you don't look right at it (your central vision is mostly color and less sensitive than the rest of the visual field).

And yeah, it really is that big.

ManishEarth

wow

@dmckee wait, you can see the whole thing? O.o

TIL

dmckee

11:38 PM

Well, it is very dim and fuzzy. But huge.

Every time I've seen it I've also been at moderately high altitudes. 1500 meters above see level with really dry dessert air.

Brandon Enright

@dmckee I've noticed the lower light sensitivity in the center of my vision many times. I'd say unless you can look straight at something and see it, it's not really bright enough to be (meaningfully) visible.

dmckee

Your call I guess. I've practiced using my peripheral vision for low light.

You don't get a lot of detail, but sometimes that is enough.

Brandon Enright

@dmckee There is a particular tornado-shaped nebula that I saw many times as a kid and I'd try dancing my eyes around it trying to make it out but I never really could satisfactorily see it. I knew something was there but I didn't really know what.

All I remember now is that it was at about a 45 degree angle off in the eastern sky but I have no idea what time of year.

user54412

11:54 PM

@ManishEarth yes, yes it is

ManishEarth

@ChrisWhite always thought the little thing you see was the whole galaxy

TIL

Unfortunately, not been able to do any proper skywatching ever since I moved here :(

user54412

they're called the Himalayas :P

ManishEarth

@ChrisWhite been there, but not in an area completely devoid of light pollution

Also been on a boat in the Sunderbans. At that point a single light can be annoying too

But I miss being able to watch the sky whenever I wanted.

(at night of course)

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