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12:02 AM
if $\Psi = \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} dk e^{-L^2(k-k_0)^2}e^{ikx}$ and by stationary phase argument the integral has a chance to be non zero when $\dfrac{d(kx)}{dk} = 0$ => $x = 0$. Given all that, how would I predict the location of the peak of $|\Psi|$?
No calculations, just a prediction
 
12:55 AM
rip it is, the location is at x=0 lol
y am i like dis
 
 
2 hours later…
2:41 AM
if i have to show that the free schrodinger equation in 1 dimenion is galilean invariant with transformations $x' = x - vt$ and $t' = t$ then should i assume a phase $\psi(k) = kx-\omega t$ and plug in $k', t'$ there and factorise to show that?
 
 
1 hour later…
 
2 hours later…
6:04 AM
@SirCumference \o
 
6:41 AM
@EmilioPisanty hey! I saw that you were a bit active around the development of the MathJax buttons userscript. Well, now that it's a bit outdated, I am working on a similar userscript that does that and a lot more. It's almost finished and now I am adding site-specific features. I just wished to ask you if you've new features to ask for in that userscript, or is that "Dirac-ify" feature still sufficient?
Thanks!
 
@Blue who... are you
 
7:09 AM
@JohnRennie Why is newton's 3rd law invalidated in case of magnetics?
 
Newton's third law is essentially conservation of momentum.
What complicates things with magnetic fields is that the field can have momentum and can transfer that momentum to other things. So it can appear that the third law is violated. It isn't of course. You just need to consider the whole system including whatever is generating the magnetic field.
 
@JohnRennie Can you prove to me it is conserved in a numerical question that I have?
 
@JohnRennie she said honey, take me dancing, but we ended up a-sleeping in a doorway, by the bodegas and the lights on upper Broadway?
@GaurangTandon frankly, it's been years since I used that script
 
@EmilioPisanty Paul Simon?
@Abcd if you want to post the question in Problem Solving I'll have a look
 
I put unicode ranges and langles in my keyboard and they take the bulk of the friction out
@JohnRennie yep
 
7:16 AM
@EmilioPisanty oh, are you interested in using a similar script again? i'm not familiar with Phys.SE so I'm not sure how useful Vector-ify, Dirac-ify are. It would only take me five minutes to implement them, but if no one uses it, it'd be pointless :(
@EmilioPisanty you set up macro codes in your keyboard for those two characters? Now, how about if you type Alt-G, it would automatically insert $|(caret)\rangle$ for you? I wonder why you'd prefer the former to the latter?
 
@EmilioPisanty the thing about the song Who Are You? is that it encapsulated life as a young man in the UK at the time. Getting so drunk that you woke up in a doorway is something most of us have done - including me. Not that it's anything to be proud of ...
That's why the band remain so important to British men of a certain age.
The Arctic Monkeys achieved the same for the next generation on with their first album.
 
8:04 AM
@GaurangTandon it's not a macro
It's part of the software keyboard
 
@EmilioPisanty "software" ...you meant you use a virtual keyboard?
 
8:37 AM
@GaurangTandon no
I mean the piece of software that translates from physical key presses to symbols
At the OS level
I built it to write comfortably in Spanish on a UK keyboard and I added some science extras
 
Anonymous
9:04 AM
@Eulb A mean circle.
 
Anonymous
(with an elongated nose partitioning me into two half-circles)
 
@EmilioPisanty you wrote your own keyboard driver? What OS?
 
9:26 AM
@EmilioPisanty oh, alright
 
9:41 AM
Going to attempt to do $\phi^4$ theory literally in my sleep. I am going to be thinking about this for two days. With a little luck i should be able to work out the "gory" details as I lay in bed sleeping.
 
9:59 AM
@JohnRennie not a driver
just a key mapping
both on ubuntu and on windows
35
Q: What are the steps needed to create new keyboard layout on ubuntu?

AkivaThe keyboard I am trying to create has a lot of Unicode and looks like this: Being unsuccessful with the following tutorial: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Howto%3A%20Custom%20keyboard%20layout%20definitions (There are a few errors in the tutorial, and it uses imprecise language such as "C...

 
@EmilioPisanty ah, cool, that's new to me.
 
@JohnRennie yeah, it's fairly new
it was pretty shit on windows 7, the windows 10 version is much more usable
 
I know you can modify keyboard mappings by hacking the registry. I've done that to remap caps lock to shift, because I kept hitting it accidentally. Presumably this app puts a nice user interface on the registry hacks.
 
 
1 hour later…
11:25 AM
Back to something people were discussing yesterday --

If you want to create radiation with a tremendously long wavelength, you can do it by moving a charge at a tremendously low frequency.

You can get a very very long wavelength if you are willing to move a charge in a sine wave with a frequency of 1 cycle per billion years. You can even do that inside any cavity you want, if you have a way to accelerate your charge the way you want it. In a small cavity it can't go very *fast* in one direction for a billion years, so somebody a billion years and a billion light-years away would need very
 
 
3 hours later…
1:55 PM
Hello, can anyone answer questions about rolling resistance? I did an experiment and found results that seems counterintuitive
Specifically, what I did is bend a track at different heights and look at the decay in height of a ball that is on the track, and the results show that for higher heights, the height decay of the ball is faster.
Here's a picture of what I did, and the track is bendable to different heights
How would I make sense of the result of the experiment that the height decays at a higher rate if it is initially placed at a higher height?
 
2:54 PM
@vzn when Motl is reviewing Woit's book amazon.com/Not-Even-Wrong-Failure-Physical/product-reviews/… he calls him out for using email messages to bolster his argument, but then in this review of SH's book blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2018/06/04/lost-in-math , which uses a random facebook post to bolster the point of the article, he loves the use of random facebook messages that agree with him motls.blogspot.com/2018/06/…
and even worse, Woit in the comments calls out the author for using random facebook messages even though in his book he apparently uses them to make his argument, hypocrisy much? :p
I'm ready for the string wars :p
 
vzn
3:27 PM
@bolbteppa there are no rules. blogs are great but its just the "golden rule"-- he who has the gold(blog) makes the rules. would like to see a place thats free of bias. apparently not on planet earth. we all know LuMo is just a iittle )( bit crazy. that craziness can likely only increase... there is a shift/ shear/ tear/ schism now emerging in the foundations of physics... blog conflicts are just the early warning(s)... major scientific paradigm shift in the cyber age... o_O
 
Physicists have slagged each other off since the dawn of recorded history (and probably before that). I doubt the current outbursts mean a paradigm shift is on the way.
 
vzn
paradigm shifts are about exactly as regular as earthquakes + volcano eruptions. in a few years, uncertain. in a few decades, certain. btw add "popsci books" to "blogs" as "early warnings".
 
3:46 PM
that book has been getting a lot of hate
 
@Eulb Hey
Anyone know what happened to the real Blue?
Did @Eulb replace him completely?
 
vzn
@Eulb hatred tends to have an irrational component...
 
Deservedly
 
Frankly, how is that book ?
Is it just popsci
 
vzn
@Albas try looking at authors credentials... the book is not dissimilar to 2 that appeared about a decade ago by Woit/ Smolin, also controversial (and with top credentials)... the 3 could be said to be "controversialists"...
 
3:56 PM
'Hey we have this huge idea we have no idea what's going on it seems to predict all this stuff and we need to figure out how to test it and develop our understanding' - waste of time, bad, terrible!
Nothing but anti-science tbh
 
vzn
emperor has no clothesâ„¢
 
Sup bros
 
Okay I see
 
@Albas which book? Hossenfelder's new book?
 
vzn
@bolbteppa woit is partial to the Hossenfelder book for understandable reasons (both woit/ hossenfelder rejecting my comments on their blogs, sigh, cant even hang out with the radical iconoclasts) :P
 
4:00 PM
Or the Woit or Smolin books?
 
@JohnRennie Hossenfelder's book
 
I haven't read it.
 
You have read Woit? @JohnRennie
 
Yes.
 
What do you think about Woit's book@JohnRennie
 
vzn
4:02 PM
lol
 
By coincidence Woit's book is staring right at me
The first part was okay going over the history stuff
 
Woit's book is interesting, but he is setting up a straw man to take shots at. String theorists do string theory because it's exciting and fun to work on. Woit seems to think there is a grand conspiracy to foster string theory over all other areas of theoretical physics and his book is complaining about this.
That isn't the case. Theoretical physicists just do what they enjoy.
 
It seems the general idea is to be aware of these books and to develop your own understanding.
 
vzn
Physics Titan Still Thinks String Theory Is "On the Right Track" (2014) blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/…
 
2014 tho
 
4:08 PM
And Witten is no longer interested enough in string theory to work on it ...
 
it ded
 
vzn
@JohnRennie that is merely a twitter rumor circulating after he wrote a broad QM survey recently. was trying to find more on it with google.
 
LHC killed it
killed it ded
(Disclaimer: I know nothing about String Theory)
 
Shake a tree, a string theorist pops out
 
and two LQG guys run over and club them unconscious
 
vzn
4:11 PM
Ed Witten, quantum information theorist. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.11965
 
vzn
@JohnRennie ok. he is notoriously averse to interviews but afaik hes said nothing publicly about a shift in directions. (it would undoubtedly cause major media waves.)
 
vzn
sigh
 
lol
yeah someone's publications are a pretty good indication of their direction
esp if they rely on publications for a living...
 
vzn
4:15 PM
ofc his publications say a lot, but you guys are both missing the point. if he is shifting directions away from string theory afaik he doesnt say anything like that in those publications. afaik he has recent publications in string theory...
 
I don't know enough about string theory to see if any of his recent papers are on it just judging by the titles
lol
 
@LHC2012 It depends a lot on the force rule you expect for the resistance force, right?
Because friction does work and that energy is removed from the system.
 
vzn
@enumaris it would be a bit inaccurate to say witten "depends on publications for a living" re so called "publish or perish". think hes at the IAS in a permanent position, its more significant/ secure than tenure in a way. think there are cases where some hold onto those positions a long time without publications. etc. in another sense, youre correct...
 
I presume that you are using a simple idealized frictional law along the lines of $f = \mu_r n = \mu_r m g \cos\theta$ (with the $\theta$ the angle of inclination of the track at that point).
And the work by friction is $W_f = -\int f \,\mathrm{d}s$.
Now the details remain to be worked out, but a high starting point means a longer distance $\int \mathrm{d}s$ tranveled, so ...
 
@vzn well, unless he's happy doing only teaching work, I think his "job function" is probably primarily to publish papers - and I suspect he is more interested in research and publishing papers than purely teaching.
 
vzn
4:27 PM
@enumaris uh, what? suspect he hasnt taught classes in many yrs. sns.ias.edu/sites/default/files/files/2017EWitten-cv.pdf
 
then what does he do if not publish papers?
 
vzn
dont understand the question
 
i don't think he's an instructor, but he's certainly involved in the various schools/workshops that go on during the year
so he does lecture quite a bit
 
vzn
yes, think he probably mostly lectures at conferences. whether that is "teaching" depends on ones defn...
 
I literally have the book mentioned in his cv within arms reach :p
 
vzn
4:35 PM
to be clear: the idea of witten shifting away from string theory ("paradigm shift"? lol) seems to be just a twitter joke by his friendly rival(s) right now, ie there is no solid evidence. it would seem, quite to the contrary.
 
it's too soon to tell, yeah
 
no no...I'm declaring string theory ded
weeeeeeeeee
 
vzn
lol join the clubâ„¢ :P
 
He wrote a ***** article yesterday on string theory motls.blogspot.com/2018/06/…
 
You can't trademark a word as basic as "club" bro
 
4:38 PM
one bit of context: the upcoming Prospects in Theoretical Physics summer program at IAS this year is on "From Qubit to Spacetime"
 
that's just not fair
 
so his mini-review on information theory may be in anticipation of that
 
or it may be just more evidence that he's moved on!
dun dun duuuunnnnnnnnnnn
 
it'll be in the last half of July
so there may be some good videos to come out of that?
 
I would probably understand none of it
lol
 
vzn
4:43 PM
> Less than 1,000 people are actually being paid as string theorists or something "really close" in the world now, and even if you realistically assume that the average string theorist is paid more than the average person, the fraction of the mankind's money that goes to string theory is some "one millionth" or so. Or 1/100,000 of the money that goes to porn or any other big industry.
 
there's 1000 people in string theory?
 
@Semiclassical Given Witten's track record, I'd be very surprised if his new interest in quantum information wouldn't be connected to his prior work in some way.
 
I would have though fewer lol
 
oh, certainly
 
5:20 PM
user image
3
Chocolate doughnuts because, well duh, they're chocolate doughtnuts! :-)
(and two apricot Danish pastries - they're my healthy helping of fruit for the day)
 
@KyleKanos This question, I think, matches your profil well.
 
6:01 PM
apricot danish pastries count as a helping of fruit?
hmmm...
 
Sid
6:26 PM
I actually ate Doughnuts for the first time yesterday. They are good.
 
very first time??
did you grow up under a rock?
 
Sid
Kinda, yeah. :P
Doughnuts are a rarity around these parts.
 
hmmm...
 
7:36 PM
God, I just realized they're beginning to implement the new layout
1
Q: Live: Left nav, new theming and responsiveness

Joe FriendWe have released left navigation bar, our new theming and a our initial responsive design work on Stack Overflow and Meta Stack Exchange (it's been live on MSO for a week). This work has been in progress and being discussed with the community for several months. The motivation for the work is cov...

Already it's up on Meta
 
7:53 PM
I've seen it on stack overflow for a while now
looks weird
 

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