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12:01 AM
14
A: Any use for $F_4$ in hep-th?

Luboš Motl$F_4$ is the centralizer of $G_2$ inside an $E_8$. In other words, $E_8$ contains an $F_4\times G_2$ maximal subgroup. That's why by embedding the spin connection into the $E_8\times E_8$ heterotic gauge connection on $G_2$ holonomy manifolds, one obtains an $F_4$ gauge symmetry. See, for example...

Crazy
 
vzn
@enumaris hey just cooked this up you might get a kick out of this :) repl.it/@vzn/RealForcefulMalware
 
yeah I don't think my company would be happy with me running something called "real forceful malware" lol
 
Huh I'll have to look at youtube lectures. I always thought youtube would only have lower level courses, but it looks like there's some more advanced stuff on there too.

And I've been at a microsoft company before and know the feeling. I kind of have a hatred for vs now. Maybe they'd jump on vscode?
 
vzn
@enumaris lol figured someone would react to that. believe it or not it was chosen at random by the site. to be "human readable". (tip of hat to @BernardoMeuer!) seriously its cool check it out when you have a chance theres a big story behind it :) :P
 
ok
 
vzn
12:07 AM
@enumaris ps it seems to fail in chrome due to a site bug! works ok IE o_O
 
lol ok
 
@danielunderwood what physics subjects are you looking for, e.g. qft or higher?
 
Probably mainly qft and gr and eventually string theory/lqg, but I should probably start by brushing up on some regular qm
 
QFT is icky
GR is cool
 
I'm also interested in mathematical physics, but I've been completely lost on the math side of what I've seen
 
12:14 AM
This site alone perimeterinstitute.ca/training/perimeter-scholars-international/… has lectures on all of those and tons more, loads of them on youtube
Check all the years
 
And gr is probably my favorite bit of physics. I just want to learn a bit of qft since qm seems so odd to me and I think some questions may be answered in qft...or maybe more questions
Awesome thanks!
 
no
QFT has no answers
just more questions
 
Hi everyone
I am perplexed by something: I recently was able to replicate past, published results - trajectories of a rigid body, in a co-rotating coordinate system. The rotating frames are positioned on the symmetrical body such that its geometric center, as well as its center of mass (by assumption) are at the origin of these frames. So, I compute the laboratory frame trajectories by using some transformation equations - nothing crazy hard.
Everything checks out, my solutions are near-identical to the paper's. Now, here's what's puzzling: I go to print out the body-frame coordinates, and they aren't ... identically zero or even numerically close to zero. Shouldn't the rotating frames give body-frame coordinates of (0,0) in this quasi-2D model?
I think I might be fundamentally mistaken about how rotating frames work ...
 
qft is a rabbit hole one never gets out of
 
Well I guess that's fun in its own way too lol
 
 
2 hours later…
2:14 AM
What are the odds of having financial safety and security as a high energy theorist? I am asking this for planning purposes. One of my short term goals (~2 years is to have at least 3M in my account). I also want to feel financially secure and safe. I don't want to ask for funds(funding, grants etc. I am not sure how it works) to be able to eat and work. For many reasons that should be obvious by now.
~~~ Also
I want to still be happy (screwing around with different topics and carrying convos with real humans
Might be applying to places too, in the future and I love my area and really don't want to leave
I think only USC (dark gaped system will close the gate) and UCLA (men with thoughts and perceptions await at gate with laughter)
Also a bit tired of repeating mantras about physics and talking about things in ways that seem unnatural to me in essays et all just so some humans playing the game (pseudo-anonymously) will . . . . . .
Going to have to figure things out . . .
oh before someone starts crying gre first blah blah
relax
don't talk about that
If I want a perfect score on it I will obtain it or something close
. . .
ok where were we
I could do Phys or Math(s) but I want to be sure I can eat in the future and I want to be wealthy
---wealth is important
*gap
At any rate for now let me just write some very very very very trivial baby software for a trivial condensed matter model
Can someone reach out to dark gaped system and let him know that I'd screw around with his stupid research (:::: I sure know how to make friends ::::) . I really don't want to have to travel around. Also, I'd probably be working on some cool (I'm not sure if it's cool, but I'd be stacking paper) stuff in my hood*.
*hood ~ Southern California Area
I'm serious though, i might have pissed off dark gaped system, but it was due to some highly non-trivial misunderstanding, and stress and lots of work coupled with frustration about life and outcomes, and he had asked me about why I would not just go back to school
At this time, I was throwing moola at ASU, and also I was going to about three to five coding interviews and getting set on fire by the interviewers.
At any rate as you all know I paid them
So . . yeah
Are there any human, and social civil engineers here that could rebuild the bridge, I think cows need to be able to collab with dark gaped systems.
His GR class was ok although I was drained daily and going through all kinds of stuff as I was sitting through them, and I was pretty agnostic to participation, but I knew I could not stop . . . . I wanted to stay ahead
at any rate . . . . as far as I remember, dark gaped system(here forth referred to as DGS) did accidentally mention he was not completely opposed to to concept of collab
At any rate if anything were to happen it will be in 1.25 to 2 years from now
It will be with the unstressed and well put together version of cows (actually I must say . . . with lots of practical human compute hours via paper and pencil)
Someone ping DGS otherwise I am not sure why I should bother going to grad school (if I do I'd write super epic papers that would make people dance ``` and other cool things that are well . . . . . cool)
yeah so DGS ping me
or someone ping DGS
If the identity of DGS is obvious please don't reveal it :D
Also apologies for all wrong and so forth( anything else I'm to socially inept to know) that I have done. Just a guy going through life and learning (society, money, hierarchies, boundaries, respect etc etc)things.
Am I apologizing because I want . . .
not really
but I do want collab though
ping me
Actually you know what
If I've pissed anybody else off. . . apologies
ok going for a quick walk now
 
2:54 AM
In other news
I finally know what my boy in France meant when he kept using and saying Res (Residue) in the classical math sense
for some reason my . . . . . .. res ~ restriction
 
3:46 AM
omg I meant gapped
not gaped
please can someone correct it to say gapped
don't google the other word
 
Anonymous
4:14 AM
@ACuriousMind Ah, I meant it in the sense of "basic postulates". For example - a qubit can be in a "superposition of two states" is not what separates it from classical particles, as a even a classical particle can be put in a superposition of two harmonic motions (which can be its basis). So I could say "superposition" is not something inherent/exclusive to QM.
 
Anonymous
@ACuriousMind BTW do you know any experiment which can distinguish between a qubit and a coin ?
 
@Blue well, the elaboration of the whole A1,A2,A3,B1,B2,B3 was intended to be such an 'experiment'
not that it was necessarily said well :P
 
Anonymous
@Semiclassical Ah, I'll read it today. Went to sleep by the time you wrote it :P
 
lol, sounds about right
I could also just do it now and see if I say it more clearly lol
 
4:19 AM
@Blue hmm? If you observe a classical particle it's state doesn't collapse ...
 
Anonymous
@JohnRennie Well, the measurement and so called loss of determinism is an argument for sure, but it is again based on the interprepetation. I and @Semiclassical were talking about that
 
What I have in mind is something I'm stealing adapting from a book by Jeff Bub
 
Anonymous
The main point is that as long as we can generate the same statistical outcomes with both a coin and a qubit, there's not much way to distinguish them (and all we can do is measure probabilities)
 
Well the coin is in principle deterministic
 
Sid
4:47 AM
It's raining cats and dogs today. I will have to skip breakfast again. :(
 
Anonymous
@JohnRennie Yes, if we know the initial state and conditions of time evolution of the coin sufficiently precisely. :P But the same could be said for a qubit (we keep in mind that whether a theory is quantum or classical should not depend on the interpretation - Copenhagen or otherwise). In our thought experiment we are (assuming) basically restricting our knowledge of the initial conditions and time evolution to only a few factors. (This was the point, right @Semiclassical? )
 
Huh? We know the time evolution of the qubit wavefunction, but not what it will collapse to on observation.
 
Anonymous
5:07 AM
@JohnRennie But that's according to the Copenhagen interpretation which says that wave function collapse is non-deterministic. I could very well use some other deterministic interpretation of QM
 
@Blue Like what? Even in many worlds what I will observe is still not deterministic.
The interpretation may shift the randomness around, but it's still there.
 
deterministic != predictable tho
even in classical mechanics, you can still suppose that there's some randomness in initial conditions
 
Anonymous
@JohnRennie "I will observe" You are constraining your knowledge of the "initial conditions and time evolution", exactly like we are constraining our knowledge of the coin
 
Anonymous
@Semiclassical Right
 
(moreover, in Bohmian mechanics that's exactly how the the lack of predictability shows up: the trajectories are deterministic, but you don't know which trajectory it's actually been on until you measure it)
 
5:12 AM
Hmm, 6 a.m. and I'm arguing semantics. I really need to get a life :-)
 
The tricky thing as ever is that QM does eliminate some options, but not all of them
but i think the real thing at stake in the qubit vs. coin example is not 'determinism' but 'counterfactual definiteness'
i.e. does it make sense to insist that a measurement has a well-defined result even if you don't make that measurement
 
Anonymous
5:26 AM
Copenhagen also rejects CD :P
 
Anonymous
Btw I don't have much idea about how well the other interpretations are accepted in the physics community. Are MWI and Bohm mathematically sound ? (I only know the basic ideas behind them)
 
dunno about MWI
 
Anonymous
And Bohm ?
 
but Bohm, at least as far as non-relativistic QM goes, is experimentally equivalent
(you have to include what's known as the quantum equillibrium hypothesis...don't really want to get into that)
I mean, the simplest route from QM to Bohmian mechanics is to start from the Schrodinger equation, derive the conservation equation for probability, and then define $\frac{d\vec{Q}}{dt}=\vec{j}/\rho$ where $j,\rho$ are the probability current and probability density respectively
Regardless of your interpretation of QM, you can extract that vector field (with dimensions of velocity) from knowledge of the wavefunction by that means
And then you can get flow lines from that vector field.
What Bohmian mechanics does is insist that those flow lines have physical meaning as the allowed trajectories of the particle
you still have randomness, insofar as you don't know which trajectory the particle is actually on
But (subject to that somewhat annoying equilibrium hypothesis) you still have the same predictions as standard QM
So my understanding is that it's a perfectly mathematically consistent story at least for regular QM
(Whether it's a satisfactory story is another question entirely)
 
Anonymous
5:39 AM
@Semiclassical Interesting. How does it explain YDSE tho?
 
well, as I said, in my presentation of it one starts from the notion that there is a well-defined wavefunction in the first place, and that it satisfies the schrodinger equation
and then, from knowledge of this wavefunction, you deduce $\rho(x,t)$, $j(x,t)$ and from this can extract the allowed trajectories. (note: these allowed trajectories look weird and non-classical, which you can take as a feature or a bug depending on how you look at it)
 
Anonymous
Fair, I get the allowed trajectories, and then ?
 
Then you've got a story with consistent trajectories in it :P
That's all one is really after
One particular property of the allowed trajectories, though, is that they preserve the Born rule with respect to time
 
Anonymous
I'm not very sure how the trajectories for YDSE would look like though
 
just to be clear: should that be TDSE?
 
Anonymous
5:46 AM
I mean the double slit experiment
 
oh, I thought you mean time-dependent Schrodinger equation
for Bohmian mechanics the standard picture is this one:
 
Anonymous
Oh, nope :P I was a bit curious how Bohm explains the double slit experiment (btw this is one reason we shouldn't use short forms :P)
 
bad link
there we go
the black lines are the allowed trajectories in the double slit experiment for Bohmian mechanics
and what you can notice is that there's lots of trajectories which end up near the middle, a good number a bit off on either side, and few in between.
each of the lines can moreover be traced back to one of the original slits, with the precise initial location in the slit being determinative
 
Anonymous
Do they intersect in the middle ?
 
Anonymous
@Semiclassical Ah
 
5:53 AM
no. in fact, none of those trajectories actually intersect
so a trajectory that's above the middle half must have started in the upper slit, etc.
 
Anonymous
Ah, cool. So say we send a electron. It chooses exactly one of those trajectories ?
 
right. that's how the story works.
 
Anonymous
But how do we get the interference pattern. Hmm, trying to see
 
eh, the interference pattern is just the fact that, at the right end of the picture, there's locations where lots of trajectories end up
and locations where relatively few end up
it's like if you were doing a plot of the electric field: more field lines in a given location = stronger field
 
Edited my profile info
 
Anonymous
6:13 AM
@Semiclassical Interesting okay. I was just thinking how to relate the delayed choice experiment with this (i.e. the interference disappears once we "mark" the electrons)
 
it's a good question
the tricky thing is that, since Bohmian mechanics is inherently nonlocal, the effect of 'marking' can be instantaneous
 
Anonymous
Hmm, I can't really relate it. Even if we know the slit each electron went through according to Bohm the interference should still be there
 
Anonymous
@Semiclassical Could you elaborate ?
 
well, keep in mind that those trajectories are the 'correct' ones because there's some time-evolving wavefunction
but if you include the effect of the 'marking' then that'll presumably change how the wavefunction evolves
and therefore change what the allowed trajectories are.
 
Anonymous
Ah, nice
 
Anonymous
6:19 AM
Didn't think of that
 
Anonymous
But how exactly do the trajectories change upon being marked
 
@Blue not really. tbh I'd like to see a full Bohmian account of a delayed choice experiment
I'm more spitballing than anything
 
Anonymous
If there is a consistent explanation of delayed choice using Bohm I'd be most interested. I find Copenhagen to be extremely unsatisfactory at a personal level :P
 
there is this paper, but I have no idea how good it is: arxiv.org/abs/1602.06100
this one has more of an experimental focus: advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/2/2/e1501466.full.pdf
 
Anonymous
The abstract looks good. I'll read sometime, thanks :)
 
6:25 AM
I suspect the second paper is probably the better one to start with
I'll also note that the presentation I've given is in terms of the so-called guidance equation. there's also a formulation in terms of a so-called quantum Hamilton-Jacobi equation
which is just Hamilton-Jacobi with an extra 'quantum potential' which depends on the wavefunction.
i'm not a fan of that presentation---it seems too artificial---but I think the Hiley paper might be more in that vein
the Mahler paper, though, I think is more in terms of the guidance equation
 
 
1 hour later…
7:29 AM
@Blue I'm still a physics/math person. I am just trying to position myself in a way that can enable me to be able to have job security and safety. Just so I'm able to feed myself and do basic things, and plausibly pay a mortgage without pulling my hair out or stressing
@Blue as I am a bit older too, and with what I've seen in the real world, I think especially in my situation, the most appropriate thing to do would be to align myself with people that understand this and can help me keep one foot in the real world so that I can build a future for myself while I scratch that physics itch
I also don't want to leave the people who have been around me
They are all in Southern California, I want to stay here, and do physics, but I also want to be able to keep my income, grow it, and so forth. It is hard to grock, but yeah believe me the things I want most in life are security (being able to eat, and provide for the people in my life ) and being able to do physics/math etc .
I can't just do it in my room all day, or on the beach
I need to get a graduate degree at least.
I wish I could just kick back and publish, but it does not make fiscal sense
I am not part of that community yet, and it would be pretty lame and stupid to contribute if people to a community of people who are getting paid to work on physics etc, also it's strange to want to contribute to communities that don't recognize you
At any rate another reason I need that phd is a bit personal and has nothing to do with love of physics
but we all have multiple reasons for doing anything
One of mine happens to be a deep need to let people who have belittled my abilities in the past to understand that they are no match
I had some rather tumultuous times when I left ASU
I had gone there in the first place because no other college thought I was any good
I had spent quite some time at a few community colleges while working some stupid gigs and stints as a phone unlocker/ repair tech
among other things
I was also actively pursuing some shall we say media opportunities
At any rate, I arrived at ASU
waived some hard math course by effectively displaying knowledge et al.
At any rate I took a collection of courses , a giant load my first and second (final semester there)
including c++ , java , mathematical structures and the like, and physics courses including qm i and qm ii etc
and much more, . . . a more that full load
The mistake I made was taking a research option too. Essentially playing the role of lab monkey whose time in the group was qustioned
I did some fairly trivial nanoscience and engineering things
like preparing surfaces and measuring contact angles and so forth and . .
looking at some matrices in excel that computed / predicted some angles
what do I know . . . .
I was not able to keep up the out of state tuition, and was thrown out
This was not easy
I called everyone in my family and they were pretty agnostic and did not care
I had graduated high school at 16, but
little did I know what was comming
I was homeless at this point and wondering arounf
People just found this funny
the woman at the lab even spewed ad hominems like . . . . oh he could not pay rent, or something
actually she said . . . I had mentioned to her that I could not pay rent
She sent this in an email that she
wrote to a mathematics guy at an institute near frys electronics in palo alto
at any rate
I had made the journey to many places and my yearning to keep studying left me at stanford
I was still homeless of course and
 
Anonymous
7:54 AM
@Cows While that surely can be a good driving reason, I think it gets stressful in the long run if your only aim is to "avenge". And yes, of course, financial security comes first. Doing physics/math sitting on the roadside doesn't make practical sense either. ;) FWIW I have heard of several people who began their PhDs at ~40 and even successfully completed it
 
I ended up . . . working at frys electronics as a cage associate and for a start up in palo alto at the same time doing some embeded systems stuff (it failed and i got no penny)
at this point things happened
when you are not a student people can tell, and there were all these questions that were going around
every one wanted to know what I was doing and if I belonged. At the same time
all professors were keeping a distance
I mean like lol I just wanted to learn physics
after a while it got to my head
I ruined all relationships
I felt like everyone was watching me and laughing
 
Anonymous
I can understand :/
 
I was practically also going through things at the shelter where I was living
I snaped
a lot more happened
I was questioned by the police. . . someone anonymously called police on me
I left, and I ran away
I had lost trust in all people, especially physics people
I went to france
and I just tried to party a bit
I ended up trying to understand renormalization, but failed because a math prof was using some advance concepts to help me
I let go of myself for a while and then I went to Monac
Monaco
I made some money gambling there and
I also did phone repair
then I went to Norway and studied math
I was all around europe for a bit
I applied to columbia general studies
they said i had to show up to get a few things done
I ended up being disappointed
i got angry at life and everything
I started a company shortly after
A media company using some bleeding edge technologies and wrote v1 . . . . v3 of the code
made some ok money
then moved on, well I tried paying my bill ~21k
failed, got stressed
my mom, my dad and everyone kept asking me to go to school without understanding
I ran away again
I then tried to learn physics again, I sat in some classes, but everyone kept making fun of me, because they figured I wanted to take a short cut or something
I could not just wait several years, I had to learn daily so that i don't stay behind
Everyone kept asking me to just take such and such class or something
It was emotionally and psychologically hard
I realized that money was important.
I also realized that most of my friends really were pretty fake
at any rate
These events made me angry
 
Anonymous
@Cows It really is :(
 
really angry at the world at people at everything
When I finally got back to Southern california I was desperate for a job
I did not care
However even burger flipping places, and car wash areas were treating me like crap and they were asking for all sorts of things. When people realized they had some power over me, they felt like they had to exercise it
I just decided then that I'd write epic code
then when I became good enough it turns out someone still needs to hire you, and if people felt a certain way or had any doubt, and of course i did not have any degree, they would just hire someone they felt more comfortable with
So I instead began writing and selling my own software
I would put on my backpack and literally walk through five cities and try to acquire clients
charging fortunes while sweating , with an oily face and all
this was fun
speaking of sweating
I got humiliated in New york by a physics professor once
He asked me to calculate some QED amplitude and said he could do it while drinking vodka
He was at NYU
 
8:14 AM
@Cows Anything you wish you could have done differently in your life? ;\
 
the other time I got humiliated at NYU was when I sat down on a seat an wet it because I had been walking . . . hustling software and had wet pants
Also I remember trying to convince someone at NYU to teach me something in qcd , I think it is called the gribov problem
he gave me a book to read though
the other guy at NYU i mentioned was a plasma physics guy
he believed in me though
but he was pretty straight with me
he wanted me to solve the problem, and he would help me
I also sat in a GR class at USC
 
@Cows What mistake would you advise us (the still young) not to make?
 
I think the professor did or said something that reminded me of something , he was just doing him, but
@NovaliumCompany well it is hard to say, what I can tell you for sure is that money is important. The other thing is that, people can't really exist independently of each other , and you want to be in a community that is good to you. Also, your health and happiness are important. May be also have at least one or two good friends. Treat everyone with respect and seek help when you need it.
Speaking of seeking help
At some point I got so desperate I started emailing all professors left and right detailing my problems and financial things. . . .haha what happened next was intense
Some of them just assumed things
emails got sent
 
@Cows You seem like you want to write an autobiography :D
 
others said I was spaming them
It was a truly crazy time
at some point after that all of them stopped talking to me
When they did it was just to ask me to not reach them in very polite ways
like
there is nothing more we can do here
or
please consider a new career
or
 
8:24 AM
@Cows What do you do know? Has your life improved?
 
casually inserting and making reference to stalker
@NovaliumCompany I paid the damn bill lol
My brother is a big deal in California
he did not help me though
All my brothers are successful engineers and non of them helped me
 
@Cows I mean, what do you work, what's your income...?
 
My sister quit talking to me
 
And also you didn't go to college or university?
 
I am a software engineer, i was in school till senior year, then dropped out. I am heading to school this fall
 
8:28 AM
So I think the main thing I can suck up from your story is, go to university/college :D
 
Anonymous
@NovaliumCompany Not everyone has that privilege.
 
I know, but whoever has, then he/she should to it.
 
Anonymous
Yup
 
College helps
You also need to sharpen your social skills
you are not going to be the only person who went to college
Recruiters will through hundreds of you guys at the same job
then if you had a degree from one of the top colleges you might have a tiny tiny tiny tiny edge
but at the end of the day social skills, and experience rule
Also it helps if the degree is CS
 
I think the best thing about life is not knowing where it will take you, good or bad, so I don't really enjoy planning my future. Ok I will go know, see you :)
 
8:32 AM
@NovaliumCompany see you soon
ok I feel better now . . . .
 
@Cows It is good to lay your feelings here, i've done it too :)
 
Well that's the story. . . .
well I sort of omitted the fact that I met a whole lot of theorists, Nobel laureates and a fields medalists in the process , but yeah
I think I sat in 4 courses at stanford lol
 
How did you enter in stanford (got accepted)?
 
interesting times, did not really . . . . well i picked up some words and so forth
I did not get into stanford
I was a visitor and took permission to sit in some courses
graduate courses
don't worry I did not pick up much :D
 
Ok, see you :)
 
8:37 AM
I learned some words, and names of courses and textbooks and research topics then studied on my own
If I was not there, I would not have known about a thing called qft, or ads/cft, or renyi entanglement, or even words like metric or manifold or string theory (the word) or Nambu-goto action etc
I knew about quantum computing before that though
But yeah this place screwed my head . . . . . .
Some quasi cool moments were a 15 fempto second conversation I had where a professor saw me opening version 1 of quantum fields and strings( belonging to a dude by the name of Jonathan ) and he said, . . . "You know people have gone crazy trying to read that book"
At first I thought he was joking, but now I know better
yeah if I had just stayed in community college, or even at my 4 year uni, I'm sure that things would have been fairly simple
I can also remember just saying "you linearize it" in a GR class and I think people actually thought it was a lucky guess
 
hehehe
 
 
3 hours later…
11:20 AM
Zyaginium Jaboas
prolifeeic ustinabolo
TGA
 
 
1 hour later…
12:29 PM
Guys, in a dc circuit in series, the current will always be the same, no matter what right? Because it has nowhere else to go?
 
 
2 hours later…
1:59 PM
@NovaliumCompany Kirchoff law, baby
 
2:19 PM
The undulations, when reality wobbles near the black hole event horizon
A much greater undulation, is expected to happen in 2020 where everything and everywhere we see,wobbles
Why stop at black holes when we can go further, to ensure the whole reality becomes as soft as jello
It is cool btw
that one is included simply because of how piercing the audio is
further research is required to convert it into a long range solid source of acoustics
 
rob
2:46 PM
Greetings! Our population of close vote reviewers, especially recently-active reviewers, is kind of small. If you have the reputation for it, please consider having a look at the review queues as part of your routine.
6
 
Anonymous
@bolbteppa That looks excellent. Thanks
 
Let's bowl, let's bowl, let's rock and roll
 

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