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John Rennie
John Rennie
5:24 AM
So can anyone see the super blood wolf moon?
It's cloudy here in Chester so sadly I am denied the experience.
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
5:35 AM
It's trending
Can't see it
 
John Rennie
John Rennie
5:52 AM
I don't believe that colour. That's been enhanced.
I've seen lunar eclipses several times and the colour is a kind of dull orange.
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
Thanks Karl for this great pic of the Moon from Florida! #SuperBloodWolfMoon
Tweeted by TheRealBuzz on January 21, 2019 at 4:59 AM
Probably has trustable pics, a few when you scroll down
 
vzn
vzn
6:19 AM
← coincidentally dinged by at least 2 lunatics today in cyberspace o_O :P
 
Martin Sleziak
Martin Sleziak
6:31 AM
In case this MathOverflow question is interesting for people from Physics Stack Exchange: Six yolks in a bowl: Why not optimal circle packing?
11
Q: Six yolks in a bowl: Why not optimal circle packing?

Joseph O'RourkeMaking soufflé tonight, I wondered if the six yolks took on the optimal circle packing configuration. They do not. It is only with seven congruent circles that the optimal packing places one in the center. Q. Why don't the yolks in a bowl follow the optimal packing of congruent circles in...

discrete-geometry classical-mechanics circle-packing
 
John Rennie
John Rennie
6:52 AM
They're not all the same size and they're not rigid spheres. Mathematicians!!
 
Martin Sleziak
Martin Sleziak
7:04 AM
Probably you should say "MathOverflowians" rather than "Mathematicians"...? :-)
 
John Rennie
John Rennie
@MartinSleziak :-)
 
Captain Bohemian
Captain Bohemian
7:37 AM
I found there has been an eclipse this year I overlooked, the partial solar eclipse on Jan. 6.
the total lunar eclipse today will occur before the moon rises here.
but I feel I just watched the total lunar eclipse on July 29 not long ago.
I actually only saw the eclipse of July 29 briefly around the greatest eclipse phase because the cloud was too thiick most of time in the whole course.
The total lunar eclipse today is invisible here even it will be the last total lunar eclipse to grace Earth’s sky until May 26, 2021.
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
8:10 AM
 
Slereah
Slereah
are they still making cyclotrons
i thought the wave of the future was linear colliders
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
We'll see
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
8:26 AM
I'm currently studying effective actions, and I want to see if I've gotten one concept straight. If you compute the tree-level Feynman diagram for an effective action, you get results for the corresponding computation of the Feynman diagram for the original action up to one loop?
 
Anonymous
@MartinSleziak Are other creatures like physicists also spotted on MO? :P BTW, good to see you here. :)
 
Slereah
Slereah
8:38 AM
Got Lee's "Manifolds and differential geometry" in the mail
It's a big boy
 
Anonymous
@NovaliumCompany You seem to be under the influence of.....a strong dose of metaphysics. We don't tread there. :P
 
Slereah
Slereah
Adding more brain into a brain is more the realm of neuroscience
I mean it's experimentally doable
Though I wouldn't recommend it
 
Anonymous
12 hours ago, by Novalium Company
In quantum mechanics, the precise location of an electron is unknown and is said to be 'random' at random times, but what if God was staying on the other side, 'pushing the buttons' where the electrons will be, therefore forming reality. Are we God?
 
Anonymous
@Slereah ::coughs:: We could try it on the...umm...guinea pigs.
 
Slereah
Slereah
Grad students?
 
Anonymous
8:43 AM
Lol
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
I take offense to that statement
I'm just a pig
 
Slereah
Slereah
oink oink
Capitalist swine
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
You sound like Napoleon from Animal Farm
 
Slereah
Slereah
I'm more of a Napoleon Dynamite
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
Jay Kay takes offense to that video
Is Jamiroquai considered "dance" music? I always try to appear sophisticated by saying it's acid jazz
 
Slereah
Slereah
8:49 AM
You can certainly dance to it
as seen here
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
Praise, Roberto commenting in the comments backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/…
 
Slereah
Slereah
9:44 AM
 
 
2 hours later…
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
12:05 PM
Is it possible to implement the ability to reply to your own messages in chat?
Well, it is possible, but I think it would be convenient to have that feature
@GodotMisogi Something like this, without having to use "Inspect Element" to find the message number
 
Captain Bohemian
Captain Bohemian
@GodotMisogi how can you do that?
I can't reply my own message.
 
Slereah
Slereah
@Slereah Let's see if you can
yes you can
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
@CaptainBohemian Notice how when you reply to a message, the following syntax appears ":message_number" in your chatbox. That message number is a reference in SE's transcript, which can be traced using the page's source code. I found mine by using my browser's "Inspect Element" and manually inserting the syntax with the relevant message number
@kartikc.p (This was inspired by kartikc.p's message yesterday, in which I believe he intended to reply to his own message about some question, but had no choice except to rely on a neighbouring message for help, which prompted me to talk nonsense as a result)
 
Captain Bohemian
Captain Bohemian
@GodotMisogi but I can't find my message number. I found the message number in this chat room is not consecutive.
I find there are multiple convenient features in SE chatrooms. How nice if private chat, like Google Hangout, LinkedIn, etc. has these features.
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
12:21 PM
@CaptainBohemian Telegram is quite convenient with its bots, and is my go-to messaging app.
Weirdly enough, Facebook "Messenger" chat on desktop has native $\LaTeX$ rendering.
 
Captain Bohemian
Captain Bohemian
@GodotMisogi I have never used Telegram. Maybe I should take a try of it.
@GodotMisogi I have never used Facebook "Messenger", which I think can only be installed on mobile phone. I always chat on computer,
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
@Slereah Where did you first study λ-calculus from? (Been reading your blog, particularly enjoying the Lazy Bird post)
 
Slereah
Slereah
@GodotMisogi I was interested in foundations of mathematics
and lambda calculus was one of the first method used for that
as far as computability goes
the original bird
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
Ah, so did you start with Smullyan's book?
 
Slereah
Slereah
Well I started with the Principia Mathematica
and learned more stuff from there
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
12:31 PM
...I can't imagine reading 119 (randomly guessed number) pages to learn 1 + 1 = 2
I've just started learning untyped λ-calculus. So far I've only done some stuff in Haskell, and just realised I've been living in the paradigm of types all this while
 
Slereah
Slereah
Most programming languages can't do lambda calculus correctly
Because there's always some hidden assumption of type
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
I was baffled by λx · xx, but then realised Russell's paradox lies in there : )
 
Slereah
Slereah
Oh it has little to do with that
It's just an expression of recursion
the site has a whole bunch of articles
But you CANNOT SEE THEM
They are Secret Articles
(bc unfinished)
although even the published ones are unfinished really
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
1:13 PM
In other news:
"The flight attendant at first refused, but the man, sitting on the toilet with his legs open and genitals exposed, insisted, and pleaded that he could not complete his ablutions with his underwear only half-down.

“Come in and help me out … you promised to help me!” he said."
 
Anonymous
1:29 PM
@GodotMisogi Ewww. Can we please keep the chat free from cringe news? :P
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
But it's hilariously well-written
@GodotMisogi @Blue If this is implemented, then maybe I'll succumb to your demands
 
Anonymous
@GodotMisogi Install the chat reply helper script. :)
 
Anonymous
It's already implemented there. Alternatively, if you want to bring attention to a past message, just find its permalink and paste it here. It will onebox automatically.
 
Anonymous
8 mins ago, by GodotMisogi
But it's hilariously well-written
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
25 mins ago, by GodotMisogi
https://taiwanenglishnews.com/taiwanese-flight-attendant-traumatized-after-being‌​-forced-to-wipe-fat-white-old-foreign-butt/
5 hours ago, by GodotMisogi
I'm currently studying effective actions, and I want to see if I've gotten one concept straight. If you compute the tree-level Feynman diagram for an effective action, you get results for the corresponding computation of the Feynman diagram for the original action up to one loop?
 
Anonymous
1:46 PM
@CaptainBohemian They're not consecutive because all SE chat rooms (excluding Stack Overflow and Meta SE) follow one global sequential order. So in a specific room, they appear as non-consecutive. This prevents things (like flag records and permalinks) from breaking when messages are shifted to other rooms.
 
Anonymous
@GodotMisogi You can get the message IDs from the last few digits of the permalinks too. ;)
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
@Blue I just realised you can hover over the arrows next to the message to find it as well
 
Anonymous
@GodotMisogi Several SE chat rooms have customized bots. We still don't. Hopefully someone can build a useful bot specifically for our room in the future. We do have our own AI though who's worth more than bots. ;)
 
GodotMisogi
GodotMisogi
What's this chat session that's scheduled for tomorrow? Any specific topic of discussion or just a pre-arranged gathering for everyone?
 
Slereah
Slereah
I don't think we've had specific topics in a while
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
2:14 PM
oooohhhh, so close
@JohnRennie what?
how is saying "look, this is an enormous investment that should be better spent in other types of science" an anti-science statement?
€20bn is an enormous amount of money for a scientific experiment with no guaranteed scientific return (beyond "oh yeah, there's that other expected SM particle") and few compelling arguments for why it should find new stuff.
there's a ton of precision atomic-physics experiments that can take bigger bites out of potential-theory-space than colliders can, and they work at the few-M€ scale
you can fund something like a thousand ACME EDM collaborations for that money
Of course CERN is going to propose a bigger collider, because they have all the vested interests for pushing in that direction
they also need to show a compelling scientific case
pointing out that there is no such compelling case isn't anti-science; rather the contrary
 
user351417
2:42 PM
@EmilioPisanty I think it was the focus on the notion of postponing it by 20 years which could, to a slight extent, be considered anti-science. At least that's what the rest of the conversation implies. As you said, promoting experiments other than particle colliders can't easily be called anti-science.
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
@Chair let's not guess at @JohnRennie's intended meaning
 
user351417
If you say, "let's chill with no definite idea about how to use our presently available monetary resources for the next 20 years (since I don't think they'd put 6 billion into development of new accelerator technologies)", that is, to some petty measure, anti-science. Whether or not that's JohnRennie's meaning, it's what my impression of the situation was.
 
user351417
I imagine this Backreaction post hints at a similar notion: that CERN's barking up the wrong tree, if that's the phrase I wanted.
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
@Chair I disagree.
If you say "present accelerator technology is unable to produce a compelling case for the fact that it will discover anything meaningful", then it's pretty reasonable to suspend funding of bigger accelerators until such a compelling case can be put together
 
user351417
How so? If there's no concrete plan regarding the usage of funds, won't things just dissolve over 20 years of inactivity in the field?
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
2:53 PM
@Chair probably, yes. A full stop would be undesirable because of that reason, I think.
but you could equally well fund the construction of smaller accelerators with more focused research goals
which CERN could be proposing
but which as I understand it they're not
 
user351417
@EmilioPisanty Of course it's reasonable (and practical) to say that 20 billion is definitely not well-spent when we're not leaning on any rigorous predictions. But she's still ignoring the alternative plans.
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
> At current, other large-scale experiments would more reliably offer new insights into the foundations of physics. Anything that peers back into the early universe, such as big radio telescopes, for example, or anything that probes the properties of dark matter. There are also medium and small-scale experiments that tend to fall off the table if big collaborations eat up the bulk of money and attention.
 
user351417
Just out of curiosity, what's her personal stake in this whole thing? Does she have it out for CERN (I'm not denying that she makes convincing points) just because it sounds wasteful to toss that much money on a project with a somewhat indistinct prediction?
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
that's the "medium and small-scale experiments" right there, no?
 
user351417
@EmilioPisanty None of that is too close to CERN's agenda though. From their propaganda which I've gobbled, it's all about finding new particles and exploring their properties.
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
2:59 PM
"she's still ignoring the alternative plans" sounds more like "let's all ignore the parts of the text where she talks about alternatives"
@Chair brilliant
are we going to find those particles?
if so, how do we know?
 
user351417
You're missing the point. Although I'm not an expert by any means, I do find her arguments convincing and they match with other things I've read when they say that we don't have any hypothesized particles for several orders of magnitude.
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
@Chair so what is your point?
 
user351417
I should have said she's ignoring CERN's alternate plans, because if CERN isn't doing something to convince people that they're a setup worth funding, then they won't have the money to do much once the accelerator technologies are developed (assuming that happens soon enough)
 
user351417
Of course, things could backfire
 
user351417
They could spend 9-20 billion and find nothing exciting.
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
3:05 PM
@Chair to the extent that your point is a reading of the text that concludes "she's ignoring CERN's alternate plans", I don't see how you get that other than ignoring the parts that do talk about alternatives
 
user351417
Put it this way... is she recommending that CERN conducts the " other large-scale experiments [which] would more reliably offer new insights into the foundations of physics. Anything that peers back into the early universe, such as big radio telescopes, for example, or anything that probes the properties of dark matter"? Because I thought she couldn't be.
 
user351417
I was under the impression that those aren't exactly like CERN's displayed agenda so far.
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
> Of course a blog post cannot replace a detailed cost-benefit assessment, so I cannot tell you what’s the best thing to invest in.
I thought that part was pretty clear
 
user351417
She's saying that she can't tell if the large scale experiments are a better bet than the table-top ones.
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
@Chair look, I started this conversation to make a narrowly-focused question to someone else.
The points in the text are perfectly clear if you do take the time and care.
 
user351417
3:20 PM
Hmm, yeah, maybe I will go through it again after a bit.
 
user351417
See ya!
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
3:59 PM
@EmilioPisanty John was responding to my quoting her saying
"Therefore, investment-wise, it would make more sense to put particle physics on a pause and reconsider it in, say, 20 years to see whether the situation has changed, either because new technologies have become available or because more concrete predictions for new physics have been made" and I am the one who first called it "literally anti-science", how is arguing to stop investing in science (= stopping science for all intents and purposes) for 20 years not anti-science, it's *literally* anti-science
 
vzn
vzn
@Chair or on other hand (alternate view!) maybe you have misunderstood nothing about her blog post.
 
vzn
vzn
4:15 PM
@bolbteppa all experiments carry some amount of risk, some more than others, and risk is roughly/ largely proportional to funding. hossenfelder is making an argument about priorities. reasonable people can disagree on priorities. Hossenfelder notes in her book many expensive experiments that have turned up null results and this is not a well publicized aspect of Big Physics but its a reality. as she notes, papers announcing null results use euphemisms like "established new interesting bounds"
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
@vzn right, that subtext is the whole point really - being against Big Physics, painting actual results as euphemisms, acting like it's purposely not well publicized, the lone ranger doing the siren call against the establishment, it's the same in this article where joke arguments like 'every big experiment will always produce technology so it's no argument for doing this one at all!' are used to buttress this point
(" We are further offered the usual arguments, that investing in a science project this size would benefit the technological industry and education and scientific networks. This is all true, but not specific to particle colliders. Any large-scale experiment would have such benefits. I do not find such arguments remotely convincing.")
 
vzn
vzn
@bolbteppa that was not what just wrote, it misrepresents. you understand the concept of a null result right?
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
Null results are results
 
vzn
vzn
@bolbteppa lol not really. that sounds nearly orwellian aka doublespeak.
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
Not finding susy at LHC energies is a null result which "established new interesting bounds", or is it not?
 
vzn
vzn
4:26 PM
Null result
In science, a null result is a result without the expected content: that is, the proposed result is absent. It is an experimental outcome which does not show an otherwise expected effect. This does not imply a result of zero or nothing, simply a result that does not support the hypothesis. The term is a translation of the scientific Latin nullus resultarum, meaning "no consequence". In statistical hypothesis testing, a null result occurs when an experimental result is not significantly different from what is to be expected under the null hypothesis; its probability (under the null hypothesis) does...
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
@vzn read your own link, by your own logic the Michaelson-Morley experiment, which they cite as an example of a null result, is not a result
 
vzn
vzn
lol and how much did it cost? :P literally a tabletop experiment
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
> arguing to stop investing in science
that's not what's being argued by any stretch of what's actually in the text
 
vzn
vzn
hossenfelder could be wrong, but its also wrong to misrepresent her views
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
unless you take "science" to mean exclusively "multi-billion-dollar accelerator facilities meant to probe supersymmetry and similar theories", to the explicit exclusion of any other endeavors
the only thing that's being argued for is a shift in what areas of science see significant investment.
 
vzn
vzn
4:35 PM
@bolbteppa btw have already said do not "entirely" disagree with your characterization of her as a "siren" lol chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/71?m=47745256#47745256
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
@EmilioPisanty if we're going to play semantics then creationists being against evolution are not anti-science either, just 'multi-billion-dollar agencies and universities and the field of biology and related fields built on evolutionary theory', I must have misinterpreted sentences like "Therefore, investment-wise, it would make more sense to put particle physics on a pause and reconsider it in, say, 20 years" to mean what the words actually say
from the person who wrote a book attacking theory, not particle physics experiments (from the comments: "My book is very explicitly about theory-development. It is not even about particle physics in particular. ")
 
vzn
vzn
as for sirens it would seem that inviting $20B on a project that goes nowhere is a kind of siren call...
@bolbteppa think its far more than disingenuous to compare hossenfelder to anti evolutionists.
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
@EmilioPisanty funny, that's what I was calling your arguments out for doing because you're completely ignoring sentences like "Therefore, investment-wise, it would make more sense to put particle physics on a pause and reconsider it in, say, 20 years" from the person who wrote a book saying the whole field is going in the wrong direction, and implying the best was meant, despite the evidence that this is a person who calls their own theory papers nonsense and attacks the whole field
Even more egregious is this "I think particle physicists have dug their own grave by giving the public the impression that the LHC would answer some big question" argument, of course in the post linked to the Higgs is mentioned, then a big argument about finding extra particles is made and "nightmare scenario's" - I mean this is madness, the idea that
"For 30 years, particle physicists have told us that the LHC should find something besides that, something exciting: a particle for dark matter, additional dimensions of space, or maybe a new type of symmetry" is a serious argument, I dare you to try to justify this as reasonable
This is authoritarian to it's core, nobody in their right mind said we should have found anything like this, the hope is this stuff would come, but it's, by definition, in no way certain or something that had to be
 
vzn
vzn
@bolbteppa she documents in her book many big predictions by the leaders of the field wrt LHC that didnt pan out. agreed Higgs is (very) substantial.
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
@vzn that's great, maybe the Higg's wouldn't have panned out either
 
vzn
vzn
4:45 PM
calling her "authoritarian" for making a compelling argument is again a bit )( ridiculous. she has rather little power. dont know why the big shots feel so threatened. oh, maybe because she has a point (that pierces the widespread massive groupthink of the field) :o
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
Just read that post as if you were in the 90's judging the US accelerator that was cancelled, or the LHC, and tell me how the thrust of her argument wouldn't have stopped both those accelerators as well
 
vzn
vzn
yes the SSC is an interesting case study have cited it myself in the chat. anyway this whole debate seems sometimes like emotion hijacking reason. kind of remarkable in a supposedly hardcore scientific field.
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
When all you read is iconoclasts lambasting big science, yeah it might seem that way haha
Wasn't that supposed to be bigger than the LHC, even back in the 90's
My sense is that collider being cancelled is why Kaku, Weinberg etc started publicizing science in a big way
 
vzn
vzn
> Its planned ring circumference was 87.1 kilometers (54.1 mi) with an energy of 20 TeV per proton and was set to be the world's largest and most energetic. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
"The SSC's planned collision energy of 2 x 20 = 40 TeV was roughly three times that of the 2 x 6.5 = 13 TeV (as of June 2015) of its European counterpart, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva.[23] However, the planned luminosity was only one tenth of the design luminosity of the LHC."
 
vzn
vzn
4:59 PM
SSC plan was ~3x LHC ring circumference (17mi)...
anyway you can find some other elite scientists besides Hossenfelder saying similar things, just posted one myself yesterday, no need to overly fixate on her :o
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
I'm sure there are better arguments against it than blanket arguments that apply to every collider ever
Since I know so little about it, my main worry out of naivety is whether it not it not finding results will embolden Big-Anti-Science
 
vzn
vzn
this recent article by Falkowski ("insider") is strikingly similar in tone/ conclusion(s) to Hossenfelders.
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
"These approaches seem misguided. Nature does not seem to conform to their predictions." come on man
 
John Rennie
John Rennie
@EmilioPisanty now you're insulting me (calling me shallow) without stopping to check what exactly I meant. If you were aiming for the moral high ground you have missed.
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
I don't know why all these writers have to pepper their passages with seriously flawed sentences out of nowhere
 
vzn
vzn
5:10 PM
@bolbteppa Hossenfelder has a lot (similar) to say about "naturalness/ finetuning" in her book. think Falkowski should have cited her, maybe he is even familiar with her pov. but shes radioactive in some circles.
 
bolbteppa
bolbteppa
The problem is, people would be very sympathetic to these kinds of arguments if the arguments could be made coherently
 
vzn
vzn
lol they are very rational/ coherent, apparently thats the "problem" for some :o :P
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
6:11 PM
@JohnRennie It appears I misread your comment - the words 'big' and 'anti' got transposed by my brain. My apologies.
I had pinged you to ask exactly what you meant, precisely because your comment, as I misread it, was out of character with what you've said previously.
 
 
1 hour later…
t t t t
t t t t
7:38 PM
I have just posted a "bomb question": physics.stackexchange.com/questions/455725/… @EmilioPisanty if you want to give it a shot.... or maybe @JohnRennie
btw there is a freaking huge problem with the low vote number on PSE. I do not vote often (or so I believe!), yet I am constantly between the highest vote giver
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
What does it mean for a rainbow to "be three-dimensional"? It's not a physical object, I'm not even sure how I'd assign two dimensions to it!
 
t t t t
t t t t
that it has a depth coz it looks like 2D
my guess is that the answer is" it depends on what forms the rainbow" , if it's a vertical wall of droplets, the rainbow will be 2d. but a normal rainbow should be 3d
but I'll wait for answers by gurus
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
I'm not convinced of the ontological claim that a rainbow is the droplets that cause it :P
2
 
t t t t
t t t t
I see what you mean
good point
 
Emilio Pisanty
Emilio Pisanty
8:30 PM
@ACuriousMind Heck, there's a much better case to be made that the optical depth of the rainbow should be set at that of the light source.
I'm pretty sure there's a question along those lines somewhere on the site
 
 
2 hours later…
user400188
user400188
10:28 PM
This has been on my mind fro a while, but did anyone ever solve the problem of Poincaré recurrence and the second law of thermodynamics?
 
 
1 hour later…
dmckee
dmckee
11:34 PM
@bolbteppa ::chuckles::
 

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