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12:02 AM
@EmilioPisanty @JohnRennie @vzn the same anti-science now gets promulgated to the largest print media audience one could ask for nytimes.com/2019/01/23/opinion/…
"And if particle physicists have only guesses, maybe we should wait until they have better reasons for why a larger collider might find something new"
Imagine painting theoretical physics as a bunch of guesses in the NYT
"the only reliable prediction they had for the L.H.C. was that of the Higgs boson" I mean my god
The idea that this was a reliable prediction is simply shocking, using this as a tool to enhance anti-science even more so
 
vzn
@bolbteppa lol (interesting! but...) think its your own pov that is looking increasingly strident and not in line with "circumspect" science.
 
I think this is a lesson, like 2016 was, that simply ignoring this kind of stuff doesn't make it go away any more
 
@bolbteppa it’s hard to blame people not trained in physics for not understanding physics. I’ve only been an undergraduate for a year and a half, and already I consider my physics before hand massively misinformed by pop culture. I think you should more so complain about the people whose job it is to inform the journalists..
Not that I don’t find it irritating as you do
 
vzn
@bolbteppa seems theres some major stuff youre ignoring.
 
@JakeRose like the writer of this piece who is a theoretical physicist
 
12:11 AM
@bolbteppa I’ll admit I hadn’t read the post
just assumed it’s general tooic
but yeah I agree then
 
Just to be clear, one could be against the building of this thing, the problem is using anti-science arguments like implying particle physics is a bunch of guesswork, or this totally not anti-science 20 year great 'pause' backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/… on particle physics the author called for
 
@bolbteppa yes I agree. I’m overall quite against it, but for different reasons and not the anti science arguments
 
Or anti-science conspiracies like "Unfortunately, particle physicists have not been very forthcoming with this information"
 
My current maths lecturer is a particle physicist I wonder what he works on
 
I mean that sentence alone is stunning
@JakeRose working on misleading you with guesses apparently :p
 
12:16 AM
Christopher is a member of the High Energy Physics research group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. His current research interests include lattice QCD, hadronic physics and strong interaction phenomenology. He is part of the Hadron Spectrum Collaboration, an international collaboration of lattice theorists investigating the spectroscopy and properties of hadrons using lattice QCD.
I wish I knew what those words meant
their descriptions are always so hard to read unless you’re a specialist in the field already
or maybe they’re not hard if you’re not an undergrad :/
 
It's all standard model stuff
Basically once you do qft in part III those words will start to make sense :p
called for considering*
 
@bolbteppa did you go Cambridge?
 
Everybody knows what part III is haha
 
@bolbteppa fair enough, won’t ask further
pffft not true
nobody outside of cam knows
 
Part III of the Mathematical Tripos (officially Master of Mathematics/Master of Advanced Study) is a one-year Masters-level taught course in mathematics offered at the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge. It is regarded as one of the hardest and most intensive mathematics courses in the world and is taken by approximately 200 students each year. Roughly one third of the students take the course as a fourth year of mathematical study at Cambridge (after Parts IA, IB, and II), whilst the remaining two thirds take the course as a one-year course. == History == The Smith's Prize Examination...
 
12:27 AM
and even then the people inside cam usually don’t either
 
'It is regarded as one of the hardest and most intensive mathematics courses in the world and is taken by approximately 200 students each year'
 
unfortunately I don’t take the mathematics tripos
Im a natsci
@bolbteppa I don’t think all that many people still know of it in passing knowledge
or what the course entails ;)
 
Could still get onto Part III since there's a heavy theoretical physics side of it
 
mhm, rare though. Most people stick with physics.
@bolbteppa requires permission from the mathematics faculty too
id be worried the difference in maths abilities would hold me back
or at least the difference in formal trisnjng
training*
 
There are three things you can apply to, pure, applied or stats and be judged accordingly
The math level will get you though, need to be prepping for it now haha
 
12:40 AM
I do want to pure theory so maybe I should consider it
(will delete this - did you do nastci? If so was the maths taught in part II good enough for the swalping to maths? And can you do pure physics all through the year for the masters?)
 
You want to be doing courses like damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/bg268 damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/stcs/fcm.html if you can, should talk to someone to find out about your situation, have no idea what it is, but the earlier you ask around the more likely it is
 
Oh crap
thought I could delete messages after a while
currenly doing Double physics and mathematics
in the natsci tripos
im gonna ask my maths supervisor and see if she knew anyone that did it, she specialised in quantum after the mathematics tripos so I’m guessing she must know somthing
 
(Page 31) Still get to do the part III qft/aqft but then do other stuff instead of having more courses in things like strings and the standard model
 
Yeah, there’s more practical based theory in the physics course
mhmmill have to ask round
 
"The trouble is, a “prediction” in particle physics is today little more than guesswork. (In case you were wondering, yes, that’s exactly why I left the field.)"
In the olden days, i.e. like 2-3 years ago, people would see a sentence like this and recognize what was going on
 
 
2 hours later…
vzn
2:21 AM
@JakeRose youre against LHC sequel? (FCC) on what grounds?
 
2:52 AM
@vzn do you mind if I barge in?
 
3:22 AM
 
 
1 hour later…
4:39 AM
@Blue do you know if the system has a way to detect “revenge” downvoting?
 
 
1 hour later…
5:56 AM
@ZeroTheHero If you mean serial downvoting, then yes.
 
6:08 AM
@ZeroTheHero the SE software detects if someone downvoted you several times in a short time, and it will revert those downvotes. It doesn't detect a single downvote from someone you just downvoted.
 
 
1 hour later…
7:16 AM
@JohnRennie I have 4 questions on this site, they were all downvoted within a total span of 60 seconds. I’m curious to see now if the downvotes will be cancelled.
 
@ZeroTheHero it does sound like a malicious downvote. I think the software that detects serial downvotes runs once a day but I forget when. Check at this time tomorrow I guess.
 
It will be an interesting experience to see.
 
Yeah, what John said. The standard advice is to give it 24 hours, then if you don't see a vote reversal you can flag one of the posts for moderator attention and we can look into it (or realistically, ask the SE team to look into it).
 
@DavidZ it’s not the end of the world in a meaningful way...I’m actually mostly curious.
 
That's a good attitude to have :-) but it definitely does look suspicious when that kind of voting happens.
 
7:22 AM
or maybe I should say... it’s not a disaster on the scale of cancelling a new super collider... but I won’t go there.
 
@ZeroTheHero it has happened to me as well. I would guess most active users of the site have experienced it at some time. I must admit I find it really annoying :-)
 
There must be 100000s of downvotes to correlate...
@JohnRennie I am in good company then.
 
Anonymous
7:57 AM
452
A: What is serial voting and how does it affect me?

animusonWhat is voting fraud? Voting fraud is the systematic voting against correct voting rationales. Fraud most often happens with a single user continually voting (up or down) on many of your posts within a short period of time. This is not considered normal behavior and the system will not allow it....

 
Anonymous
Mods can see vote statistics for individual users. If they can find any targeted voting pattern, the community managers can nullify those votes. The system itself can detect and reverse serial voting if it occured within a short span of time.
 
Anonymous
But well, like any other fraud-detection system, this has some loopholes too. Someone sufficiently smart can find and misuse those (but you need not worry as the rage-downvoters aren't usually too smart). :P
 
8:34 AM
@JakeRose there is zero chance of you changing from NatSci to part III maths unless you're an Ed Witten scale genius. But there are QFT options in the physics bits of NatSci.
 
Geant4 question on the site
That takes me back
 
Anonymous
@enumaris Whoa, I missed the Pokemon talk. Bad timing.
 
9:07 AM
Holy shit Bronnikov did a new wormhole paper
He's been at it for like 40 years
also neat
"Note that any metric in $1+1$ dimensions allow a coordinate change such that it acquires the form $$ds^2 = \Omega^2 (-dt² + dx^2)$$"
Only for a given topology >:|
although I guess locally it is always true
 
9:23 AM
@Slereah I attended a talk on Quantum Traversable Wormholes by Ping Gao recently, in which he claims to have a recipe for creating one in your kitchen. I don't remember who responded with "I don't have phantom scalar fields in my kitchen" here to that
 
@GodotMisogi It was me
 
Ah. The talk before that was about two black holes with a shared singularity observed by an observer outside the universe. The audience was having trouble understanding the speaker, so Finn Larsen clarified by saying "there's two blacks, but one hole", and Ping Gao kept repeating "I will show you how to create two blacks and one hole in your kitchen" in his talk as a result
 
heh
although black hole wormholes are fairly boring
The distant regions are spacelike separated
snore
 
9:52 AM
That paper is suspiscious
He's doing the Dirac equation on $1+1$ dimensional Godel and Alcubierre metrics
showing that they're diffeomorphic to Minkowski space
and seeing nothing wrong with that
He's just doing Minkowski space in weird coordinates!
 
10:53 AM
"In GR there are phantom-free wormhole models with axial symmetry, such as the Zipoy [17] and superextremal Kerr vacuum solutions as well as solutions with scalar and electromagnetic fields [18, 19]; in all of them, however, a disk that plays the role of a throat is bounded by a ring singularity whose existence is a kind of unpleasant price paid for the absence of exotic matter."
There's so many bloody wormhole solutions
"Regular phantom-free wormholes in GR were found in [20, 21], sourced by a nonlinear sigma model, but they are asymptotically NUT-AdS instead of the desired flatness"
 
@Slereah Your total rep is over 9k thousand
 
WHAT NINE THOUSANDS!
 
God I'm laughing hard now, shows I'm tired as hell
 
 
1 hour later…
12:25 PM
What an incredible thing, in $\hat{V} = e \int \hat{j} \hat{A} d^3 x = e \int \hat{\overline{\Psi}} \gamma \cdot \hat{A} \hat{\Psi} d^3 x$ if you use stationary states instead of free wave functions we can consider first order qed processes, which are forbidden in free qed scattering by conservation of 4-momentum, such as emission and absorption
 
12:37 PM
I'm relearning Calculus and I was wondering where in Physics can derivatives be applied? I suppose anywhere that something is changing?
 
@NovaliumCompany Newton's laws involve second derivatives (acceleration), velocity is the first derivative of position, finding the position given Newton's second law, an equation involving acceleration, involves integration
 
Yep, I know these, but anywhere else?
$I = C\frac{dV}{dt}$
 
Maxwell's equations are defined in terms of derivatives
 
In this equation why would we want to know how fast the voltage is changing?
(the rate of change of voltage)
 
Current is flow of charge, i.e. moving charge, i.e. involves derivatives
 
12:40 PM
I'm talking about the dV/dt part. Why would we want the rate of change of voltage at time t at all?
I know we need voltage change for current change but... I can't make the relation.
Is there any relation or I can just memorize the formula?
 
The current flowing onto a capacitor is the rate of change of voltage on the capacitor damped by the capacitance of the capacitor, $I = C dV/dt$
 
$I(t) = C\frac{dV}{dt}$ where $V(t) = t^2$. So at t = 3s, $I = 6C$?
 
You would derive this in a first year college calculus-based physics course or AP physics course
 
Is $I = 6C$ correct given these ^ parameters?
 
Yeah
 
12:43 PM
omg I'm smart xD
I'm still 16, I live in Bulgaria and we don't learn calculus.
Plus I prefer to learn on my own.
 
That's no excuse not to teach yourself :p
 
^ :D
@bolbteppa exactly
I'm so glad to have this hbar chat room around, people here are really helpful.
2
 
youtube has AP physics courses you could teach yourself with, don't need a ton of calculus you can pick it up as you go along
 
Yep. I just saw Einstein write second derivatives and I was like "Wooow, I must learn this!"
 
12:46 PM
@bolbteppa Are you a student?
 
Go through 'AP Physics C: Mechanics' and 'AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism', the recent playlists on there
Maybe
 
Welp, privacy is privacy no problems :)
 
@bolbteppa xD
 
The best of course is
 
1:00 PM
That paper uses $x$ for a radial coordinate
I am outraged
 
$x$ could mean $x = (t,\mathbf{x})$ :o
 
1:25 PM
@Blue Could you please tell me what is the difference between traversing a list and displaying it? They both appear to be the same thing to me because ultimately in displaying also we just show the full list like in Traversal.
 
Good morning/afternoon/evening for everyone!

Do exist in literature a Penrose Diagram for a non spherical symmetric gravitational collapse?

Thanks
 
Anonymous
@Abcd Displaying a list means printing the elements of the list. If you're just traversing (accessing the elements of) a list, you don't necessarily need to print it.
 
@Blue OK. My book was printing so I thought its the same.
 
2:10 PM
@JohnRennie even if I do only theoretical physics options?
 
Anonymous
@Abcd Are you using SL Arora's text?
 
@M.N.Raia Gonna be hard
If it's not spherically symmetric you can't necessarily suppress radial degrees of freedom
though of course I guess they technically don't need to be 2D
it just helps if they are
 
@vzn as much as I love physics for physics sake, when considering large scale projects such as these it shouldn’t be from a physicist POV that we make the decision. We must remember that this is a lot of money and that there is other things this could be spent on (humanitarian issues, housing crises etc). Another point of view that I subscribe too is that we have reached a point in particle physics were the experiments have become large and costly
with perhaps not the reward the public would want. (Yes, the public whose money we are spending is an important factor). Furthermore, there is many under developed fields at the ‘table top’ stage where the research is cheap and the rewards plentiful. Perhaps, holding off on the LHC and investing this into those projects will give more benefits. Maybe in 20/30 years there will be better technology for the same cost allowing for better results from the LHC, which would more justify the cost.
 
@Blue no Sumita Arora
 
Anonymous
@Abcd Oops, SL Arora is the physics textbook. Right, Sumita Arora. :P
 
Anonymous
2:19 PM
That's pretty much the best school-level book you'll get for Java though. :)
 
Anonymous
We used another popular book too. I forgot the name now. And there was also this nice website.
 
@Blue ikr
 
I'm not 100% sure that money not going to the LHC is money going to help the poor
plus such projects have other benefits than pure research
 
2:39 PM
@JakeRose Part III maths is super scary. Most students who do a maths degree won't go on to do part III maths. A physics degree, even with all theoretical options, won't prepare you for part III maths. By all means try, but don't be surprised if it doesn't work out.
 
I did the whole "year of math after physics degree" thing
It was indeed a trap
 
@JohnRennie I’m taking both TP options next year, and they do offer it as s conversion I just need external permission
 
user351417
@Blue One of the main reasons why I didn't take computers in 11th/12th was that I'd have been forced to learn Java. I had no intentions of investing the time in learning a new language's syntax and style conventions. I'm not regretting that decision at all :P
 
guessing I’d need s high first for it to be allowed
@Slereah oh no I don’t think the option is as clear as poor vs LHC. But the argument stands that perhaps the money could be better spent on such things as that as opposed to high energy particle physics
 
Anonymous
@Chair Learning Java is helpful for understanding the OOP paradigm in general. You won't get that from learning C or Python.
 
user351417
2:48 PM
Python's OOP, isn't it?
 
@Slereahand yes I agree with that too, the LHC has inspired countless students into pursuing physicists, and it runs lots of programs, among other none research benefits. I just don’t fully consider the price worth it snymore
 
Anonymous
It's not a pure OOP language. Just having some OOP features doesn't make it OOP!
 
Anonymous
> Python features a dynamic type system and automatic memory management. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including object-oriented, imperative, functional and procedural, and has a large and comprehensive standard library.
 
Please don’t get me wrong, I love the LHC, I have friends who are working their now, or doing their PHDs jointly with researchers there.
 
user351417
@Blue But why would it be useful to get a proper grasp of OOP techniques?
 
2:50 PM
Im just not sure it’s completely worth the price anymore.
 
Anonymous
@Chair If you don't intend to go to the software industry, then yes, it's not gonna be much useful. :P
 
Anonymous
Physicists can spend their whole lives knowing just one programming language.
 
user351417
@Blue Huh, funnily enough, I wanted to do comp engineering at the time
 
user351417
I think there's a general consensus that IB comp is a sissy subject which you take when you don't want to work, so there are lot of people in my batch who liked programming even before 11th but still didn't take comp.
 
Anonymous
Some parts of computer engineering are nice (like computer architecture and memory management). But computer science and physics are better, of course. ;)
 
user351417
2:53 PM
Apparently they call the IB course 'computer science' but it's actually just networks and programming syntax, with a touch of sorting algorithms
 
Anonymous
Hah. It's a shame when they call programming: computer science. :P
 
Anonymous
The juicy parts of computer science are complexity theory and discrete mathematics.
 
user351417
It's surprising that all males in my batch are applying for comp science but most of them want to do the engineering stuff.
 
Anonymous
97
Q: (Why) Should I learn a new programming language?

PhDI'm quite proficient with Java, C/C++, JavaScript/jQuery and decently good at Objective-C. I'm quite productive with the languages and their corresponding frameworks too and do produce enterprise level systems (and also small scale ones) with sufficient ease all the while keeping code 'clean' and...

 
Anonymous
Interesting read. ^
 
3:05 PM
@bolbteppa "I could go working for some investment company, or a bank" hits hard man
 
3:19 PM
@user2723984 Jackson will do that :p
 
4:12 PM
Can we apply derivatives anywhere? For example in $A = \pi r^2$, if the radius was changing with respect to time, how about $A(t) = \pi(\frac{dr}{dt})^2$?
Does this make any sense lol? :D
 
user351417
@NovaliumCompany That implies $A(t)=\pi [r(t)]^2=\pi \frac{\mathrm{d}r}{\mathrm{d}t}$.
 
user351417
Probably not what you want
 
I have no idea what I want, I just want to put derivatives in random formulas and see what comes out.
 
user301074
:v
 
user301074
$int_{0_A} dA(t) = int_{0_t} \frac{dA}{dt} dt $
 
user301074
4:18 PM
just calculate the $\frac{dA}{dt}$ rate
 
user301074
lel
 
^ I have no idea what's goingon
 
user351417
Mathjax for integration is \int^{upper limit}_{lower limit}f(x)\mathrm{d}x
 
Why $\pi [r(t)]^2=\pi \frac{\mathrm{d}r}{\mathrm{d}t}$
Why $[r(t)]^2 = \frac{\mathrm{d}r}{\mathrm{d}t}$
 
user301074
oh ****
 
user351417
4:22 PM
@NovaliumCompany Exactly. It isn't.
 
oh:D
Any chance I can insert a derivative in the formula so it looks complicated?
(but I want to understand it, not too complicated pliz :D)
 
user351417
Just make all your variables greek letters.
 
@user2723984 I know some people from my grad school days who work in the financial industry. They are not doing bad at all, and in fact their work is quite interesting: basically solving something like the Schrodinger equation with random delta-potential inputs.
 
$v = v0 + at$ and $\frac{ds}{dt} = v0 + \frac{dv}{dt}t$ - Does this make any sense? I think I'm just writing the same thing?
 
Anonymous
4:25 PM
@ZeroTheHero Finance does have some really cool math these days (and a lot of it is inspired from physics...from what I've heard)!
 
@Blue it is quite fascinating, and you're playing with live ammo there.
 
user351417
@Blue while doing research for some college essays, I came across this cool concept of a lot of finance companies wanting physics majors for computation stuff.
 
@Chair Usually, typographic guidelines prefer f(x)\,\mathrm{d}x
 
user351417
Apparently internships with banks and stuff are a big deal and colleges advertise such opportunities for physics majors
 
user351417
@Loong gaah, I keep forgetting that space until I write it and it looks insufferable :P
 
4:26 PM
As with anything it's really the work environment that makes it fun or not.
 
$v = v0 + at$$\frac{ds}{dt} = v0 + \frac{dv}{dt}t$ Does this make any sense?
 
user301074
yep
 
user301074
i guess
 
nvm it doesn't
I typed it wrong
just ignore me sorry
 
@ZeroTheHero I wasn't implying that working in finance or anything isn't interesting, there's certainly more jobs prospect though
or at least that's what they tell me
 
Anonymous
4:33 PM
@Chair Indeed. That reminds me of this article.
 
Anonymous
BTW, SE has a quantitative finance site. It has some interesting Q&As.
 
Anonymous
 
R.N. Mantegna, H.E. Stanley, An Introduction to Econophysics: Correlations and
Complexity in Finance (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999)
or more recently Nature Physics Focus Issue: Complex networks in finance March, Nature
Physics 9, 119 (2013).
telling that it's a special issue of Nature Physics.
@user2723984 That video on learning Jackson is funny, although the backdrop (this is from the movie Der Untergang (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall_(2004_film)) is very serious.
 
Anonymous
Unrelated: I got an answer from Watrous himself. Today's my lucky day! :)
 
@JohnRennie you around?
 
4:46 PM
heyy guys
 
vzn
@JakeRose think you have valid/ worthwhile points and anticipated them some. however its notable that its not really much different than Hossenfelders argument. BT and other shrill hossenfelder critics are trying to shoehorn/ "extremist tar" all FCC-questioning or skeptic povs into "anti science" and think its just not respectable or... scientific...! :(
 
soo what do you think are the chances of humanity visiting other stars in our lifetime?
 
your lifetime or my lifetime?
 
In quantum we’re doing wavefunctions and such. By taking the FT of an wave packet $\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} g(k)\exp^{i(kx)}$ we get by couriers theorem a function g(k). But why does this function give the probability density of finding a momentum in some region?
 
well, the next 100 years..
or 80
 
4:50 PM
if over the next 100 years you're young and very optimistics... ;) but...
 
@vzn I do see both sides. I really dislike the anti science side of it. People who haven’t done undergraduate don’t understand the effort in making a ‘guess’. And that our predictions are based on quite solid information. I completely agree it’s not respectable, and thus why I have tried to stay away from those arguments myself. I hold the opinion we should present ourselves to the public as truthfully as possible and let them make a well informed statement on the projects continued worth.
I should mention that I probably want to to go into particle physics when I’m older, I’m not trying to shoe horn money into my research area so I can collect it
 
@vzn I have only read headlines on the CERN proposal for the new collider, but it just seems like they want to dig a bigger hole and use stronger magnets. To me, this is like going from a 2-horse cart to 6-horse cart: totally incremental. I would be a lot more supportive if the funds were spent on developing and scaling up some promising accelerator technology: keeping with the horse-and-cart analogy basically getting out of the horse business and into the combustion engine business.
 
Anonymous
@JakeRose The general public doesn't have sufficient knowledge to judge the worth of scientific projects...
 
yeah
yeah...thats pretty much my dream/goal
 
user351417
I suddenly remembered the guy who argued against the LHC by saying that there was a 'fifty-fifty chance' of it destroying the world, because either it does, or it doesn't.
 
4:53 PM
@Blue lol yep...missed the pokemon discussion...shows you that you have to be here all the time
 
and sometimes i get kinda demotivated by the sheer (almost impossibility) of the task
 
Anonymous
If you left it to the public, CERN would have never happened. And NASA would have gone broke long ago.
 
@Blue so you appoint people who can assess this information
 
Anonymous
@JakeRose Well, isn't that what they do these days?
 
I’m living in a perfect world were people don’t lie and appoint professionals who are well trained enough
 
4:54 PM
@Blue Whatever we think, CERN and NASA have immense societal values as aspirational projects.
@Blue nothing more self-serving than a grant committee.
 
anyone?
 
@Blue I disagree on NASA. NASA regularly gives out an incredible volume of information and technology.
I don’t think they’re in the same league, considering NASA is so much broader an organisation
 
Anonymous
@ZeroTheHero That's true. But then you have people saying: "there are millions who're starving and you're instead spending millions on space exploration!"
 
@Blue and that should be considered itself. The rewards and cost weighed up.
@Blue I don’t think a comparison to NASA is valid.
 
u guys know this equation $\nu=v/\lambda$?
 
Anonymous
4:57 PM
@ZeroTheHero That's unfortunately...true, yes.
 
we should weight CERN purely on itself and not based on what we give other organisations in quite separate countries and quite separate circumstances
 
Anonymous
@JakeRose I think we both agree that the funding should be regulated by people who have knowledge to judge the worth of the project and not the general layman?
 
@Blue the same could be said of spending public monies on arts, subsidizing your local symphony etc.
 
actually this is a different topic that im asking about, i will ask tomorrow lol
 
5:00 PM
@Blue completely
i think you need some in between person who knows a little of both so he can ‘translate’ too
 
@JakeRose If you've ever had to deal with any European Commission Grant you would have a different opinion.
 
Anonymous
@ZeroTheHero Hah, interesting anecdote!
 
@Blue there are some things for which the real value is not economic. "Big science" is one of those. 'not saying I'm against big science, just wondering if you cannot do big science in a way different from what CERN is proposing.
 
Anonymous
@ZeroTheHero Right. I see your point.
 
@JakeRose like Sabine Hossenfelder perhaps? ;)
 
5:09 PM
@ZeroTheHero who’s that?
@ZeroTheHero agree with your point btw
 
author of the BackReaction blogpost...
that "started" this whole discussion.
 
@ZeroTheHero sorry I didn’t pay much attention to her name :’)
 
no big deal.
in this business, everybody has an agenda. Quoting from a reply by Hossenfelder to a comment of her original post: "Look, we are currently paying for a lot of particle physicists. If we got rid of 90% of those we'd still have more than enough to pass on knowledge to the next generation." Advocating that one let go of 90% of people in a field...
 
vzn
@JakeRose there are many anti science zealots in the world but havent seen any attracted to killing the FCC so far. hossenfelder is definitely a scientist, her critics notwithstanding... labelling "big science" critics "anti science" almost reminds me of abortion debate terminology where pro choice might be labelled "anti life" by pro life contingent... o_O
 
@vzn I’m not saying being opposed to big science makes you anti science
 
vzn
5:15 PM
@ZeroTheHero if you check out hossenfelders new book, its even more thorough on the big picture in which there are a lot of expensive projects with questionable returns. its all about "price performance ratio" and anyone in any field can understand that... its also about balancing scientific priorities/ large budgets etc...
 
@vzn I’m a little confused about what you mean
got to run to a shop but I’ll pick this up tomorrow!
 
vzn
@JakeRose right. understand that. therefore suggest being careful throwing around the words "anti science" even in attempting to avoid it...
 
@JakeRose hi, yes, sorry I was briefly distracted.
 
5:57 PM
how to change my user name , im using stack exchange app in my phone
 
6:16 PM
@kartikc.p Use the full site on mobile
Why haven't they been able to reverse engineering coke or KFC's 11 herbs and spices
What are the scientists doing ?
 
@vzn see journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/… Quoting from the abstract: "Impact was generally a decelerating function of funding. Impact per dollar was therefore lower for large grant-holders. This is inconsistent with the hypothesis that larger grants lead to larger discoveries."
 
@ZeroTheHero exactly what Big Science wants you to think
It's just based in Canada, not global
 
@bolbteppa yes the study is limited to Canada but I don't think it's an unrepresentative sample.
I doubt the US or European systems are so different as to have vastly different outcomes.
By and large, my own anecdotal experiences suggest that expecting things to scale is a fundamentally flawed assumption.
i.e. if you give someone 10x the $$, this person can probably take some risks that she/he could not take with smaller a smaller grant.
On the other hand it's also my experience that people with larger grants tend to spend their funds less wisely.
 
6:33 PM
@AvnishKabaj send me the link
 
@bolbteppa I remember going to a conference in China... I was absolutely gobsmacked to see that this guy from France basically bought his ticket 48hr pre-departure. He must have paid 5x what I paid.
@bolbteppa This is one of those debates where additional information that goes against your convictions is underplayed, and information in support of your position is overplayed. Not sure we can solve it here.
 
@ZeroTheHero if the ticket is expensed, maybe he doesn't care...
 
@enumaris precisely. expensed to his grant.
 
there ya go :D
 
so he doesn't care that much...
it's still an example of wasted fund.
@enumaris I mean: the guy must have had access to a reasonably-sized grant to pay that much.
 
6:40 PM
use it or lose it
 
@ZeroTheHero you ought to know how such an example most likely demonstrates your biases rather than the person doing the example you give, there's so many potential answers to what happened, and even in the worst case scenario it's not a waste that's what grants are there for
 
@bolbteppa no and yes. If you or your group holds a grant you still have a moral obligation to manage it wisely.
 
Hi everyone
 
@bolbteppa I accept that in some cases this kind of expense is necessary. I've seen it when, because one has to wait for a visa or because of some last minute thing, there is no other option but to spend the $$.
 
Well, if we're going to bring morality into it, maybe the person should have gotten a week long cheaper train + boat combo etc... to the conference to be as respectful to their grant as my tastes dictate :p, this is a bit ridiculous
and of course we're just guessing the person didn't get a bargain seat and instead got the most expensive one
 
6:46 PM
@bolbteppa That's not what I suggesting. There is a convenience factor here that should not be forgotten. I'm not suggesting you take longer to reach your destination.
@bolbteppa I am not guessing: I asked him.
@bolbteppa anyways.
 
I mean really, that's what the grants are there for, its kind of astounding to (morally) judge someone as wasting their grant for buying a flight to a conference because they decided to buy it close to the flight date as though this is an example of wasting grant money when it's literally what the money is there for haha
 
@bolbteppa I'm not sure I agree with the last part of your statement.
 
So if it's not there for this stuff then the person literally misused it, that's a separate ballgame
 
@bolbteppa we're drifting from the core subject. all i wanted to point out is that there is some research (limited in scope) to suggest that big projects don't correlated with big results.
 
well this whole issue falls on a grey scale lol. If one demands one always tries to find the "cheapest options of similar convenience", it would be entirely too difficult to enforce. So it's really just up to the individual in this case. Maybe to him, buying flights 48 hours beforehand is a normal practice. And his convenience is he doesn't have to search around everywhere for a cheaper ticket.
 
6:51 PM
I'm not sure big projects should be expected to deliver big results...
 
Right, well that's an inherent aspect of science
I agree
 
The problem with the phrase "big results" is that it assumes a universally agreed-upon metric to measure the size of results :P
 
One huge issue with the anti-science articles that led to this discussion is this insane presumption that things like extra dimensions or the Higgs were expected as certainties, and the lack of some results being proof everybody is playing games and all this stuff about not being forthcoming about their results etc
 
"Big results" = SR, GR and QM?
 
@ACuriousMind yes that's problematic. If you ask some people, the "biggest" result of the last 50 or so years was John Bell's paper, which costed next to nothing but (coincidentally) was apparently while Bell was visiting CERN
plus it took quite a while to recognize the lasting significance of this work.
I'm not sure that cost effectiveness is the right metric.
there's a point to be made that if you don't try you don't get.
 
6:57 PM
@bolbteppa Could you consider to not mark beliefs you disagree with with hostile epithets like "insane" or "ridiculous"? People can be wrong, that's not sufficient reason to insult them.
 
@ACuriousMind Fair enough, not meant as an insult in any sense
 
would redonkulus be better?
 
Mayhaps but lets keep it clean :p
 
vzn
@ZeroTheHero a remarkable "meta study" thx for sharing!
@bolbteppa that is an inaccurate summary, its the opposite. the study questions/ undermines Big Science using quantifiable statistics. ie its scientific
> We suggest that funding strategies that target diversity, rather than “excellence”, are likely to prove to be more productive.
 
@vzn again... not sure that we necessary want impact to scale with budget but that's a different question.
 
vzn
7:11 PM
my feeling is particle colliders/ acclerators fueled a lot of 20th century physics during a golden age and will be around for ages but maybe mass scale no longer leads to anomalies and the future is to work "smarter not harder". would like to see more emphasis on computational physics/ simulation. there is already sizeable trend in the direction...
 
@vzn that's the "inside" argument. Physics wouldn't attract all the talent it does if not for hep and other "high profile" areas. Just look at your local bookstore: how many book on the physics of surfaces or metamaterials do you see?
What we see is that most physicists end up studying in a field of physics that is quite different from what got them to physics in the first place. One may actually discover that imaging molecules or atoms using ultra-short pulses of light is quite cool...
but it's not necessarily things they would have thought of a cool before.
 
vzn
@ZeroTheHero big science seems to be similar to capitalistic "all or nothing/ winner take all" tendencies. as for attracting physics talent, yes there is a lot there but looking around in this chat room, as possibly roughly representative, a lot of experts have left the field, apparently due to lack of positions...
 
@vzn unfortunately yes.
@vzn there is this strange book by Lee Smolin: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Physics
 
vzn
@ZeroTheHero you mention bell, this is a neat new book on the subj, also covers the big picture of physics funding trends over decades, found it all fascinating.
@ZeroTheHero lol, "strange"? think its brilliant :) hossenfelders is quite similar. see also woit.
 
which discusses some of the sociological aspect of hep. I did not find the science contents of this books to be very good however.
 
7:27 PM
Debate from around the time of those books
Apparently there's audio of the debate
'A couple days earlier though, a debate in London between Smolin and Mike Duff (also involving philospher Nancy Cartwright) had a very different nature.'
'Smolin sat down. Duff stood up. It got nasty.

The trouble with physics, Duff began, is with people like Smolin…'
 
vzn
note woit + smolin books are now over 1 decade old and seem to presage some of the recent LHC troubles.
 
Just so that you know: Smolin is quite controversial and has made a lot of ennemies. He came out in support of Garret Lisi's work en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
 
vzn
@ZeroTheHero lol wolfram + 't hooft are "controversial" too :P
 
I remember being asked at point blank range by good friend if Smolin was some sort of sleeper agent for some anti-science US sect.
I'm not surprised to hear some can loose their cool with Smolin.
 
Anonymous
7:36 PM
Nov 12 '18 at 18:27, by rob
"Commander! The enemy is upon us!" "It's time, men! LOOSE THE BELLY FAT!"
 
Anonymous
@ZeroTheHero "loose" :)
 
too late to correct the typo...
 
Anonymous
Just joking. Don't mind. ;)
 
My skin is thick... ;)
 
Anonymous
This is one spelling error I remember getting beaten for, by my English teacher. :P
 
7:39 PM
@Blue I think I just got one past you there...
 
vzn
smolin seems largely harmless to me, hes really almost indistinguishable from an "insider," only shows how some (other) scientists are very straightlaced and can overreact. oh look at this, coauthored 2 papers with hossenfelder :o perimeterinstitute.ca/people/lee-smolin
 
He did some work on doubly special relativity but it got no traction.
 
vzn
Dec 7 '18 at 15:47, by John Rennie
99% of all theoretical papers are wrong. It's always been that way. Getting it wrong is part of the job for theoreticians.
 
unfortunately for him, he has firebrand status so whatever he states will be not only dismissed but it's likely many people will take the exact opposite point of view.
 
vzn
re that new yorker question and hows that working out for you? ... it seems to have mostly worked out for him.
 
7:45 PM
I really need to get back to work...
(regrettably)
 
Anonymous
See you around!
 
Anonymous
And I need to go to sleep now...
 
7:56 PM
 
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