The h Bar

John Rennie

05:24

So can anyone see the super blood wolf moon?

It's cloudy here in Chester so sadly I am denied the experience.

bolbteppa

05:35

twitter.com/hashtag/SuperBloodWolfMoon?src=tren

It's trending

Can't see it

John Rennie

05:52

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

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

06:19

← coincidentally dinged by at least 2 lunatics today in cyberspace o_O :P

Martin Sleziak

06:31

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?

Making 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...

John Rennie

06:52

They're not all the same size and they're not rigid spheres. Mathematicians!!

Martin Sleziak

07:04

Probably you should say "MathOverflowians" rather than "Mathematicians"...? :-)

John Rennie

@MartinSleziak :-)

Captain Bohemian

07:37

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

08:10

Slereah

are they still making cyclotrons

i thought the wave of the future was linear colliders

bolbteppa

We'll see

GodotMisogi

08:26

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

08:38

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

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

Grad students?

Anonymous

08:43

Lol

GodotMisogi

I take offense to that statement

I'm just a pig

Slereah

oink oink

Capitalist swine

GodotMisogi

You sound like Napoleon from Animal Farm

Slereah

I'm more of a Napoleon Dynamite

Napoleon Dynamite Dance

►

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

08:49

You can certainly dance to it

as seen here

bolbteppa

Praise, Roberto commenting in the comments backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/…

Slereah

09:44

GodotMisogi

12:05

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

@GodotMisogi how can you do that?

I can't reply my own message.

Slereah

@Slereah Let's see if you can

yes you can

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

@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

12:21

@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

@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

@Slereah Where did you first study λ-calculus from? (Been reading your blog, particularly enjoying the Lazy Bird post)

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

esolangs.org/wiki/Lazy_Bird

the original bird

GodotMisogi

Ah, so did you start with Smullyan's book?

Slereah

Well I started with the Principia Mathematica

and learned more stuff from there

GodotMisogi

12:31

...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

Most programming languages can't do lambda calculus correctly

Because there's always some hidden assumption of type

GodotMisogi

I was baffled by λx · xx, but then realised Russell's paradox lies in there : )

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

13:13

In other news:

taiwanenglishnews.com/…

"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

13:29

@GodotMisogi Ewww. Can we please keep the chat free from cringe news? :P

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

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

13:46

@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

@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

What's this chat session that's scheduled for tomorrow? Any specific topic of discussion or just a pre-arranged gathering for everyone?

Slereah

I don't think we've had specific topics in a while

Emilio Pisanty

14:14

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

14:42

@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

@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

@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

14:53

@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

> 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

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

14:59

"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

@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

15:05

@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

> 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

@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

15:20

Hmm, yeah, maybe I will go through it again after a bit.

user351417

See ya!

bolbteppa

15:59

@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

@Chair or on other hand (alternate view!) maybe you have misunderstood nothing about her blog post.

vzn

16:15

@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

@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

@bolbteppa that was not what just wrote, it misrepresents. you understand the concept of a null result right?

bolbteppa

Null results are results

vzn

@bolbteppa lol not really. that sounds nearly orwellian aka doublespeak.

bolbteppa

Not finding susy at LHC energies is a null result which "established new interesting bounds", or is it not?

vzn

16:26

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

@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

lol and how much did it cost? :P literally a tabletop experiment

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

hossenfelder could be wrong, but its also wrong to misrepresent her views

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

16:35

@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

@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

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

@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

@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

@vzn that's great, maybe the Higg's wouldn't have panned out either

vzn

16:45

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

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

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

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

> 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

"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

16:59

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

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

this recent article by Falkowski ("insider") is strikingly similar in tone/ conclusion(s) to Hossenfelders.

17 hours ago, by vzn

Higgs on the Moon/ Adam Falkowski / inference review

bolbteppa

"These approaches seem misguided. Nature does not seem to conform to their predictions." come on man

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

I don't know why all these writers have to pepper their passages with seriously flawed sentences out of nowhere

vzn

17:10

@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

The problem is, people would be very sympathetic to these kinds of arguments if the arguments could be made coherently

vzn

lol they are very rational/ coherent, apparently thats the "problem" for some :o :P

Emilio Pisanty

18:11

@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.

t t t t

19:38

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

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

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

I'm not convinced of the ontological claim that a rainbow is the droplets that cause it :P

2

t t t t

I see what you mean

good point

Emilio Pisanty

20:30

@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

user400188

22:28

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?

dmckee

23:34

@bolbteppa ::chuckles::

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