HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Facts and Values
Date: 27 Aug 92 18:08:51 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

Dale Bass writes:
     Actually the measurement of head sizes may be currently being
     surpressed because of an overriding concern that unpalatable
     results may be found.  There has been discussion of such in
     recent Nature letters and articles (see the rather interesting
     attitude of John Mattox, Nature's editor in 358:187 (1992),
     in which he states that 'unpalatable' results should have
     to pass more stringent tests.  Responses are 358:532 (1992)).

     Though I hasten to add that the interpretation of such results
     is certainly questionable, I find it interesting that Mattox would
     assert a higher standard for 'unpalatable' results than for
     ridiculous results (c.f. the Benveniste affair).

Of course, it all depends on what you mean by unpalatable, right?
I take your point, but there has been such a long history of
eminent scientists lending legitimacy to racist theories and
eugenics, that one must be triply careful.  The measurement of
head sizes is of course one of the most highly charged of these
so-called "experiments," given its long history and association with
the great [not for this] anatomist Broca (ref S.J. Gould's _The
Mismeasure of Man_.)  U.S. Army data have a long history in this
business, too ... makes you wonder, why do people always use Army
data?

Here's a more rational argument.  If some astronomer thinks he's
discovered a planet around a pulsar, or some experimenters think they
have a massive neutrino, and they publish but later have to retract
due to systematic error, no harm is done to anyone or anything except
maybe some egos.

On the other hand, if a scientist publishes a paper that describes,
say, racial or sexual variation in intelligence, in a respectable 
journal, and then it turns out, for whatever reason, that their
conclusions are not supported, that paper is still out there in a
hundred thousand libraries _even if its own author retracts_.
Zealots and cynics can exploit the paper, and implicitly rely on the
good name of the journal, without mentioning the retraction - and
anyone who goes to look it up won't see the retraction, either, 
unless they go to the index.  A lie can circle the globe before the
truth takes a single step.
From: phfrom@nyx.uni-konstanz.de (Hartmut Frommert)
Subject: Re: fermion in curved space (In e)
Keywords: fermion
Organization: Dept. of Physics, University of Constance
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 13:11:33 GMT

In article <phfrom.260@nyx.uni-konstanz.de> I wrote:

[ stuff on fermions in curved spacetime ] 

and forgot to mention that the indices are taken as follows:
     i,j,...  tetrad      \
     \mu,...  coordinate  - --  indices
(but maybe it was clear from my posting)

Sorry.
--
 Hartmut Frommert, Physics, Univ of Constance, | + Whale killing is murder. +
 P.O.Box 55 60, D-W-7750 Konstanz, Germany | + Eat whale killers, not whales.
 E-Mail: <phfrom@dknkurz1.bitnet> or <phfrom@nyx.uni-konstanz.de>
+    "Windows NoT" expands in German to "Windows Noch Teurer"
+                                                ^even   ^more expensive
From: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: E=mc2?
Date: 4 Sep 92 13:25:39 GMT
Reply-To: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University

In article <185lq3INN4oc@smaug.West.Sun.COM> Richard.Mathews@West.Sun.COM (Richard M. Mathews) writes:
>raicu@netcom.com (Eugen Raicu) writes:
>
>>I don't see any fundamental differences between nuclei and bed springs.
>>Correct me if I am wrong about this.
>
>I see a difference.  In bed springs, all of the constituent parts are
>the same.  Only binding energy changes.  In nuclear reactions, it is
>in general the case that the numbers of up and down quarks change.

For the nuclear reactions under discussion in the original thread, fission 
and fusion, the number of up and down quarks (or protons and neutrons) 
does not change.  There is a delayed component that is a result of the 
weak interaction (beta decay), which does change the quark content, but 
contribution to total energy release is quite tiny and the time delays 
can be quite long (years or centuries). 

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)
From: nadar@ece.arizona.edu (Mariappan S. Nadar)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Multigrid methods
Date: 31 Aug 92 20:51:29 GMT
Reply-To: nadar@ece.arizona.edu (Mariappan S. Nadar)
Distribution: world,local
Organization: University of Arizona Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Hi:

	Could someone please send me references to recent work
on Multigrid Monte Carlo algorithms in statistical physics (Ising model,
XY model, Phi^4 model etc.)

				Thanks in advance

							Mariappan.
From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank)
Subject: Re: The dangers in microwaved food...
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 15:42:19 GMT

In article <20821@nntp_server.ems.cdc.com> mstemper@ems.cdc.com writes:
>In article <1992Aug20.200552.12599@elroy.jpl.nasa.gov>, david@euclid.JPL.NASA.GOV (David Bernath) writes:
>|> >>In article <1992Aug20.015531.7842@nuscc.nus.sg> matmcinn@nuscc.nus.sg (Mcinnes B T (Dr)) writes:
>|> >>there are serious health risks in eating.
>|> >There are serious health risks.
>|> Health is a serious risk.
>Risk is healthy.
Eating Risk(tm) is seriously unhealthy.
-- 
             ......................................................
             ted frank | thf2@midway.uchicago.edu | std disclaimers
             the university of chicago law skool, chicago, illinois
             it's log!  log!  log!  it's big, it's heavy, it's wood
Newsgroups: sci.physics,alt.sex
From: joel@moho.sdsu.edu (Joel Wedberg)
Subject: Re: Subject?
Organization: San Diego State University, College of Sciences
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 00:59:55 GMT





     <Lots of free fall argument deleted>

     Anyway, the acceleration of gravity (the 9.8 m/s^2 being bandied 
about) changes with distance from the center of mass (eg the center
of the Earth).

     - Joel

Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: gsh7w@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Hennessy)
Subject: Re: Facts and Values (was Where it came from)
Organization: University of Virginia
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 20:02:38 GMT

In article <25732@dog.ee.lbl.gov> sichase@csa3.lbl.gov writes:
#(3) 1 year = 10^7 seconds

I always use 1 year = pi * 10^7 seconds myself.


--
-Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia
 USPS Mail:     Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA
 Internet:      gsh7w@virginia.edu  
 UUCP:		...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w
From: gross@maxwell.ucsc.edu (Mike Gross)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: E=mc2?
Date: 31 Aug 92 05:23:34 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: maxwell.ucsc.edu

In <1992Aug31.041026.17766@nuscc.nus.sg> matmcinn@nuscc.nus.sg (Mcinnes B T (Dr)) writes:

>sajid@jam.wpd.sgi.com (Sajid Zia) writes:
>: Can somebody write to me how Einstein arrived at this
>: equation, I am extremely curious. Thanks,
>: 
>I am also very curious about the origin of the notion that nuclear
>weapons are in some special way related to E=mc^2. Even today there are
>textbooks which seem to imply that these devices operate by converting
>matter into energy. I find it hard to see how such a misunderstanding
>could have arisen.

> : Sajid

But nuclear weapons _do_ turn matter into energy. For a fusion bomb, the key
point is that a deuterium and a tritium nucleus weigh less than a helium 
nucleus and a neutron. A gamma ray is also among the fusion products. Thus,
you have matter + ~10 MeV -> less matter + a lot more energy (grossly
simplified, of course). This _is_ a conversion from matter to energy. 

Mike Gross
Physics Board
Univ of California                GO SLUGS!!!!!
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
gross@maxwell.ucsc.edu
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: trh42502@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Dream Weaver)
Subject: Re: FTL Microwave Signal
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 03:58:43 GMT

It was my understanding from reading several laymans articles (like the 
one in a recent Scientific America) that the signal was instantaneous
and therefore was labeled faster than light. And that this instantaneous
connection was outside the normal relativistic bounds, ie no reverse
time travel, etc.
So in short am I just confused over the issue, am I on a different topic
or what?
-- 
______________________________________________________________________________
Thomas R. Hilquist
Internet:trh42502@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
Disclamer: My evil twin posted this, someone stole my login, my computer went AI
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.astro
From: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark)
Subject: Re: Fossil Paradox (was: Structure of Time)
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 17:49:09 GMT

In article <1992Aug17.105608.421@ecc.tased.edu.au> ecc_jim@ecc.tased.edu.au writes:
>All this stuff about going back in time and changing things so that our future
>will be different might work, but I think people underestimate the true effects
>it would have.
>
>In chaos theory the "butterfly effect" is mentioned. Well if I went back in
>time, stood there for a few minutes and then came forward I think that would
>have a HUGE impact on our world. Consider the fertilisation process. The things
>that decide which sperm gets to the egg. The slightest change in that and
>you're going to have a whole set of different people.

There's no paradox.  If you go back in the past, then everything you will do
has already happened, by definition.  All your actions are therefore
predetermined ... and past.

If you caught someone's eye, nothing changes, because then that is what
actually what DID occur in the past.  Whatever you do, then, that's what
happened.
From: mcfarlan@corona.math.washington.edu (Thomas J. McFarlane)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Report on Philosophies of Physicists
Date: 4 Sep 92 07:56:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Sep4.075606.16500
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Washington, Mathematics, Seattle

In article <2729@news.cerf.net> mitsu@nic.cerf.net (Mitsuharu Hadeishi) writes:

>>>       In sum, the problems are so subtle and so filled
>>>with the potential for misunderstanding that I have long since
>>>given up on trying to explain them in brief...
>	It may well be that you and 50% of the readers of this newsgroup
>would be able to follow my postings without having major misunderstandings,
>but I know from experience that a few people (at least) would take great
>exception to my statements and misunderstand them to be somehow
>undermining the whole underpinnings of Western Civilization (you may
>laugh now, but if I tried it you'd see the flames rising like a forest fire).
>The only way to avoid this is to not start it. 

It is saddening to see that your experience with trying to explain
these things in the past is preventing you from sharing them now.
To have 50% of a newsgroup following seems to be quite a high percentage.
Would you deny profound (but admittedly very subtle) knowledge to a
group of interested people just because a few might take exception to
it and misunderstand? 

Tom McFarlane 
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Subject: Re: The Big Bang and the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM.
Organization: IST, University of Central Florida, Orlando
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 20:26:50 GMT

In article <2964@ucl-cs.uucp> G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Gordon Joly) writes:
>
>
>If the Schro\"dinger's Cat argument is a good thought experiment in
>the school of thought that suggests (that in Quantum Mechanics) "there
>is nothing without QM observation, by which we mean the collapse of
>the wavefunction", then in The First Three Minutes of the Universe
>after the Big Bang, were all the particles (or superstrings or
>spacetime-ons) busy observing each other?
>
>If not, how did the Universe arrive (after the initial singularity) is
>any state at all, let alone its initial state?
>
>____
>
>Gordon Joly      Phone  +44 71 387 7050 ext 3703      FAX  +44 71 387 1397
>Internet: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk        UUCP: ...!{uunet,uknet}!ucl-cs!G.Joly
>Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT

Why limit your musings to the first three minutes?
Clearly the universe was in a supersition of states until
I was born in 1948.
This is the personal anthropic principle.



j
-- 
Thomas Clarke
Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central FL
12424 Research Parkway, Suite 300, Orlando, FL 32826
(407)658-5030, FAX: (407)658-5059, clarke@acme.ucf.edu
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.math,sci.philosophy.tech
From: hporopudas@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi
Subject: Re: About my postings (Calendar (NEW) etc.)
Organization: Nokia Telecommunications.
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 07:56:32 GMT


  I would like to comment ron@mlfarm.com (Ronald Florence)'s message:


        It is a pity. I will miss your comments.

                     Hannu.


  "Thrown to ignorance peoples give themselves to work and employment,
   and by keeping themselves sensible and learned they stagger without goal
   like blinds lead by blinds."

              (Indian wisdom, Kat'ha upanisad)
Xref: sparky sci.physics:13810 sci.misc:1541
From: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.misc
Subject: Re: Impure Mathematics
Date: 30 Aug 92 05:32:23 GMT
Reply-To: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Followup-To: sci.physics
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University

This thread on the travails of (very) old Polly Nomial was most 
interesting.   When I saw it, I expected to see an objection that 
this was 10, 20, 50 years old and basically a waste of bandwidth. 
(I mean, I saw it over 20 years ago, and it seems to originate 
in the post WWII genre of humor the vets brought back with them 
when they went to engineering school -- like the mimeographed copy 
of the operating instructions for a model whatever WAC that my dad 
has.  The kind of thing a group of guys writes up in the Aleutian 
Islands.  Not exactly rec.humor.funny material.) 

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the first objections 
were from two women readers of sci.physics who were offended by it. 
Quite a nice indication of some of the positive changes taking place, 
and I want to support what Suzanne and Beatrice said.  This joke would 
not be so popular if Paul Lynomial had been the victim of homosexual 
rape at the hands of a burly Curly Pi, for example.  Thanks for the 
reminder, since this is more than just political correctness.  We 
need the ideas and skills of a wide range of persons in science, and 
we will not benefit from those ideas and skills if those persons 
are not comfortable in the community.  

What I really liked was the nice twist in the revised ending!  Precisely 
because so many of us have heard the original, a more modern version 
is both funny and effective.  Just omit all those juvenile attacks at 
the end, and propagate the new one instead ... maybe in the FAQ?  We 
can always have a jokes section, since physicists have fun too.  Did 
you see the CEBAF cartoon in the New Yorker a few weeks back?

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)
From: sichase@csa3.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Heat generation - a minimum principle?
Date: 26 Aug 92 19:50:28 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: na
Reply-To: sichase@csa3.lbl.gov
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.198
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4   

In article <BtLLKD.J5A@breeze.rsre.mod.uk>, heading@breeze.rsre.mod.uk (Anthony Heading) writes...
>Feynman, in his Lectures in Physics (II 19-14), says "In a note
>added after the lecture":
> 
>  Among the minimum principles that I could mention, I noticed
>  that most of them sprang in one way or another from the least
>  action principle of mechanics and electrodynamics. But there
>  is a class that does not. As an example, if currents are made
>  to go through a piece of material obeying Ohm's law, the
>  currents distribute themselves inside the piece so that the
>  rate at which heat is generated is as little as possible.
> 
>I've thought about this for a while, and I can't see how to
>derive it or where it comes from. It seems to allow for the
>solution of current distribution problems without explicitly
>having to introduce the idea of a voltage potential field...

This is off the cuff, my having never heard this statement before. But
it makes sense to me:

Generally speaking, when you heat something its resistance goes up.
So if you pass a current through a solid chunk of material, the current
will avoid hot regions produced by the current itself, so distribute itself as
uniformly as possible. Since power is I^2*R, this is the condition under which
the least heat is generated. 

So the current distributes itself to generate the least heat by a self-
correction mechanism which is not related to any action principle.

-Scott
-------------------- 
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver
From: WALID@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Walid Majid)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: quantization of angular momentum
Date: 2 Sep 92 23:48:55 GMT
 <1992Sep1.203830.2793@galois.mit.edu> <25947@dog.ee.lbl.gov>
Distribution: na
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

In article <25947@dog.ee.lbl.gov>, sichase@csa3.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) says:
>
>Am I off base here?  If you have a free scalar particle with wave function
>exp(-iEt+px), how is L quantized?
>

It is not.  A plane wave state is not an eigenstate of L.

Walid
From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Report on Philosophies of Physicists
Date: 31 Aug 92 14:12:33 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: mcfarlan@corona.math.washington.edu (Thomas J. McFarlane)

In article <1992Aug28.211530.12229@u.washington.edu>, mcfarlan@corona (Thomas J. McFarlane) writes:
>They deal equally superficially with both.  To judge philosophy or
>"Eastern Mysticism" by such accounts is just as dangerous as to judge
>physics or "Western Science" by them.

>Anyone distressed by superficial books like Tao and Wu-Li might be a
>bit comforted by Bernard d'Espagnat's _In Search Of Reality_ and some
>of the other genuine philosophical tracts on physics.  

Ken Wilber(?) (ed) QUANTUM QUESTIONS is another good elementary mixture of
philosophy and physics.  The introduction makes the same point regarding
the worthlessness of Capra from *both* sides of the fence.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
From: ken@dakota (Kenny Chaffin)
Subject: Re: Structure of Time (EXPERIMENTAL POSSIBILITIES)
Organization: U S WEST Advanced Technologies
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 19:19:10 GMT

In article <25709@dog.ee.lbl.gov> sichase@csa3.lbl.gov writes:
>>Does Hanna-Maria give investment advice on the American stock market?
>No.  But on the commodities market, she says "Buy October potatoes."

	No, no, no, no, no---can't you guys get it right---Space Potatoes!

KAC


Organization: Physics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 18:56:34 -0400 
From: "Arun K. Gupta" <ag3l+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Report on Philosophies


>From: sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
>Subject: Re: Report on Philosophies of Physicists
>Date: 30 Aug 92 20:09:48 GMT
>
>In article <mcirvin.715196487@husc8>, mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Mcirvin) writes...
>>
>> ... relativity has nothing to do with moral or cultural relativism, and QM
>> has nothing to do with Taoism or transcendental meditation; just as
>> Darwinism has nothing to do with "social Darwinism."
>
>We need to print this statement on our money, or add it to the national
>anthem or something.  If I had a dollar for every time I had a conversation
>with someone who didn't understand this, I could fund the SSC by myself.
>
>-Scott
>

There are not 10 billion people on earth. You must know some pretty-one-track
minds. :-)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu (RING, DAVID WAYNE)
Subject: Re: Why do protons outnumber antiprotons?
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 01:13:00 GMT

sichase@csa3.lbl.gov writes...
>>behind. That hole is a positron. So for every electron there exists
>>a positron.
> 
>This interpretation is about 50 years out of date.  Consider a simple
>process, beta decay:  n -> p + e + nu.  How does your picture account
>for the production of an electron without leaving a positron around somewhere?

For one thing it's an antineutrino, which is just a different component
of the positron-antineutrino SU(2) doublet. So this example is a little
unfair. I think the real problem with the hole theory is that bosons
also have antiparticles, and the 'sea' can't fill up because there's no
exclusion principle.

Dave Ring
dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu
Newsgroups: sci.physics