HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: phfrom@nyx.uni-konstanz.de (Hartmut Frommert)
Subject: Re: How do you draw a straight line?
Organization: Dept. of Physics, University of Constance
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 08:26:41 GMT

barry@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca (Barry G. Adams) writes:

>  I JUST COULDN'T RESIST:

[C prog deleted]

So do I :-)) but in LaTeX:

% vertical line of length 2.25 inch
\rule{1pt}{2.25 in}

% horizontal line lifted -.125 inch, length 7 cm
\rule[.125 in]{7 cm}{1pt}

:-)
 Hartmut Frommert                 <phfrom@nyx.uni-konstanz.de>
 Dept of Physics, Univ of Constance, P.O.Box 55 60, D-W-7750 Konstanz, Germany
                                           -- Eat whale killers, not whales --
From: kambic@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (Bonus, Iniquus, Celer - Delegitus Duo)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Quantum eraser
Date: 9 Oct 92 13:33:07 EST

I have just gone through a book called "Tamingthe atom." by von Baeyer.  In it
he speaks of a "quantum eraser" experiment at Max Planck.  Does anyone have any
information on whether this experiment was done or not?

Thanks

George Kambic
kambic@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com

Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: FEYNMAN 8
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 00:49:36 GMT


Feynman 8
Quick review of Newton's "local" mechanics of "inertia":
Gleick's GENIUS p.29 "Richard asks his father, why when he pulls his red
wagon forward, a ball rolls back. 'That,' he says 'nobody knows. The
general principle is that things that are moving try to keep on moving, and
things that are standing still tend to stand still, unless you push on them
hard.' And he says, 'This tendency is called inertia, but nobody knows why
it's true.' Now that's a deep understanding."

Teleological "nonlocal" physics - La Forza del Destino?
p.59 :"Yet even as the eighteenth-century philosopher scientists learned to
compute the paths of planets and projectiles by Newton's methods, a French
geometer and philosophe, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertius, discovered a
strangely magical new way of seeing such paths. In Maupertius's schem a
planet's path has a logic that cannot be seen from the vantage point of
someone merely adding and subtracting the forces at work instant by
instant. He and his successors, especially Joseph Louis Lagrange, showed
that the paths of moving objects are always, in a special sense, the most
economical. They are the paths that minimize a quantity called action - a
quantitity based on the object's velocity, its mass, and the space it
traverses.  No matter what forces are at work, a planet somehow chooses the
cheapest,the simplest, the best of all possible paths. It is as if God - a
parsimoniious God - were after all leaving his stamp."

Our sense of mystery is closely linked to this themata of
locality/nonlocality. At the classical level locality is enough - the
"nonlocality" of the variational principle of least action is really not
essential. But not so at the quantum level - and at the general relativity
level. Feynman's Ph.D. thesis on forces quantum harmonic oscillator using
Lagrangian quantum mechanics shows this - it's in Feynman & Hibbs text.
This will be a major point to develop - that both future and past co-create
present at quantum level.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: matmcinn@nuscc.nus.sg (Mcinnes B T (Dr))
Subject: Re: Understand...!!!!
Organization: National University of Singapore
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 06:11:58 GMT

hees@cubic.com (Phil Hees) writes:
: 
: Of course we agree that some clocks are better than others, and we do have
: an abstract concept of time which allows us to talk about measurement
: errors of even the most precise atomic clock.  Furthermore, without an
: abstract concept of time, how would one know how to design a good clock?
: One might wind up with a baloney instead.  ;)
: 
: But it is very important to acknowledge that time _is_ what clocks
: measure, and that length _is_ what meter sticks measure, lest one be
: mislead by a faulty abstraction.  Einstein's thought experiments involved
: putting real clocks, meter sticks and observers in various situations and
: determining what would happen to them.  If he hadn't believed that time is
: what a clock measures, he would never have formulated relativity; he would
: still be trying to explain why his clocks were misbehaving.

Time is the length of timelike worldlines. That's all. Just take
spacetime seriously, and the universe is yours.             : 
: Remember Mach's Principle.

Remember the Alamo.: 

Most people on sci physics have an idee fixe or two. Try posting
something of the form "Hey, I hear that the gurus at Princeton think
that the loop approach to quantum gravity is nonsense" if you doubt
this. :)

								: --
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: "The Universe of MOTION" (crackpot index)
Date: 16 Oct 92 18:22:48 GMT
Article-I.D.: spss.1992Oct16.182248.10174
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <93388@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>In article <1bkpg2INNmt1@smaug.West.Sun.COM>, Richard.Mathews@West (Richard M. Mathews) writes:
>>15.0000 Matthew P Wiener
>
>15.0000?  An INTEGER to four SIGNIFICANT figures!?!  I propose, to
>PROPERLY calibrate all FUTURE crackpot indices, that WEEMBA be the
>USENET equivalent of CARBON-12.  Just as ONE atomic mass unit (amu)
>is *exactly* 1/12 the mass of a CARBON-12 nucleus at STP, so TOO is
>ONE usenet crackpot unit (ucu) *exactly* 1/15 the crackpottery of a
>WEEMBA-15 posting at STP.

Meaning that the unit of really major (1000-level) crackpottery is the kucu?
From: seh@neutron.physics.arizona.edu (Steven E. Hoell)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math
Subject: Re: Mattel on women
Keywords: Targetting females once again.
Date: 6 Oct 92 02:50:13 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Arizona, Tucson AZ

They ought to make a Barbie that shuffles the pieces of a Master-strength
chess computer. Call it "Judit" or something.


Steve Hoell                seh@neutron.physics.arizona.edu
From: mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Mcirvin)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: a question about water waves
Date: 15 Oct 92 00:22:26 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc8.mcirvin.719108546
Distribution: usa

mlevin@husc8.harvard.edu (Michael Levin) writes:

>My question is, suppose you freeze-frame a water
>wave that was mving due north at some point. You now have a peak,
>which during the next frame(s) will go down, and the next north-most
>patch of water will then move up. What exactly is it that determines
>that the next patch of water to move up is that north (i.e., in the
>direction that the wave was moving) of the previous peak?

It's the same thing that determines which way a thrown baseball
is going to move next:  inertia, in this case the inertia of
the water molecules.  The water molecules to the north have been
moving upward for a little while, and the ones to the south have
been moving downward.  So they'll continue to do this until the
forces exerted upon them by other water molecules reverse their
paths.  You can't tell this just by looking at a still picture.

(You can, actually, if the wave is about to break-- the wave
breaks in the direction it's moving.  This is because in ocean 
waves the molecules actually move in vertical circles, with the
motion along the top of the circle in the direction of the wave's
motion.  I think that that's a consequence of the way in which
water waves are generated; time-reversing the motion would give
you another allowed wave motion, though less likely in real life.)

It's the same way for the baseball.  If you take a snapshot of
the baseball in midair, you can't tell which way it's going to
move next, unless you know the velocity.  

This is a rather general property of classical mechanics.  Along
with positions, you need time derivatives as initial-value data
for a calculation. 
-- 
Matt McIrvin, posting nonsense again
From: sichase@csa3.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: "THE UNIVERSE OF *MOTION*" (book review)
Date: 7 Oct 1992 09:38 PST
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.198
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1992Oct6.174041.1576@cnsvax.uwec.edu>, mcelwre@cnsvax.uwec.edu writes...
>          
>          "THE UNIVERSE OF MOTION", by Dewey B. Larson, 1984, North 
>          Pacific Publishers, Portland, Oregon, 456 pages, indexed, 
>          hardcover. 

>          Larson emphasizes CONCEPTS and declares that mathematical 
>          agreement with a theory does NOT guarantee its conceptual 
>          validity. 

No.  But mathematical disagreement does guarantee failure.  And failure
to make mathematical predictions at all guarantees that you will never
even come close.

-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: rabjab@golem.ucsd.edu (Jeff Bytof)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: ALTERNATIVE Comet Rendezvous Missions
Date: 14 Oct 92 01:01:46 GMT
Article-I.D.: golem.rabjab.57.719024506
Organization: ucsd
NNTP-Posting-Host: lutherlab.ucsd.edu

>From: mcelwre@cnsvax.uwec.edu:

>               Most of the following information came from the late Dr. 
>          Peter David Beter, a well respected Washington, DC attorney, 
>          Doctor of Jurisprudence, and expert and consultant in 
>          international law, finance, and intelligence, who received 
>          most of his information from many associates in the CIA and 
>          other intelligence groups of other countries who disapproved 
>          of many of the things happening or being planned behind the 
>          scenes.  
>  
>                 [material deleted...]
>  
>               Larson is saying that outer space is filled with mass-
>          LESS UN-charged electrons flying around at the speed of 
>          light! 
>     

For all you fans of Peter Beter and Dewey B. Larson, 
here is a bibliography!:

Beter, Peter:  "The conspiracy against the dollar; the spirit of
                the New Imperialism", New York, G. Braziller [1973]

Larson, Dewey B.:  "Beyond Newton: an explanation of gravitation",
                   [1964]

               "The case against the nuclear atom", [1963]

               "The neglected facts of science", [1982]

               "New light on space and time", [1965]

               "Quasars and pulsars", [1971]

               "The road to full employment: the scientific answer to the 
                number one economic problem", [1976]
               {^^^^I wonder if this is one of "those plans out there"
                   that Ross Perot keeps referring to!}

               "The structure of the physical universe", Prelim. Ed.,
               [1959]

               "The structure of the physical universe", Rev. and
                enlarged ed., [1979-1988]

All of Larson's books are published by North Pacific Publishers,
Portland, Or.       

---------------------
rabjab@golem.ucsd.edu
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Shake it up, baby!
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 92 22:13:34 GMT

In article <abian.718566997@pv343f.vincent.iastate.edu> abian@iastate.edu (Alexander Abian) writes:

>  To prevent the abovementioned catastrophes, calamities and disasters
>radical and bold methods must be implemented which should be of Cosmic
>order such as Altering THE TILT and/or  THE ORBIT OF THE EARTH.
>  Please do not  lecture me on the need for the existence of deadly bacteria,
> also on  the theories of FOOD CHAIN, Darwinian Natural Selection, etc,
>etc, I know all of them very well.  I say, CHANGE RADICALLY THE COSMIC
>PARAMETERS OF THE EARTH. Shake the present decadent cosmic setup.

Heh.  I kinda dig this - it's sort of the revolutionary attitude of 
"destroy in order to improve" taken to its extreme limit.  The
ecological equivalent of Maoism.  "Who cares if changing the Earth's
orbital parameters would destroy civilization and possibly all
vertebrate life forms - we need to shake up the decadent status quo!"
Just remind me to hop on the space shuttle while you're "improving"
things, Abian.
From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: FEYNMAN 7
Date: 14 Oct 92 05:16:37 GMT
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link


Feynman 7
"A theory about the spontaneous, whimsical birth of photons in the energy
decay of excited atoms - an effect without a cause.." p.54 GENIUS

More precisely, an effect without a past cause. Spontaneous emission of a
photon has a future cause -its eventual absorption! The loss of
determinism, that statistical nature of individual quantum processes, can
be understood as the action of advanced causes from the future.  Causality
is a two-way street in time at the quantum level in spite of the
irreversible arrow of time which is a one-way street at the classical
level.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA AND THE PRINCIPLE OF TENDENCY OF MAINTAINING THE
Organization: MIT, Department of Mathematics
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 05:06:33 GMT

I ask Abian, who seems to really be Abian:

>> Why doesn't the bomb just
>>sit there if it wants to take it easy?  Or is this the "reaction to
>>provocation" part?  

>  Yes, indeed it is the "reaction to provocation" .  That is my whole
>point, and I am glad that you are starting to change your status quo
>of views , however, after a rather strong reaction to my proposals.

Sorry, pal, my status quo is staying quo, I was just wondering whether
your theory was utterly tautological, and you answered my question.

> You tried to mock, to intimidate me by expressions such as"YOUR BIG
>LETTERS are boring us, we are bored, we have heard you ... stop, etc.,"
>That was (as expected) your reaction to my provocation.  I am reacting too. 

I'm only trying to mock you; intimidating you would be fun too but I'm
not bothering, since your entire cosmology is built around reaction to 
provocation and maintainance of the status quo.  

> You say that my theories do not have the predictability aspect about them !

Yes!

> Give me a better explanation for the violent reaction of gun-powder 
>when it is struck ! I say that  gun-powder is like a Hitler or Stalin, 
>when sufficiently provoked it will react so violently that in the 
>process it even may destroy itself and/or the provoker.

If you ever really want a better explanation feel free to ask sci.chem.
Hint: oxidation is more rapid at high temperatures.

> Give me a better explanation of explosion of sulfuric acid when a drop
>of water is poured on it.  It wants to maintain the status quo of its
>acidity and reacts by creating heat to evaporate the intruder.  I have
>explained this before. Boring !!

Again, see sci.chem.  

> The extreme violent Reaction to  provocation is the real explana-
>tion in the mechanism of the A and H bomb!  But I have explained that
>before.  Boring !!

Okay, I think you have most lucidly explained your views and we will
just have to agree to disagree on their profundity or hilarity as the
case may be.  I'm sorry you find yourself so dull but I understand;
having explained the entire universe with your little pair of
contradictory principles I think are entitled to a long snooze.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: whit@milton.u.washington.edu (John Whitmore)
Subject: Re: lemon-radio
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 20:58:31 GMT

In article <1992Oct8.224716.7543@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com> bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris) writes:
>In article <Bvs973.1FG@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> brucer@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Bruce Sutherland) writes:
>)I heard of a tinkerer who built a working tunable radio using
>)only a lemon, an iron nail, and two copper wires. 

>)HOW DID IT WORK?!!  First of all, there's no speaker.  Second
>)what is the resonant coupling that tunes the radio to the 
>)right frequency - there's no capacitor.

>Anything like that would probably be an AM receiver, not a FM one.

>I don't think you'd need a battery at all, what you need for an AM
>radio is a tuned circuit, a rectifier of some kind (which is where I
>suspect the lemon could come in

	No, you DON'T need a rectifier; what you need is a DETECTOR,
and that is quite different.  In this case, one could use magnetostriction
in the nail as a detector; old spark-gap era receivers sometimes used
a remanent magnet which 'demagnetized' when the RF level got
high enough.

	Rectifiers are good detectors, and one hardly ever sees
anything else nowadays (even mixer-type detectors are referred
to as 'synchronous rectifiers').

	As for the capacitor, one can consider the interwinding
capacitance of a coil of wire for this purpose, creating
what is called a 'helical resonator'.  A second possibility
is to wrap two insulated wires tightly together (this kind of
'twiddle capacitor' is a common item in experimental jigs,
as a kind of field-expedient trimmer).

	John Whitmore

p.s. if the detector/speaker IS magnetostriction in the
iron nail, the reception will be loudest when the nail is
aligned N/S; so the radio is also a compass...





Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: lemon-radio
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 22:47:16 GMT

In article <Bvs973.1FG@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> brucer@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Bruce Sutherland) writes:
)I heard of a tinkerer who built a working tunable radio using
)only a lemon, an iron nail, and two copper wires.  I know the
)lemon was used as a battery and one wire was wrapped around
)the nail (which was stuck in the lemon) to make an inductor
)and the other wire was stuck in the lemon and run along the
)coils to tune the radio to the desired frequency.  My question is
)HOW DID IT WORK?!!  First of all, there's no speaker.  Second
)what is the resonant coupling that tunes the radio to the 
)right frequency - there's no capacitor.  Finally, if any has
)tried this themselves, I'd be interested in knowing quantitative
)things like the size and make-up of the nail and copper wires
)that would give a lemon-radio which could pick up an FM station.
)
)Bruce Sutherland      (brucer@helios.physics.utoronto.ca)
)University of Toronto

Anything like that would probably be an AM receiver, not a FM one.

I don't think you'd need a battery at all, what you need for an AM
radio is a tuned circuit, a rectifier of some kind (which is where I
suspect the lemon could come in, assuming this is more than an Urban
Legend), and a high (preferably) impedance earphone.  [I'd bet that the
earphone  *was* an extra part, just not mentioned as being part of the
raido.]

However, you'd only detect strong signals this way - strong enough to
forward bias the rectifier.  (Germanium or some other sort with a low
forward voltage would be preferred, as opposed to silicon diodes which take
significantly more forward bias to 'turn on')  Old 'crystal' sets used a
cats-whisker on a crystal to form the rectifier, for example)

However, at sufficiently high power levels (I lived *really* close to
an AM radio station as a kid), you can get strange effects.  Our
neighbors used to get the local AM station in their bathroom, sans
receiver!  (I *think* I heard this effect for myself, not 100% positive
anymore, though.)  I've heard stories (not sure if these are true) that
people have also occasionally gotten AM reception through fillings in their
teeth!
From: R_Tim_Coslet@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Transporter Technology
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 20:42:37 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
  <1992Oct11.062259.23675@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>

In article <1b79amINN8cl@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> bz223@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Dann
y Guy Frezza) writes:
>
>This may sound far out, but does anyone have any information on current
>research in Transporter Technology, ie, the technology used on Star Trek?
>It seems to me, that if the law of physics holds, ie, "matter cannot neither
>be created nor destroyed, but transformed into energy of another form", that
>this technology, although far out, is not impossible.
>Please email if anyone has any current research on this topic or knows of it.
>-- Thanks!
>-- 
Unfortunately, I doubt that even a large computer would be enough. The
real thing preventing development of such technology is our current lack
of PHENOMENA upon which to base the technology.

1) you need a 100% effecient means of converting matter to energy. The
only such known phenomenon available is matter-antimatter anihilation. However
this is very messy and hard to control. You would need a source of antimatter
equal in mass to the object being transported and a means of keeping it
from anihilating anything BUT the matter of the object to be transported.

2) you need a 100% effecient means of collecting the energy released and
transmitting it to the destination.

3) you need a 100% effecient means of converting this energy back to matter,
in EXACTLY the same configuration as it had when originally converted to
energy. This is the MAJOR block as there is no known natural PHENOMENON that
can be used to do this. Perhaps high energy photon decay back to matter-
antimatter could be used.... but can you think of any way of controlling
the EXACT location and TIME of this decay.

While a LARGE computer would unquestionably be needed to record all the
matter states and control the reconstruction, the major block is the lack
of controlable phenomena for that computer to use to do it with.

Remember, an Atomic Bomb is only about 0.2% effecient at converting matter
to energy and produces a VERY big explosion. If either of the energy conversion
processes was less then perfectly effecient and precise or the energy
collection was less than perfectly effecient, you would also be likely
to get a NASTY explosion someplace you really don't want one :-)

If you built a transporter that was 99.8% effecient, it would release energy
in similar quantities to that of Atomic Bombs... and several hundred kiloton
explosions in the immediate vicinity of people get rather messy!  :-)

                                        R. Tim Coslet

Usenet: R_Tim_Coslet@cup.portal.com
        technology, n.  domesticated natural phenomena
From: jstott@bigwpi.WPI.EDU (Jonathan Stott)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Transporter Technology
Date: 12 Oct 1992 13:30:57 GMT
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
NNTP-Posting-Host: bigwpi.wpi.edu

In article <1992Oct11.062259.23675@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> ddixon@nyx.cs.du.edu (David Dixon) writes:
>In article <1b79amINN8cl@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> bz223@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Danny Guy Frezza) writes:
>>
>>This may sound far out, but does anyone have any information on current
>>research in Transporter Technology, ie, the technology used on Star Trek?
>>It seems to me, that if the law of physics holds, ie, "matter cannot neither
>>be created nor destroyed, but transformed into energy of another form", that
>>this technology, although far out, is not impossible.
>>Please email if anyone has any current research on this topic or knows of it.
>>-- Thanks!
>>
>>Dan Frezza
>>
>
>This is not to rule out the technology, just to say that it probably doesn't
>exist now.
>
>					Dave

From what I've read of the literature, the biggest stumbling block seems to
be the anti-matter power source.

                                        -Jonathan

-- 
Jonathan Stott (jstott@wpi.WPI.EDU) "It's not my goddam planet, Monkey Boy!"
  "The sexes are equal once their erogenous zones have been blown off."
Newsgroups: sci.physics