HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Space: continuous or discrete?
Keywords: help bad science foo bar
Date: 29 Jan 93 02:56:59 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

This is ridiculous.  It's as if they were to argue that negative numbers
don't "really exist" (whatever that means), so you can't have any 
gravitational acceleration, because a = -GM/r.  It doesn't mean anything.
I would say, though, that most physicists think "discrete" implies some
minimum interval, in the sense of quantization, like integral multiples
of e or hbar.  Since you can always find a rational between any two
irrationals, eliminating the irrationals brings you no closer to this
sort of discreteness.

I guess this is why I always start to wonder when I see good reviews of
Paul Davies's books in more-or-less scientific magazines (like _Nature_?)
They usually contain some phrase like "even though Davies makes some
outlandish speculations, the book is a good popularization of blah blah"

Don't they realize that the outlandishness is what novices carry away from
reading the book?  Not only does it mislead people about the facts, it 
misleads them about what science is: something where boffins sit about
all the time thinking wild ideas (what mathematicians do!) as opposed to the
actual gruntwork of science.  Gruntwork isn't flashy, but it's what's
necessary to separate science from speculation.  Pop books too often fail
to be about _science_ by fudging this.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: re: below absolute zero?
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 07:12:05 GMT


This is from a thread in rec.arts.startrek.tech which you physics junkies
should start looking at if you want to generate students and earn your
academic salaries in a time of decreasing educational investment - which may
or may not change under Clinton:

I'm not sure of what was originally intended. I just caught the posts
whipping by at warp 10 and did not really digest it. There is in quantum
physics such a thing as a negative spin temperature - this would be formally
below absolute zero - but that is misleading since any negative temperature
is "hotter" than any positive temperature. Indeed -.0000000000.....1 degrees
Kelvin is hotter than infinite positive temperature. This is because of the
way entropy varies with respect to energy in quantum systems with discrete
energy levels. A negative temperature means that more particles sit in the
upper energy level than in the lower energy level for the simple case of
a two level system like a spinning electron, proton or even neutron, or atom
of spin 1/2 in a magnetic field.

Thought problem for Star Fleet Academy Cadets from Admiral Sarfatti:
How does a reversible Carnot heat engine behave if the hot reservoir is
at a negative quantum temperature while the cold reservoir is at a positive
classical temperature? What kind of Star Fleet devices can you make with
this idea? Hint: use the second law of thermodynamics.
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.skeptic,alt.paranormal,alt.sci.physics.new-theories,rec.arts.startrek.tech
From: foster@jed.cs.uidaho.edu ()
Subject: Re: New Physics, Healing, Paranormal
Organization: University of Idaho CS Dept.
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 17:06:24 GMT

This is crap.  Brain dead crap.  If anyone in authority thinks this is evidence
of mastery of anything, they are brain dead, too.

You may quote me.
-- 
James A. Foster                           foster@cs.uidaho.edu
Universty of Idaho                        Dept. of Computer Science
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: physcaw@cwis.unomaha.edu (Glenn Sowell)
Subject: Another summer workshop
Summary: An NSF sponsored workshop on digital video in physics education.
Keywords: DVI, education
Organization: University of Nebraska at Omaha
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 14:41:08 GMT


             Teaching Physics Using Interactive Digitized Video
                    A Leadership Development Workshop
              for college and university physics faculty members

            To be held at the United States Air Force Academy, 
                           Colorado Springs, CO
                              June 13-25, 1993
Purposes
     The purposes of this workshop are to:

i) foster discussions of new strategies for the teaching of physics 
using the capabilities of interactive digitized video technology.

ii) enable you to become skilled in the use of interactive digitized 
video technologies for teaching physics courses for undergraduates.

iii) help you develop lessons to improve the learning of physics using
the existing software and technologies. 

iv) prepare you to lead local, regional, or national workshops on 
teaching college science using interactive digitized video 
technologies. 

v) make the new physics course-related interactive digitized video 
lessons developed by the workshop participants available to physics 
educators throughout the country.

For additional information and application forms call 800-332-0265 ask
for "AAPT"  or send e-mail to rfuller@unl.edu

Application deadline, February 26, 1993.

Supported by a National Science Foundation faculty enhancement grant, 
#9255518

Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.skeptic,alt.paranormal,alt.sci.physics.new-theories,rec.arts.startrek.tech
From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: 2 of 4 moderators not qualified for sci.phys.research
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 07:08:31 GMT


I'm for a moderated physics gorup. But looking at the posted CV only
John Baez is really qualified by formal trainin. Johnson is next best
but he is an experimentalist and most of stuff is theory. It would be
good to have a separate experimental conference. Dale Bass dos not even
have a Ph.D. and his field is not physics but engineering. And the other
fellow is more a chemist than a physicist.
From: bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Nasty people.
Date: 29 Jan 93 03:16:12 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti) writes:
  [deletia]
> .... Perhaps sarfatti has drunk deeply of the Mailerian spring.
>Whatever drew him into this way of life, the fact remains that
>he's obeying Nietzsche's maxim, live dangerously; ...

>Too bad that some blockheads among us writhe with envy at the
>spectacle of a gifted soul aiming at stardom, and who spit gall
>rather than applaud a trapeze artist flying high, netless, over
>marble.                                           ^^^^^^^
                                                   |||||||

                                                   if only!
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: lawley@kurango.cit.gu.edu.au (michael lawley)
Subject: Space: continuous or discrete?
Keywords: help
Organization: Griffith University.
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 03:00:31 GMT


Hi,
   I've recently been read Paul Davies' and John Gribbin's ``The Matter
Myth''.  In it there is a brief discussion of chaos theory and its
relevance to physics.  They argue that, since the world is a physical
system and not the theoretical model the physicists use to describe it, the
actual values of any quantity (say, the distance between two electrons)
must be a rational value rather than an irrational one that may be predicted
by the model.  Now this seems to imply that space is discrete rather than
continuous and that would seem to be rather a large claim.  Can anybody help
me out here - did I misunderstand their argument or are they wrong or is it
a disputed point?  The thing that really surprised me was that they just
glossed over this stuff without really looking at the implications.

cheers,

mike

-- 
    michael lawley (lawley@cit.gu.EDU.AU).        The Unicycling Postgrad
-- 
  .   
    .	michael lawley (lawley@cit.gu.edu.au)			 _--_|\
. O _	The Unicycling Postgrad					/      *
_/=/	CIT, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, AUSTRALIA, 4111	\_.--._/
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: Home made monopoles
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 00:07:04 GMT

In article <1jr3uiINNcjk@mirror.digex.com> bdoa@digex.digex.com (Barry Adams) writes:
>   
>
>                     Home made magnetic monopoles
>                     ============================
>
>   Contrary to popular belief , magnetic monopoles exist and are easy to
>make . Take a Steel hemisphere and cut a concentric hemisphere cut of the
>middle , now magnetize the hemisphere such that the domains of the object
>are aligned with the north (south) pole pointing outwards. Now stick two of
>the hemispheres together forming a sphere  (glue strong enough to resist
>the magnetic repulsion of the hemispheres is required) you now have your
>magnetic monopole :-) , since any observer will see the object having a north
>pole only (unless they cut it open).

Cute - I hope you are joking and, more importantly, that everyone realizes
this!  I myself am usually scrupulously honest in pointing out that all my
designs for antigravity machines etc. are flawed and that the real point
is to find the error.
From: mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Matt McIrvin)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: gravitons
Date: 21 Jan 93 23:50:23 GMT

mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Matt McIrvin) writes:

>nariani@utdallas.edu (Sushil Nariani) writes:

>>If light cannot escape a blackhole, how can gravitons escape to pass on
>>the message of blackhole gravity to the rest of the universe?

>One answer is that the "virtual particles" that mediate forces 
>according to quantum field theory aren't bound by ordinary laws of
>motion.  They can therefore get out of black holes with no trouble
>at all.  How they do this without conveying information out of a
>black hole is a complicated story.

Contemplating this further, I think that this statement is a little
misleading.  I don't know what the graviton propagator really looks 
like (I haven't seen the expression recently), but if you work in
Feynman gauge and examine the propagator of a *massless* spin-1
boson like a photon, I think that in spacetime (rather than in
momentum-energy space) it is confined to the light cone.  If gravitons
behave the same way, then the explanation for how they get out of the
hole is the same as the classical explanation for how the field can
persist:  they're relics from the time before the hole formed.  It's
only *massive* particles that have tails to their propagators that
lie outside the light cone-- for them the situation is as nontrivial
as I suggested above.
-- 
Matt McIrvin
Xref: sparky sci.physics:23568 sci.skeptic:22926 alt.paranormal:2861 alt.sci.physics.new-theories:2867 rec.arts.startrek.tech:7797
From: lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.skeptic,alt.paranormal,alt.sci.physics.new-theories,rec.arts.startrek.tech
Subject: Re: New Physics, Healing, Paranormal
Date: 26 Jan 93 21:22:00 GMT
Distribution: world,local
Organization: University of Arizona
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <C1H8Dr.7r3.2@cs.cmu.edu>, lindsay+@cs.cmu.edu (Donald Lindsay) writes...
> 
>petitc@nuge105.its.rpi.edu (Christopher Jon Petit) writes:
>>there is supposedly (or so I've heard) scientific proof that some
>>forms of ESP do in fact exist.  I think the head of Stanford's Engineering
>>dept. did some studies which showed that, by trying to influence certain
>>statistically valid actions (e.g. 100,000 flips of a coin, in one second, by a
>>computer), the subjects did have a small but measurable influence.
> 
> 
>That would be interesting IF IT WERE TRUE. But the last I heard, it
>just isn't true. 
> 
>Since you are the person making the amazing claim, it's up to you to
>produce the amazing facts. Find a reference, please.

Princeton, not Stanford.  There are lots of references, including many
Technical Notes published by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
center.  Roger Nelson of PEAR has previously sent out a listing of
available reports to interested parties; I have one or two somewhere.

Jim Lippard              Lippard@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Dept. of Philosophy      Lippard@ARIZVMS.BITNET
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
From: lordSnooty@cup.portal.com (Andrew - Palfreyman)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Super-Strings
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 19:59:28 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world
  <24JAN199310142815@csa1.lbl.gov>

I wonder if the fad with string theory and superstrings is simply
Occam's Razor in action, or is it perhaps something at a deeper
level? I mean that one could just as easily have chosen a primitive
of higher dimensionality.
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
| lord snooty @the giant |  inceptus clamor frustratur hiantes             |
| poisoned electric head |              andrew_-_palfreyman@cup.portal.com |
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: re:2 of 4 moderators not qualified...
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 19:41:28 GMT


From: Patrick Slavenburg <patricks@sci.kun.nl>
To: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us
Subject: Re: 2 of 4 moderators not qualified for sci.phys.research
Newsgroups: sci.physics

In sci.physics you write:

>I'm for a moderated physics gorup. But looking at the posted CV only
>John Baez is really qualified by formal training. Johnson is next best
>but he is an experimentalist and most of stuff is theory. It would be
>good to have a separate experimental conference. Dale Bass does not even
>have a Ph.D. and his field is not physics but engineering. And the other
>fellow is more a chemist than a physicist.

>I don't believe I read this ...if this was said 100 years ago I would
>have...This is a narrowmindedness of which one thought it would be
>extinct.

Patrick this is a very silly comment. We are talking about a "physics"
conference, so it seems reasonable that the moderators be physicists and
not engineers or chemists and that they already have Ph.Ds in physics not
some related subject.

>I am a theorist myself at the moment and working for my PhD.
>of course mr. sarfatti thinks that physics is the only science in the
>world,

This is a non-sequitor - we are talking about a physics conference in case
that relevant fact has slipped your mind.

>and of those the REAL scientists must be theorists...

This is a total distortion of the context of my remark. I suggested two
conferences one for theory and one for experiment. The fact is that the
activity is mostly theoretical or pedagogical.

>I wonder where he obtains his money from..

None of your business.

>from other theorical physicists ? or from society. In that case let him
>explain to society why HE is so magnificent and all the others aren't..
>and in case he can't.... ahh.. well.. he might be able to do theoretical
>work from an umeployment fee..(or whatever you call it there I'm dutch ..
>).THAT would suit him right I think. So I think these are enough words
>wasted on arrogance, cheerio,
>Patrick Slavenburg

I would like to add, that although Baez is certainly qualified, he has his
own agenda and since he is a major contributor of postings it is not enough
that he be the only theorist moderator - the other three moderators are not
competent to judge Baez's posts. In effect, then, sci.physics.research will
be John's private journal - not that his stuff is not good.
Xref: sparky sci.physics:23539 sci.skeptic:22900 alt.paranormal:2848 alt.sci.physics.new-theories:2853 rec.arts.startrek.tech:7782
From: relipper@napier.uwaterloo.ca (Eric Lippert)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.skeptic,alt.paranormal,alt.sci.physics.new-theories,rec.arts.startrek.tech
Subject: Re: New Physics, Healing, Paranormal
Date: 26 Jan 93 16:49:44 GMT
Organization: University of Waterloo

[REAMS!  deleted]

This is a joke, right?

I ask, because a few weeks ago, there was a message in rec.humour.funny, detailing how to make up a "revisionist history" message.  The example was a document which "proved" that Hiroshima was never bombed.

This document, "New Physics, Healing, Paranormal" uses most of the techniques mentioned in the humourous article on how to fool some of the people some of the time.

Typical methods include

- self sealing arguments, such as "Martin Gardner is part of a conspiracy to cover up the truth."

- claiming to be a scientist.  Degree?  Who needs a degree?

- taking the most counter-intuitive consequences of relativity and quantum theory, stating them out of context, and then stating that they imply the possibility of time travel/telepathy/telekinesis/whatever.

- taking the nontechnical, out-of-context remarks of famous scientists as proof that they embraced time travel/telepathy/whatever

- the ridiculous presupposition that being able to sense brainwaves implies that we can determine the mental states of the brain.  That is like building a machine which could determine the theme of a novel stored on a laser disc by looking at the mirror-image on the disk!

- make references to well-know publications such as Scientific American or Military Review.  Volume numbers?  REFERENCES TO ACTUAL ARTICLES?  Who needs THOSE?

Seriously now, I really do not understand psychic advocates.  The real world is a wondrously interesting place!  Weirdnesses like black holes, einstein-rosen wormholes, quasars, quantum wells, point particles, superconductors, etc, etc, etc are bizarre and interesting, and best of all, demonstrable!

Further, we have an entire industry dedicated to amusing fictions such as time travel and PK.  (Its called SF... and Paramount owns over a billion dollars worth of it!)

Rudy Rucker once said "An interesting fact which is often overlooked in psychic studies is that we all have PK and telepathy.  You think some thoughts, tell me about them, and instantly I am thinking THE SAME thoughts.  Who needs telepathy when we have telephones?"

(quoted from memory, "The Fourth Dimension" )

And further to the point, what the hell is this doing in startrek.tech???

Eric Lippert
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jcf@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman)
Subject: Re: Airplanes fly upside-down, how?
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 04:40:59 GMT

myrberger@e.kth.se () writes:

>The normal explanation for how airplanes fly is (simplified perhaps):

>The wing is formed so the air have a longer way to go on the top, 
>therefore the air moves faster and an upward force is a fact.

My understanding is that this "explanation" is a canard, and the fact
that planes can be flown upside down proves it.  An asymmetrical wing
with a _circulation-free_ flow around it still experiences no lift,
because the effect of the greater velocity on the longer side is
counteracted by the fact that the normal to the surface is not
vertical, so you don't get the full component of the force.

The law says: lift is proportional to circulation.  If you can somehow
get circulation started around _any_ airfoil -- even a circular
cylinder -- it will experience lift (i.e. a force perpendicular to its
direction of motion).

Unfortunately I don't have a reference on this, but I read a thorough
discussion of this pseudo-explanation some years ago.  It is one of
those cute pieces of nonsense that will never die -- like the belief
that E=mc^2 has something special to do with nuclear fission.
-- 
        Joe Fineman             jcf@world.std.com
        239 Clinton Road        (617) 731-9190
        Brookline, MA 02146
From: jonathan_scott@vnet.ibm.com (Jonathan Scott)
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 22:10:56 GMT
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Home made monopoles
News-Software: UReply 3.1
            <1993Jan25.171223.5051@novell.com>

Before anyone else falls for this, the "home made monopole" as described
doesn't work.  If you have a hollow sphere made of material which was
totally uniformly magnetized along radial lines, the effect of closing
the sphere would be to exactly cancel out the magnetic field.  If it was
less than perfect, you would have patches of north and south pole over
the surface, giving equal flux into and out of the sphere.

That is, of course, unless you put a monopole inside it...

Jonathan Scott
jonathan_scott@vnet.ibm.com  or  jscott@winvmc.vnet.ibm.com
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: kimball@stsci.edu (Timothy Kimball)
Subject: Re: What causes electrical shock?
Organization: Space Telescope Science Institute
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 21:08:58 GMT

Daniel Jonathan Clute (djclute@cwis.unomaha.edu) wrote:
: 	On a recent vacation, I stayed in a hotel room full of static;
: whenever I tried to turn on a light, I was shocked.

Ah, but you haven't lived until you've seen and heard large, blue,
static sparks flashing around in the hotel bedsheets
every time you move them, as I did in Holiday Inn, Columbus, Ohio.

I know that shocks are caused by a charge imabalance bewteen
your body and whatever you're going to touch.
_I'd_ like to know what causes the charge imbalance.

--

/* tdk -- Opinions are mine, not my employer's. */
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: Access to HEPNET physics.
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 09:25:54 GMT


Who knows how to do it from internet? Please use my e-mail. Thanks.
Xref: sparky sci.physics:23558 alt.sci.physics.new-theories:2863 sci.skeptic:22920 alt.paranormal:2858
From: schultz@garnet.berkeley.edu (Richard Schultz)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,alt.sci.physics.new-theories,sci.skeptic,alt.paranormal
Subject: Re: New Physics,Healing & Paranormal 2 "White Paper"
Date: 27 Jan 93 16:43:14 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.berkeley.edu

In article <C1H5D6.6Jr@well.sf.ca.us> sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti) writes:

>Brian
>Josephson, a Nobel Prize Laureate in physics at Cambridge University thinks
>that complex living systems, which unlike inorganic matter are not in
>thermal equilibrium. . .

I don't know much from physics, so I really can't judge whether the "physics"
Sarfatti presents is the babble it appears to be.  I am, however, a chemist.
It's possible, I guess, that  Josephson and Sarfatti have a really strange 
definition of life (one that includes, say, the earth's atmosphere, which is 
an immediately obvious example of "inorganic matter" that isn't at thermal 
equilibrium).  More likely, to my way of thinking, is that this obvious
simple blunder says something else entirely about Sarfatti's competence as
a physicist.  Or rather, lack of competence.

					Richard Schultz