HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: Feynman 30 part I examples of interfering alternatives
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 20:26:38 GMT


Feynman 30 Examples of interfering alternatives. I
From Feynman and Hibbs, Quantum mechanics and path integrals:
p.14 "It is not hard, with a little experience, to tell which kind of
alternative is involved. For example, suppose that information about the
alternatives is available (or could be made available without altering the
result), but this information is not used.  Nevertheless, in this case a
sum of probabilities (in the ordinary sense) must be carried out over
exclusive alternatives.  These exclusive alternatives are those which could
have been separately identified by the information."

Feynman's use of "information" can be identified with 1-1 correlations to
orthogonal states of an "environmental" measuring system which are traced
over in the local detection of the phenomenon.

"When alternatives cannot possibly be resolved by any experiment, they
always interfere."

This is necessary to get a quantum connection signal - the two alternative
paths of the transmitter photon for a fixed path of the twin receiver
photon must interfere.  In addition, the exclusive alternatives for the
detection of the transmitter photon which are traced over at the receiver
must not wash out the phase information from the transmitter.  Henry Stapp
says that the latter is impossible - but that is adhoc not in the standard
quantum formalism.  If retarded causality is right then Stapp will be
correct. Therefore, this quantum connection signal experiment is a direct
test of retarded causality at the individual quantum event level.  It is my
position that retarded causality is a statistical macro- emergent
phenomenon essentially identical to the arrow of time and the second law of
thermodynamics.
From: lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Date: 5 Nov 92 15:31:42 GMT
Organization: Society for the Appreciation of Janni Lee Simner

Those who claim that 'truth' and 'reality' are synonyms are ignoring
the existance of emotional truths, which have no objective existance
(are not part of "reality") outside of the people who experience them.
This comes up not just as part of religion, but as the basis of
literature and much of the rest of the arts.

The predictions about the nature of *physical* reality of a religion
are falsifiable.  Other aspects of a religion are not.  They are in the
realm of subjectivity.

Debating the obvious is a bit silly.

	Larry "Slightly interescting sets" Hammer
--

                         \                     Time ...
LNH@physics.arizona.edu   \   Worships language and forgives
GEnie: L.HAMMER2           \  Everyone by whom it lives   -- Auden
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: ted@physics.Berkeley.EDU (Emory F. Bunn)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: No big crunch?
Followup-To: sci.physics
Date: 6 Nov 1992 00:45:51 GMT
Organization: /etc/organization
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics.berkeley.edu

This thread has probably gone on long enough, but I do want to clarify my
own view on the subject of dark matter.  The hypothesis I've been trying to
defend is that the mass density of the Universe is enough to make
the Universe flat, and that this density is dominated by some unkown, 
nonbaryonic form of matter, possibly one of the new particles that the
particle physicists tell us should exist.  This is the closest thing
cosmologists have to a "standard model" of structure formation.

I'm not 100% convinced that this hypothesis is right:  It's an extraordinary
hypothesis, and as such should be supported by extraordinary evidence.
Whether you think the evidence is strong enough to justify it is up to you.
What started me posting to this thread was reading Dale's comments, which
present the impression that the hypothesis was made up by some fanciful
cosmologist without any hard evidence to support it.  This is clearly false.
I've tried to explain that the hypothesis does make definite predictions,
and is therefore testable, and that at the moment a number of tests have
already been done that support it.  Does that mean the hypothesis is right?
Of course not.  But it is at the moment the only theory around that is
based on known and accepted physical principles and explains the observations.

I also want to reiterate that the dark matter hypothesis looks considerably
less "outrageous" when you note that virtually every extension of the
standard model of particle physics predicts heavy new particles.
The suggestion that the reason for this is that the particle physicists
have rigged their theories in order to make this true so that they can
solve the dark matter problem is manifestly absurd:  The idea that there
should be a grand unified symmetry is older than the dark matter problem,
and has many strong arguments to recommend it that are independent of
cosmology.  Grand unified theories require new massive particles.  This
is an argument in favor of nonbaryonic dark matter which is completely
independent of the usual cosmological ones.

The most important point is simply this:  If you want to decide whether
or not to believe in nonbaryonic dark matter, you'd best study the evidence,
and see whether or not you find it compelling.  It's not good enough just
to say, "It sounds pretty strange to me, so I don't buy it."

-Ted
From: bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: resident loudmouths on astrology
Date: 11 Nov 92 16:27:15 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

matmcinn@nuscc.nus.sg (Brett McInnes) writes:
[a nice series of summaries of positions]
>[John Baez]
>He has pointed out, and will point out again, that no solutions are
>known, at least in 4 dimensions. Some progress has, however, been made
>with 2-dimensional astrology.

Let me contribute:
Matt Austern on astrology:
He is uncomfortable with its lack of a secure mathematical underpinning,
but is willing to overlook this if the phenomenology turns out OK.

Scott Chase on astrology:
He is trying to figure out whether it can arise from minimal sensible
modifications to the Standard Model Lagrangian.

Ben Weiner on astrology:
He is trying to get the noise out of his data; as a result, he is
uncertain of its value by a factor of 2.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: Some physics questions
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Distribution: na
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 92 19:07:54 GMT

In article <6NOV199212364099@csa1.lbl.gov> sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
>In article <1992Nov6.175022.13136@galois.mit.edu>, jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes...
>> 
>>As the rest of my post indicated, that wasn't the part that I don't
>>buy!!  I can imagine a theory that predicts mixing angles, but not a
>>theory that predicts the speed of light (in any exciting sense - see my
>>previous post).
>
>Why not?   What makes the speed of light any more fundamental than the charge
>of an electron, or the electroweak mixing angle?  And even if it's more 
>fundamental, what prevents you, in principle, from developing a theory which
>predicts the speed of light? 

Gee, you didn't seem to have read the post I referred to.  I didn't say
that the reason was just that the speed of light is "more
fundamental" than mixing angles.  The reason has to do with the fact
that c is dimensionful while the mixing angles are dimensionless.  One
has at least 3 degrees of freedom in choosing units (mass, length,
time), and this means that 3 dimensionful constants of nature can freely
be set to 1.  (I defer discussion as to whether charge and temperature
should raise the total to 5.)  There's nothing especially sacred about
the choice of c, hbar, and G as the three to use.  My point is that the
closest we can come to "explaining" the speed of light is to explain the
(dimensionless) ratio of c to some other speed (possibly one concocted
by multiplying together all sorts of constants of nature, but let's just
call this other speed "the speed of dark").  One can think of the
explanation of this ratio as being an explanation of the speed of light
(if you think the speed of dark is "more fundamental") or as an
explanation of the speed of dark (if you think of the speed of light as
"more fundamental").  My hunch is that if this takes place, people will
call it an explanation of the speed of dark.  But my real point is that
one can't hope to explain ALL dimensionful constants of nature.
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: Campfire and plasma musings
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 92 19:26:07 GMT

In article <6NOV199215262053@csa1.lbl.gov> sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
>In article <74055@apple.Apple.COM>, slovick@Apple.COM (Linda Slovick) writes...

>>2.) Is a flame a plasma?
>
>Yes. 

We went through this once upon a time before and I seem to recall that
someone said that such a flame (a campfire flame) was a relatively wimpy
form of plasma.  Well, they used a more technical sounding term, but
what it meant was that the gas was far from fully ionized.  I guess
there is no sharp transition between (ordinary) gas and plasma, the way
there is between liquid and gas (at low pressures).  A really intense
plasma like near the core of the sun would be just a bunch of electrons
and nuclei whizzing around like mad.  I imagine that in a not-too-hot
flame, there are a bunch of atoms missing only a few of their electrons.
Anyone know HOW ionized a campfire flame is?
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math
From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: What's a manifold?
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 23:08:46 GMT

In article <1992Nov5.004804.24757@galois.mit.edu> jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:

)I guess you may have the basic gut idea of a manifold, since you
)referred to Lobachevsky.  Anyway, the idea is that a manifold is a
)generalization of a surface to higher dimensions.  

A rash assumption!  I've picked up some of an idea from the net, however.

I should mention that if you like mathematics and sarcastic humor, you
could do a lot worse than pick up some of the songs by Tom Leher.
"Lobachevsky" is one of his songs.

In it, the main character of the song (who is Russian, of course) offers
the following advice, in a thick russian accent and with fractured syntax.

"Plagarize, Plagarize, Plagarize!  Only be sure to always call it - 
research"

Leher, a mathematics professor turned songwriter/performer,  wrote other very
nice sarcastic parodies, a fair number of which have some mathematical and/or
scientific content (not all do, however), including the "Hunting Song",
"Werner Von Braun", "National Brotherhood Week", "The New Math", and "The
Elements". Leher is just as much (if not more) fun than reading usenet!

)Anyway, manifolds come in several flavors, most notably "smooth" and
)"topological".  A topological manifold is a Hausdorff space such that every
)point has a neighborhood homeomorphic to R^n (Euclidean n-space).  Now
)you should ask me to define whatever didn't make any sense in that
)definition!

What's a Hausdorff space?  For that matter, what's homeomorphic? (one-to
one reversible mapping??).
From: emarkp@soda.berkeley.edu (E. Mark Ping)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA   ABIAN  replies to R.J.KNAPP
Date: 6 Nov 1992 23:05:41 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley, CS Undergraduate Association
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu
Keywords: Principle (A1)


  So, now it's clear what your principle A1 is:

1) Everything stays the same unless something tries to change it.

2) If that thing changes, then it enters another quasi-stable state which will
   in turn remain the same without provocation.

  But then why does time require energy to keep moving forward?  I would
think that it would try to retain its 'velocity', and therefore since it is
now moving, it should keep moving forward unless some provocation tries to
change its current status quo.

???

------------
E. Mark Ping
emarkp@soda.Berkeley.EDU

  "Stand aside, I take large steps."  --Michael Dorn
  "Say, that's a nice bike."          --Cyberdyne Systems T-1000
  "Pituita es."                       --Unknown Latin Scholar
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: zowie@daedalus.stanford.edu (Craig "Powderkeg" DeForest)
Subject: Re: History of AC vs DC Power
Organization: Stanford Center for Space Science and Astrophysics
Date: 11 Nov 92 10:00:57

In article <bar> steve@pepe.aero.org (Steve Sedlacek) writes:
   Again, what is the HISTORY and WHY should
   power transmission be AC (I assume it is more than just transformers to
   step voltage up and down being easy for AC).

You hit the nail on the head.  There are two good reasons for AC
rather than DC: it's easier to generate (no make-and-break brushes in
the generator); and it's much easier to step voltage up and down.  That's
crucial because resistive losses go like the current you're transporting.
Thus you want to step up the voltage as high as you can, so you don't have
to push as much charge around.  But it doesn't make sense to have high 
voltages in the home (imagine a 30kV line in every electrical socket!),
so there's a limit there.  It's well-nigh impossible to supply a whole
city (or even small town) with a pure ~100V system.  AC lets you slip 
nicely between the horns of that dilemma.

Another good reason that springs to mind: the circuitry is (for
simple applications) apolar.  If you plug in your vacuum cleaner
backwards, it does _not_ spew dust all over the house.  So you can
make cheaper sockets and plugs.  This matters -- there are well over a billion,
and probably over 10 billion, electrical sockets in the U.S. alone!

As far as history goes, Edison and his company had established some
small DC power grids, and basically was washed under (despite Edison's
fantastic reputation and clout) by Tesla's polyphase AC system (I 
forget the company that was promoting it: GE maybe?  Westinghouse?).

The sad part of the story is that Tesla's life reads like a Charlie 
Brown cartoon:  despite his brilliant ideas, he kept getting swindled
and/or smeared by people who practically stole many of his inventions.

Towards the end, he did get a bit whacked out, though -- `telautomatics' 
was an idea far ahead of its time, and he didn't have enough nonlinear
circuit elements to make it work.
[Then Lee DeForest invented the triode and it was all over...]

--
Craig DeForest -- astrophysicist for hire.   DoD#314159; PhD#271828
From: quest@iowegia.uucp (Steve J. Quest)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: EINSTEIN'S SCHOOL DAYS
Date: Sun, 08 Nov 92 21:30:09 CST
Distribution: world
Organization: Iowegia Public Access Usenet/UUCP, Clive IA USA.

Gordon_Wong@mindlink.bc.ca (Gordon Wong) writes:

> I read that Einstein was a very poor student in his early years. Was it
> because he just didn't bother to go to school because he found that what was
> being taught just wasn't stimulating enough for him or was it something else?
> 


Gordon,

        If school for Einstein was like school for me, then 
possibly he intimidated his teachers- made them feel stupid, and 
inferior.  The retrobution for this of course is poor grades, no 
matter HOW well you actually do in the class.  Absolute power 
corrupts- and teachers have the absolute power over your grades.  
They issue the tests, check them, and assign a grade.  There is NO
accountability for teachers whos egos prevent them from being 
fair.

        It was not until college that I found the reverse of this 
trend.  Apparently, a college professor has more honor than a high 
school teacher- but they do show human characteristics such as 
envy, and fear.  Fear of the intelligent- blight of mankind.....sq
From: hall@vice.ICO.TEK.COM (Hal F Lillywhite)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Is Math Hard?
Date: 9 Nov 92 20:59:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: vice.10713
Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or.

In article <1992Nov8.115711.8199@athena.mit.edu> solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky) writes:
>In article <10673@vice.ICO.TEK.COM>, hall@vice.ICO.TEK.COM (Hal F Lillywhite) writes:
 
>|> In article <611@alden.UUCP> sgr@alden.UUCP (Stan Ryckman) writes:
>|> >In article <10620@vice.ICO.TEK.COM> hall@vice.ICO.TEK.COM (Hal F Lillywhite) writes:

>|> >Just how do we "take what they [the "experts"] say [about
>|> >education] into account and then apply our
>|> >own intelligence?"  A vote?  I bet creationism still would win out
>|> >in a fair portion of the U.S.
 
 
>|> Well, yes we do it by vote.  The only other choice available to us
>|> is some form of dictatorship.

>Dear g-d, we have here a product of the American education system. There are
>thousands of choices available to us besides dictatorship and democracy.

OK, name one.  And no I don't mean just different forms of democracy
(eg. representative, direct etc.) or dictatorship (absolute, limited
etc.)  Name a form of government which neither allows the people a
choice nor allows certain classes to rule regardless of the desires
of the majority.

>Democracy is a disgusting system wherein the majority rules. Democracy will
>always result in a communist economic system. This is its nature because a
>majority of people will always covet something a minority has. This is NOT
>the way a child's education should be determined. IT CAN NOT BE. The parents
>of a child must make that decision.

I think you are over-reacting badly.  My original point was that as
parents (and voters) we must not blindly accept what the "experts"
say, we should listen to their advice and use our intelligence to
decide.  I agree that parents should make that decision, a position
largely supported by our democracy.  That is why we have local
school boards and why parents are allowed home or private schooling
options.  True this is an expensive option for most but maybe
someday our democracy will allow a real choice (over the objections
of the "experts" in the teachers unions).

>You are advocating the Hillary Clinton school of thought. 

I am absolutely *not* advocating the Hillary Clinton school of
"thought."  She seems to want to set herself up as the expert
dicatator to whom we should all bow in this matter.  No way.  I may
listen to her opinions and reasons but I most certainly will not
blindly follow her.  Nor do I believe that the majority of voters
will follow her.  In this case democracy will probably maintain a
measure of sanity contrary to what Mrs. Clinton would like to impose
upon us.
Xref: sparky sci.physics:18860 sci.optics:1165
From: lordSnooty@cup.portal.com (Andrew - Palfreyman)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.optics
Subject: Re: THE SARFATTI EFFECT, FACT OR FANTASY?
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 92 01:29:29 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

Jack Sarfatti writes:

| ....so it must be tested by experiment!
| 
| Well, we'll see what experiment decides!

When? Where? Who?

Andrew Palfreyman
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: Erratum: |a,e,+> = i|a,o,+>
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 21:53:19 GMT


The last line in first version that I may not have aborted was mistyped.
This is the corrected version.
I will now lay to rest forever the bogus objection made by Mike Gallis,
Carlton Caves, Keith Ramsay et-al that my gedankenexperiment requires
violation of local unitarity in which a finite norm superposition is
transformed into a zero-norm superposition.

|a,b>  = {|a,e,+>|b,e,+> + |a,e,->|b,e,->}/sqrt2

|a,b>' = {e^iphi|a,e,+>|b,e,+> + |b,e,->|a,o,+>}/sqrt2

note that |<a,e,+|a,o,+>| = 1

|a,e,+> = e^ix |a,o,+>

<a,e,+|a,e,-> = 0

<a,o,+|a,o,-> = 0

There is no need to use a transformation that brings two orthogonal states
into the same state which would violate invariance of inner products and
norms.  The half-wave plate transformation H(o) is

H(o)|a,o,-> = |a,o,+>

H(o)|a,o,+> = |a,o,->

H(o)|a,e,+> = |a,e,+>

H(o)|a,e,-> = |a,e,->

H(o){|a,o,-> - |a,e,+>} = |a,o,+> - |a,e,+> = |a,o,+>[1 - ei^x]

[<a,o,-| - <a,e,+|][|a,o,-> - |a,e,+>]

= <a,o,-|a,o,-> + <a,e,+|a,e,+> - <a,o,-|a,e,+> - <a,e,+|a,o,->

= 1 + 1 - 0 - 0 =2

<a,o,-| - <a,e,+|H(o)*H(o)|a,o,-> - |a,e,+> = |1 - eix|^2 = 2(1 - cosx)

therefore, local unitarity of H(o) (i.e. invariance of inner product)
requires that x = pi/2

* so that |a,e,+> = i|a,o,+>

(this was mistyped in first version)

QED

There is no violation of local unitarity in my quantum connection signal
gedankenexperiment in the specific sense falsely claimed by skeptics.
From: ande@sierra.com (Ande Rychter)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Religion and Science don't mix
Date: 6 Nov 92 00:34:00 GMT
Organization: Sierra Geophysics Inc.,  Kirkland, Wa

In 26505 Kim Gunnar St|vring \yhus writes:

> As for science disproving existence of God: This can be done by showing
> that the description of God is inconsistent, or by falsifying.

In 26529 E. Mark Ping writes:

> Science can *never* disprove the existance of a God.


I always thought that the exercise of disproving the existence of God is 
akin to the exercise of disproving the existence of a 25-legged monster 
which lives on the dark side of the moon, eats rocks, is semi-transparent 
(slightly greenish), and whose metabolism is based on the decay of 
the proton. -AR
From: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Gordon Joly)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Size of a PHOTON?
Date: 5 Nov 92 20:02:47 GMT


I thought all wavefunctions were in the 3-range [-inf,inf]?

Gordon
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: abian@iastate.edu (Alexander Abian)
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA ---- ABIAN  replies to  TALBOT
Keywords: TIME, INERTIA, MATTER
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 16:14:01 GMT

In <BxK3sI.8Gy@news.cso.uiuc.edu> met48546@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Marc E. Talbot) writes:

>abian@iastate.edu (Alexander Abian) writes:

>>     

>>           To those who ask what do you mean by

>>                   TIME HAS INERTIA
>>         
>> my answer is, I mean 
>>                                                       
>>                    TIME IS MATTER
>> 
>>However, TIME HAS INERTIA to some is more acceptable.
>>                 
>>                                         Alexander ABIAN
>>-- 
>Could you perhaps define what you mean by inertia?  And what properties does
>time have which makes it matter? 

>Marc Talbot
>Physics Slave, UIUC



     Dear Mr. Talbot,

Thank you for your question.
   It is very difficult to define what "matter" is  since it is such a
fundamental notion.  Any definition of "matter"  will be done 
based on some other words which themselves would require a definition
and so on.
   However, if I cut all the usual beta-sigma (more explicitly 
Beta-Sigma) out, I will say:

(A7)   MATTER IS SOMETHING WHICH REQUIRES ENERGY FOR CHANGING ITS
       STATUS-QUO

   Now, you see what do I mean, I am opening myself to questions:
    
    "what do I mean by Something",
    "what do I mean by Requires",
    "what do I mean by Energy"
    "what d0 I mean by Changing"
    "what do I mean by Status"
    "what do I mean by Quo"   
 
  So, it seems there is no way out and something must be accepted 
without rigorous and precise definition.

   NOW, to your real question.
 
   "What properties does time have which makes it matter"

My answer is "The property that it takes energy to move TIME forward"

Do I have some proof ?   Yes, so far unexplained loss of energy in
the Cosmos.  I figured it out that it is spent (irretrievably to
move TIME forward, which is a CHANGE OF THE STATUS QUO OF THE TIME,
and thus  by (A7) TIME IS MATTER, or more acceptably,  TIME HAS INERTIA.

   Mr. Talbot I would be interested in your further comments.  Please
post in  sci.physics,  Subject: TIME HAS INERTIA  (I read and post 
almost exclusively in  TIME HAS INERTIA).
  Thank you.                               Alexander Abian







-- 
   The tendency of maintaining the status-quo, Reaction to provocation and
                The tendency of maintaining again a status-quo.  
    TIME HAS INERTIA  and some energy is lost to move Time forward  
  E = mcc  (Einstein)    must be replaced by    E = m(0) exp(-At) (Abian)
Newsgroups: sci.physics