HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: lchardon@trentu.ca (LAURENT CHARDON)
Subject: KIRLIAN PHOTOGRAPHY...
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Trent Computing and Telecommunications Department
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 22:19:00 GMT

A few years ago I came across Kirlian photography. What is the latest 
explanation?

I'm quite surprised that we hear so little of it, since the effects are so 
remarkable. Is it studied somewhere ? If you are (or were) working with 
Kirlian Photography, please let me know, I have a few questions...

Laurent.

________________________________________________________________________________
  Laurent Chardon,      Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario CANADA  K9J 7B8
  Voice: (705)-749 5022 Fax: Sorry, use voice first   E-mail:LChardon@trentu.ca
________________________________________________________________________________
From: tbeatty@sedona.intel.com (Tim Beatty~)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA - ABIAN REPEATS overwhelmingly demanded (A3)
Date: 16 Dec 1992 17:18:47 GMT
Organization: Intel Corporation
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: thunder.intel.com
Keywords: attn: CHINTER, SITES TAO, WATTS
Originator: tbeatty@sedona


Dear Abian,

In regards to your (A3):  I find it difficult to believe that objects like
planets and rocks have "feelings" and understand "security".  Your (A3) is
nothing more than what first year philosophy students ponder every day.  What
motivates people.  The fact that you have concluded that it is selfishness means
that you haven't taken any first year philosophy classes.  This approach to
explaining behavior is usually dismissed because it fails to explain all
behavior.  Read a first year philosophy book.

Tim Beatty
-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Tim Beatty              |  tbeatty@az.intel.com
 Intel Corp., CH3-91     |  The opinions expressed are my own.
 5000 W. Chandler Blvd.  |
 Chandler, AZ  85226     |  "It is so hot in some parts of the world
                         |   that the people there have to live other places."
 (602)554-8156           |   - Unknown Fifth Grader on Science test
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: russ@pmafire.inel.gov (Russ Brown)
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 20:57:24 GMT
Organization: WINCO
Subject: Re: Nuclear Waste Disposal
Summary: 
Followup-To: 
Organization: WINCO
Keywords: 

In article <u926135.724043220@tasman> u926135@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (Adrian Hassall Lewis) writes:
>bwood@diva.Berkeley.EDU (Blake Philip Wood) writes:
>
>>In article <rsf1.723799992@Ra.MsState.Edu> rsf1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Robert S. Fritzius) writes:
>>>Should there not be some way to bombard radioactive nuclear waste with
>>>sufficient quantities of high energy electrons... to reduce the
>>>waste material to mostly non-radioactive lighter elements...
>
>>>Is it not possible to convert some of our...star war beam particle devices 
>>>into tools to save us from our radioactive waste time bombs?
>
>>There's a project here at Los Alamos to do exactly that.  It's known
>>as "Accelerator Transmutation of Waste", ATW for short.  Perhaps someone
>>else can fill in the details.
>
>
>
>>-- 
>>                 Blake P. Wood - bpw@ctxsys.lanl.gov (505) 665-6524
>>                 Group P-1, MS-E526, LANL, Los Alamos, NM  87545
>
>It is also possible to turn fast breeder reactors into waste burners.  You
>replace the uranium blanket with waste.  This also means that little or no
>plutonium is produced.  There was an article in "New Scientist" a month or
>two back on the subject.
>

Unfortunately, the radionuclides to be transmuted are associated with
lots of other things, all of which make the problem a bit more
complicated.

This concept should not be evaluated in vacuo.


Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math
From: hl5a@holmes.acc.Virginia.EDU (Winston Lin)
Subject: DMP
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 10:46:07 GMT

Hello there,
	In a problem (EMF class) with wedge shaped capacitor 
(instead of parallel), one is required to find the dominant mode of 
propagation.  Fringing effect is neglected, and the plates are assumed
to have perfect conductivity.

	Can anyone explain what 'dominant mode of propagtion' refers
to in the context?

	Any explanation is much appreciated...

		thanx

  (***-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_--_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-***)
 ((***   ___       ____                                                   ***))
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    *       -- -- --       I    n  n    sss      tttt    o  o    n  n      * 
     *      --    --       I   nn  n  sssss       tt     oooo   nn  n     * 
      * - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -*  
     *       Hung-wen Lin	         2100 JPA APT.#7                *
    *       (804) 295-1094                Charlottesville, VA 22903        *
   *       e-mail: hl5a@virginia.edu                                        *
((***_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_***))
 (***                                                                    ***)
From: hoconnel@iti.org (Heath O'Connell)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Richard P. Feynman
Date: 17 Dec 1992 00:37:32 GMT
Organization: The University of Adelaide
NNTP-Posting-Host: adelphi.itd.adelaide.edu.au

al@sys6626.bison.mb.ca (haus der luge) writes:

>Oh, and by the way, I'm an ARTS student - of the 'worst' kind to many 
>physicists - a political philosophy major !!!
> 
>I won't come right out and say that I was offended by some of the rather 
>rude and prejudiced comments mentioned by some members of this newsgroup, 
>but I was.
>Besides, the latest discoveries in the sciences are beginning to blur any 
>distinction between our two main fields in many respects.

	Did I miss something?


--
		hoconnel@adelphi.physics.adelaide.edu.au
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.engr,alt.psychology.personality
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: Stereotyping (was Re: Richard P. Feynman)
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 21:46:40 GMT

In article <Bz621A.Hr6@nic.umass.edu> jennyg@titan.ucc.umass.edu (Jenny Gutbezahl) writes:
>In article <gilligan.724135021@cs1.bradley.edu> gilligan@cs1.bradley.edu (Edward Henigin) writes:
>
>>There are reasons that people hold stereotypes.
>
>Ignorance, fear, close-mindedness...  And, of course, being too intellectually
>lazy to distinguish between individuals when it's so much easier just to hang
>a label on someone & be done with it.
>
>>Partially from a lack
>>of experience with the stereotyped party, and partially because the
>>experience people do have with the stereotyped party tend to reinforce
>>the stereotype (or change it if it's wrong, but usually, at the surface,
>>stereotypes are pretty close.  Gay men talk with feminine voices.  This
>>is a stereotype.  This has never been proved wrong to me.)

>This is a lovely stereotype.  It's never been proved wrong because it's
>untestable.  What the hell is a "feminine voice"?

It could be testable since one could define a feminine voice as one more
high-pitched than average for a male.  If Henigin wished he could just
rent some spectral analysis equipment and lug it into a gay bar to
measure the average pitch of the ambient chatter and compare it to that
at a "non-gay bar".   However, since you can't in general immediately
tell whether a man is gay, and since people with lots of stereotypes
about gays are probably exactly the sort who would be scared to step
inside a gay bar, it is probably much simpler for such people to DEFINE
a high-pitched voice as a characteristic of being gay and use this to
tell whether people are gay.  :-)  

This is, of course, a common mistake.  That's why Dirac had to predict
the existence of antimatter before people took the trouble to notice
that they had been seeing it all along and just not recognizing it,
because it "shouldn't be there."  (There, see?  Some physics.)

It's not clear, by the way, whether Henigin is claiming to believe this
stereotype or really just that it hasn't been disproved to him!  To
someone with a careful mind these are utterly different things!!  

What is the difference between a stereotype and a generalization?  Why
does that former sound so much nastier?  Don't tell me we are all
victims of negative stereotypes about stereotypes, such that any
stereotype that turns out to be true gets called a "generalization"!  




-------------
"A weed is simply a plant with insufficient guile."
From: bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Materials for simple static electricity expts.
Date: 16 Dec 1992 18:33:58 GMT
Organization: Intel Corp., Chandler, Arizona
NNTP-Posting-Host: stealth.intel.com

In article <1992Dec15.210441.28006@ncar.ucar.edu> jweiss@paintbrush.cgd.ucar.edu (Jeffrey Weiss) writes:
>I thus
>can create many charged spoons and forks but they all have same-sign
>charges.  Any hints on getting oppositely charged objects?

You need something sufficiently farther down the
triboelectric scale.

Plastic on wool works well because they are near opposite
ends of the scale.

The problem here is that plastic is so close to its end of
the scale that you won't be able to get much charge even
if you do find something farther down.

(I used to have a fulsome copy of the scale on-line,
but that was like five years and eight platforms ago...)

				--Blair
				  "The only constant is loose change."
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: leemike@eecg.toronto.edu (Michael Lee)
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA.  VERIFIABILITY CARRIED TO RIDICULE IN GR AND QM
Keywords: TESTING THE HYPOTHESIS  IS CARRIED TO  CREDULITY IN  GR AND QM
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Date: 14 Dec 92 05:01:12 GMT

In article <abian.724289079@pv343f.vincent.iastate.edu> abian@iastate.edu (Alexander Abian) writes:
>                                      12-13-92
>    
>    Trust me, accept (A1) to (A4),  I am sure that they will pass the 
>    genuine test of the experimental verifiability.
>
Why should anyone trust you?  If one could frame an argument in a
rational manner, then it would not be necessary to beseech others
to trust one.  Should you wish to truly convince people of the
veracity of your ideas, rationality should be the key to that purpose,
not citations of ostracised scientists who were later confirmed to be
correct.  I find these citations to be quite facetious, if the purpose 
of these citations is to acrue, in a roundabout fashion, validity to 
your ideas.  Simply because these individuals were ostracised for
their ideas, which through the passage of time were found to be
inherently correct, does not imply in any way your ideas are also 
correct.  Conversely, the past is rife with individuals, as probably
the present and the future, whom have made truly outrageous scientific 
claims which were correctly intrepreted by their peers, and justly 
ignored or hostilely denied any credibility.  The question that 
ironically arises is which camp does your ideas (A1 to A4) belong: 
for all posterity or the rubbish heap.  

regards,
  Michael Lee
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer)
Subject: Re: Materials for simple static electricity expts.
Organization: Simon Fraser University
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 00:47:08 GMT

In article <1992Dec15.210441.28006@ncar.ucar.edu>
jweiss@paintbrush.cgd.ucar.edu (Jeffrey Weiss) writes:
>In my physics classes I recall we used cat fur, bakelite rods, and
>pith balls to do simple static electricity experiments.  Does anyone
>have any suggestions for common household substitutes?  I've found
>that rubbing plastic silverware with a wool blanket charges the
>plasticware, which I can then use to charge other plasticware.  I thus
>can create many charged spoons and forks but they all have same-sign
>charges.  Any hints on getting oppositely charged objects?
>--
>Jeff
>jweiss@ncar.ucar.edu

Comb and paper work well, of course. Try to see what you can do with a TV
screen or a pair of polyester pants or nylon socks fresh out of the dryer. Just
scuffing across a suitable rug will give you a big enough charge to trigger the
reflexes of unsuspecting students with a spark to the nose or the earlobe.

You might like to try something less ordinary and a bit mystifying, but which
still uses common artifacts. Here's an idea (which I haven't tried myself, but
which I will save to do for my grandchildren). Take an aluminum pieplate* and
fit it with an insulating handle (glue a plastic 35 mm film can to its center,
for example). Take a piece of clean wool cloth and go around investigating
plastic countertops and cutting boards, etc., for suitable bases for an
electrophorus. If all else fails you can make one with paraffin in a shallow
dish or pan. If you don't know what an electrophorous is then you have a
pleasant piece of library research to do which, I'm sure, will stimulate
further good ideas of your own.

Leigh

*The bottom must remain very flat.
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: Bayes' theorem and QM
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 18:58:16 GMT

In article <SRCTRAN.92Dec13221623@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) writes:
>Speaking of Bayes Theorem, one theorem I never see mentioned in many of
>these discussions, and I am almost afraid to mention it (since it can
>spawn many pseudo theories) is a theorem due to Gregory Chaitin at IBM,
>who proves that if you accept the basic properties of Integers, then it
>follows (in a very pretty argument) that statements about reality are 
>all probabilistic, that any theory that uses the integers implicitly
>is bringing in randomness  (or that's how I interpret his work).

We talk about the work of Chaitin, Martin-Loef and Kolmogorov now and
then on sci.math.  Your description of it is (as you note below)
severely over-dramatized.  But if it gets anyone to read the original
stuff and understand it, I guess it's all for the best.

>One could argue that some of the probability that comes into play with
>quantum theories comes from the fact that physicists use integers to
>experiment and predict, that there is an unstated axiom in physics that
>things are probabilistic.

One could argue this, but one would be wrong.  :-)

Classical mechanics and quantum mechanics are fundamentally different in
that the latter is fundamentally probabilistic.   The former is only
probabilistic in the sense that computational limitations may prevent us
from computing the precise future state that is in principle determined by a
given present state.  This sort of computation may simply be infeasible
because we don't know the present state to arbitrary accuracy -- that's
what we call chaos -- or it could (conceivably) be impossible for any
Turing machine to do the computation no matter how accurately the
initial state was known -- that's what we call uncomputability.  There
are no very realistic examples known of the latter phenomenon, though
Pour-El and Richards have proposed an example involving the wave
equation.  (I believe there example is not sufficiently realistic to
worry about.)  If we got ahold of really uncomputable classical
dynamical systems then Chaitin's work would be applicable to classical
mechanics and we could say classical mechanics allowed for randomness of
a much stronger sort than mere chaos.  That would be cool but I
conjecture that it won't happen.  In any case, the world is really
quantum-mechanical and thus one doesn't need uncomputability to get
randomness -- it's built into the axioms of quantum mechanics, as it were.

>I know I am mishandling his ideas greatly, and would appreciate it if
>some of the theorists could read his work and see if there is any relevance
>to the axioms of physics.  If nothing else, his papers are great reading.
From: raju@bass.bu.edu (Rajminder Singh)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA - ABIANS overwhelmingly rejected (A3)
Date: 20 Dec 92 03:05:02 GMT
Reply-To: raju@bass.bu.edu (Rajminder Singh)
Followup-To: sci.physics
Organization: Boston University

In article <1992Dec16.032608.19006@Princeton.EDU> tao@fine.princeton.edu (Terry Tao) writes:
>---
>THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE MOST BASIC, MOST FUNDAMENTAL AND THE MOST PRIMAL
>CHARACTERISTIC BEHIND ANY CAT, KITTEN, MOGGY, FELINE, LION, CHEETAH, TABBY,
>PANTHER, AND THE ENTIRE FELINE FAMILY as my principle (A6)
>
>(A6) THE PRIMAL FEATURE OF A CAT IS HAVING FOUR LEGS

[deleted stuff]

>
>Until Abian comes up with some new type of logic, he's going to be "the person
>who thought that all dogs are cats".
>
>Abian: a challenge.  Either prove that my logic is faulty or accept that
>all dogs are cats.  Whatever argument you use to prove my argument is
>faulty, I can apply it to your usage of (A3) or (A1) or whatever...
>
>Terry

Keep up the *good work*. I am quite certain that Abians' claim to the Nobel
prize is now in jeopardy !

An amused bystander  :)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^            (__)             (__)            Rajminder Singh          ^ 
^            (oo)             (oo)            ERB 07, 44 Cumm. St.     ^
^     /-------\/   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~      ECS, Boston University   ^
^    / |     ||                                                        ^
^  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                                                      ^
^   Cow in water       Cow in trouble                                  ^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Newsgroups: sci.physics,rec.arts.startrek.tech
From: ses52823@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Marius)
Subject: Re: Accellerating Spaceship (yet another bird in a plane)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 03:27:19 GMT

Although I realize this isn't a Star Wars newsgroup...

I wanted to clarify my previous definitions of the 'wormhole travel' tech --

* Star Wars ships can't maneuver (as per Peter Suk) faster than the speed of
  light.  Their hyperdrives are only calibrated to calculate a clear linear
  path (so that they don't, say, wormhole into a sun) and then go go go...
  This is why the Millenium Falcon can't evade the Star Destroyers in some of
  the scenes from all three movies -- they don't have enough time/distance
  to clear a hyperspatial path.

* Han Solo does however mention at one point in time (you'd have to see 
  rec.arts.sf.starwars to find the source) that his engines (NOT hyperdrive)
  are capable of 1.5 times the speed of light (he says 'point five past c')

I don't really want to befuddle the point of my original post -- I was using
the 'charged particle' (read: plasma) analogy to explain the concept of a
massless energy field, even though they aren't very analogous.  I find the
image easy to store in one's head.  So sue me...

* * *

Marius
ses52823@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu

* * *
From: barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman)
Subject: Re: How does Superman create thrust? (WAS Re: The Batman Light: How does it work?)
Organization: UCLA, Mathematics Department
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 04:47:04 GMT

In article <1gb90gINN2te@huon.itd.adelaide.edu.au> hoconnel@iti.org (Heath  
O'Connell) writes:
> dabbott@augean.eleceng.adelaide.edu.AU (Derek Abbott) writes:
> 
> 
> We all ingest neutrinos, whether we want to or not. However, they go through
> you fairly quickly.
> 

Yes, you know the old saying---have a big neutrino meal, and 
10^-9 seconds later, you're hungry again.

--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet; NeXTMail is welcome)


Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Scientific writing (was Re: scientists who write literature)
Date: 11 Dec 92 20:24:48 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

hall@vice.ICO.TEK.COM (Hal F Lillywhite) writes:

>In article <pi*r^2> jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr) writes:

>>                                                 The current issue of 
>>Physics Today has a viewpoint by "Professor Mozart" addressing a similar  
>>problem with scientific seminars and talks at meetings. 

>Right.  And this whole thing started with a report of some English 
>prof claiming that scientists are not good at literature.  

To be fair the report was of an English prof who asked "are there any
scientists who write literature"  (maybe it was "novels") which is
not at all the same thing.

>I consider Mermin's writing about his friend Mozart evidence to the
>contrary.  A glance at a few of these articles convinces me that he 
>is a better creative writer than 90% of the literature scholars 
>around today.  

OK, I'll call you on this.  Name five literature scholars (you can name 
five who write worse than Mermin, or five who write better, I don't care,
but they should be of approximately equal prominence in their fields as
Mermin is in his.)  Do you really know that or are you just saying it?

>(Of course he is also a better creative writer than
>90% of the physical scientists around today.)

Mermin is about the _only_ person who ever writes creatively in Physics
Today.  I am sure there are more who could, but the standards of the
community are such that they do not.  That is the issue.  Attempts to
start a war with the English department are just a distraction.

-Ben

"watch: one name will be Camille Paglia"
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
Subject: Re: RFD: sci.physics.research moderated
Organization: Software Engineering Institute
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 08:43:46 EST

In article <1gqqqjINN9ii@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> fxt@helios.ucsc.edu (oxide owner) writes:

>yep. just enough knife's edge to stop the abian's, the hannu's, the snarfy's,
>the dale versus blair (for example) flame fests, the mega group cross posters,
>the verbage denoted to the relationship of religion and physics, and the qm 
>and/or sr paradox specialists. 

For what it's worth, I vote no.  Even with all the above, I'd rather just
keep hitting the 'n' key.

What's fringe and what isn't?  For example, on the QM stuff I think Mr
Budnik is as wrong as Mr Abian, and he probably thinks the same about
me.  But it does us good to have our views seriously challenged from
time to time, from no matter what perspective.  In my view, there's
already too much smug orthodoxy in this group; if dissent - even crank
dissent - is stifled, it will just get more smug and very boring.

Xref: sparky sci.physics:21133 sci.math:16884
From: palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer)
Subject: Re: Richard P. Feynman
Organization: Simon Fraser University
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 20:18:17 GMT

In article <R0RkVB1w165w@sys6626.bison.mb.ca> al@sys6626.bison.mb.ca (haus der
luge) writes:

>Please recall that Mr. Feynman 
>specialized in physics but also painted and played the bongos, among many 
>other endeavours not normally associated with 'scientists'.
> 
>Besides, the latest discoveries in the sciences are beginning to blur any 
>distinction between our two main fields in many respects.

Your ignorance of the sciences is evident in the blur you perceive. Make no
mistake, Richard Feynman was a superb scientist, and he would have made no
claims to expertise in your field, political philosophy.

You also seem not to be aware of the well-known common association of
scientists and mathematicians with music and musicianship. Feynman was very
proud of his ability to beat five against seven on the bongos. Do you know any
political philosophers who can do that?

I recommend you read Chapter 3 on "The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences"
in Feynman's "Lectures on Physics". You will note that, while psychoanalysis
receives notice (if appropriately disdainful), he has neglected any mention
whatever of political philosophy.

Herr HausDerLuge, I knew Richard Feynman, and you're no Feynman.

Leigh Palmer,
disciplinary bigot
...and proud of it!