HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dave@prim.demon.co.uk (Dave Griffiths)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: The size of electrons, and Fanciful misc  SAGA
Date: 4 Nov 92 13:40:33 GMT
Organization: Primitive Software Ltd.

In article <2NOV199214144631@csa3.lbl.gov> sichase@csa3.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
>In article <1992Nov02.091053.23915@prometheus.UUCP>, pmk@prometheus.UUCP (Paul M. Koloc) writes...
>> 
>>Wavelike character arises from the non-infinite information density
>>of real space (it's grainy) and the localized quantized time.  
>>Not true, there is a limit to the information density of any particle
>>object and reaching that critical density the particle will grow in
>>volume (or distort-compress the local metric or spontaneously generate
>>additional information operators to handle the excess (that is: photons 
>>or charged particle pairs). 
>
>This is not a statement of any physics that *I* know.  As a matter of fact,
>I'm willing to go further and say that it's total rubbish.  Can you 
>point to a textbook which contains any statement resembling what you have
>claimed?

Think for yourself! I've no idea what he was talking about either, but just
because it's not in a textbook doesn't make it rubbish.

>
>>The only people who still think that points have zero extent are
>>mathematicians.  Such a concept has no measure in reality or in physics.
>>THINK delta Function.  
>
>The point particles in all my Lagrangians have zero extent.  Nobody pretends
>to believe that an electron must be pointlike just because we have been
>unable with our best experiments to probe the length scale necessary
>to find out what's what.  But as an "effective model" of the electron, 
>a pointlike Dirac fermion is such a good approximation that our most
>sensitive experiments to date have been unable to distinguish any 
>discrepancy.  Consequently, it is perfectly fair to say that as far as we
>know, the electron is both fundamental and pointlike - a nice simplifying
>abstraction with which to work until we have better information.
>

Well if it's textbooks you're into, you might try Feynman's Lectures Vol II,
chapter 28 where he describes how the theory of electromagnetism, even
modified by QM, "ultimately falls flat on it's face" owing to the infinite
field energy of a point charge.

Surely physics is more than just a branch of engineering? You seem to take
the attitude that if there are conceptual difficulties, they can be swept
under the carpet - provided the model is effective and you can crank the
handle and get good predictions, who cares?

Dave Griffiths
From: matt@physics3.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Standard Model without Higgses (Was : Size of a PHOTON?)
Date: 6 Nov 92 13:53:43
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
Distribution: world
	<4NOV199211145034@csa1.lbl.gov> <1992Nov4.223548.8659@physics.ucla.edu>
	<5NOV199211015169@csa2.lbl.gov>
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics3.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov's message of 5 Nov 1992 11:01 PST

In article <5NOV199211015169@csa2.lbl.gov> sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:

> From an experimental point of view, the entire question of mass generation
> is only now becoming a tractable problem.  I am sure that Matt will flame
> me for lending so much credence to this, but I'll tell you anyway.  Ellis 
> et.al. have done fits to the large body of LEP data on Z physics, treating
> M(top) and M(Higgs) as two open parameters of the SM.  The fact that 
> radiative corrections set nice limits on M(top) is well known and widely
> accepted.  You find, roughly, that on the assumption that the SM is correct,
> M(top) = 130+/-30 GeV.  Ellis finds that you can also now constrain the Higgs
> mass, though very weakly.

I'll try not to make this too much of a flame... :-)

My complaint with an analysis like this is that the Higgs boson is
only one possibility for what's breaking the electroweak symmetry
(and, hence, what's generating fermion masses), and not necessarily
even all that plausible.  Personally, I don't like the idea of
elementary scalar particles---not without supersymmetry, anyway.

We're certainly seeing radiative corrections from *some* heavy
physics.  We have enough precision so that we distinguish between
models just a little bit (enough, for example, so that technicolor is
in serious trouble), but not enough, in my opinion, so that we can
really say that what we're seeing is a Higgs.  The most we can say is
that we haven't yet made any measurement that rules out the minimal
Standard Model with a single Higgs boson.

I take the top measurement more seriously.  This is a much bigger
effect, and it's also much less model-dependent.  We'll see, though,
when the top is found.  If we're lucky, that will be at the Tevatron,
in the next couple of years.
--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
austern@lbl.bitnet                faction, an army!  If you don't have any
matt@physics.berkeley.edu         solutions, become a part of the problem!
Xref: sparky sci.physics:18463 sci.math:14613
From: baez@ucrmath.ucr.edu (john baez)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math
Subject: Re: What's a manifold?
Date: 8 Nov 92 23:09:37 GMT
Followup-To: sci.physics
Organization: University of California, Riverside

In article <1992Nov7.022034.26120@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt) writes:
>In article <1992Nov5.174751.2086@galois.mit.edu> tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow) writes:
>>In fact, I think that despite appearances your retract definition of
>>manifold actually contains topological axioms implicitly.  Don't you
>>really want to say that a manifold is something *homeomorphic* to a
>>smooth retract of an open subset of R^n?
>
>(Homeomorphic is for topological spaces, did you mean diffeomorphic?)
>What does "something diffeomorphic to" mean?  Some *what* thing?  How
>is diffeomorphism defined for objects not yet already covered under my
>definition of manifold?
>
>I'm still contemplating the issue of noncanonicality of the retract
>(tubular neighborhood) definition.  Opinions are running strongly
>against.  None of the arguments have been "knock-down" arguments for
>me, but all the same I'm starting to get the picture.

I think that in the long run one of the better ways to treat this issue is
via ringed spaces.  This is not for the person just starting to learn about
manifolds, but for the person who knows about topological manifolds, smooth
manifolds, piecewise linear manifolds, complex manifolds, almost complex
manifolds, algebraic varieties, and so on.  All these kinds of spaces can
be regarded as "spaces with structure" in the following way: they are
all equipped with a sheaf of rings, namely the sheaf of "nice" functions 
appropriate to the sort of space at hand: continuous, smooth, piecewise linear,
holomorphic, almost holomorphic [that's what they *should* call but I don't
think they do], and algebraic functions, respectively.  

So we may define a topological manifold as a (locally compact Hausdorff)
space such that each point has a neighborhood such that the sheaf of
continuous real-valued functions on that neighborhood is isomorphic to
the sheaf of continuous real-valued functions on R^n.  We may define a
smooth manifold as a topological manifold with a dense subsheaf of its
sheaf of continuous functions -- which we call the sheaf of "smooth" 
functions -- such that each point has a neighborhood such that the sheaf
of smooth functions on that neighborhood is isomorphic to the sheaf
of smooth functions on R^n.  And so on for the other types of spaces.

This is, of course, how algebraic geometers do it these days.  You can
learn about ringed spaces and much more in the chapter on "schemes" in 
Hartshorne's Algebraic Geometry.  (Algebraic geometers have lots of sneaky
schemes.  A "scheme" is a specially nice sort of ringed space.)

Note that this avoids the use of atlases, although it is equivalent to
the atlas approach, or even that irritating tubular neighborhood approach
in some cases!  (Now try to to show that every algebraic variety is
the retract of a tubular neighborhood in C^n!) 

Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: What is a manifold?
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 22:15:38 GMT

In article <1992Nov5.022710.10234@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt) writes:
>In article <abian.720910802@pv343f.vincent.iastate.edu> abian@iastate.edu (Alexander Abian) writes:
>>
>>   So, MY DEFINITION is:
>>
>>      An n-dimensional differentiable manifold  M  is a connected
>> subdomain of  an  n+k  dimensional  Euclidean space such that
>> at every point,   M  has an n-dimensional tangent hyperplane.
>
>If you require manifolds to be connected, what does coproduct in the
>category of manifolds become?  (I.e. how do you add two manifolds
>together?)  Does coproduct even exist then?  Seems unlikely.
>
>I'm guessing connectedness doesn't damage coequalizers.  Anyone know
>for sure?  John?

Geez, some people wouldn't understand how to tie their shoes until it
was explained to them in the language of categories!!  :-)  Let us pause
to recall the words of Goethe: "Computer scientists are like Frenchmen:
whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and
forthwith it is something entirely different."  (Okay, Goethe said
"mathematicians," not computer scientists.)  

As far as I can tell, manifolds don't have equalizers or coequalizers.
I have never messed with coequalizers but I guess you just turn all the
arrows around in the definition of equalizers... so given two smooth
maps f,g from X to Y, the coequalizer would be a manifold Z with a smooth
map from Y to Z such that any map h from Y such that hf = hg factors uniquely
through Z.  So it seems like we are taking a quotient of Y, identifying
the point f(x) with the point g(x) for all x in X.  This quotient won't
usually be a manifold.  

Of course, there are spaces that are a little nastier than manifolds but
still interesting.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: Isham 5 Decoherence Functional & Nonclassical Q Intelligence?
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 04:43:54 GMT


Isham 5 Decoherence Functional
The key technical ingredient is the decoherence functional D(h',h) which is
a function of pairs of histories h',h associated to the same collection of
questions Q1...QN,,, If

h' = P(QN,q'N,tN)...P(Q1,q'1,t1)   (6.3.6)

[Q is set of all questions pertaining to a particular measurement.  q is
one such question]

...

D(h',h) = tr{P(QN,q'N,tN)...P(Q1,q'1,t1)p(0)P(QN,qN,tN)...P(Q1,q1,t1)}
(6.3.8)

The family of histories is said to be consistent if D(h',h) = 0 for all
pairs h,h' for which h not equal to h'..

6.3.3 The Application to Quantum Gravity
The consistency condition (6.3.9) depends on the state p(0)... As
emphasised by Gell-Mann and Hartle, this implies that the manifest
existence of our current world of a quasi-classical domain depends
ultimately on the initial state p(0) that existed shortly after the
'initial' big bang.  From this perspective, the classical features of our
present-day world must be seen as a contingent property of the big-bang:
they could have been otherwise.

[I propose that the structure of the 'contingent property' is engineered by
advanced intelligence in our far future using controlled quantum action at
a distance backward in time to bring themselves (and us) into being.
Sarfatti]

Indeed, for all we know, the quantum theory of our universe may admit other
consistent families of histories with no quasi-classical domains at all; a
valid concept in the context of a post-Everett interpretation of quantum
theory." p.100

[The other consistent families are like the Q-space of super-beings in Star
Trek - nonlocal discarnate intelligences in the "universes next door" that
can and do intrude upon us. Sarfatti]
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: abian@iastate.edu (Alexander Abian)
Subject: TIME HAS INERTIA    ----     SOME SYNONYM
Keywords: TIME, INERTIA, MATTER
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 06:30:49 GMT

     

           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
-- 
   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)
From: sschaff@roc.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Stephen F. Schaffner)
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 02:15:21 GMT

In article <Nov.9.19.53.57.1992.11917@ruhets.rutgers.edu>, bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes:
|> sschaff@roc.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Stephen F. Schaffner) writes:
|> > [Gene Kochanowsky writes:]
|> >|> 	Or if you are a bible thumper try this quote for size:
|> >|> 
|> >|> 		"proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing"
|> 
|> >	I doubt I've ever thumped a Bible, and I can't imagine a reason for 
|> >thumping a bible, but I'll bite anyway: where's the quote from?
|> 
|> Of course, this quotation isn't from the Bible; it's from "The 
|> Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."  

Shucks, I hate missing literary allusions.


|> [...] I figure the best thing is to ignore them.  Just like
|> I ignore street preachers.

Having just read Mr. Kochanowsky's latest blast in my direction (well, I read 
most of it -- hostility makes me nervous), I'm inclined to agree.

-- 
Steve Schaffner        sschaff@unixhub.slac.stanford.edu

"Three mornings a week I still wake up and think, 'None of this could 
possibly be true'."               (Bishop) Stephen Neil

	The opinions expressed may be mine, and may not be those of SLAC, 
Stanford University, or the DOE.
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.bio
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: Some physics questions
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, LA
Distribution: na
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 92 19:29:50 GMT

In article <1detccINNkst@chnews.intel.com> bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>In article <6NOV199212364099@csa1.lbl.gov> sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
>>Scott I. Chase			"It is not a simple life to be a single cell,
>>SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		 although I have no right to say so, having
>>				 been a single cell so long ago myself that I 
>>				 have no memory at all of that stage of my 
>>				 life." - Lewis Thomas
>
>Here's where I prove I slept through biology (and that I
>have the balls to take on the ideas of people like Lewis Thomas):
>
>Before the sperm enters the egg, it isn't you, and after
>it enters the egg, it's not a single cell, it's two cells,
>or something entirely different.  Right or wrong?

I'm sure Lewis Thomas wasn't identifying unduly with his dad's sperm.
As far as I can tell, he's referring to the continuity of life and the
fact that you can in theory trace all our cells back to single-celled
ancestors.  Then the "so long ago" makes sense and the "I" is a grand
exaggeration.
From: sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Some physics questions
Date: 6 Nov 1992 12:36 PST
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: na
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.196
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

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? 

We're getting a little philosophical here, but I would argue as follows:

The speed of light is what it is for *some* reason, or it would have a
different value!  (I know I'll get flamed for this one.)  I expect that
this reason will ultimately be accessible to us.

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"It is not a simple life to be a single cell,
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		 although I have no right to say so, having
				 been a single cell so long ago myself that I 
				 have no memory at all of that stage of my 
				 life." - Lewis Thomas
Xref: sparky sci.physics:18160 sci.math:14419
From: smith@gramian.harvard.edu (Steven Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math
Subject: Re: What's a manifold?
Date: 5 Nov 92 15:15:53 GMT
Article-I.D.: gramian.SMITH.92Nov5101553
	<1992Nov5.004804.24757@galois.mit.edu>
	<1992Nov5.035214.25991@galois.mit.edu>
	<1992Nov5.060400.14203@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>
Organization: Harvard Robotics Lab, Harvard University

pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt) writes:

> What I don't understand here is how "living in R^n" is of itself
> creating complexity and obscurity.  I can see that the
> arbitrariness of f might get in the way.  But where does the
> complexity and obscurity creep in if for example we define a
> manifold to be a smooth retract of an open subset of R^n?

The choice of ambient space is also somewhat arbitrary.  If the
manifold can be imbedded in R^n, then it can also be imbedded in
R^{n+1}, to say nothing of imbeddings in other manifolds.  The point
is that manifolds exists independently of their imbeddings in R^n or
other manifolds.  Any reasonable definition should possess this
invariance.

Steven Smith
From: slovick@Apple.COM (Linda Slovick)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Campfire and plasma musings
Date: 6 Nov 92 21:30:21 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA



While watching my campfire as it burned down to coals, I got to
wondering about plasma.

1.) Do campfire coals get hot enough that the "gas" coming off
of them is really a plasma, or is it still just a gas?

2.) Is a flame a plasma?

3.) Is there some hidden heat associated with the state
transition between a gas and a plasma like there is between the
other states?

4.) Is plasma somehow associated with ionization?

5.) I have played with one of those little Radio Shack plasma
ball toys, but am still pretty hazy about what it's doing.  It
also doesn't seem to get at all hot, so is plasma always
associated with high temperature?  If so, is there just too
little stuff in the plasma ball toy for high temperature to give
off much heat?

6.) Does a working florescent light contain a plasma?  Do
plasmas generally floresce (my campfire coals kind of looked
like they did, all red and bluish with no visible smoke)?

7.) Just what IS plasma, anyway? I remember from physics class
many (MANY!) years ago that plasma is supposed to be the fourth
state of matter, and have the vague general idea that it's
supposed to be a sort of superhot gas, but just what makes it a
whole different state?

Just curious...

Linda Slovick                                 slovick@apple.com
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: kim@Lise.Unit.NO (Kim Gunnar St|vring \yhus)
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA        ABIAN REPLIES TO M.S.T.  WATTS
Keywords: (A1) and (A2)
Organization: Norwegian Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 16:03:28 GMT

In article <abian.721368793@pv343f.vincent.iastate.edu>, abian@iastate.edu (Alexander Abian) writes:
 > Mr. Watts,                          
 > 
 >    I tried to read your two  page posting. It is difficult for me 
 > to manage to catch your whole posting since (repeating your words)
 > the construction of your sentences are grammatically faulty.  If
 > you rewrite your posting (again repeating your words) in correct
 > English, I may  reconsider replying to it.

What kind of nonsense is this? I read Watts's article too, and it was
both more gramatically correct, and easier to understand than most other
articles. What kind of game are you playing? Are you paranoid? Or
maybe you are a simple program, ELIZA-like, just mirroring input?

And as for correct english, mr Watts appear to be from the United
Kingdom, while you appear to be from the United States, and
thereby don't speak or talk correct english.

 > (A1)     THE TENDENCY OF MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO, REACTION TO PRO-
 >          VOCATION AND THE TENDENCY OF MAINTAINING AGAIN A STATUS QUO.

And that is still an ill formed sentence. The usual way to interpret
such a sentence is to expand the ',' as part of a multiple attribute,
like this:
THE TENDENCY OF MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO, and the tendency of
maintaining REACTION TO PROVOCATION, AND THE TENDENCY OF MAINTAINING
AGAIN A STATUS QUO.

Since your postings continues to have nothing to do with science,
you should get away from this group.

Kim0

PS: Dette er en gramatialsk korrekt setning, som Abian ikke kan lese.
Xref: sparky sci.physics:18702 sci.math:14776
From: bruck@mathj.usc.edu (Ronald Bruck)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math
Subject: Re: graphical humping terminology
Date: 11 Nov 1992 13:42:46 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: mathj.usc.edu

In article <1992Nov11.202318.28554@galois.mit.edu> jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:

(Stuff omitted)

>
>The "bump functions" mathematicians use are usually C_0^\infty, that is,
>infinitely differentiable and compactly supported.  If for some reason
>one wants to reserve the term bump for C_0^\infty functions, one could
>call more general functions "lumps" or "humps".  It might be nice to
>have all 3 of these become technical terms.
>
>Thm.  The product of two lumps is a hump.
>
>etc. would be fun to see.
>

Which would be known as the "Humpty-Lumpty Theorem"?...

(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

--Ron Bruck
bruck@mtha.usc.edu preferred
From: mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Mcirvin)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Scientists Plan to Blow Up the World!
Date: 7 Nov 92 22:55:29 GMT
 <mcirvin.720987478@husc8> <1dfv7aINNhvp@gap.caltech.edu>

brahm@cco.caltech.edu (David E. Brahm) writes:

>Ha!  The Standard Model surprises you again!  If the top is heavy and the
>Higgs is light (but with "reasonable" values), the Standard Model predicts
>our vacuum is metastable; see
>  P. Arnold & S. Vokos, Phys.Rev.D44:3620 (1991)
>  G. Anderson, Phys.Lett.B243:265 (1990)

[description of conditions deleted]

>(Both Eric Carlson & Larry Hall probably know of these papers, since
>Stamatis Vokos and Greg Anderson are both LBL grads.)

This result was precisely what Carlson was talking about, actually.
I didn't know that the necessary conditions were *that* reasonable.
Excuse me while I go hide under the bed.
-- 
Matt McIrvin