HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth)
Subject: Re: New Physics, Healing, Paranormal
Organization: Software Engineering Institute
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 08:35:00 EST

In article <-xq3+jr@rpi.edu> petitc@nuge112.its.rpi.edu (Christopher Jon Petit) writes:

> As for all the ESP info---consider this.  There are many urban legends which
>involve ESP as 'saving the day'  Now, in order for ESP not to exist, EVERY ONE
>of those stories must have either an alternate explaination or be totally false

Quite true.  In thinking about this, I find it helpful to narrow the subject
matter somewhat.  Specifically, to dreams.  And, indeed, to a small subset
of dreams - dreams by a person about to travel that the train will crash,
the boat will sink, or whatever.

I've had such dreams, and you probably have too.  So, let's suppose Serena
Savak is about to fly to Hawaii, has a dream of a plane crash, cancels her
ticket, and the plane crashes.  And, of course, the Weekly World News
publishes the whole story.  ESP, right?

Not necessarily.  What we don't know is, how many times Ms Savak has had the
same dream, but the plane has *not* crashed.  And we need that information,
in order to prove even a statistical correlation between dreams and crashes.
After all, if one flight in 1000 crashes, and only one dream in 1000 comes
true, that's exactly what you'd expect if the dreams were the result of
random anxiety rather than precognition.  But, of course, the WWN doesn't
run 999 stories on dreams that didn't come true.

There is an alternative approach.  Travellers cancel their trips quite
frequently, but psychic travellers, presumably, are more likely to cancel
trips on vehicles that are about to crash.  So, is there a detectable
difference in the pattern of cancellations for planes that have crashed?

This has been studies at least three times, and (typically, I'm afraid)
I've long ago forgotten where the stuff is written up.  So, if you have
time to hunt, two of them are

(a) a series of interviews with people who did not sail on the Titanic

(b) a study of cancellations on the de Havilland Comet 1, conducted by
    British Overseas Airways Corporation.  That's the plane that caught
    "metal fatugue", by the way, and there were for a while all kinds of
    wild theories about what was going on.

As best I can recall, no pattern emerged.  But it still gives me the
creeps to read "Futility".

From: weeks@hpscit.sc.hp.com (Greg Weeks)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 21:24:44 GMT
Subject: Weinberg and the end of physics?
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Santa Clara, CA
Newsgroups: sci.physics

I've been picking up mixed signals regarding the state of quantum gravity.

On the one hand, there are still texts that allude to the basic problem --
ie, how to develop a quantum theory without a fixed underlying space-time.
On the other hand, Steven Weinberg says that the ultimate theory may be at
hand, based (I take it) on structures that are more extended, more
algebraically complex, and on a higher-dimensional underlying manifold than
previous theories.

So which is it?  Has progress been made on what many people considered to
be the fundamental problem?  Or are hopes being pinned on theories based on
flat, ultimately unobservable space-times?
From: aephraim@physics3 (Aephraim M. Steinberg)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Origin of Limerick?
Date: 22 Jan 1993 18:57:23 GMT
Organization: /etc/organization
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics3.berkeley.edu

In article <C18MoM.I64@world.std.com> jcf@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman) writes:
%"Vincent J. Matsko" <vm0h+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
%
%%The following is my advisor's paraphrase of a limerick he once heard. 
%	There was a young lady named Bright,
%	Who travelled much faster than light.
%		She started one day
%		In the relative way,
%	And returned on the previous night.
%
%
%	There was once a young fellow named Fisk,
%	At fucking exceedingly brisk.
%		So rapid his action,
%		Fitzgerald contraction
%	Shrunk his dingdong darn down to a disk.
%
%Heard at Caltech in the summer of 1956.

Well, this will be a POOR paraphrase, but the original idea was so amusing
that I'll give it a try anyway.  This was created by a committee at a
physics department happy hour a few years ago, and my version is less 
than 50% accurate:


RELATIVITY CLASS

One student said Newton should pay
For teaching that F was ma,
     But Newton did not;
     He said F was p-dot,
Still true this Einsteinian day.


-- 
Aephraim M. Steinberg                    | "WHY must I treat the measuring
UCB Physics                              | device classically??  What will
aephraim@physics.berkeley.edu            | happen to me if I don't??"
                                         |       -- Eugene Wigner
From: lizi@soda.berkeley.edu (Cosma Shalizi)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Interview with Steven Weinberg about Final theory
Date: 22 Jan 1993 23:21:14 GMT
Organization: Campus Crusade for Cthulhu (Berkeley Tentacle)
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu

In article <Jan.18.13.39.26.1993.15772@ruhets.rutgers.edu> bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes:
>Actually, string theorists have already succeeded in coming up with the
>Final Theory, answering all questions of physics, and so on.  But they
>realized that if they just came right out with it all, it would instantly
>kill off their entire field - in fact, particle theory would become
>obsolete and administrations might use this as an excuse for wholesale
>eliminations of faculty lines, etc.  So they burned the manuscripts, so to
>speak.  Kind of like Texaco suppressing Free Energy, or our favorite:
>EVIL PHYSICISTS ARE HIDING THE TRUTH !!
   Actually, I once worked out with some friends the ultimate conspiracy
theory. Part of it involved Demokritos of Abdera's propounding the
Ultimate Theory in his _Greater World-System_ about -450 - a remarkable
accomplishment, since computers were not invented until the time of
Archimedes... and all of this, mind you, from the postulate that World War
III has already happened. We had a lot of time on our hands.
	Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
	In Real Life: lizi@soda.berkeley.edu
	larval physicist

-- 
"I'd love to hold you/ I'd love to kiss you/ I ain't got time for that now."
-Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
"Death needs Time for what it kills to grow in."
-William S. Burroughs, "Ah Pook is Here"
From: dseeman@novell.com (Daniel Seeman)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: What causes electrical shock?
Date: 21 Jan 93 23:26:39 GMT
Organization: Novell Inc., San Jose, Califonia

In article <1993Jan21.210858.25428@stsci.edu> kimball@stsci.edu (Timothy Kimball) writes:
>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. */

Charges build up on surfaces or in places (maybe a better term) because those
"places" are not good conductors.  For example, the sheets on your bed are 
cotton so do not readily allow charges to flow away to ground.  So, when those
sheets go through the drier, are folded then put onto your bed, they are left
fully charged.  Then when you get in, your skin touches the sheets.  Your skin
is a better conductor than cotton is so the charges stored on the sheets move
or rather are pulled toward your skin.  If the charge build up is significant
enough, a large potential will be created (between you skin and the sheets) and
the charges will be made to "arc" through the air from the sheet to your legs.
This is what causes that blue flashing that you can see.  

Hope this helps...

dks.
From: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: How to write integrals (was Re: The confusion of tongues (was ...))
Followup-To: sci.physics
Date: 22 Jan 1993 09:15 PST
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.197
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <COLUMBUS.93Jan21101415@strident.think.com> columbus@strident.think.com (Michael Weiss) writes:

>On the topic of mathematicians' vs. physicists' notation, does anyone know
>why most mathematicians will write an integral as shown below on the left
>(unless they omit the dummy variable x entirely), whereas physicists prefer
>the form on the right?
>
>         /                       /
>         |  f(x) dx              | dx f(x)
>         /                       /
>

I think that it's just a matter of convenience.  Physicists often write
long messy integrals with no simple solution.  In these situations, it is
nice to know what kind of integral you have, just by looking at the
beginning of the expression.  Is it a multivariable integral?  What are
the coordinates, i.e., does it say dxdydz or r^2drd(theta)d(phi)?  If you 
separate the integral sign from the volume element by a long expression, it
is harder to see at a glance what you have in front of you.

-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
From: whit@carson.u.washington.edu (John Whitmore)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Physics News Update #110 (1/15)
Date: 22 Jan 1993 06:40:40 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
NNTP-Posting-Host: carson.u.washington.edu
Keywords: physics news interesting banana

In article <1993Jan18.171822.8876@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt) writes:
>In article <1993Jan17.072739.8136@midway.uchicago.edu> revu@midway.uchicago.edu writes:

>>ATOMIC HYDROGEN IN A MAGNETIC TRAP has been
>>studied directly using optical spectroscopy for the first time. 
>>Hydrogen usually exists on Earth as a diatomic molecule, but
>>atomic hydrogen (H) can be created and maintained at low
>>temperatures by spin polarizing the atoms in a magnetic field; the
>>Pauli exclusion principle then keeps the atoms from pairing up. 

>Would someone care to explain this last line?  Why is this the Pauli
>exclusion principle and not just aligned magnets repelling each other?

	It is possible to generate single H atoms, but not to 
cluster them without giving rise to H2 molecules.  The spin polarization
referred to here is of the electron spins; an H2 molecule contains
a filled 1S shell, consisting of one spin-up and one spin-down
electron-which cannot form with two spin-up electrons.

	A cluster of H atoms can thus be made which does not
allow any H2 molecule formation.  The Pauli principle will
only allow spin-up electrons in distinct different states
(i.e. only one such electron in the 1S orbital).

	John Whitmore


From: ric@hpspdla.spd.HP.COM (Ric Peregrino)
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 02:08:45 GMT
Subject: Re: Okay, it's not the inverse sprinkler problem...
Organization: HP Stanford Park - Palo Alto, CA
Newsgroups: sci.physics


Uwe writes:

>Actually, I found that the best thing to do was to step (lightly) on
>the gas. I was standing at an intersection, and I heard a wild
>screeching of tires behind me, plus headlights waving madly in my
>rearview mirror. The person behind me couldn't brake in time and had
>lost control of his/her car. So I pulled forward about nine feet, and
>the other car eventually stopped six feet forward of where my rear
>bumper had been, and facing backward. Then I re-swallowed my heart &
>other organs. I recommend this alternative over either of the others
>(if it works :-) ).

Ah but this means that there was no traffic in the intersection to
subsequently hit you on the driver's side; not a nice thing. If the
intersection was completely clear, then I'd go clear through the
intersection. If only the nearest lane was clear, you could make a
right turn.

R. Peregrino
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jtbell@hubcap.clemson.edu (Jon Bell)
Subject: Re: Solar Eclipse Question
Organization: Presbyterian College, Clinton SC
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 16:54:32 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.230236.46625@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> christos@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:

>1. Is the moon rotating around the earth in a single plane sothat every 29 days
>it comes in between the sun and the earth? If that is the case different places
>of the earth should have solar eclipse every 29 days(period of the ratatioon of
>the moon around the earth).

The moon's orbit does indeed lie in a single plane, but that plane is 
tilted with respect to the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun.
Therefore the moon's and sun's apparent paths in the sky intersect in
only two places.  We get an eclipse only when the sun and moon arrive at
one of the intersection points at the same time, which isn't very often.

Jon Bell / Dept. of Physics & Comp. Sci. / Presbyterian College / Clinton SC
From: masahiro@sakura.cc.tsukuba.ac.jp (Tsuchiya Masahiro)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: photon 'detectors' - how reliable?
Date: 23 Jan 93 21:29:49 GMT
Reply-To: masahiro@sakura.cc.tsukuba.ac.jp

>>In article <wwadge.727584610@csr> wwadge@csr.UVic.CA (Bill  Wadge) writes:
>>
>>>
>>>    .. towards a detector which records every photon ..
>>>
This may be not the answer which you want. But if you want to obtain
accurate number of photon, you may use photochemical reaction which
quantum efficiency is 1.

masahiro@depertment of chemistry, university of  tsukuba   
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.skeptic,alt.paranormal,alt.sci.physics.new-theories,rec.arts.startrek.tech
From: gerry@cmu.edu (Gerry Roston)
Subject: Re: New Physics, Healing, Paranormal
Reply-To: gerry@cmu.edu (Gerry Roston)
Organization: Field Robotics Center, CMU
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 17:30:27 GMT

In article <1k436cINNfe5@emx.cc.utexas.edu> ethan@emx.cc.utexas.edu (Ethan T. Vishniac) writes:

>   In cases like this the request for appropriate references
>   is doomed to failure, but making the request makes a point
>   so....

   How about CARP?  

   Cite Appropriate References Please

Why bother responding.  The first poster made his request just for 
the halibut!

--
Gerry Roston (gerry@cmu.edu)    | IX - The enumeration in the Constitution,
Field Robotics Center,          | of certain rights, shall not be construed
Carnegie Mellon University      | to deny or disparage others retained by the
Pittsburgh, PA, 15213           | people.
(412) 268-3856                  | 
                                | 
The opinions expressed are mine | 
and do not reflect the official | 
position of CMU, FRC, RedZone,  | 
or any other organization.      | 
Newsgroups: sci.physics,alt.sci.physics.new-theories
From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: re: subspace communication (Star Trek)
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 18:55:22 GMT


Dr. Hinson kindly sent me his relativity lectures for Trekies on faster-
than-light effects and relativity that he posted in the Star Trek
conference. I did not know that conference existed.

I do have a PhD in physics and there is nothing I did not already know in
the lectures you sent- thanks anyway.

The point is that causality itself may well be wrong. Godel, Hoyle and most
recently Kip Thorne \Igor Novikov et-al in the papers on traversable
wormholes have shown why.

Your paper does not distinguish between causality violation and causal
anomalies (paradoxes). The universe may be causality-violating without
causal anomalies - in fact I suspect that is the case.

To say that the universe is causality-violating means frame-invariant
communication on the quantum connection (without mass transport) both
outside the light cone and also backwards in time over timelike interval.
Both spacelike and future to past time like communication are
frame-invariant ideas. The point is to renounce the prejudice that causes
are always before effects. That is what is wrong.

A causal anomaly is logically different from causality violation. Thorne
et-al show it is possible, in fact true in model quantum calculations, that
when there is causality violation there are no anomalies. To put it simply
your free will is destroyed if you are in a causality violating loop in time
and you try to create a paradox. A machine will malfunction in order to
avoid a paradox. This is similar to Pauli exclusion principle. All Feynman
path amplitudes that describe inconsistent histories vanish!

It is true, however, that the unitarity of time-evolution in standard
quantum mechanics combined with the orthogonality of the single-particle
states in the entangled pair state does inhibit quantum connection
communication outside the light cone and backwards from the future over a
timelike interval. However, it does seem possible to formulate a variation
on standard quantum mechanics that is minimally non-unitary but still
conserves probability. It also may be possible to create pair states with
non-orthogonal coherent states (actually two sets of multi-particle systems
in an extended notion of "pair") that may allow connection communication
even in unitary standard quantum mechanics. I suspect that nature actually
uses connection communication to create the universe from the future. I also
suspect that conscious minds use it automatically (see Penrose, Emperor's
New Mind). Connection communication would permit the "subspace
communication" of the Star Trek precognition of our coming future.     .
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: scip2124@nusunix1.nus.sg (MARC PAUL JOREF VAN LOO)
Subject: Re: female mentors in science
Organization: National University of Singapore
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 05:20:31 GMT

michael kagalenko (mkagalen@lynx.dac.northeastern.edu) wrote:
: In article <1993Jan27.055231.23117@nuscc.nus.sg> scip2124@nusunix1.nus.sg (MARC PAUL JOREF VAN LOO) writes:
: >michael kagalenko (mkagalen@lynx.dac.northeastern.edu) wrote:
: >
: >: All this talk about "female science" looks suspiciously similar to 
: >: other well known distinctions : "Ariahn" vs "Non-Ariahn", "proletarian"
: >: vs "bourgeous" science....
: >
: >    Are you a nut?
: >
: >
: 
: Are you PC ?


   
       I am Posting Currently yes.
       No doubt there are ahrian traces in this remark...
       all you need is some fantasy.

       Making comparisons like yours doesn't prove you have
       a keen eye for history, it just shows you're obnoxious.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: andre@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca (Andre Roberge)
Subject: Re: Magnetic monopoles?
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 15:07:51 GMT

In <1993Jan27.055742.24399@galois.mit.edu> jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:

>In article <MERRITT.93Jan25150507@macro.bu.edu> merritt@macro.bu.edu (Sean Merritt) writes:
    (about monopoles)
>>I still think that the fact that they would add symmetry to Maxwell's
>>equations is a valid reason for the searches.

>Hmm, I don't.  First, while naive monopoles change dF = 0, *d*F = J to the
>nicer-looking dF = K, *d*F = J (where F is the field strength, J the
>electric current, and K is the magnetic current), this destroys the 
>gauge symmetry of the equations! 

Not really...  You're able to rewrite them as dF' = 0 and *d*F' = J'
by using  a duality transformation (see Jackson Sect. 6.12) and thus still
be able to write F' = dA'    (where the ' refers to the transformed
fields).  Of course you can only do that if all particles have the same
ratio of magnetic to electric charge.  But I bet you (I've never seen it
mentioned) that this is exactly what you get out of any decent GUT.
{it should be related to the fact that the proton charge comes out
to be exactly the same as the positron charge in GUTs.  Use that plus
Dirac's quantization condition to prove this...}

> Why trade a hefty infinite-dimensional
>symmetry group for a measly U(1)?  (Of course, one could argue that the
>infinite-dimensional group, being "gauge" symmetries, is nonphysical and
>worth less than the puniest group of "physical" symmetries.  But gauge
>theories have considerable charms.)  Second, and more importantly, in
>the context of GUTs one is not actually toying with Maxwell's equations
>by putting in magnetic currents as above: one is going to a wholly more
>complicated theory in which the Higgs field determines which gauge field
>counts as the "electromagnetic" one by means of spontaneous symmetry
>breaking, and monopoles are due to regions of space that can't make up
>their minds (so to speak).
From: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Q:  How to de-Gauss a room?
Date: 27 Jan 1993 09:40 PST
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.197
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <kHVZXB3w165w@iowegia.uucp>, quest@iowegia.uucp (Steve J. Quest) writes...
>Brian,
> 
>        You have a unique problem- one which I am sure others down 
>the road will experience as MRI becomes more commonplace.  I have 
>not heard of a site pulling out equipment to date, so therefore
>have not heard of this problem.

I don't know about moving MRI equipment, but high-energy physicists regularly 
move huge magnets from one place to another, leaving the old experimental 
area behind for the next person to install their experiments.  We're talking
anywhere from 10 KGauss and upwards to as strong a field as you can make.
So I don't think this fellow's problem is unique.

>etc.  There is no "easy" way to degauss a room.  I can speculate 
>that it would take a powerful alternating magnetic field, that 
>slowly drops in intensity.  Since they had magnetic resonance  

With this part, I agree.

-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



Newsgroups: sci.physics