HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: emarkp@soda.berkeley.edu (E. Mark Ping)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA  -    DOOLEY's REACTION to PROVOCATION
Keywords: TIME  is MATTER
Date: 12 Nov 92 23:55:33 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley, CS Undergraduate Association
NNTP-Posting-Host: soda.berkeley.edu

MR. ABIAN

  You continually ignore the following question:

  If your A1 holds, then why does time require energy to perpetuate it's
status quo -- i.e. moving forward.  BY YOUR OWN A1 TIME SHOULD RETAIN IT'S
STATUS QUO.  ADDING ENERGY SHOULD **CHANGE** IT'S MOTION FORWARD.

  Until you answer this question, DON'T POST ANYTHING ELSE OR

****GET OFF THIS NEWSGROUP****
GO POST IN ALT.SCI.PHYSICS.NEW-THEORIES!!!!

------------
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: alison@wsrcc.com (Alison Chaiken)
Subject: Solid-state doesn't use QED! (Was Re: Particle Research)
Organization: W S Rupprecht Computer Consulting, Fremont CA
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 04:43:23 GMT

music@erich.triumf.ca (FRED W. BACH) writes:
>In article <gewIg2C00WBL01w4Qz@andrew.cmu.edu>, Paul Karol <pk03+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes...
>>A distinguished particle physicist not too long ago
>>seriously claimed that since the electron was the first fundamental
>>particle discovered, all of chemistry was beholden to particle physics. 
>   A bit stretched, but the discovery of the electron led to QED which
> led to a very much deeped understanding of solid-state physics which
> spawned semi-conductors which, in turn, spawned the computer, which
> makes this newsgroup possible.  Am I wrong?  I don't think so.

You're wrong.  As far as the theory of the electron goes, QED has had
no impact on solid-state physics whatsoever.  I have been a
solid-state physicist for 10 years, and I have never never seen or
heard a single reference to QED corrections to electron energy levels.
Even relativistic corrections to electron-energy levels (Darwin term)
are always ignored except for the actinides.  It is true that an
understanding of spin-orbit coupling is important to understanding
energy levels in semiconductors, but this is not QED!  Solid-state
physics doesn't really even use the full Dirac equation, except that
we are interested in the magnetic moment of the electron, which the
equation explains qualitatively.  The local-density theory which is
used to calculate the band structure of solids is based on the
Hartree-Fock theory and its elaborations by Kohn-Sham-Landau.
Hartree-Fock predated Dirac.

Having said all that, the theories of broken symmetry and elementary
excitations (Goldstone bosons) in solid-state physics have been heavily
influenced by particle theories.  Here solid-state is using the
_concepts_ of field theory, not the results!  My understanding is that
particle theories have been in turn influenced by solid-state theories
(e.g., non-perturbative field theories are greatly influenced by the
BCS theory of superconductivity).
-- 
Alison Chaiken 				alison@wsrcc.com
(510) 422-7129 [daytime] 		or chaiken@cmsgee.llnl.gov
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: royd@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Roy Daniel)
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Organization: Universite de Montreal
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 20:14:03 GMT

Just a little citation from the Hitch Hicker's Guide to the Galaxy:

(Adapted freely; I don't have the book at this time)

{"I don't want to give a proof that I exist, for proof denies faith, and without
faith I am nothing." said God.
"Yes, but the Babel fish [a fish that, when placed in your ear, translates 
every language to you] is a dead giveaway, isn't it? So, by your own saying,
you don't exist. QED." said man.
"Oh. I haven't thought of that" said God, as he disappeared in a puff of logic.

So the man, ready for an encore, tries to prove that black is white, and gets
trampled to death on the next zebra trail.}

Most definetly, science and religion don't mix.

Seeya.

Daniel Roy
 

 a
From: baez@ucrmath.ucr.edu (john baez)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Solid-state doesn't use QED! (Was Re: Particle Research)
Date: 8 Nov 92 23:20:21 GMT
Organization: University of California, Riverside

In article <1992Nov7.034453.2080@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>In article <1992Nov6.233219.15750@galois.mit.edu> jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:
>
>>Yes, here there seems to be a very nice interplay.  It's one of the few
>>things that keeps physicists talking to each other, the mathematical
>>analogies between condensed matter physics and field theory.  All sorts
>>of tricks, like the ones you mention and also renormalization group
>>methods, solitons and instantons, etc., show up in both subjects.
>>Here's to the unity of nature!
>
>     I enjoy a bit of good interplay, now and again, myself.  But do you
>     not think to a certain extent, that this is the result of the existence of
>     the most fashionable tool in our toolbox?

The fashionableness of a theory plays a big role in why people look all over 
for examples of phenomena that fit the theory - or not, as the case may be.
But the fact that so many tools apply to both solid state physics and quantum
field theory is due to the fact that their mathematical structures are closely
related, being both quantum theories of field-like phenomena.   When you find
that quantum fields can form solitons, you can easily find solid state (or 
condensed matter!) systems that display solitons.  In solid state you have
quite a bit of choice in terms of finding systems that have roughly some
Lagrangian or other, so you can really test your mathematical notions to
some extent.  (Typically, of course, the real condensed matter system is
more complicated than the Lagrangian you guessed for it, so these "tests"
are always suspect.)
From: johno@sdd.hp.com (John Ongtooguk)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Date: 6 Nov 1992 22:03:31 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, San Diego Division
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: hpsdlg10.sdd.hp.com

In article <1ded61INNin6@chnews.intel.com>, bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
|> 
|> In article <1dchkqINNt4k@hpsdlss3.sdd.hp.com> johno@sdd.hp.com (John Ongtooguk) writes:
|> >       ........... Science is more of a falsifier than deliverer of 
|> >truth and after enough "is, is not" the truth may become evident, or 
|> >at least accepted as such. 
|> 
|> Science may rationally improve its methods in order to more
|> accurately determine the efficacy of its models.  This does
|> not imply in any way that the presenters of the previous models
|> were making false claims, unless in the course of presenting
|> the models they lied.

   Falsifier as in proving false, not representing falsely. Proving
   something to be false is not the same as stating the 'truth',
   and in this regard science has had a lot to say about religion
   as well as previous scientific 'truths'.     

|> In article <1992Nov6.020049.6292@galois.mit.edu> jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Ba
|> ez) writes:
|> >>  If the truth is always changing then what is it after it changes ?
|> >
|> >"Error."
|> 
   Meaning in some cases that the previous statement was wrong and can 
   no longer be regarded as the 'truth'; the nature of the atom, of
   galaxies, the apparent size of the universe, etc.     

|> Science, when presented properly, admits its faults to examination
|> and discovery; it makes claims only about the logical deductions
|> calculated and the experiments conducted, and those claims are
|> only that the results are as they appear.
|> ............
|> In contrast, religion strives to hide its fundamental faults
|> behind paradoxical aphorisms about faith and sin. 

   Speaking as an agnostic supporter of science a problem that I've
   seen is that while science has had a lot to say about religious
   truths and has for a lot of people replaced religion as the means
   for understanding their place in the world it doesn't offer much
   in the way of a value system. Have to pray the best I guess %^)

   John Ongtooguk (johno@sdd.hp.com)
From: sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Magnetic Scale Removers
Date: 13 Nov 1992 09:55 PST
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.196
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1e0efbINNocn@bHARs12c.bnr.co.uk>, irw@bharh58.bnr.co.uk (Ian Woollard) writes...
> 
>My combination boiler managed after some years of use to scale up
>completely on the hot water circuit. The water in my area is hard
>enough to hammer nails in with, so this isn't at all surprising.
> 
>What was somewhat surprising was that my plumber suggested that I fit,
>not a water softener (he claimed that this would impede the flow: I
>believe this, I don't have a water tank at all) but a plastic cylinder
>with a large magnet in it to the cold pipe. The claims he made were

Sounds like your plumber needs to brush up on his physics.  Save your money.

-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
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: Is John Baez nonlocal?
Summary: Highly
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, LA
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 21:55:27 GMT

In article <BxKELI.Moo@well.sf.ca.us> sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti) writes:
>
>I notice that John Baez uses at least three different e-mail addresses
>almost simultaneously. Is this evidence for the many worlds interpretation
>of quantum mechanics?

Well, there's John Baez the mathematician, John Baez the physicist, and
John Baez the MIT professor who is Joan Baez's father.  The 3rd one
doesn't exist but that doesn't seem to faze him.
From: rk3h+@andrew.cmu.edu (Robert J. Knapp)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA ABIAN replies to R.J.KNAPP
Date: 11 Nov 92 10:02:25 GMT
Article-I.D.: andrew.Mf0KPFe00Voi08n246
Organization: Junior, Physics, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Sorry about not responding for a few days... MANY tests.

Rob "Money is not our God" Knapp

Open a book,				|	LEGALIZE
and open your mind			|
the only thing they can't censor	|	[MNIBG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
is logic.				|
-------------------------------------------------------------
"Life is something to be experinced through the eyes of a child."
                   			-Me
From: sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: No big crunch?
Date: 6 Nov 1992 12:16 PST
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.196
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    

In article <1992Nov6.020022.29066@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes...

>      How can one make definitive statements about GUT's *requiring*
>      new massive particles without there existing a tenable GUT?
>      After all, I am reasonably sure that there are infinite possible
>      theories that do not require new particles.  In fact, there are 
>      probably potential GUTs that do not even use the concept of particles.
>      I am not so confident as to the suitability nor the uniqueness of
>      our representations as you appear to be.

Every GUT in the standard panoply of GUT's requires new heavy particles.  
One of the nice things about the simplest GUT, SU(5), is that it requires 
no new fermions, just a few very heavy IVBs to mediate lepton-quark 
transformations.  For more complicated choices of gauge group you start 
getting all sorts of wierd "extraneous" particles, none of which have ever 
been seen.  

The speculation that some future hypothetical "GUT" might not even use the 
notion of particles is is totally groundless, and not useful.  Anything
is possible.  So what?  You have to use the clues you have.  Every theory
we try to build which extends the SM in what seems to be a natural way
inevitably includes additional particles.  Sometimes we discover these 
particles, and someone becomes famous.  More often, they just fade away.

And what exactly do you mean by "tenable"?  There are plenty of GUT choices
which are consistent with all the available data.  (Of course, there is 
little available data.) 

-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: mcirvin@husc8.harvard.edu (Mcirvin)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Massive Photons Tomorrow (was Scientists Plan...)
Date: 7 Nov 92 00:44:38 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc8.mcirvin.721097078

ramsay@unixg.ubc.ca (Keith Ramsay) writes:

>The possibility of ordinary radiation becoming impossible was not
>mentioned in the article. I suspect that "the length of interaction of
>electromagnetism" mentined here means something like the distance two
>static charges can be from each other and still exert appreciable
>forces on each other, rather than, say, "electromagnetic waves don't
>carry farther than 1 meter". Of course, I haven't worked any of this
>out for myself.

All of this is right.  The idea is that the photon would gain a mass,
thereby obeying Proca's equation rather than Maxwell's.  Radiation
would gain a dispersion relation in free space; light would travel at
a speed less than c and dependent upon frequency, but it could carry
arbitrarily far.  Static electric and magnetic forces, on the other
hand, would be exponentially damped with distance.

The dispersion relation could scramble radio signals by delaying
different-frequency components by varying amounts.  Sunshine would
survive intact if it managed to get produced in the first place.

-- 
Matt McIrvin
From: matt@physics3.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Compelling Mysteries (II)
Date: 10 Nov 92 12:46:39
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics3.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU's message of Tue, 10 Nov 1992 03:35:43 GMT

In article <1992Nov10.033543.21908@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:

> 	  d) the solar neutrino 'problem'.  Is it a problem?  Do we believe 
>      the calculations.  Why do no two experiments seem to tell us the same 
>      thing?   Is something being left out of the 'standard model' of the 
>      sun?  How much *is* gallium chloride by the ton?
> 	  e) why does the Hubble 'constant' float all over the place.  It
>      almost seems like one could select a value at random and find very
>      good support for that value in astrophysical observations.

Sorry to be such a wet blanket all of the time, but...

I tend to think that the answer to these two questions is fairly
simple too: these measurements are both extremely difficult, and it
isn't terribly surprising that different measurements are giving us
different answers.  

(And in the solar neutrino measurements, it's worth remembering that
most of these experiments are testing a prediction of the "standard
solar model"---the flux of high-energy neutrinos---that is extremely
sensitive to the input assumptions.  I'll be more inclined to believe
that the problem is real when I see numbers I really believe from a
measurement of the low-energy neutrino flux.)
--
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!
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.math
From: tycchow@phragmen.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow)
Subject: Re: What's a manifold?
Organization: None.  This saves me from writing a disclaimer.
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 02:35:24 GMT

In article <1992Nov5.213739.4045@galois.mit.edu> jbaez@riesz.mit.edu
(John C. Baez) writes:

>For example: "a group is a subset of the set of permutations of a set
>that is closed under taking inverses and products".  Yuck!
>These things should be theorems, not definitions.  

This is true, but only with hindsight, I think.  As Gerald Edgar has noted,
some think that we should proceed from the abstract to the specific, but
this approach often suffers from the problem of motivation.  Objects such as
groups and manifolds were not defined intrinsically at first, because they
arose in some specific context.  Only afterwards did it become clear what
properties to abstract and how this would help.  Frequently the original,
clumsier definition is closer to intuition and easier to motivate.

Groups are an excellent example.  Usually the axioms are just thrown at the
student without any particular motivation.  The student isn't told that the
motivation for the associativity axiom is that groups usually feel most at
home when acting on a set, and functional composition is "automatically"
associative.

This isn't to say, as I read in Spivak once, that ontogeny must recapitulate
phylogeny in pedagogy.  Still, for the purposes of motivation it may be
useful to look at the history of mathematical concepts.
-- 
Tim Chow     tycchow@math.mit.edu
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs
30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh
only 1 1/2 tons.                               ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949
From: cegtitd@prism.gatech.EDU (Tim Dodd)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Date: 12 Nov 92 21:40:34 GMT
Article-I.D.: hydra.74613
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

In article <Nov.9.19.53.57.1992.11917@ruhets.rutgers.edu> bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes:
|and unable to get their minds around the idea that
|one can hold in one's head both science and religion (go read Pais's
|life of Einstein, OK?),

I've read this book rather recently (within the past year), and I don't
know where you're coming from here.

Tim
-- 
Tim Dodd, Research Scientist, Georgia Tech:  cegtitd@prism.gatech.edu
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: Feynman 28 Sum over histories - a theory of everything?
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 09:33:18 GMT


"Feynman 28 "sum-over-histories" a theory of everything?
P.250 (Gleick) "Feynman's path-integral view of nature, his vision of a sum
over histories" was also the principle of least action, the principle of
least time, reborn.  Feynman felt that he had uncovered the deep laws that
gave rise to the centuries-old principles of mechanics and optics... How
does a thrown ball know how to find the particular arc whose path minimizes
action?  How does a ray of light know how to find the path that minimizes
time?  .... These paths .... are special because they dend to be where the
contributions of nearby paths are most closely in phase and most reinforce
one another.  Far from the path of least time - at the distant edge of a
mirror, for example, paths tend to cancel on another out.  Yet light does
take every possible path ... The seemingly irrelevant paths are always
lurking in the background, making their contributions, ready to make their
presence felt in such phenomena as mirages and diffraction gratings.

.... Feynman was - with finality - eliminating the wave viewpoint
altogether.  Waviness was built into the phases carried by amplitudes, like
little clocks. .... The actors were, more clearly than ever, particles ....

p.264  Feynman cared far less than Dyson about his still-patchwork scheme
for renormalizing quantum electrodynamics.  It was his sum-over-histories
theory of physics that claimed his passion.  As Dyson saw it, it was a
grand vision and a unifying vision - too ambitious ...

'It was essential to his view of things that it must be universal.  It must
describe everything that happens in nature.  You could not imagine the sum-
over-histories picture being true for part of nature and untrue for another
part.  You could not imagine it being true for electrons and untrue for
gravity. It was a unifying principle that would either explain everything
or explain nothing.
From: snyder@henry.ece.cmu.edu (John Snyder)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: New Group sci.physics.orthodox
Date: 9 Nov 92 23:34:57 GMT
Organization: Physics Department, Carnegie Mellon University

In article <1992Nov9.135719.18651@cs.yale.edu> jhh@waldzell.physics.yale.edu (Jim Horne) writes:
>In article <1deevpINNl33@bigboote.WPI.EDU> phillies@bigwpi.WPI.EDU  
>(George D. Phillies) writes:
>> Is it just me, or is the crackpot and fringe material
>> drowning out the real physics?  Perhaps it is time for
>>  
>> sci.physics.orthodox (moderated?)
>> 
>
>I think a much better name would be sci.physics.research, and it
>would have to be moderated, though lightly. There is already a  
>successful moderated group sci.math.research which could serve
>as an example of how to encourage substantive discussions of current
>research.
>
>> My motivation for this is the suspicion that this group 
>> is not in contact with the physics community at all.  
>> 
>> George Phillies
>> phillies@wpi.wpi.edu
>
>Yes, very few real physicists read sci.physics. Most have been driven
>out by the crackpots.
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>Jim Horne
>jhh@waldzell.physics.yale.edu
> 


This sounds good to me, too.  I think some kind of split would be helpful.
A large amount of the posts in this newsgroup appear to be discussions
of the philosophy of science, and the politics of science funding; and
*highly* speculative stuff that should be in alt.sci.physics.new-theories.
Though somewhat interesting, I don't really enjoy wading through them
on a daily basis.  

John
snyder@henry.ece.cmu.edu
Xref: sparky sci.physics:18736 alt.conspiracy:12134
From: bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: NASA Coverup
Date: 10 Nov 1992 20:10:01 GMT
Organization: Intel Corp., Chandler, Arizona
NNTP-Posting-Host: alfalfa.intel.com

In article <1992Nov10.042927.11250@galois.mit.edu> jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:
>Let's admit it.  EVERYONE on sci.physics is part of the coverup, so
>snarfy is just wasting his time posting here.

Exactly the converse.

Snarfy is part of the new coverup, in which the Bush
administration and God are conspiring to keep from us
the information about the findings that all of our
fears and calculations were correct.

				--Blair
				  "It didn't work two weeks
				   ago on Arms for Hostages;
				   it didn't work last week
				   on Armageddon; and it won't
				   work today on Lunar Mass."
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: SSC, jobs, etc.
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, LA
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 92 19:44:54 GMT

In article <6NOV199214083231@csa1.lbl.gov> sichase@csa1.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:
>In article <1992Nov6.200752.26007@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes...
>
>>     That's funny.  I thought I heard several Senators tell us the SSC
>>     is about 'jobs'.
>
>What a Senator has to say about the SSC is meaningless.  

Hmm, I thought they were the ones who had to vote to buy the damn thing.
In which case their remarks may well be inaccurate or deliberately
misleading, but certainly not meaningless.  We certainly can't expect
the Senators to vote for the SSC out of their own personal interest in
particle physics.  "Jobs" is a much more plausible motive, even if
building the SSC is a bad way to produce jobs.  Or possibly the Senators
were referring to their *own* jobs.
Newsgroups: sci.physics