HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Subject: Re: Super Conducting Supercollider
Organization: University of Virginia
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 18:50:01 GMT

In article <25116@dog.ee.lbl.gov> sichase@csa2.lbl.gov writes:
>In article <5568@lhdsy1.lahabra.chevron.com> rcj@lhdsy1.lahabra.chevron.com (R.C. Jones) writes:
>
>>> What are the more scientific opinions about the value
>>> of the Super Conducting SuperCollider program?
>
>I will not get involved in this thread again... I will not get involved in 
>this thread again... I will not get involved in this thread again... I 
>will not get involved in this thread again...  Rustum Roy was a moron...
>I will not get involved in this thread again... I will not get involved in 
>this thread again...

     Moron or not, I think he was very effective in making his points.

     My favorite exchange, though, was the one about the Nobel Laureates.
     "Nobel Laureates in physics?  Who cares about them?"  

     I was in stitches.

                                      dale bass
-- 
C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926
From: ttyytt@mixcom.com (Adam Costello)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: ... an infinite mesh of 1ohm resistors ...
Date: 28 Jul 92 00:08:44 GMT
Article-I.D.: mixcom.1992Jul28.000844.27051
Organization: Milwaukee Internet Xchange BBS, Milwaukee, WI U.S.A.

In article <1992Jul27.210947.5820@fs7.ece.cmu.edu> snyder@henry.ece.cmu.edu (John Snyder) writes:
>
>I believe that you are missing the point of the previous post here.

But I think you are missing the point of the second post.  The "solution"
involved imagining that you could inject an amp of current into a network
of resistors.  No capacitors!  Where is the charge supposed to go?
Regardless of whether this can be done in the laboratory, there's still
the question of whether it can be done in the mind.  Certainly, if the
network were finite, it would make no sense.  Does the infinitude of the
network allow a source with no sink?  We can argue that it does this way:

Consider this sequence of networks:

+-----+-----+     +-----+-----+-----+-----+
|     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
|     /     |     |     /     /     /     |
|     \     |     |     \     \     \     |
|     /     |     |     /     /     /     |
|     |A    |     |     |     |     |     |
+-/\/-+-/\/-+     +-/\/-+-/\/-+-/\/-+-/\/-+
|     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
|     /     |     |     /     /     /     |
|     \     |     |     \     \     \     |
|     /     |     |     /     /     /     |
|     |     |B    |     |     |A    |     |
+-----+-----+     +-/\/-+-/\/-+-/\/-+-/\/-+     And so on...
                  |     |     |     |     |
                  |     /     /     /     |
                  |     \     \     \     |
                  |     /     /     /     |
                  |     |     |     |     |
                  +-/\/-+-/\/-+-/\/-+-/\/-+
                  |     |     |     |     |
                  |     /     /     /     |
                  |     \     \     \     |
                  |     /     /     /     |
                  |     |     |     |     |B
                  +-----+-----+-----+-----+

In each network, connect a 1 amp current source from B to A.  In the
limit, we have the infinite network with a source and no sink.  I'm
still not convinced, because I'm not sure "limit" makes sense here.
Any comments?

AMC
From: dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu (RING, DAVID WAYNE)
Subject: Bose condensation for photons?
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: Texas A&M University, Academic Computing Services
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 22:00:00 GMT

This is yet another posting from the fortune cookie factory. :)
John Baez asked me to post for him and I have included a few comments.

I write...
>So now I think the thing which makes the photon classically 'different' from
>other particles is that it's a neutral boson. Like helium. Hmmm... 

John:
I guess another thing that makes photons weird compared to, say, atoms
is that there is not even approximate conservation of photon number in
most situations.  That's why there's no exact analog of Bose
condensation for photons.  (Lasers are not examples of Bose condensation
because laser light is not an equilibrium state the way, say, superfluid
helium is.  The equilibrium state of photons is blackbody radiation and
this never exhibits Bose condensation.)

Dave:
My book says that the condensation temp _would_ be ~1,000,000 K , but we
assumed constant N, which is wrong, so there is no condensation.
I don't understand this, one does not need to demand N be conserved, one
just needs to observe the value that N takes.

John:
Bose condensation assumes that N is conserved.... just as maximizing
entropy subject to constant energy gives you temperature as a Lagrange
multiplier, maximizing entropy suubject to constant N (or density)
gives you chemical potential as a Lagrange multiplier, so working out
the Gibbs state for a system of conserved particles is quite different
than for nonconserved ones such as photons.  If photon number was
(almost) conserved with time there would be Bose condensation.  Since
it's not, there's not - one gets blackbody radiation.

Dave: Hmmm... but physical properties are supposed to be independent of
which ensemble you use. If, instead of holding temperature fixed, you
measured or calculated the expectation of energy, and then demanded
energy be conserved to this value, you would change to the microcanonical
ensemble, but all physical properties would be unchanged.

Dave Ring
dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu

and

John Baez jbaez@math.mit.edu

sorry I can't get your sig right. :)
From: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Space Station & APS
Date: 31 Jul 92 19:00:21 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: na
Reply-To: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.197
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4   

In article <1992Jul30.214339.38024@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu>, jmp1@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (JEFFREY MICHAEL PARSONS) writes...
>Can anyone confirm what Sen. Grahm (Texas) said on CBS This Morning (7/30/92)?
>I believe that he said that governmental funding of science research has gone
>from a former (stable) 5% of the budget to 1.8% (1.6% without the SSC) under
>the current Congress.  He noted that this trend appears to be continuing.  I
>would also add that it is my impression that a smaller percentage of federal
>science funding is going to physics.  Does anyone have a source which confirms
>or refutes these facts?  Dale, what does your crystal ball have to say? :-)

This probably refers to the shift in a large number of research dollars into
the defense budget since the Reagan years.  I doubt is real dollar total
expenditure for basic research has gone down.  And the budget hasn't
grown *that* much.

-Scott (not-the-Dale)

--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver
From: bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Defining Photons
Date: 28 Jul 92 20:48:51 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

snarfy@cruzio.santa-cruz.ca.us writes:
>This theory means that  things  (massive  ,food-like
>objects)  do  not  get  warm  (  gain  E , the equivalent of M
>times the constant C^2) when you cook them in your microwave.

Indeed they do.  Photons carry energy E=pc.  When absorbed by
food or anything else they impart energy E=pc to the food.  Photons
are a special case of E = sqrt( m^2 c^4 + p^2 c^2 ) because for
photons m = 0.  The food is not "at rest;" rather the food has
so-called "rest energy" due to its mass, plus a minuscule amount
of kinetic energy due to its momentum p_food, which is quite small
(I never see food sliding around in _my_ microwave).

>       ``I'M JUST TRYING TO POINT OUT THAT OHM'S LAW DOESN'T  INCLUDE  A
>       TIME   OR   DISTANCE   FACTOR''  Screams  Snarfy.``  That  allows
>       communication of information about changes  the  rate  of  energy
>       transfer  back  to  the  E  transmitter from the E receiver to be
>       instantaneous once a connection is made, by means of lowering the
>       impedance of the receiving object! ''n

C'mon Snarfy, Ohm's law doesn't apply to everything in the world.
It doesn't even apply to lightbulbs (non-ohmic devices).  More to
the point, derivations of Ohm's law tend to assume a quasi-static
uniform E-field (driving voltage).  If you change the resistance
there will still be a delay as the changing E-field propagates
through your system at the usual speed: that of light.  By the
way, don't forget the effects of inductance, possible capacitative
resonances, and variable impedance thingies like wet trees in your
broadcast circuit.

Ben
From: matt@physics.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Converting the masses
Date: 22 Jul 92 14:23:45
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Theoretical Physics Group)
	<9868@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> <1992Jul22.193837.18095@sfu.ca>
Reply-To: matt@physics.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: palmer@sfu.ca's message of 22 Jul 92 19:38:37 GMT

In article <1992Jul22.193837.18095@sfu.ca> palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer) writes:

> "Mass" as you use it
> is equal to neither inertial nor gravitational mass as those terms apply to
> any system more complicated than a particle at rest!

There is, however, *nothing* which is equal to either inertial or
gravitational mass for a relativistic body.

That is: I define the inertial mass of a body as the "m" appearing in
the equation
		F = m a,					(1)
and I define the gravitational mass of a body as the "m" appearing
in the equation
		F = G m M / r^2.				(2)
I believe that these definitions are customary; I don't know what
other meaning could be attached to the phrases "inertial mass" or
"gravitational mass."

Both of these equations are true in nonrelativistic physics, and
neither equation is true in relativistic physics, no matter how "m" is
defined.  Relativistic gravity, in particular (i.e., general
relativity) is much more complicated than Eq. (2) would suggest.

Note that this fact has been known since the earliest days of
relativistic physics.  Around the turn of the century, some physicists
used to write Eq. (1) using two different "masses," the "longitudinal
mass" and the "transverse mass," which differ by a factor of gamma.
For reasons that I do not understand, one of those "masses" was
subsequently called the "relativistic mass," and the other one was
dropped from the discussion.
--
Matthew Austern              I dreamt I was being followed by a roving band of
(510) 644-2618               of young Republicans, all wearing the same suit,
matt@physics.berkeley.edu    taunting me and shouting, "Politically correct
austern@theorm.lbl.gov       multiculturist scum!"... They were going to make
austern@lbl.bitnet	     me kiss Jesse Helms's picture when I woke up.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: matmcinn@nuscc.nus.sg (Mcinnes B T (Dr))
Subject: Re: The Modern Physicist in Calculus I
Organization: National University of Singapore
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 03:07:13 GMT

Princeton University. Luckily not from the Institute. I don't think I
could stand the irony.
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Subject: Re: "What's New" July-24-1992
Summary: Sooooo-eeeey
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 03:40:59 GMT

In article <92206.204426WTU@psuvm.psu.edu> <WTU@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
(actually our old friend rpark)

>	WHAT'S NEW, Friday, 24 July 1992                   Washington, DC
>
>	1. PHYSICISTS IN EUROPE, JAPAN AND CANADA OPPOSE SPACE STATION!
>	In an unprecedented joint statement issued today, the Presidents
>	of a group of major scientific societies, including The American
>	Physical Society, fired a blast at Space Station Freedom.  That's
>	hardly news; they do it every year.  But this time, the statement
>	was accompanied by the translation of a statement adopted by the
>	German Physical Society.  Like their American colleagues, German
>	physicists contend Space Station Freedom cannot be justified on
>	the basis of economics or science.  And it didn't stop with the
>	Germans!  

     [stuff deleted]

>	3. SENATE COMMITTEE RESTORES $550M TO THE SUPERCOLLIDER IN FY 93!
>	The Appropriation Committee yesterday left untouched that portion
>	of a Subcommittee Report dealing with the SSC.  The report calls
>	for $623M for high-energy physics, $7.5M less than the Adminis-
>	tration request. 

     Is this from the "It may be pork, but its OUR pork" file?

                                   dale bass


--
C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: matmcinn@nuscc.nus.sg (Mcinnes B T (Dr))
Subject: Destroying the Earth
Organization: National University of Singapore
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 04:43:15 GMT

To what radius would we have to compress the Earth in order to form a
black hole? The Schwarzschild radius is usually cited, but that is
rather strange, because the Schwarzschild radial coordinate does not
measure distance. 
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer)
Subject: Re: Converting the masses
Organization: Simon Fraser University
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 19:50:07 GMT

In article <130889@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> dk@imager (Dave Knapp) writes:

> 2.) Laymen who have heard of "relativistic mass" frequently ask why
>     a sufficiently energetic rocket ship can't become a black hole. 
>     If you believe that "relativistic mass" is real, then you have
>     to explain why it doesn't behave like a black hole gravitationally.

You will just have to redefine the "mass of a black hole", something
which lacks sufficient definition. I say "the rest mass of a black
hole". Of course I talk to physics students, not laymen. I believe
the principal intent of the language I use in teaching is to convey
meaning to those prepared to appreciate it. By the way, I've never
been asked by a physics student why a sufficiently fast-moving rocket
ship (or other particle) doesn't "behave like a black hole gravita-
tionally". It does behave like a gravitating mass having the relativistic
mass, of course.

Leigh
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: Converting the masses
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 22:23:38 GMT

NOTE: John C. Baez is the author of this article.  I am only using my
account to post this article for John as a favor - Mark Corscadden

In article <131516@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> dk@imager (Dave Knapp) writes:
>   I don't understand why all the fuss about defining "mass" as
>"energy in an object's rest frame."  If an object (or system) doesn't
>have a well-defined rest frame, then it can have no well-defined
>mass, no matter WHAT definition you use!

Let me just reiterate that there is a sensible notion of "rest frame"
which applies to any physical system having finite energy and momentum,
namely, the frame in which the energy is minimized, or equivalently in
which the momentum is zero.  According this definition even a system
consisting of 2 cannonballs whipping away from each other at high speed
would have a "rest frame" (in this case it's the same as what people
like to call the "center of mass frame" - no, I'm not being circular,
that's just what they call it.)

John Baez
From: gsh7w@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Hennessy)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Gyromagnetic ratio of the proton
Date: 27 Jul 92 20:56:16 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Virginia

In article <1992Jul27.204759.26632@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes: 
#     It also does not appear to be inside the Macintosh downstairs
#     (we had all the protons removed during the last maintenence).
#     By the way, does anyone know how to put it back together ...

Well, of course Dale, if you remove all the protons from your Mac it
then has a rather large negative charge, so all the peices are
electrostaticaly repelling each other.

--
-Greg Hennessy, University of Virginia
 USPS Mail:     Astronomy Department, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475 USA
 Internet:      gsh7w@virginia.edu  
 UUCP:		...!uunet!virginia!gsh7w
From: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: mass of quarks?
Date: 31 Jul 92 18:33:56 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: usa
Reply-To: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.197
Keywords: quark property
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4   

In article <12587@inews.intel.com>, bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes...
>In article <25025@dog.ee.lbl.gov> sichase@csa2.lbl.gov writes:
>>Loosely speaking, you heat up some matter until the quarks and qluons are
>>liberated. If they are massive, then you heat things up some more and when
>>chiral symmetry is restored they lose their mass.  Cute, huh? 
> 
>What do you mean, "heat?"
> 

Take two heavy nuclei and accelerate them to many GeV per nucleon.  Collide
them and you get a hot nucleon gas, which if the temperature (energy density)
is high enough (QCD seems to predict that) a phase transition to a 
deconfined phase takes place.  

A somewhat different, but also valid, picture talks about "melting the 
QCD vacuum" in the excited region left behind when the two nuclei
interpenetrate and fly away drawing out oodles of hadronic strings.

The details of what actually happens are somewhat unclear, but in both
pictures you end up with a region of high energy density which results
in a new phase of nuclear matter.

-Scott
--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver
From: peterk@public.sub.org (Peter Kittel)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Noah's formation: The rainbow
Date: 21 Jul 92 16:59:21 GMT
Distribution: sci
Organization: Public News & Mailserver, Commodore Germany PM UNIX, Frankfurt

cpyy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:

>I understand how a single prism refracts white light to form a rainbow.
>Could someone explain the nature of a true (Noah's Arc type) rainbow,
>as formed by rain?  

I see that you already got a decent answer. But I have a related one:

Is it only me or does the sky beneath a rainbow also appear lighter
to others than the sky above a rainbow (or wait, was it the other way
around?)? But anyway, for my eye there is definitely a jump in 
brightness of the background sky (normally rain clouds) from beneath
to above the rainbow. Any explanation for this?

-- 
Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel  // E-Mail to  \\  Only my personal opinions... 
Commodore Frankfurt, Germany  \X/ {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmger!peterk
                                   or  peterk@public.sub.org
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez)
Subject: Re: Defining Photons
Keywords: Relating photons E=MC^2 criticism
Organization: MIT Department of Mathematics, Cambridge, MA
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 92 22:56:26 GMT

NOTE: John C. Baez is the author of this article.  I am only using my
account to post this article for John as a favor - Mark Corscadden

In article <mcirvin.712178899@husc10> mcirvin@husc10.harvard.edu (Mcirvin) writes:

>In a bookstore, I recently saw a volume in which the author claimed
>that general relativity was being made difficult to learn in a
>concerted effort to keep people from using it to extract free energy
>from the sun's gravitational field! 

I always wondered why physicists insisted on using a notation in which
all tensors are loaded with indices.  This is the most reasonable
explanation so far.  :-)

John Baez
From: leon@unixg.ubc.ca (Leon ter Beek)
Subject: Re: Gyromagnetic ratio of the proton
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 21:29:48 GMT

In article <1992Jul29.000725.3143@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>In article <1992Jul28.200456.13596@unixg.ubc.ca> leon@unixg.ubc.ca (Leon ter Beek) writes:
>>>In article <1992Jul27.191552.13679@unixg.ubc.ca> I@unixg.ubc.ca wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Can someone indicate where I can find an accurate number for the
>>>>gyromagnetic ratio of the proton in SI-units [1/s*T].   
>>>
>>
>>Thanks to all who responded. The gyromagnetic moment of the proton is
>>determined up to 7 significant figures to this date:
>>
>>gamma_p = 2.67522128(81) 1/(s T) )
>>
>>Leon
>
>      Hate to be picky, but shouldn't there be a 10^8 somewhere?
>
>                                  dale bass
>
>
>--
>C. R. Bass                                           crb7q@virginia.edu
>Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
>University of Virginia
>Charlottesville, Virginia                            (804) 924-7926

Yep, sorry

Leon
Newsgroups: sci.physics
From: 13r43@math.ucrf.edu
Subject: SSC cost
Organization: McGill University
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 16:24:56 GMT

I pulled this off talk.politics.misc. I am not responsible for it's contents.
From: nicho@VNET.IBM.COM
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Is car pooling for real? (was Re: Are bikes really less polluting?)
Date: 23 Jul 92 08:39:36 GMT
Reply-To: nicho@vnet.ibm.com

In <Brsryo.BxL@watserv1.waterloo.edu> Richard Bell writes:
>"Environmentally friendlier", a bus can easily carry 40 people (and if I
>were shorter, I might even say comfortably) a non-carpooling vehicle seats
>one.  Compare one bus versus forty cars:
 It's only better if the bus always carrys 40 people.
 -----------------------------------------------------------------
               ** Of course I don't speak for IBM **
Greg Nicholls ... nicho@vnet.ibm.com or nicho@cix.compulink.co.uk
                  voice/fax: 44-794-516038
From: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Gyromagnetic ratio of the proton
Date: 27 Jul 92 21:05:08 GMT
Reply-To: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov
Distribution: na
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.254.197
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4

In article <1992Jul27.191552.13679@unixg.ubc.ca>, leon@unixg.ubc.ca (Leon ter Beek) writes...
> 
>Can someone indicate where I can find an accurate number for the
>gyromagnetic ratio of the proton in SI-units [1/s*T].   
> 
>Leon

If it's not in the Review of Particle Properties, produced every other
April by the Particle Data Group (most recently in PRD - blue cover),
along with lots of other fun facts, then I'm stumped.  

75% of everything interesting in the universe can be found in the little
pocket version of that book.  90% can be found in the larger, full listings.
An additional 5% is in "Inside Macintosh."   The last 5% is spread 
pretty thinly... :-) 

-Scott

--------------------
Scott I. Chase			"The question seems to be of such a character
SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV		that if I should come to life after my death
				and some mathematician were to tell me that it
				had been definitely settled, I think I would
				immediately drop dead again."      - Vandiver