Large Hardon Collider

[Max™]

That's why I said; "Hey man, nice shot", good shot man.

[Mizango]

Here's another. I tried to reduce some of the noise and bring out the band. You could literally see the entire band stretch from south to north where I was. I wish I had a better location to shoot, because the pictures could have been much better. I just took what I could get since I was sent back to the 80's as far as not having internet/cell/GPS. I had a nice long lake stretching from north to south I was going to shoot from. It was right on a campsite and it was closed for some reason. It was in a national park, and I really didn't want to go to jail, so I had to go elsewhere.

Also, Antares sticks out like a sore thumb in all the pictures. I guess it should be expected due to the sheer size.

Spoiler: show

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4059/...f1f8aabb_o.jpg

Holy shit man, that one is fantastic. You're right about Antares lol, the sheer size of that behemoth alone makes it stand out like no other. Keep up the good work man, I never get tired of seeing these.

[Mizango]

You too Waraji, that picture kicks ass.

[BerenTebogo]

What are stars?

Oh, those things they show you at the museum of science in Boston to the tune of Smashing Pumpkins greatest hits.

Man, I thought those were just a myth.

(Fuck living near Boston)

[Mizango]

What are stars?

Oh, those things they show you at the museum of science in Boston to the tune of Smashing Pumpkins greatest hits.

Man, I thought those were just a myth.

(Fuck living near Boston)

lol I bet they loop "Tonight" just to tease you.

[BerenTebogo]

lol I bet they loop "Tonight" just to tease you.

They could loop that song til 2025 and I wouldn't get tired of it. Fuck yeah only song with lasting intrinsic value!

[Mizango]

I know, I love that song lol.

[Cruzizzle]

FInally got out last night ~2am. Drove for about 2 hours to get to the intended site only to find that I couldn't get in past 10pm. I'm in the middle of bum fucked Illinois. GPS doesn't work, no cell service, and I have no clue where I'm at. I drive around for about 45 minutes looking for anywhere to setup and shoot. Here's the pictures. All strait out of the camera, I haven't ran them through photoshop or through post-processing yet.

Nice! I haven't been able to get out anymore yet. Got a nice pic of the moon the other night though from my apt window through a telescope.

I grew up in Illinois, currently living in the middle of bum fucked Iowa lol. Where were you trying to go? The place I currently go is 10 miles outside of my small town, there's a boat ramp to the lake, but it's part of the state park and they come by to make sure no one is there, I've been asked to leave before, but I figure if I go out there after midnight they probably won't come by again.

Anyway. I have a new mount/tripod coming in this week, it's computerized and has a nice little L bracket that comes with it I can conveniently attach my camera too. I bought it for the new telescope I bought, but the telescope is on back-order till the end of June unfortunately. But I'll be using it with my camera and seeing if I can't get some decent long exposure shots while it tracks.

Shit sucks though about the back-ordered telescope. I am going on vacation June 25th, 5 days before it's suppose to ship. But I am going to be out at a cabin in the mountains of Colorado. Would have be awesome to have it then, I've even sent a message to Orion to see if they can help me out there, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Mizango]

That is the one thing I miss about living in St Louis, I could drive out to BFE from the city in just a matter of 45 mins. I'd always take my telescope, but I think I am going to order me some filters and do some astro-photography as well, Tyche has inspired me to take stills.

[Waraji]

Chest paddles here!

From where I live right now, at night around 12am through 4am (usually when I get home this late is cuz I was out drinking), you can easily make out typical major constellations plus brightest stars. Nothing like that in the pictures Tyche posted though, sadly. Although going south towards The Keys should be some good photo op's. Given that its not cloudy, which is most of the time anyways.

[Kryssan]

More funding?

There have been recent announcements in both the USA and UK of investments into university-led research projects designed to improve the prospects of a next generation of nuclear power plants.

In the USA, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced on 20 May the latest round of funding allocations for research and development projects under the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP).

In total $38 million has been awarded to 42 projects covering four main research areas, including fuel cycle research and development, 13 projects, $11.82 million; Generation IV reactor research and development, 20 projects, $19.86 million; light water reactor sustainability, 2 projects, $764,000; mission-relevant investigator-initiated research, 7 projects, $5.56 million.

The funding is intended to re-invigorate the US nuclear industry, which is seen as being a key player in helping to fulfil US energy objectives of greenhouse gas emissions reduction, job creation and energy independence. Some objectives of the research projects include reducing waste and proliferation concerns associated with spent fuel, and improving the safety, economics and sustainability of nuclear power.

"We are taking action to restart the nuclear industry as part of a broad approach to cut carbon pollution and create new clean energy jobs," said Chu. "These projects will help us develop the nuclear technologies of the future and move our domestic nuclear industry forward."

Twenty three universities will act as lead research institutions for projects in 17 states. Other research partners will contribute to the projects, including collaborators from industry, national laboratories and other education facilities. Research and development forms one of three planks of the NEUP, which also provides funding for scholarships and fellowships, and infrastructure upgrades for research reactors, energy facilities laboratories and classrooms.

UK looks at materials

In the UK, the Open University is leading a consortium of six universities - including Imperial College, the University of Bristol, Loughborough, Manchester and Oxford - in a project designed to increase levels of understanding on the performance of materials suitable for fourth generation reactors.

A particular focus will be the performance of materials suitable for high temperature reactors and long lifetimes, both factors which affect the economic viability of future nuclear power plants.

The project is being funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for £1.75 million ($2.5 million). Output from the research is expected to benefit industrial partners and the broader UK science and engineering community.

I can only hope when they say that universities will be leading this that they will put some effort into extending the research reactors. Very few of them left, and several are in danger of being closed down permanently before 2020 unless some serious changes occur. Otherwise I guess we'll be stuck with the Idaho Falls resources and the spattering of a few satellite sites.

[Caiti]

Morgan Freeman plus theoretical physics? In my science channel? It's more likely than you think.

Wed 9th on science.

Did hawkings show only have 3 ep btw? What about how the universe works? I only tivod 2 ep. Ib4 wrong bg account.

[Pirian]

I only remember 2 episodes? But it may be that I only remember sitting down for 2 Sundays and they shows multiple episodes in a row. I think this is more likely because I vaguely remember them doing this

[Kryssan]

Ib4 wrong bg account.

Just to make you happy.





Buuuut, there were three episodes for Hawking's Into the Universe.

1. Aliens
2. Time Travel
3. The Story of Everything

Universe was also Hawking but from a while back, had 6 episodes.

[Eliseos]

Wikipedia's article of the day is about the Jupiter Trojans with a pretty neat picture:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rSystem-en.png

Pretty crazy to see how much crap is so close to us in the solar system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Trojan

[BerenTebogo]

I guess I originally got interested in sciences for a similar reason (I used to read astronomy books with a lot of pictures and explanations and stuff). But Brian Greene and Stephen Hawkings books is what really got me into it (even though I don't even agree with string theory anymore, string theory was probably the biggest reason I chose theoretical physics over any other major relating to math).

Edit: Well I guess I didn't choose it over the other majors since I'm also majoring in math. Originally, I only majored in math because of how it would help me in theoretical physics. But now that I realize I wont have a job if I major in theoretical physics, I'm considering solid state physics or just sticking with math. But originally my plan was particle or theoretical physics, mainly because of hawking and green (is his name greene or green?)

I know Woozie is gone for another month but I was perusing some articles today in my boredom and I stumbled onto some information that may (or may not?) be common knowledge for some of you guys that knocked me back a bit.

Since I've been reading a lot between semesters (I think I mentioned before I was working through two books by Brian Greene) and having just finished "The Elegant Universe" I was happily optimistic about the potential applications of String / M-theory as a ToE (even though he wrote the book 11 years ago.)

I hadn't actually heard any major negative information about String / M-theory in the news or in blogs, and as far as I knew the LHC project was still hoping to find evidence of Supersymmetry (correct me if I'm wrong here) as one of the byproducts of their particle collisions.

So you can imagine my surprise when I was reading Peter Woit's (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/) blog and read through two of his recent posts http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2977 and http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2952 . Now a lot of the information didn't mesh totally with me as my understanding of String / M-theory is limited to Wiki, books on the subject, and Science channel specials, so I scanned around for hopefully a more succinct conclusion that I could take and chew on. Lo and behold:

Peter Woit says:
May 11, 2010 at 9:19 am

Trent,

I didn’t write that “string theory is a failure”, specifically because “string theory” now refers to very many quite different things, some of which have had successes. However, the idea of using string theory in higher dimensions to get a unified theory has failed, and most physicists are aware of this. If physics departments thought that string unification was still a promising research program, they would still be actively trying to hire young people in the subject.

Duff knows the subject is in trouble, but instead of acknowledging failure and moving on, he’s trying to evade the consequences of this failure with over-hyped and misleading claims. If he can’t even get Lubos to defend them, you know he’s gone way too far…

Followed by

Peter Woit says:
May 11, 2010 at 3:04 pm

John,

There’s no necessary contradiction between your claim that this sort of algebra is beautiful and mine that it is “remarkably obscure”.

Trent,

Once string theorists give up writing popular articles designed to mislead people about what string theory is and what it isn’t, I’ll stop pointing this out. The unwillingness of influential string theorists to own up to what has happened is a continuing source of damage to the subject.

The reason I pointed out that string theorist’s colleagues have decided to stop hiring them is that you asked for evidence that physicists believe string theory to be a failure. That the latest fad is now dark matter phenomenology is not necessarily a reason to believe it will be any more fruitful than string theory. The sort of thing I personally have the most hope for, “formal” QFT research, is far more unpopular than either string theory or phenomenology.

String theory does do some interesting things, and I’m in favor of people investigating them and writing intellectually honest articles about them. In the case of what Duff is writing about, I don’t actually see string theory doing anything, just a lot of hype on his part.

Duff’s summation against Smolin and myself was not that we’re not doing research, but that, within the physics community, the arguments for doing string theory had won out over those against the subject. That may have been true before the past half dozen years or so, but now the shoe is on the other foot. Instead of making an honest technical argument for string theory research that could convince his now-skeptical colleagues, Duff has decided to write a misleading semi-popular article, exactly the sort of behavior he wanted to accuse Smolin and me of.

Now Woit works in the same department as Brian Greene, and as far as I know they are close colleagues. Woit just happens to blog frequently for the benefit of the public and Greene writes books and does TV shows. Two sides of the same coin basically. So, as someone who has worked intimately with one of the stronger supporters of string theory possibly being a ToE, is it safe to take his comments at face value? Are we really back to where we were 30 years ago in our search for the ToE?

I'm gathering that S/M theory does have promising applications in the physics world still, however we've all seen the migration of physics students towards the field of the theoretical, hoping to be a part of real S/M theory research.

With the growing disparity between experimental and theoretical physics students (I'd cite some shit from another Professor in Chicago but I can't be assed at the moment.) does this leave physics reeling from the blow at all or will it just be another smooth transition into a search for another possible ToE?

Thoughts, comments, anything really. I don't have the credentials to really weigh in but I do find it interesting.

Edit for timeframe:

According to this it would seem that the "nail in the coffin" was recently struck in part by the findings of the LHCs first experimental collision in March (stayed up all night to watch it, was pretty cool):

More Quantum Information Theory From String Theory
May 27th, 2010

Claims made recently in the CERN Courier that string theory can be applied to Quantum Information Theory (see here) are being followed up with a new paper entitled Four-qubit entanglement from string theory which appears to claim that, despite what some might think, string theory is falsifiable since it makes experimentally testable predictions about Quantum Information Theory:

So it seems that this may be a very, very current breakthrough? Or just rehashing of known information presented in different ways? Honestly curious if anyone has any insight.

[Neosutra]

If they can reach specific energy levels and find a few of those ultra-high energy particles then they can falsify some parts of string theory.

I'd say string theory has several things correct (quantum entanglement for one), but is far from the solution. It's not a bad shot in the dark and it isnt a bad thing that a lot of people are doing theoretical. More miners swinging their pickaxe blindly in the dark, the more likely you are to find some gold.

[Eliseos]

My issue with String theory is that it doesn't really predict anything (ie something testable within our current/future technology. I think to be able to "see" a string, we would need a particle accelerator the size of the milky way), it's more of a way to manipulate mathematics. Plus the amount of funding that String theory gets as opposed to other potential theories is ridiculous. The only way to get research funding in theoretical physics is to research String theory. If you have a theory that isn't involving strings, you most likely won't have a job.

[Max™]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/string_theory.png
Spoiled a table-spreader comic.

Spoiler: show

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_4ruQ7t4zrFA/SY...ing-theory.JPG

http://discovermagazine.com/2005/aug...darkmatter.jpg
http://discovermagazine.com/2005/aug...tring-grav.jpg

http://www.pa.uky.edu/~joshqualls/futurama.jpg


All joking aside, the aDS-CFT correspondence is undoubtedly useful, and did emerge from string research.
It isn't exclusive to the field though, and has been applied for things such as aDS/QCD models: http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/05/so...hole-real.html, and more.

As has been said though, it is REALLY fucking hard to narrow string models down to a testable level, in particular a falsifable form is elusive since you can apparently just hop to another island in the "string landscape" and claim it has to be invalidated as well. Multiply that by 10^500, and you've got a fucking headache on your hands.


Incidentally, more info on the LHC progress, and planned experiments here:
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=92525

[BerenTebogo]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/string_theory.png
Spoiled a table-spreader comic.

Spoiler: show

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_4ruQ7t4zrFA/SY...ing-theory.JPG

http://discovermagazine.com/2005/aug...darkmatter.jpg
http://discovermagazine.com/2005/aug...tring-grav.jpg

http://www.pa.uky.edu/~joshqualls/futurama.jpg


All joking aside, the aDS-CFT correspondence is undoubtedly useful, and did emerge from string research.
It isn't exclusive to the field though, and has been applied for things such as aDS/QCD models: http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/05/so...hole-real.html, and more.

As has been said though, it is REALLY fucking hard to narrow string models down to a testable level, in particular a falsifable form is elusive since you can apparently just hop to another island in the "string landscape" and claim it has to be invalidated as well. Multiply that by 10^500, and you've got a fucking headache on your hands.


Incidentally, more info on the LHC progress, and planned experiments here:
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=92525

That first blog is written by one of the authors being publicly discredited by Woit, which kind of goes against the whole point of the situation. So, lol.

And by that I basically mean that if I'm not an authority in the field, as none of us are, I'm going to go with the expert in the field with tenure at Columbia University who has worked side by side with Brian Greene, the man doing more for bringing S/M-T information to the general public than any other author I've come across besides maybe Hawking or Kaku, for more than a decade over some guy from the Czech Republic unless I can be shown a valid reason not to.

Spurious, untestable claims about potential applications are not a form of such reasons.

That's the real "big picture" reason why string theory is almost certainly right as "a theory of everything". Not to pay attention to these "signals of light" would mean to "randomly walk" through the dark alleys of ignorance. Science simply couldn't proceed if we couldn't learn a lesson here.