I'm attracted to the idea of Edward Norton Lorenz.
Of chaos fame, sensitive dependence on initial conditions ? The weatherman ?
Yeah he hit a button there. Poincare also worried - classically ie. pre QM - about whether an otherwise undisturbed solar system might be unstable, that being defined poorly but essentially will some planet wander off or collide or fall into the Sun etc. Now there was a guy in the early 1990s who built an array of 80486s to simulate the progression of the solar system as time marched on. A 'digital orrery' in fact, I think SciAm featured this. You have to truncate digits to fit a number to some finite machine representation and that limits your prediction ( or post-diction if you run backwards to the past for a prior configuration ). Poincare thought, or hoped, that the error margin would not grow without bounds. Alas it does. So that for a given numerical accuracy of planetary parameters now as input, there will be a future time say, when the orbital phase of eg. Uranus will be 100% uncertain. So at that time one will have no idea where in the sky Uranus would be seen from the Sun. You don't even have to touch The Uncertainty Principle to get into strife here.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Speaking of some names that have already been mentioned .....
Didn't Stephen Hawking make a $100 dollar bet with Peter Higgs that the LHC (would not) find the Higgs Boson ?
Point of Order! Dr. Hewson awarded Mikey Scooby Snax when in fact he should have been denied them for double posting.
Moving on...
The anniversary of my birth is rapidly approaching, three weeks from tomorrow (well, probably today by the time our good doctor reads this). Some twenty four years and one day earlier, when my mother was less than two years of age herself, an experiment was conducted in her city of residence. Had said experiment been miscalculated, she could have been one of millions exterminated that day*, thus precluding my existence now. I am, of course, leading up to the name of one Enrico Fermi. Ding! I win. You may have the Scooby Snax delivery truck go directly to my house. Better yet, just send me certificates for a free pizza once a week for life. (And not cheap corporate pizza. either. Good pizza from my local joint.)
*I don't actually know if that could possibly have happened.
...Did I have something else I wanted to say?
This wasn't it, but I might as well mention I read an article today about a stupidity virus. It's a virus that infects green algae in rivers and ponds, but if it gets into a human, it will decrease cognition and other brain functions, effectively lowering the person's intelligence.
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
Point of Order! Dr. Hewson awarded Mikey Scooby Snax when in fact he should have been denied them for double posting.
There will be a town hall meeting at 6PM to discuss the removal of the Scooby Snack supply from the custody of Dr. Hewson. Motions for further censure may be made at that time.
Sheesh, now I know how Tricky Dick felt ! One little burglary too many and then hypocrisy and deceit go out of fashion. But I've been watching that 'Parks & Recreation' documentary. It's a really good program with tons of factual information, so I'll be well prepared for how this town hall stuff goes down. Maybe Ms Knope will help me. No Worries Mate .... :-)
[ Better have a back up though. I'll have to get some local produce to hand out ... digs through freezer ... what do we have here ? Platypus Paw Pate. Koala Kidney Kabanas. Wallaby Wing Wafers. Eucalyptus Egg Extract. Snake Serum Shardonnay. Arachnid Alliterative Ale. I'll be able to make up some pretty good Horses' Doovers out of this. ]
No, not Enrico. But we are clearly warming up in this thread. So your Mum was nearby when he fired up the pile ? He actually called it a pile literally because it was a pile of bricks of various types. Thus the later term 'nuclear pile' referring to the core of some sort of reactor. He used a slide rule alot and evidently correctly. You don't see those much anymore. He also came up with the term 'barn', a unit of area measure in nuclear physics for the purpose of scaling the likelihood of some particular response to collisions, relating to the old phrase "He couldn't hit a barn door from 10 paces". Mr Fermi was one of those rare co-incidences of exceptional practical and theoretical talent within the one brain. There was a pause for thought amongst the Los Alamos crew as to whether the bomb would trigger ignition of the Earth's atmosphere etc, but the nuclear energy thresholds ( for oxygen, nitrogen and whatnot ) to do that were considered as too high. Phew ! :-)
As for the stupidity virus : look at it from the algae's point of view, did we give it to them ie. we are holding them back ? :-)
Now H.Lorentz, Fitzgerald, Poincare and others were all using that gamma factor alot. But with different thinking though. It comes from the same right triangle they were looking at and so Pythagorus applies. Thus SQRT[1 - v^2] is one of the shorter sides with the longest side ( hypotenuse ) being the speed of light ( c = 1 ), with the remaining side being v .....
Now Hint #3 - Success and failure in Sweden.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: I'm attracted to the
Of chaos fame, sensitive dependence on initial conditions ? The weatherman ?
Yeah he hit a button there. Poincare also worried - classically ie. pre QM - about whether an otherwise undisturbed solar system might be unstable, that being defined poorly but essentially will some planet wander off or collide or fall into the Sun etc. Now there was a guy in the early 1990s who built an array of 80486s to simulate the progression of the solar system as time marched on. A 'digital orrery' in fact, I think SciAm featured this. You have to truncate digits to fit a number to some finite machine representation and that limits your prediction ( or post-diction if you run backwards to the past for a prior configuration ). Poincare thought, or hoped, that the error margin would not grow without bounds. Alas it does. So that for a given numerical accuracy of planetary parameters now as input, there will be a future time say, when the orbital phase of eg. Uranus will be 100% uncertain. So at that time one will have no idea where in the sky Uranus would be seen from the Sun. You don't even have to touch The Uncertainty Principle to get into strife here.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Waaay over my head but I, as
Waaay over my head but I, as a part time plumber in one of my past careers, US Navy, kind of like Susskind's ideas, when I can follow them.
Speaking of some names that
Speaking of some names that have already been mentioned .....
Didn't Stephen Hawking make a $100 dollar bet with Peter Higgs that the LHC (would not) find the Higgs Boson ?
Wonder if he ever Paid Up )
Bill
-> Of chaos fame, sensitive
-> Of chaos fame, sensitive dependence on initial conditions ? The weatherman ?
Also the man who had the idea of the great attractor. And he had a famous namesake - Hendrik Antoon Lorentz.
Richard
Point of Order! Dr. Hewson
Point of Order! Dr. Hewson awarded Mikey Scooby Snax when in fact he should have been denied them for double posting.
Moving on...
The anniversary of my birth is rapidly approaching, three weeks from tomorrow (well, probably today by the time our good doctor reads this). Some twenty four years and one day earlier, when my mother was less than two years of age herself, an experiment was conducted in her city of residence. Had said experiment been miscalculated, she could have been one of millions exterminated that day*, thus precluding my existence now. I am, of course, leading up to the name of one Enrico Fermi. Ding! I win. You may have the Scooby Snax delivery truck go directly to my house. Better yet, just send me certificates for a free pizza once a week for life. (And not cheap corporate pizza. either. Good pizza from my local joint.)
*I don't actually know if that could possibly have happened.
...Did I have something else I wanted to say?
This wasn't it, but I might as well mention I read an article today about a stupidity virus. It's a virus that infects green algae in rivers and ponds, but if it gets into a human, it will decrease cognition and other brain functions, effectively lowering the person's intelligence.
David
Miserable old git
Patiently waiting for the asteroid with my name on it.
RE: Point of Order! Dr.
There will be a town hall meeting at 6PM to discuss the removal of the Scooby Snack supply from the custody of Dr. Hewson. Motions for further censure may be made at that time.
Abuses of power will not be tolerated!
Phil
Phil
I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
Sheesh, now I know how Tricky
Sheesh, now I know how Tricky Dick felt ! One little burglary too many and then hypocrisy and deceit go out of fashion. But I've been watching that 'Parks & Recreation' documentary. It's a really good program with tons of factual information, so I'll be well prepared for how this town hall stuff goes down. Maybe Ms Knope will help me. No Worries Mate .... :-)
[ Better have a back up though. I'll have to get some local produce to hand out ... digs through freezer ... what do we have here ? Platypus Paw Pate. Koala Kidney Kabanas. Wallaby Wing Wafers. Eucalyptus Egg Extract. Snake Serum Shardonnay. Arachnid Alliterative Ale. I'll be able to make up some pretty good Horses' Doovers out of this. ]
No, not Enrico. But we are clearly warming up in this thread. So your Mum was nearby when he fired up the pile ? He actually called it a pile literally because it was a pile of bricks of various types. Thus the later term 'nuclear pile' referring to the core of some sort of reactor. He used a slide rule alot and evidently correctly. You don't see those much anymore. He also came up with the term 'barn', a unit of area measure in nuclear physics for the purpose of scaling the likelihood of some particular response to collisions, relating to the old phrase "He couldn't hit a barn door from 10 paces". Mr Fermi was one of those rare co-incidences of exceptional practical and theoretical talent within the one brain. There was a pause for thought amongst the Los Alamos crew as to whether the bomb would trigger ignition of the Earth's atmosphere etc, but the nuclear energy thresholds ( for oxygen, nitrogen and whatnot ) to do that were considered as too high. Phew ! :-)
As for the stupidity virus : look at it from the algae's point of view, did we give it to them ie. we are holding them back ? :-)
Now H.Lorentz, Fitzgerald, Poincare and others were all using that gamma factor alot. But with different thinking though. It comes from the same right triangle they were looking at and so Pythagorus applies. Thus SQRT[1 - v^2] is one of the shorter sides with the longest side ( hypotenuse ) being the speed of light ( c = 1 ), with the remaining side being v .....
Now Hint #3 - Success and failure in Sweden.
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
Mike, you left out "Three
Mike, you left out "Three shakes of a lamb's tail"
Phil
Phil
I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
RE: Mike, you left out
Ooh. I'll get Steve The Butcher to order some in ...
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Now here's a title : The Calculus of Scooby Snax. Anyone want to co-author ?
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: ( edit ) Now here's a
Only if we do the advanced title "The Trickonometry of Scooby Snax"
Phil
Phil
I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.