Backreaction: Discovery or Invention?
In the process of science, we accumulate knowledge. That’s observations, that’s applications, that’s theories. But this knowledge, does it exist before we have made it our own and it is just up to us to discover it? Or is this knowledge genuinely new, and does only come into existence once we are thinking about and working with it?
I saw this picture tweeted by drskyskull, and I must point out that the “powerballs” are indeed, quanta in this paradigm. Not every use of the word implies that quantum mechanics is involved or being invoked.
Quantum means “discrete.” A liquid would represent a continuum.
The good news: The measurement box that had gone walkabout has been located.
The bad news: it was located just before I was able to construct a milk carton “Have you seen me?” sign to give to the owner.
The better news: They seem to have been breeding, since we found another of these boxes. They’re quite useful, so different divisions had purchased at least one and kinda lost track of how many we had. We borrow equipment from each other all the time (not so much sharing is caring as cooperation, because we are not of the Barney generation), and it didn’t help that we just called them measurement system boxes. Possibly from the town of Measurement System on Measurement System Island, near Measurement System cove. For all of our cleverness, we physicists are often an unimaginative lot when it comes to naming things.
Well, no more. The boxes are now named Larry, Moe, Curly and Harpo. Literally — they now have nametags on them. Harpo is a different model number, hence the comedy-paradigm-shift, and it does beep at us. This paints us into a corner, though. We now have to worry if we get a new model, if it is Abbot/Costello or Laurel/Hardy, and will that limit us to buying only two?
If you can get the dough thin enough, the calzone style has a lot to recommend it. It’s certainly the version that looks most like a waffle. And you don’t have to heat up the oven. The problem with doing it this way is the tendency for it to be too bready. After all, it’s going to have two crusts. If you haven’t, say, been working in a pizzeria for a few years, you might find it difficult to get the dough as thin as it needs to be for this to be optimal.
The alternative, waffling the dough and then topping it and baking it, means the finished product may not completely resemble a waffle. But it’s a more forgiving dough-to-topping ratio. Even if the dough is thicker than you might like, the balance is less likely to be wildly off. Also, if you’re going to make multiple waffled pizzas, this is the way to go. Waffling the dough will take a bit of time, but then you can finish the pizzas in the oven together.
Waffleizer tackles the question “Will it waffle?”
Story related to waffles: A colleague’s brother is a chef, who was objecting to management’s push for him to do a daily special at the restaurant (often it’s whatever’s about to go bad rather than a specialty of the chef). So in protest, he offered up the Awful Falafel Waffle. No more requests to do specials.
Game over for British science?
According to the panel, cuts would cause many top-flight researchers who currently work in the UK to leave, attracted by increased science funding abroad, while overseas researchers would no longer be attracted to work in UK institutions. The quality of university teaching would suffer, and children would be put off pursuing careers in science. “What kind of signal does it send if they see other countries increasing their expenditure while there are cuts here?” asks Lord Rees.
Science funding already tends to be less than 1% of GDP in many countries (0.5% of GDP in the UK), and yet it affects innovation and future economic development. And if you let programs wither and die, it’s very, very hard to re-establish them owing to diffusion of knowledge and people.
Another atomic physicist, of the cold-atom variety — Carl Wieman — is named to join the Obama administration. Mwuhahahaha.
Cosmic Variance: The New Objectivity
(Science) Reporting as Truth vs. Falsity as opposed to He said vs. She said
If journalists are just mindless stenographers, they can’t be accused of making that particular mistake. But they are actually making a much more serious mistake, abandoning the search for truth in favor of the goal of not being blamed.
It’s hard to argue against this mindset, which is often mis-labeled as “objectivity.” So maybe we should be defending the New Objectivity: the crucial duty of reporters to separate what is true from what is false.
Six scientists tell us about the most accurate science fiction in their fields
Several of the scientists we contacted were simply at a loss when I asked whether they could think of any science fiction that was accurate when it came to their field of study.
Built on facts: Light, up to 11
How many photons can you stuff into a box?
[I]f you stuff enough energy into the vacuum you’ll eventually start creating matter (electron/positron pairs in this type of circumstance) via Einstein’s famous E = mc^2 relationship. In nuclear weapons we’re used to seeing the m turn into E very dramatically, but of course the other direction works just as well. Get enough E and you’ll start making m.
Zucchini, that is.