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Comment Re:Home-sized options? (Score 1) 58

What's the storage *density*? I have the impression that grid scale batteries often use (relatively) low density storage, so they take up a lot of space. Lithium batteries are relatively high density (lots of storage/volume). Dense storage is, of course, part of what makes them so dangerous when they catch fire.

Perhaps it you wanted this to last through a blackout you'd need to give up your basement, rather than just part of it as with lithium batteries.

Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 58

Unnh....there must be a reason Japan was researching whether uranium could profitably extracted from sea water. I believe that it was because decent ores for uranium were becoming scarce. (I used to know whether that was the reason they gave, but I can't certainly remember any longer....I think that was it though.)

Comment Re:Well, test the interpretations. (Score 1) 110

You are correct. That's precisely how MWI is thought to work.

The premise of the argument is that, to conserve superposition information, you would necessarily need to prove that it would be grouped with information QM requires to be conserved, when viewed in a space that permitted it to be conserved. If it isn't, then there's no mechanism to preserve it, so no MWI.

Comment Re:Well, test the interpretations. (Score 1) 110

Not strictly correct. You would be correct for all consequences over any statistically significant timeframe, but (a) I've purposefully included things that aren't actually outcomes, and (b) over extremely short timeframes (femtoseconds and attoseconds), differences would emerge very briefly, because different mechanisms take different routes.

Remember, the maths only concerns itself with outcomes, not the path taken, so identical maths will be inevitable for non-identical paths.

Comment Well, test the interpretations. (Score 1) 110

I would contend that it should be possible to find an implication of each interpretation that only exists in that interpretation. If, for example, Many Worlds is true, then it necessitates that any sort of information cannot be destroyed and vice versa, when considering the system as a whole. If Many Worlds is false, then superposition information is lost when superposition collapses, you cannot recover from the collapsed wave a complete set of all superposition states that existed. I'm sure that someone will point out that superposition isn't information in some specific sense, but that is the whole point. Many Worlds is impossible if you can show that superposition ISN'T the sort of information that IS conserved, because Many Worlds requires, by its very nature, that it is.

This gives us a test that does not require us to look into other universes and can be done purely by theoreticians. If you regard the system as a 5D system, then is that information conserved or not? Yes or no. If yes, then that does not "prove" Many Worlds, but it does mean that only interpretations that preserve that information in some form are viable. If no, then Many Worlds, and all other interpretations that preserve that information in some form, are ergo impossible. Instead of filling out questionaires on what you think is likely, try to prove that it can't be possible and see if you succeed.

I would also argue that physicists thought that the Lorenz contraction was a neat bit of maths by mathematicians that had nothing to do with reality, until Einstein cottoned onto the fact that it actually did. You cannot trust physicists who have an innate dislike of mathematics. This doesn't mean that maths always represents reality, but it does mean that it does so unreasonably often and unreasonably well.

Comment Re:I believe the data we get is distorted... (Score 1) 49

That explanation depends on a degree of friction that I'm fairly sure you can't find signs of. Remember, we aren't talking about within a galaxy, or even within a galactic cluster, but rather *between* galactic clusters. I think it would also run into problems with requiring superluminal communication between the vortices.

Comment Re: Not every physicist is convinced that this is (Score 1) 49

Just about all cosmologists assume the basic principle is correct. It's demanded by General Relativity. But doing the calculations is pretty intractable, and depends on data measurements that are of uncertain accuracy. THAT's why these theories have never gotten anywhere.

These folks are claiming that now we have good enough data and good enough computers to reliably do the calculations. ... Well, most folks haven't even looked at the problem. And it's a change, so they're dubious. And being dubious is probably the correct stance, even though the theoretical basis is sound.

Comment Re:Everything old is new again? (Score 1) 49

It's not *really* cherry picking, but what it shows is that people have ideas that fall in clusters, and they have a lot of difficulty thinking outside those clusters. The Hindu mythology is pretty much as described, but so loose and ungrounded that it's impossible to say if they were dealing with the same ideas. (The way to bet is "not really".)

I expect that AIs will come up with a cosmology that people can't understand, but which will match the same equations. This is based on some experimental tests that they've designed. The machines that they designed were basically unintelligible by humans, but when repeatedly simplified until they reached something a human could build, they worked. And the experimental results matched the same equations that people had been using.

Comment Re:Somehow... (Score 1) 45

I disagree. First, the bands used for astronomy are regularly used by others, which is one reason why radio telescopes have radio silence zones. Second, astronomy certainly trumps the need for cat videos or porn. Thirdly, you really really don't need all the frequencies that are currently being used for domestic purposes, because they're being used very inefficiently. You can stack multiple streams onto far fewer lanes and use multiplexing. Fourthly, whingers lost any sympathy they might have got from me by voting in twits who keep cutting the science budget. If we had space radio telescopes, you could do what the F you wanted on Earth, but because of the current lunatic situation, you're not only grabbing what scientists need, you're stopping them from alternative solutions as well.

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