Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re: There's no such thing as a free lunch (Score 1) 145

It doesn't stop Google from collecting your information, though. They just don't serve you ads. Instead, they serve you to other corporations.

Thanks for moving the goal post. I never said anything about information collection as it's impossible for a micro-payment system to work and have anyone trust it without some sort of information exchange and logging.

Submission + - Physicists Check Their Privilege With An Antimatter Beam

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Jon Butterworth has an interesting article at The Guardian about the idea of standpoint-independence in physics and the absence of “privileged observers.” The ASACUSA experiment at CERN plans to make a beam of antimatter, and measure the energy levels as the beam travels in a vacuum, away from the magnetic fields and away from any annihilating matter. The purpose of the experiment is to test CPT (Charge/Parity/Time) inversion to determine if the universe would look the same if we simultaneously swapped all matter for antimatter, left for right, and backwards in time for forwards in time. In string theory for example it is possible to violate this principle so the ASACUSA people plan to measure those antihydrogen energy levels very precisely. Any difference would mean a violation of CPT inversion symmetry. Physicist Ofer Lahav has some interesting observations in the article about how difficult it is these days for physicists to develop independent points of view on cosmology. "Having been surrounded by a culture in which communication is seen as generally a good thing, this came as a surprise to me, but it is a very good point," writes Butterworth. "We gain confidence in the correctness of ideas if they are arrived at independently from different points of view." A good example is the independent, almost simultaneous development of quantum electrodynamics by Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. They all three had very different approaches, and Tomonaga in particular was working in wartime Japan, completely cut off from the others. Yet Freeman Dyson was able to prove that the theories each had provided for the quantum behavior of electrons and photons were not only all equally good at describing nature, but were all mathematically equivalent — that is, the same physics, seen from different points of view. Whether we are using thought experiments, antimatter beams, sophisticated instrumentation, or sending spaceships to the outer solar system, Butterworth says the ability for scientists to loosen the constraints of our own point of view is hugely important. "It is also, I think, closely related to the ability to put ourselves into the place of other people in society and to perceive ourselves as seen by them — to check our privilege, if you like. Imperfect and difficult, but a leap away from a childish self-centeredness and into adulthood."

Comment Re:Water sublimating (Score 1) 364

It is only too warm for water ice on the surface, where there is virtually no pressure, below the surface, there is enough pressure to keep it solid. Although water-ice and dry-ice look very similar, they have very different properties, the dry ice at those pressures/temperatures would have almost immediately, while water-ice, which has an inherently low vapor-pressure at that temperature would have remained solid much longer. Dry ice actually does form in that area for a good portion of the year, since the actual lifetime estimate for phoenix, of 90 days, is because that area will be completely covered in dry-ice during the winter. However, it is summer there now, and much warmer, pretty much all of the dry-ice should have already sublimated by now, even if recently uncovered. Hopefully, the people at the univerisity of arizona have done one of the tests to determine which substance this is.

Slashdot Top Deals

The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down.

Working...