Paul Krugmans Theory of Interstellar Trade
Ich hatte grade meinen Spaß mit Paul Krugmans Wirtschaftstheorie vom interstellaren Handel bei Lichtgeschwindigkeit: The Theory of Interstellar Trade (PDF). Das Teil ist von vorne bis hinten mit SciFi-Anspielungen gespickt – Krugman hat das Vorwort der Neuauflage von Asimovs Foundation geschrieben – und schließt mit den Worten: „Those of us working in this field are still a small band, but we know that the Force is with us.“ Hell, yeah!
This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer travelling with the goods than to a stationary observer.
Wormhole to another Dimension reported in Brighton by a Dude walking his Affenpinscher. Yep.
And then this happened:
Council bosses have been left mystified after reports that a portal to another dimension has opened in a residential street in Brighton.
A member of the public reported to Brighton and Hove City Council that the “wormhole or vortex” had opened up in Montreal Road, Hanover, on May 2. They made the report via the website Fix My Street which is more typically used to report potholes, dumped rubbish and broken lampposts.
The anonymous poster said: „I was recently walking my affenpinscher (a toy breed of dog) around the Hanover area of Brighton when I noticed that a wormhole or vortex has opened up on Montreal Road. On closer inspection it seems to be some kind of portal to other times, places and dimensions. I would have investigated further but I was concerned my little dog would be sucked into it.“
Vortex to another dimension reported in Brighton (via Arbroath)
Decay: Zombies at the LHC – Complete Film online
Vor ein paar Wochen bloggte ich den Trailer zu „Decay“, einem Zombiefilm, der am und im Large Hadron Collider am CERN spielt, gedreht von Studenten und Mitarbeitern des Teilchenbeschleunigers. Heute haben sie den kompletten Film unter CC-Lizenz online gestellt, oben die Youtube-Version, hier der Film auf Vimeo, Torrents sind in Arbeit.
As of Saturday 8th December, the film Decay will be available for free download and streaming online via the website www.decayfilm.com under a Creative Commons licence (CC-BY-NC). […] Made by physicists, it is set at the Large Hadron Collider, and centres around zombies created by exposure to the newly-discovered Higgs boson. Writer and director Luke Thompson, a University of Manchester Ph.D. student, originally conceived the idea in February 2010, after joking that the tunnels under CERN would be ideal for a zombie film. With a budget of approximately £2000 and a regular cast and crew of only 20, the team built a camera shoulder-mount from copper pipes, made fake blood from golden syrup, and scavenged props from dumpsters. […]
The film follows a small group of students (played by physicists) after a disastrous malfunction in the world’s biggest particle accelerator. As they try desperately to escape from the underground maintenance tunnels, they are hunted by the remains of a maintenance team, who have become less than human.
Decay – The greatest Discovery in Physics could be our last. (via Andreas)
Pizza Physics
Pizzavideo von TED-Education. Und ich hätte jetzt gerne sämtliche Physik der Welt mit Pizzastücken erklärt. Mit doppelt Käse und Knoblauch.
People love eating pizza, but every style of pie has a different consistency. If “New York-style”–thin, flat, and large–is your texture of choice, then you’ve probably eaten a slice that was as messy as it was delicious. Colm Kelleher outlines the scientific and mathematical properties that make folding a slice the long way the best alternative…to wearing a bib. Talk by Colm Kelleher, animation by Joel Trussell.
A Slower Speed of Light: Theory of Relativity as a Game
Youtube Direktlight, via Kill Screen
Das Game Lab am MIT hat ein Game mit Open Source-Engine entwickelt, das Einsteins Relativitätstheorie visualisiert und die Effekte sichtbar macht, die bei Lichtgeschwindigkeit eintreten: A Slower Speed of Light. Ein Game für Windows und Mac mit Dopplereffekt und allem. Dr. Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper hätte da seinen Spaß dran.
A Slower Speed of Light is a first-person game in which players navigate a 3D space while picking up orbs that reduce the speed of light in increments. A custom-built, open-source relativistic graphics engine allows the speed of light in the game to approach the player’s own maximum walking speed. Visual effects of special relativity gradually become apparent to the player, increasing the challenge of gameplay.
These effects, rendered in realtime to vertex accuracy, include the Doppler effect (red- and blue-shifting of visible light, and the shifting of infrared and ultraviolet light into the visible spectrum); the searchlight effect (increased brightness in the direction of travel); time dilation (differences in the perceived passage of time from the player and the outside world); Lorentz transformation (warping of space at near-light speeds); and the runtime effect (the ability to see objects as they were in the past, due to the travel time of light). Players can choose to share their mastery and experience of the game through Twitter. A Slower Speed of Light combines accessible gameplay and a fantasy setting with theoretical and computational physics research to deliver an engaging and pedagogically rich experience.
Photos of Quantum Blackboards
Schicke Fotoserie von Alejandro Guijarro: Für sein Momentum-Projekt besucht er die weltweit führenden Institute für Quantenphysik und fotografiert Tafeln voller Formeln. Dr. Sheldon Cooper hat keine Ahnung von Kunst, aber das hier würd’ er versteh’n.
The artist travelled to the great quantum mechanics institutions of the world and, using a large-format camera, photographed blackboards as he found them. Momentum displayed the photographs in life-size.
Before he walked into a lecture hall Guijarro had no idea what he might find. He began by recording a blackboard with the minimum of interference. No detail of the lecture hall was included, the blackboard frame was removed and we are left with a surface charged with abstract equations. Effectively these are documents.
Rename Comic Sans into Comic CERNs
Ich hab’ grade eine Petition unterschrieben, die Microsoft dazu bringen soll, Comic Sans in Comic CERNs umzubenennen, um den Verdiensten der Wissenschaftler am LHC eine gebührende Ehre zu erweisen. Und der erste Kommentar will, dass es Buchstaben-Spaghetti in Comic Sans/CERNs gibt, die wiederum unter dem Namen Fabiola (die Cheffin am ATLAS, wo man das Higgs Bosom entdeckte) verkauft werden sollen. Die Petition dafür würde ich auch unterzeichnen. Und aufessen.
We were all moved by Dr Fabiola Gianotti’s incredibly strange choice of font in announcing the recent results of Cern’s ATLAS collaboration and feel that her use of Comic Sans has gone a long way to rehabilitate this awful, awful font.
In recognition of the work of Professors Peter Higgs, François Englert and Robert Brout and others in the description of the Higgs mechanism by which vector bosons gain mass by interacting with the Higgs field; and in recognition of the work of the scientists and engineers at Cern’s Large Hadron Collider, in particular the members of the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, in their search for the Higgs boson, the quantum of the Higgs field; we believe that Microsoft should rename ‘Comic Sans’ to ‘Comic Cerns’ in Windows 8 and in future releases of the Windows operating system. Renaming Comic Sans to ‘Comic Cerns’ would be a unique way of recognising the groundbreaking achievements of these scientists and engineers.
Microsoft Corporation: Rename the font ‘Comic Sans’ to ‘Comic Cerns’ in the Windows 8 OS. (via Boing Boing)
Higgs Boson in Comic Sans
Gestern haben sie das Higgs Boson gefunden. Die Physiker am CERN nennen das nicht so und reden von „einer Entdeckung“, aber es ist so, stand ja überall. Am bemerkenswertesten finde ich (neben der Vervollständigung des physikalischen „Standardmodells“, was für die Wissenschaft dann auch ein kleines bisschen langweilig ist, eigentlich) die Präsentation. Ich weiß ja, dass Wissenschaftler (und Techies!) die schlechtesten Gestalter der Welt sind. Aber von den Fuzzies am größten Teilchenbeschleuniger der Welt, die sich ein eigenes Art-Department leisten und die gestern mal eben die wichtigste Entdeckung der Physik in den letzten drölf Jahren vorstellten, da erwarte ich etwas anderes als diese visuelle Komplettkatastrophe von einer Präsentation gestern in fucking Comic Sans auf Kackbraun! Aber vielleicht sind’s auch nur subatomare Trolls. (via Martin)
Und wer wissen will, was dieses Higgs Feld eigentlich ist, der kann sich entweder Harald Lesch oder diese Animation ansehen, beides mehr oder weniger erhellend. Ich bleibe aber definitiv bei Obi Wan Kenobi:
A cubic Lightyear of Cheese
Das hier ist wahrscheinlich das grandioseste, das ich jemals im Internet gelesen habe: Ein mathematischer Vergleich des Energieausstoßes unserer Sonne mit dem Energiegehalt von einem Kubiklichtjahr Käse, der sich wenn er sich irgendwo tatsächlich bilden sollte – und ey! Die Many Worlds-Theorie und Dr.Who schreiben sogar vor, dass es in irgendeinem Paralleluniversum einen Kubiklichtjahr großen Käse gibt! –, dann würde er sofort zu einem schwarzen Loch zusammenfallen. Gran-di-os!
Ausnahmsweise im Fast-Vollzitat:
According to Wolfram Alpha, there are 2.9 x 10^6 dietary calories in a cubic meter of cheese, 142829% of your recommended daily caloric intake.
Furthermore, there are 8.468×10^47 cubic meters in a cubic light year. From this, we can conclude that there are 2.455 x 10^54 dietary calories in a cubic light year of cheese.
According to NASA the sun produces 3.8 x 10^33 ergs/sec or roughly 3.8 x 10^26 joules/sec. Over the course of a year that adds up to approximately 6.065 x 10^37 joules of energy.
One dietary calorie or “kilocalorie” equals about 4180 joules. Doing the math we conclude it will take 1.7 x 10^20 years for our sun to generate the same amount of energy as a cubic light year of cheese.
Be warned, however, that at 977 kilograms per cubic meter, or 8.27 × 10^50 kilograms per cubic light year, the Schwarzchild Radius of a cubic light year of cheese would be 1.23 × 10^24 meters, significantly greater than the 9.46 x 10^15 meters in a light year. From this we can conclude that a cubic light year of cheese, should that somehow manifest itself, will immediately collapse into a black hole.
So while you would think a cubic light year of cheese would be the obvious choice over the sun, if you are presented with a choice between them, the numbers suggest you would be far better off choosing the sun.
These numbers assume cheese of approximately constant density. Swiss cheeses require much more sophisticated modelling.
Astrophysics (via JWZ)
Faster than Light-Neutrino confirmed
Vor ein paar Wochen ging die Meldung durch Science-Blogs, dass Wissenschaftler am National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Italien Neutrinos beobachtet hatten, die sich angeblich schneller als das Licht bewegten. Dazu hatten sie Neutrinos vom CERN in den OPERA Neutrino-Detektor des Laboratori Nazionali im Gran Sasso-Gebirge geschossen und die Teilchen kamen 60,7 Nanosekunden früher an, als es die Lichtgeschwindigkeit erlaubt. Das ergab natürlich ein riesen Bohei, viele Wissenschaftler aus dem Team wollten das Papier mit den Ergebnissen nicht unterzeichnen und sowieso ging man allgemein von einem Fehler aus, so auch ich, weshalb ich erst gar nix dazu gebloggt hatte. Das alles erschien mir viel, viel, viel zu unwahrscheinlich um kein Fehler zu sein. Neil deGrasse formulierte das neulich bei einem AMA auf Reddit so:
What are your thoughts on the reports of neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light?
Three options:
1) Mistake in the data
VERY DISTANT 2) New particle traveling backwards through time. No need to modify relativity.
EVEN MORE DISTANT 3) Need to modify Relativity.
Das Problem ist nun: Sie haben das Experiment wiederholt und erneut Neutrinos gemessen, die sich schneller als das Licht bewegten. WHOA! Ich verstehe vielleicht die Hälfte der Artikel, die ich gleich verlinken werde, aber ich verstehe das hier zu hundert Prozent: Sollte sich das Testergebnis noch einmal wiederholen, dann ist das ziemlich sicher die wichtigste Entdeckung der Wissenschaft seit Einsteins Relativitätstheorie und all das wird dann die Physik komplett auf den Kopf stellen.
OPERA beginnt nun mit einer neuen Testreihe, die sich ein paar Monate hinziehen wird und MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) am Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois kalibriert grade sein System, um das OPERA-Experiment nachzustellen, Ergebnisse werden für Anfang nächsten Jahres erwartet. Ich bin extrem gespannt, was da noch kommt.
One of the most staggering results in physics – that neutrinos may go faster than light – has not gone away with two further weeks of observations. The researchers behind the jaw-dropping finding are now confident enough in the result that they are submitting it to a peer-reviewed journal.
“The measurement seems robust,” says Luca Stanco of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Italy. “We have received many criticisms, and most of them have been washed out.” […]
The result also unsettled those within the OPERA collaboration. Stanco was one of 15 team members who did not sign the original preprint of the paper because they thought the results were too preliminary.
One of the main concerns was that it was difficult to link individual neutrino hits at Gran Sasso to the particles that left CERN. To double check, the team ran a second set of measurements with tighter bunches of particles from 21 October to 6 November. In that time, they observed 20 new neutrino hits – a piddling number compared to the 16,000 hits in the original experiment. But Stanco says the tighter particle bunches made those hits easier to track and time: “So they are very powerful, these 20 events.”
New Scientist: More data shows neutrinos still faster than light (via Reddit)
Science2.0: OPERA Confirms: Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light!
Nature: Neutrino experiment affirms faster-than-light claim
Wikipedia: Neutrinotests – OPERA, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso
The Weight of an eBook
Professor John Kubiatowicz von der University of California hat ausgerechnet, wieviel so ein eBook auf einem Kindle wiegt, wenn es dort gespeichert wird.
Prof John Kubiatowicz a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, explained in the New York Times last week that storing new data involves holding electrons in a fixed place in the device’s memory. Although the electrons were already present, keeping them still rather than allowing them to float around takes up extra energy – about a billionth of a microjoule per bit of data.
Using Einstein’s E=mc² formula, which states that energy and mass are directly related, Prof Kubiatowicz calculated that filling a 4GB Kindle to its storage limit would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram, or 0.000000000000000001g. This is roughly equivalent to the weight of a small virus, while the equivalent number of books – about 3,500 – would weigh approximately two tons.
The Size of a Human Rolled Into a Sphere:
Superinteressante Frage auf Ask Metafilter: „If an average-sized human body were rolled into a sphere, how big would that sphere be?“ Die Kugel aus Menschenfleisch hätte einen Durchmesser von nur rund 50cm und sähe garantiert ziemlich lustig aus. (via The Awl)
Liquid Smoke: How to drink a Joint
(Youtube Direktsmoke, via Geekosystem)
Von Youtube: „Requires: 1 unfiltered roll up ;) and a cold glass. Don’t inhale the smoke just pull it into your cheeks and let it fall out your mouth along the inside of the tilted glass. Do not breath as you do this or it will blow it all away!“
Wissenschaftler am CERN haben zum ersten mal Antimaterie für einen längeren Zeitraum festhalten können. Warpdrive next. „The team know the trap worked because they made about 10 million antihydrogen atoms which promptly obliterated themselves. Then they turned off their new trap and saw 38 more obliterations – meaning those 38 antihydrogens stuck in the trap.“ (via Spacecollective)
Strange Charm: A Song about Quarks
(Youtube Direktquark, via Marco)
Schöner Song von einem jungen Mann über Quarks, die Elementarteilchen, aus denen alle Materie aufgebaut ist. Besonders interessant ist hier Marcos Quark-Superheldenassiziation, zu der man die einzelnen Quark-Flavours kennen sollte: Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Bottom, Top.
Ich mag ja vor allem das strange Elementarteilchen und habe mir die selbst immer als unterschiedliche Ausgaben von Pacman vorgestellt. Up war ein Druffi-Packman auf Speed, Down der Depri-Pacman, Charme war Ms. Pacman, Bottom war eher ein plattes Oval und Top ein lange Lulatsch-Pacman. Und Strange war der irre LSD-Pacman auf Acid. Jeez.
