usenet weirdness

Great. I got a lot out of Penrose's "Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy (...in Physics)". Or, at least a reputed authority's account that "functional freedom" as he puts it makes for a great schism, a crisis, in physics.

Recall Millikan measuring an electron (or rather, establishing a charge/mass ratio), then about Rayleigh-Jeans getting to spectroscopy or, "the Old quantum mechanics", about the discretization, of what would otherwise be continuous quantities, to discrete quantities, or "quantization".

The, "standard linear curriculum", it's fair to say that we all sat the "standard linear curriculum".

Then, a usual account of, the "non-linear", and, the "non-standard", reflect upon what the "linear curriculum's" account of "linear algebra" simply doesn't include, that mathematics does include.

About definitions of continuity, of course there are the, "classical expositions of the super-classical", or Zeno's.

Then, a lot of people say that Aristotle, who's the authority in Western reason since antiquity, is Archimedean in the sense of there not existing neither infinitesimals nor infinities. Yet, it is as well so that Xenocrates is part of an account of Aristotle's as well, the lesser acknowledged accounts of Aristotle that include both the prior and posterior analytics, makes for "standard infinitesimals", "iota-values", say, between zero and one an exact infinitude of them.

Then, this bridges between the classical account of the Pythagorean, where almost-all is rational, and the modern account of the Cantorian, where almost-all is transcendental, about Vitali and Hausdorff, to make for why it's not a paradox to make for three definitions of, "continuous domains".

We're familiar with, "continuous functions", yet, their definition holds even if defined on rationals, since it's just an account as after topology and basically for intermediate-value-theorem / mean-value-theorem / trapezoid rule.

Then, the definition of, "continous domain" itself, is usually left to the "complete ordered field", the Archimedean field, in the standard linear curriculum. So, calling those field reals, then it is yet so that "line reals" or these "iota-values", are also mathematically, structurally, another example of a continuous domain. Then there's a third a la "signal reals" since the Shannon/Nyquist theorem you'll know basically makes for the supersampling as doubling, to result a continuous domain after analysis of the rationals.

So, "Mathematical Foundations" itself has structures, features, of the objects of the "domain of discourse" or our language about it, the inter-subjective account as after language, structures of mathematical continuity and infinity, that automatically equip mathematical physics.

I.e., mathematics _owes_ physics more and better mathematics of continuity and infinity.

Warm regards

Anne Cutler?

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

I don't think that is correct. Both the sets of natural and rational numbers are aleph-0 in size, because it's possible to create a one-to-one mapping of every rational number to every integer.

Jeroen Belleman

For physics, and as well mathematics, this is very much a "realist" account, vis-a-vis "nomalist fictionalism".

To accommodate this in language, there's an idea of an ideal "Comenius language", of all truisms, when the domain of discourse is discourse itself, and all truism, with only the Liar as an example of a template satisfying being a "lie-detector" among the "truth-makers". Then from our finite and human meso-scale, we have a sort of, "Coleridge language", which attempts to make metaphor, which eventually fails, of the strong metonymy. Then, that gets related to Leibnitz' "universal grammar", Duns Scotus' "univocity", Nietzsche's "eternal basic text", and Quine's "text".

This then obviates some of the reasoning of, "logicist positivism", of the weaker variety or "nominalist fictionalism", of usual accounts of pick-em-up-and-put-em-down theories, for making a "stronger logicist positivism", to go along with a realist's "stronger mathematical platonism".

Then, it's figured that "mathematical physics" really is a continuum mechanics, here for example for matters of "energy and entelechy" with regards to "dynamics and dunamis the power and potential" of realists' potentialistic theory, about why the classical is really potentialistic and really potential itself again.

Then, the "severe abstractions" like "quantization" are useful while yet merely partial.

The "wider account of repleteness for mathematical completeness", or continuity, then, gets quite involved throughout.

So, again for matters of language and the inter-subjective, we point to all the canon and dogma and doctrine as above, including revisiting what were deemed _closures_ of mathematical "openings" (perestroikas, catastrophes) that then instead of wrongly asserting (axiomatizing) the "ordinary" theory (eg Russell's retro-thesis of an ordinary inductive set after Russell's paradox refuting itself), and for the "Riddle of Induction" instead for these "bridge results" or "analytical bridges" of deduction, this way an account of the archetectonic is both paleo-classical, and, post-modern.

And correct, ....

Accounts like that of Fred Katz and OUTPACING give for a size relation of sets that proper supersets of sets are demonstrably "larger", in a size relation.

The usual notion of "asymptotic density" or "Schnirelmann density" gives an account that only half of the integers are even.

The integers and rationals having the same cardinal is called "Galilean". It was called "Galileo's paradox" since it contradicted "asymptotic density".

Cardinality after Cantor's Mengenlehre and Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, then its interpretation of number-theorem structure according to descriptive set theory, which is the great account of 20'th century formalization of mathematics in a theory-of-one-relation the set theory, sees necessary re-interpretation with regards to other theories-of-one-relation, like ordering theory for Ordinals, and as well about three three regularities of well-foundedness (eg, Zermelo), well-ordering (eg, Zorn), and well-dispersion (eh, Martin) that there are great accounts of the independence of these with regards to each other, since Skolem and Mirimanoff, and, Goedel, von Neumann, and Cohen.

Then, Erdos' "Giant Monster of Mathematical Independence", helps reflect upon things like whether there's a prime at infinity, or a composite, and that there are independent models of arithmetic, either way, yet somehow not inconsistent together, as "dually-self infraconsistent" overall, a theory, an "Atlas of Mathematical Independence", for law(s), plural, of large numbers.

A Theory, ....

It used to be said that a third of chemists were mostly involved in vinyl. Or, you know, polymers.

Classical effects in mechanics after the "gyrational" show up in the third order, including things like "visco-elastic creep", "Magnus heft", and "spinning a top".

Sedov always nominally includes continuum and gyrational or gyratory effects in "mascroscopic theory of matter".

In something like Einstein's there's for example the "cosmological constant", while though it's "vanishing yet non-zero". For Levi-Civita it's about "the indefiniteness of ds^2", i.e. again about infintesimal analysis and quite thoroughly for the non-standard the, "un-linear".

How about Schopenhauer's "qualitas occultas".

If you look around for "real wave collapse" and for example with "supplementary variables" then with regards to Bohm's ideas of "pilot wave" and "ghost wave" and for example about Fadeev and Popov "ghost particles", one can find that it's considered by some more explanatory than something like Feynman's "virtual photons", which are un-observed (un-scientific).

A. Neumaier's "A theoretical physics FAQ" used to have a section on "real wave collapse".

Lee Smolin was a player in the game, not just a spectator. And Penrose is an idiot, where physics is concerned as soon as he gets beyond the technicalities of GR. (just imho)

The problem isn't with the world, I think. It is us humans failing to get the right ideas about it.

You shouldn't. It is another thing that you got completely wrong.

Hmmm. Of a kind, I guess. Just packaging it as math isn't enough,

Jan (don't want to know)

Then don't behave like one. You've been long enough in SPR by now for an idea of who is who.

Felix Bloch discovered it in the MHz regime, iirc. (he measured relaxation times)

Yes. Progress often comes from having more advanced instrumentation.

Yes, so what. You have that available, if needed, in a research lab.

Yes. but for research the cost of liquid Helium is not really important.

There is no need to go overly defensive, the problem was you being too agressive.

As for new research technique: it has to be tried before you can know what can be done with it. Meanwhile the results are publishable.

Really, there is genuine science and technology at less than a hundred megabuck a year,

Jan

Is there any particular idea for which Smolin is known?

I've read some of his books, nothing really comes to mind.

If "loop quantum gravity" is the thing, then there are "spin foam networks".

It's a popularizer.

In Lincoln Barnett's book on Einstein, he quotes Einstein with regards to the role of popularizers, with regards to physics and the public its perception thereof.

Kevin Brown there writes a lot of interesting things about physics.

About "quantum gravity", the earliest account known here is after Fatio and LeSage, the "ultramundance corpuscles". (It's the "gravific" not the "gravitic".)

One might find more context in "supergravity", and the "shadow gravity" or "umbral gravity".

Here or in my words there's a "fall gravity". (It's the "gravific" not the "gravitic".)

Otherwise the constant violation of conservation of energy doesn't seem quite lost in the quantum wash.

I think calling people stupid is nasty.

Most of those old hens probably aren't even physicists.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

She died in 2022, so I'm now less careful about protecting her identity from people like you.

Polyvinyl chloride is one industrial polymer. There are others. As a chemist I depended on fluorocarbon polymers - notably teflon/PTFE. As an electronic engineer I met them again in plastic film capacitors. Polypropylene film makes pretty good capacitors. A colleague made good used of Teflon film capacitors in a weird application where their superior performance justified the high cost.

Which are the sort of things that you only worry about if you have to.

Never heard of him (or her).

Most people say non-linear. Quite a few real world effects are non-linear. Transistor base-emitter junctions come to mind.

Bob Widlar was good at seeing its - very predictable - non-linearity as feature rather than a bug. Barry Gilbert got on that act pretty early too.

Developing more advanced instrumentation can let you tackle previously intractable problems. People talk about a solution looking for a problem.

If you've got enough money. If you need helium-3 as your refrigerant, you apparently need political influence as well.

But only if you have enough money.

I don't see it as a problem.

It helps if they are publishable in a high impact journal. When I was a graduate student one of the lecturers kept his students busy publishing papers on the properties of the simpler conpounds of technicium - the lightest element that hasn't got a stable isotope. He had contacts in the reactor business that let him get hold of enough of it to do that kid of work. The results got published in mior league journals.

My father got his 25 patents in the paper industry, which - while capital intensive - isn't in the hundreds of megabucks a year category.

My last job was with Haffmans B/V in Venlo in the Netherlands who made instrumentation for breweries.

My father complained about that too. I knew why the gradient coils were making their noise, so it didn't worry me.

Getting through the whole procedure takes a lot longer than that. My local hospital is only a ten minute walk away, but the hospital insists on keeping me sitting around for about an hour during even the fastest procedures. They seem to need to keep the patients intimidated. Or at least acting as if they are intimidated.

Mathematics doesn't owe physics anything. Physics exploits tools developed by mathematicians, which makes physicists customers for the work of some mathematicians.

A mathematical physicist like Paul Dirac is an interesting hybrid, but his biography is titled "The strangest man".

Mathematics is just another human language.

A science fiction author - H Beam Piper - wrote a short story "Omnilingual" that was published in 1957. I read it when it was first published (while I was still at secondary school).

This may be putting too much faith in the capacity of human language to capture reality.

The "nuclear medicine" with "technicium 99" is quite targeted.

I felt it helped me a lot with the post-COVID sequelae, and everything else, while it's not a usual thing.

(Also had a nice time with the ultrasound tech.)

It seems everybody forget everybody has COVID. That said, the post-nasal pharyngeal swab with the Tobacco Mosaic Virus epitopes and the Omicron the "COVID-Lite" really helped crowd it out.

A shot of remdesivir when the MERS was kicking in before COVID also seemed to help, and hopefully the Hep B vaccine was helpful, while though I never took the mRNA jab and intend never will, then also I hope to avoid the Crow-vid and Cow-vid (and, Pig-vid) and avoid food animals with mRNA jabs.

For something like nucleonics and nuclear theory, there's that the periodic table of elements, has another chart for the isotope chart, that's just more like a wide line on the order of atomic mass, then that their fundamental identities and associations, of the nuclear species, might find the usual account as after organizing for bond orbitals, as removed from classical as the isotope table is from the periodic table.

It's similar with other theories about what's "elementary" and what's "derived", or what's "fundamental" and what's "derived", as to what is incremental in one, is only eventual in the other, and vice versa.

For example, a space of geometry, and a space of words, has usual accounts since, for example, and not to make a theological account yet only as a common source with established editions, Genesis 1 starts with a space for geometry and John 1 starts with a space for words.

Then, geometry itself is sort of the same way, about points and lines or points and spaces more thoroughly. For example, via induction, one may not make a point from dividing lines or a line from connecting points, yet, there's a point for deduction that Leibnitz' perfection of gaplesness "jumplessness" or what eventually has Hilbert's "postulate of continuity", are axioms that intend to suffice when otherwise it would demand a deductive account where induction is not infallible then to relate matters of continuity to the geometric series.

It's so that we can't really speak of that for which there are no words, ultimately "the ineffable", then that the idea that man can comprehend the infinite and continuous, is for matters of reason, besides.