Won't work IMO.
I base this on a mixture of sceptical criticism at the details of the plan itself (100 billion Euros being raised in six months, two thirds of which are coming in banks from the worst-hit countries including Greece... hmm) and sheer intuition.
We'll see whether I'm right or not soon enough.
Thursday 27 October 2011
Wednesday 5 October 2011
Chem Nobel Prize
Goes to quasicrystals and specifically Shechtman - Technion having a good run of late, eh? - 27 years after the fact. Nobel Committee back to form, then.
A few people have asked me, so I'll say roughly the sum total of what I learnt about quasicrystals from the lecture a few weeks ago:
They're ordered non-crystals. Meaning that they're still ordered in some way, and have some sort of symmetry, usually rotational (I don't know if you can have glide symmetry alone without translational... but it doesn't really matter as I would be astonished to find a real-life material with glide symmetry. We're talking condensed matter phys-er, science here. Real world). But not translational. Meaning if you move it around at all it'll look different - as opposed to a true crystal, where if you move it the right amount (specifically, move it by an integer linear combination of the lattice vectors), it looks exactly the same.
So that's all I know about quasicrystals. Sorry.
EDIT: And yes, the place I learnt (briefly) about quasicrystals was in a Condensed Matter Physics course.
A few people have asked me, so I'll say roughly the sum total of what I learnt about quasicrystals from the lecture a few weeks ago:
They're ordered non-crystals. Meaning that they're still ordered in some way, and have some sort of symmetry, usually rotational (I don't know if you can have glide symmetry alone without translational... but it doesn't really matter as I would be astonished to find a real-life material with glide symmetry. We're talking condensed matter phys-er, science here. Real world). But not translational. Meaning if you move it around at all it'll look different - as opposed to a true crystal, where if you move it the right amount (specifically, move it by an integer linear combination of the lattice vectors), it looks exactly the same.
So that's all I know about quasicrystals. Sorry.
EDIT: And yes, the place I learnt (briefly) about quasicrystals was in a Condensed Matter Physics course.
Tuesday 4 October 2011
Congratulations Brian Schmidt
On a well-deserved and very fast Nobel Prize for Physics (took them about 10 years, not 20). Non-zero Λ is a big, big deal.
For the uninitiated, he was a key member of the two teams that independently but more or less simultaneously made the first properly comprehensive attempt to make a determination of the amount of mass in the universe (Ω_M, in fact, the "proportion" of mass/energy in the universe that is, well, stuff, like me and you).
What they were expecting to find was that Ω_M is about 0.3, ie. the amount of "proper stuff" in the universe is close to 30% of the "critical density" - ie. the total amount of mass/energy (which includes "proper" matter and other things like light etc.) that would be needed above which the universe would eventually collapse in on itself due to gravity.
(Note: if you're heard of "dark matter", that counts as "proper stuff" too)
What they instead found was completely different. Their supernova measurements didn't fit what they would expect if Ω_M was about 0.3 and nothing else. Or 0 and nothing else. Or 1 nothing else. Or Ω_M = anything, and nothing else in the universe.
What they instead found was that their data and the data of the other team - both independently obtained by similar but different methods - fitted a model which had in it what's called a non-zero cosmological constant (Λ). The same cosmological constant that Einstein stuck into his equations to have them make sense, and then took it out and called it "the biggest blunder of my life".
Turns out this blunder won a few people a Nobel Prize.
A cosmological constant, by the way, is a term in the equations of general relativity, that when you apply it to the universe, basically attaches an energy to the structure of space itself. Dark energy is another term that's often used. The upshot of it is that with the non-zero Λ, the universe isn't just expanding, it's accelerating. This surprised the hell out of everyone, but surprisingly it gained acceptance pretty fast - one because the data was clearly good, and everyone else's data started matching up when they tried similar experiements, and two, it explained a lot of weird things that flummoxed people for a long, long time.
A better explanation can be found on his website: http://msowww.anu.edu.au/~brian/PUBLIC/public.html
He's on the left. On the right is the leader of the other team, I believe, who is a co-laureate. But the other guy doesn't lecture my astronomy course.
For the uninitiated, he was a key member of the two teams that independently but more or less simultaneously made the first properly comprehensive attempt to make a determination of the amount of mass in the universe (Ω_M, in fact, the "proportion" of mass/energy in the universe that is, well, stuff, like me and you).
What they were expecting to find was that Ω_M is about 0.3, ie. the amount of "proper stuff" in the universe is close to 30% of the "critical density" - ie. the total amount of mass/energy (which includes "proper" matter and other things like light etc.) that would be needed above which the universe would eventually collapse in on itself due to gravity.
(Note: if you're heard of "dark matter", that counts as "proper stuff" too)
What they instead found was completely different. Their supernova measurements didn't fit what they would expect if Ω_M was about 0.3 and nothing else. Or 0 and nothing else. Or 1 nothing else. Or Ω_M = anything, and nothing else in the universe.
What they instead found was that their data and the data of the other team - both independently obtained by similar but different methods - fitted a model which had in it what's called a non-zero cosmological constant (Λ). The same cosmological constant that Einstein stuck into his equations to have them make sense, and then took it out and called it "the biggest blunder of my life".
Turns out this blunder won a few people a Nobel Prize.
A cosmological constant, by the way, is a term in the equations of general relativity, that when you apply it to the universe, basically attaches an energy to the structure of space itself. Dark energy is another term that's often used. The upshot of it is that with the non-zero Λ, the universe isn't just expanding, it's accelerating. This surprised the hell out of everyone, but surprisingly it gained acceptance pretty fast - one because the data was clearly good, and everyone else's data started matching up when they tried similar experiements, and two, it explained a lot of weird things that flummoxed people for a long, long time.
A better explanation can be found on his website: http://msowww.anu.edu.au/~brian/PUBLIC/public.html
He's on the left. On the right is the leader of the other team, I believe, who is a co-laureate. But the other guy doesn't lecture my astronomy course.
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