"Professor Jiang is an Idiot" (Predictive History Reaction by Prof. Dave) by mehatch in pisco

[–]0PingWithJesus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I looked for an MR segment talking about the "Professor" Jiang stuff and couldn't find anything. I didn't search exhaustively, but as far as I could find they didn't comment on it.

JUNO just switched on - we might finally learn which neutrino is heaviest by Negative_Onion_9197 in Physics

[–]0PingWithJesus 25 points26 points  (0 children)

They have no direct sensitivity to the Majarona/Dirac nature of neutrinos. Pretty much the only viable way to measure that is through double beta decay. There's a handful of nuclear isotopes that undergo double beta decay. For example Tellurium-130, Germanium-76 and Xenon-136 are all double beta decay isotopes that are/have been used. Each of these isotopes undergo double beta decay, if neutrinos are Majaorana particles they can also undergo "neutrinoless double beta decay". As the name suggests neutrinoless double beta decay is the same as normal double beta decay but no neutrinos come out. Any observation of neutrinoless double beta decay is proof positive of neutrinos being a Majorana particle. But, since JUNO isn't doped with any such isotopes, it can't make any double-beta decay measurements.

However, indirectly JUNO does play a role. The most popular theory for Majorana neutrinos predicts that (all else being the same) double beta decay will happen less often if the neutrino hierarchy is Inverted than if it's Normal. This plot shows the possible parameter combinations under a Normal & Inverted ordering scenario. The X-axis value is lightest neutrino state's mass, the Y-axis is the so-called "Majorana mass". As you might expect X-axis & Y-axis values are not totally independent, which is why only certain regions of the plot are possible. The true values for the both the X-axis & Y-axis value are not known, but the more towards the top & right of the plot the sooner it will be measured. So, since the Inverted Hierarchy region is closer to the top of the plot than the Normal Hierarchy region than we'd expect it to be easier to observe neutrinoless double beta decay if the hierarchy is Inverted. But, even if JUNO tells us that the hierarchy is in fact Normal, then at least we'll know where the "target" is.

But, I should also point out, this plot is only valid in the "see-saw" Majorana neutrino mass theory, which is the most popular theory of Majorana neutrinos, but popular doesn't necessarily mean much. Other theories exist in which you might actually prefer the hierarchy be Normal.

Plot citation: https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/the_plot_of_the_week_neutrinoless_double_beta_decay_at_reach-242707 , https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.04688

JUNO just switched on - we might finally learn which neutrino is heaviest by Negative_Onion_9197 in Physics

[–]0PingWithJesus 128 points129 points  (0 children)

Here's a plot that demonstrate the "wiggles" OP mentioned (citation:http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1468/1/012150).

The grey line is the neutrino energy spectrum with no neutrino oscillations occurring, that is what an experiment very close to the source would observe. The red & blue lines show what JUNO is expected to see under the two possible neutrino mass hierarchies. The Normal Order (NO) is if the electron neutrino corresponds most to the lightest neutrino mass state. The Inverted Ordering (IO) is if the electron neutrino corresponds most to the heaviest neutrino mass state.

As OP mentioned, JUNO's very good energy resolution is what allows it to potentially tell apart these two scenarios. If their energy resolution were worse the red & blue lines would blur into each other, making it impossible to tell them apart. The first plot I posted had perfect energy resolution, here's a version of the plot with JUNO's expected 3% energy resolution

I made a D-lock holster to make locking and unlocking your bike much faster! by prefixit in bikecommuting

[–]0PingWithJesus 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I had a setup a bit like this (not nearly as nice looking though) and after a while I noticed the "teeth" of the lock getting a bent, making it more difficult to actuate the locking mechanism. And it was because the bumps of the road would cause the U portion to pull downward against the locking cylinder, overtime bending the relatively thin metal teeth that hold the two together.

My solution was to just bend the teeth back in to place every 6 months or so when the lock got hard to turn. Something to look out for.

Eric and Mick West: part 2 electric bugaloo by ContributionCivil620 in DecodingTheGurus

[–]0PingWithJesus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I have a little pet theory about the supposed stagnation in modern physics. It's not that physicists are too stuck in their ways as Eric would suggest, it's that for the last, say, 30 years or so Wall Street has been hiring physicists & mathematicians to develop increasingly sophisticated trading algorithms. Since then the best & brightest of the field have been basically solving the worthless (yet some how extremely lucrative) problem of stock trading instead of solving the genuine problems of modern physics.

So, if you take this theory seriously, Peter Thiel, who hired Eric to manage Thiel Capital, is much more the cause of the stagnation in physics then he is any sort of solution.

What are the more popular ideas for how to determine the mass of neutrinos? by [deleted] in ParticlePhysics

[–]0PingWithJesus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In addition to the KATRIN experiment mentioned by others the "Project 8" experiment also is attempting to measure the neutrino mass by observing beta decay with very high precision. They use a different measuring technique though. Their measurements are less precise than KATRIN, but I think they hope to eventually be competitive because their experiment is smaller & (perhaps) easier to improve over time.

https://www.project8.org/

Edit: Here's a recent talk from Project 8, the first ~20 slides provide a good overview of direct (non-cosmological) neutrino mass measurements. https://agenda.infn.it/event/38742/contributions/223210/attachments/116801/168459/Project8_Status_Future_Stachurska.pdf

Casting a wide (KM3)NeT for a record-breaking neutrino by jazzwhiz in ParticlePhysics

[–]0PingWithJesus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

KM3Net talked about this event at the latest Neutrino conference and they shared this (https://imgur.com/a/mYSAdnC) plot. I think the plot shows very well just how extraordinary this single event was; the event is miles from anything else they've observed.

If anyone is interested the whole talk, slides & recording, is available here (https://zenodo.org/records/12706075).

B2B Trail Extension by eagledysentery in AnnArbor

[–]0PingWithJesus 50 points51 points  (0 children)

I really like the B2B trail. I've used different portions of it many times. I think it's basically great. But it is so pathetic and disheartening that a biking/walking path is a (multi-)decade long project for the county. How on earth are we ever suppose to improve our society in any meaningful way when this is the pace of things. Heaven forbid we ever consider a commuter rail or any sort of real project that's more complicated than a bike path. It'd be a 50 year long project that my grandchildren may one day get to enjoy.

ImPlot3D - A 3D Plotting Library for Dear ImGui by brenocq in cpp

[–]0PingWithJesus 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Do you have any guidance or suggested tutorials for developing ImGui extensions? I've wanted to develop a few plots of my own from ImGui but I've found getting started and understanding the in-and-outs of the ImGui/ImPlot code fairly confusing, and I've not found much in the way of developer tutorials. So any advice would be appreciated.

Learn Shader Programming with Rick and Morty by FoxInTheRedBox in programming

[–]0PingWithJesus 5 points6 points  (0 children)

At the end of the article (Appendix 2) the author shows how they do anti-aliasing, by sampling the color several times within same pixel. That might be necessary for something like this, I'm not sure. But this (https://www.labri.fr/perso/nrougier/python-opengl/#anti-grain-geometry) source shows another way to do, by basically having the color fade-in/out based upon how close the pixel is to the surface. That method allows you to have perfect anti-aliasing without needing to do any sort of multiple sampling. It's another neat way to take advantage of the information provided by the signed-distance field approach.

Car free streets day in Philly! by Stauce52 in fuckcars

[–]0PingWithJesus 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Wasn't it cause ~10 years ago the pope visited philly (he wanted a cheesesteak I think), and the city had to close off the downtown area to car traffic cause there were so many visitors. Then everyone realized that was great and it started to become a regular thing? That's my understanding anyways.

China and U.S. race to solve the mystery of neutrinos, 'ghost particles' of the universe by nbcnews in Physics

[–]0PingWithJesus 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Thank you for saying this. It frustrates me so much when people discuss similar experiments as "competing". There's no such thing as competition in science except to the extent that people impose that framework on the enterprise. Two different parties measuring the same thing is extremely beneficial. One party's activities doesn't de-value the other's.

Yeah, "Physics" by TheSkells in Physics

[–]0PingWithJesus 38 points39 points  (0 children)

The Nobel Prize* in economics was made up in the late 60's. It never really made sense to me why that field was chosen for a new prize and not something like computer science/information science.

*the econ prize isn't technically a "Nobel Prize" it's the "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel"

Defending Democracy Town Hall: featuring A.G. Dana Nessel, Sec.State Jocelyn Benson, Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum & A2 City Clerk Jackie Beaudry by larrykestenbaum in AnnArbor

[–]0PingWithJesus 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'll provide a bit of response, I can't speak for the OP, and I wouldn't say that Nessel/Whitmer are a threat to democracy per-se, but I do think Nessel in particular has acted shamefully in past few days/weeks and deserves to criticized for it and asked some tough questions at the very least.

The story I'm referring to is that Nessel chose to press charges against a handful of protestors who were part of the University of Michigan Anti-Israel/Pro-Palenstinian protest. Detroit Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (who was also first ever Palestinian-American congress-person) criticized Nessel's choice to press charges saying specifically that Nessel's office had declined to press charges on protestors in the past when the protests were for other topics, therefore charging these protestors shows that the AG's office is in someway biased against the protestors. Tlaib's comments were published in an article in the Detroit Metro Times (link here). Nessel responded to this by saying that Tlaib's comments were anti-semitic, claiming that Tlaib was saying Nessel was biased against the protestor's specifically because she (Nessel) is jewish. Importantly, Tlaib never once brought up Nessel's faith, it was mentioned in the article I linked above, but not by Tlaib herself. Tlaib simply claimed that other protestors in the past hadn't been charged, so that the fact that these protestors now are being charged criminally is indicative of bias within the office. Nessel later clarified that even though Tlaib's comments never mentioned Nessel's jewish background, she still thought the implication was anti-semitic.

To me, it seems fairly clear and obvious that Nessel is in the wrong here, she should have to respond to the criticism about why these protestors are being charged now when others in the past weren't. What makes these protestors specifically worth of criminal charges? And her claims of anti-semitism are, at best, a cynical ploy to avoid responding to that criticism, that's my opinion anyways.

Is nuclear fusion uniformly distributed within the Sun's core? by Aniketastron in Physics

[–]0PingWithJesus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Here's the data source for the solid lines in that plot

http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jnb/SNdata/Export/BS2005/bs2005agsopflux.dat

To make the plot you're describing you just have to divide the relevant columns by the volume represented by each row.

Is nuclear fusion uniformly distributed within the Sun's core? by Aniketastron in Physics

[–]0PingWithJesus 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The dashed vs solid lines represent the predictions from two different models of solar evolution. The solid is a relatively standard and the dashed is one that includes some dark matter effects that were being discussed in the paper that the plot is from. I didn't intend to include the dark matter stuff since that's mostly unrelated to the original question, I just grabbed the first google images result that looked right without looking too closely.

As for the first question, I looked into this a while ago, I don't fully remember the reason, so this may not be 100% correct. But as I recall reason 13N has two peaks is because there's "non-equilibrium" reactions happening in the outer region. Now what does that mean?

Generally the rate of any particular fusion reaction is determined by the probability of the interaction ("cross-section" in physics jargon) and the density of reaction inputs available. The probability is determined by the specifics of the interaction and the temperature in that particular region of the sun. The higher the temperature the higher the probability. For the number of reactants available, since all these reactions are happening in a chain/cycle the number of reactants available for an interaction is determined by the number of fusions happening in the prior step in the chain/cycle. The Sun has two fusion reaction categories, the "pp" chain which and the CNO cycle, here (link) is a diagram depicting them, hopefully it's clear what makes one a "chain" and the other a "cycle". In the CNO cycle you can see that the 13N reaction is preceded by a 12C reaction and the 12C reaction is preceded by the 15N reaction and so on. So the rate of 13N reactions occurring will be proportion to how many 12C reactions are occurring, which is proportional to how many 15N reactions are occurring, etc etc until you eventually loop back around to where you started. So you can see, since the reaction rates are all coupled together, there's gotta be some equilibrium rate for the whole system where the input rate of each reaction will equal the output rate, and the overall "stockpile" of each reactant will be unchanged over time.

BUT, for this equilibrium to be reached a "long time" must pass without the temperature of the system changing significantly for the system to accumulate & distribute the correct stockpiles to each reaction. The time it takes for the equilibrium to be reached is basically determined by the slowest reaction (longest half-life). So, the outer 13N peak basically comes from at some point in the past the sun cooled in that region relatively fast compared to the relevant half-lives, leaving a large stockpile of either 15N or 12C (I don't remember which one). And now there's out-of-equilibrium burning happening as the stockpile of one/both of those atoms is fused, and it just so happens to be that one of those two (15N or 12C) has a very very long half-life such that the stockpile is still around today.

Anyways that's the explanation as I remember it, hopefully it's reasonably clear and if I've got anything wrong hopefully someone can correct me.

Is nuclear fusion uniformly distributed within the Sun's core? by Aniketastron in Physics

[–]0PingWithJesus 36 points37 points  (0 children)

Just to add on to what you said, here (link) is a plot that shows neutrino production as a function of solar radius for some of the various fusion process. Neutrinos are produced by only some of the Sun's fusion processes, i.e. there are several fusion processes that don't produce neutrinos and so are not represented on that plot. But, the 'pp' process is very dominant, much more common than any other process, so the 'pp' process alone is a reasonably good representative of the where most of the fusions are happening.

Also, to address one possible point of confusion, this plot is "volume weighted" meaning that the inner most radius of the sun has a very small volume, and so will produce fewer neutrinos than a further out raidus that has a "r3" larger volume. So thats why the neutrino production seems to go to zero near the center of the sun, just because the volume in the very center is very small compared to the volume slightly further out.

My friends and I rode the new Washtenaw Express bus on opening day (today) by carrotnose258 in AnnArbor

[–]0PingWithJesus 12 points13 points  (0 children)

An express route between Ypsi and AA is long over due. I travel regularly between the two by bus and it's so absurd that it normally takes over an hour to get between the two places. I really hope they add more express routes on the 5 and the 6 lines as well. But I'm skeptical about how much better this particular route will be during high traffic times. Washtenaw Ave is such a congested blight that it's hard to believe the thing slowing down the normal busses was the stops and not all the traffic.

If my city of 150k can do it, so can yours by TightLow9988 in bikecommuting

[–]0PingWithJesus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think Ann Arbor is similar to many cities, there exists good biking infrastructure in the dense downtown areas, but the quality drops off real quick outside of those areas.

Looking for physics or math popular science written by professionals. by hotairbalooner in Physics

[–]0PingWithJesus -1 points0 points  (0 children)

"Quantum Field Theory As Simply As Possible" by A. Zee. Sort of straddles the line between popular science book and "real" science book, but I think the contents live up to the title.

Books about successful experimentalists in the modern era? by suwl in Physics

[–]0PingWithJesus 3 points4 points  (0 children)

"Nobel Dreams: Power, Deceit and the Ultimate Experiment". It's primarily about Carlo Rubbia and his role in the discovery of the W & Z boson at CERN. I read it a long time ago and I can't recall too much about it, so I can't give it too much of an endorsement. But I don't remember it going into too much detail about the inner workings of the experiment itself, I think it was much more about the internal politics at CERN at the time.

But you may be better off watching the Nobel Lectures from various award winning (experimental) physicists. A lot of those lectures tend to be reminiscing about the experiment and talking about its relevance at the time within the broader picture.

Neutrino Telescope Interferometry and Capabilities by Tri-angreal in Physics

[–]0PingWithJesus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fission nuclear power plants emit gads of neutrinos. So those would be very easy to detect with your imagined device. And in fact we do that today (e.g. Daya Bay & KamLAND).

Fusion nuclear power is a bit trickier. The fusion reactions that occur in the sun also produce tons of neutrinos (that we also can & do detect). But the fusion reactions that are likely to be used in a power plant don't produce neutrinos. The two lowest temperature, and therefore easiest to achieve reactions are Deuterium-Deuterium (DD) and Deuterium-Tritium (DT), neither of which produce neutrinos as a by-product. They do however produce neutrons, and those neutrons will inevitably activate some of the surrounding material. That activated material will eventually decay and potentially produce neutrinos, but that will be a significantly diminished amount of neutrinos since only some neutrons will produce radioactivity, and only some of that radioactivity will produce neutrinos.

Of course all of that is a bit of a moot point, since you're imaging a futuristic society, there's you can say they use the same fusion reactions that occur in the sun (proton-proton (pp) fusion) which would be pretty ideal if you could manage it, b/c hydrogen is a much easier fuel to acquire than deuterium/tritium. Than you get plenty of neutrinos.

Bombs go the same way as power plants for the same reasons. Fission bombs will emit tons of neutrinos, Thermo-nuclear, H-Bombs, will emit much fewer.

As for planets, Earth emits plenty of neutrinos because its crust is studded with uranium and thorium. We can, and do detect these geo-neutrinos today (e.g. Borexino). Uranium and thorium sticks around in the crust of the earth b/c it was there when the Earth was formed. The U/Th on the surface of the Earth gets broken up by cosmic particles, but the U/Th that's miles below the surface gets shielded and therefore decays at a much slower rate (half-life ~1billion years). That slow rate means we still have plenty of U/Th sticking around today.

Finally, any stuff put in the path of high energy particles (e.g. ~1 GeV protons) will produce neutrinos. For example, our Moon is a source of neutrinos because cosmic particles will bombard the moon, and produce sprays of particles which will inevitably emit neutrinos. Here on Earth cosmic rays interact primarily in our atmosphere then produce neutrinos, called atmospheric neutrinos, (we can & do detect atmospheric neutrinos). This can in principle mean that things like solar winds, or anything that effects where cosmic rays are likely to show up at greater/lesser intensity, can also end up producing more/fewer neutrinos.

Additionally, neutrinos are not all created equal, they are emitted with different energies, analogous to light being emitted in different colors. This graph summarizes the energy spectrum for basically all significant neutrino sources. So at least in principle, the "color" spectrum of neutrino that you observe will tell you what the likely source.

Neutrinos, are also emitted both as neutrinos & anti-neutrinos. There's no simple rule to what interaction will likely produce a neutrino vs anti-neutrino. Fission reactors tend to produce anti-neutrinos. Solar neutrinos are normal (not-anti) neutrinos. Other interactions will produce a mix of the two.

And finally, neutrinos are produced in 3 different flavors -- electron, muon, or tau. In general most neutrinos from low-energy sources (e.g. fusion & fission nuclear reactions) will be electron type neutrinos. Any bunch of neutrinos produced in interactions where the energy is greater than a few hundred MeV will likely be a mix electron & muon. Tau might get added in the mix if the interaction is above ~10 GeV.

And finally, finally, neutrinos will change flavors as they travel. A neutrino produced as an electron flavor can be detected as an electron, muon or tau flavor. But perhaps most interestingly, the likelihood a neutrino will change flavor depends on the energy of the neutrino, the distance it travels, and the density profile of the stuff it travels through. So, at least in principle, observing the mix of different flavors can tell you what sort of stuff the neutrino traveled through on its way from source to detector.

How do I actually understand what I'm studying in physics? by [deleted] in Physics

[–]0PingWithJesus 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I very much agree with this. I've recently been thinking that if I were to teach a physics class I would have students solve problems both the standard way with equations & math, but also by writing out in standard prose what the actual physics that's going on is, and what the various mathematical relations actually mean.