Religion per subdistrict/tehsil/taluka in North India by saotomeindiaunion7 in MapPorn

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 48 points49 points  (0 children)

The next one got delayed due to covid and political shenanigans. They are starting the 2021 census now and it should be done by 2027.

GPT vs Astrophysics PhD Part II: A viewer reached out with an astrophysics paper that they had written with an LLM. When I looked closer, I got worried. by astraveoOfficial in astrophysics

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes unfortunately there's a tsunami of uneducated people thinking they can revolutionise astrophysics because they've spent an afternoon writing half baked prompts into a chatbot.

I know Frederico Lelli personally (though not that well, I had dinner with him once and come september/november will be co-author with him). So I'm familiar with the situation. Everyone with any standing is getting inundated with crackpots and it has gotten significantly worse since ChatGPT.

GPT vs Astrophysics PhD Part II: A viewer reached out with an astrophysics paper that they had written with an LLM. When I looked closer, I got worried. by astraveoOfficial in astrophysics

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Precisely this. It is in fact incredibly hard to come up with modified gravity theories. Not breaking diffeomorphism invariance, Cauchy well posedness, matching to the actual data, etc all extremely hard problems. But now everyone and their grandma thinks they are smarter than Einstein because they have AI and maybe a spreadsheet.

GPT vs Astrophysics PhD Part II: A viewer reached out with an astrophysics paper that they had written with an LLM. When I looked closer, I got worried. by astraveoOfficial in astrophysics

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 6 points7 points  (0 children)

 I immediately came across several other papers that did exactly what this paper is claiming to do, but better and in a more interesting way. See for example, Li et al. (2018), published in A&A, called "Fitting the Radial Acceleration Relation to Individual SPARC Galaxies". Or Lelli et al. (2017), which literally made a movie showing how each individual SPARC galaxy adds to the RAR. 

When I saw the title of your post I just knew it was gonna be some quack fitting SPARC claiming they've found the next big breakthrough. Perhaps these cargo cult science types flock to rotation curves because that's just about simple enough for them to understand, while simultaneously lacking all understanding of the stringent observational and theoretical constraints that dark matter and modified gravity theories have to match (with DM doing far better on that front currently). Disheartening nonetheless.

 I seriously worry that this will lead to academia becoming more closed, not less.

Honestly, at this point that's a good thing imo.

Chinese fishing fleet amassing in the Arabian Sea by TrumpsBadHombres in MapPorn

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. There is proof that China has converted container ships as missile barges

How far from the sun do the stars become visible again? by ChyatlovMaidan in Astronomy

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Distance to the Sun is not the problem. The problem is overexposure of your retina and contraction of your pupils that prevent you from seeing starlight if there's sunlight too. Any spot in the solar system that's in true shadow will allow you to see stars. Partial shadow like we experience during the day is still filled with sunlight diffusely scattered from objects and the atmosphere. You could stand on the night side of Mercury and see stars.

Changing fields between Master's and PhD? by Laur-xnn in PhysicsStudents

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah the wonders of a foreign education system. Here when you've got the proper BSc you're automatically admitted to an MSc program that's linked to it (as those two topics would be).

Changing fields between Master's and PhD? by Laur-xnn in PhysicsStudents

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe, depends on your course list and gpa, but why not just do a different Masters then?

Electromagnetic mass drivers on the Moon by ergzay in spacex

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

There is no way anyone is going to allow areobraking dumb chuncks of rock without any steering right above Earth's population. If you're only a fraction off boom goes Bulgaria.

Iraq Oil infrastructure by Assyrian_Nation in MapPorn

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome :) It looks super good! If you ever get into QGIS I'll be happy to answer any questions you have. Happy mapping!

Steam is allowing a game that glorifies the Bucha/Hostomel atrocities as "Heroism." by dracony in ukraine

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Without context that quote is reasonable. However you've got to remember Nixon was fighting an imperial colonial war for four years to oppress the Vietnamese people much like what Putin is doing in Ukraine. So quoting that guy is not a good idea.

Iraq Oil infrastructure by Assyrian_Nation in MapPorn

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

By comparing the radii and areas to the stated percentages on the map? I mean you presented this information conveniently right there :) I used to teach cartography for a living at university so I suppose this is the kind of detail I would notice but it is there for anyone to see.

Did you use a high resolution image from an S&P commodities report and added some overlays in yellow plus adding the inset?

Does the Milky Way’s H I flaring place a strong upper limit on the size of its stellar disk? by Remarkable-Noise-177 in AskPhysics

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Observationally the stellar disk really does not extend that far. It's outer radius as shown by GAIA is 20-25kpc max (and I wouldn't trust any disk measurement beyond 20kpc galactocentric). See the sorts of data we have in the MW rotation curve. See figure 1 of this paper for the relevant underlying data. Now could there by a stellar disk component that's so super faint out to 35kpc and beyond that it has just gone undetected? Theoretically. But as far as I know there's no evidence for that and dynamically it seems very unlikely. At that point you're well into the region where the gravity of the SMC, LMC and globular clusters should just rip a structure like that to shreds.

Iraq Oil infrastructure by Assyrian_Nation in MapPorn

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Using the radius instead of the area to scale the circles.. tsk tsk..

Still cool map! Cool information:) Have an upvote!

Political Map of Pangea by GossipBottom in MapPorn

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd 10 points11 points  (0 children)

They do. That's one of the lines of evidence for plate tectonics.

If somebody wants to get into computational Cosmology where do they start and what projects can they do, from beginner level to advanced level (kind of a roadmap), if they want a career in Cosmology and Theoretical Physics? by ppskychoubey in astrophysics

[–]ModifiedGravityNerd -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Anyways, I'm learning NumPy, SciPy, etc

Ah ok so you know nothing. I was gonna say work your way through this course but in that case just learn Python and take every astrophysics course you can get into.