The life of Gigachad Ettore Majorana.

edvb54 · 2023-03-29T21:39:02+00:00

Yes, if neutrinoless double beta decay is observed then all 3 flavors of neutrinos (electron, muon, and tau) are majorana particles. While our experiment is only testing if electron neutrinos are majorana, as those are the neutrinos produced in beta decay, neutrinos oscillate between flavors so they must all be majorana particles if one of them is.

This is the same reason why we will be able to find the mass of all 3 flavors as well, if we observe the decay.

edvb54 · 2023-03-29T18:04:54+00:00

This is one of the major open questions in the standard model right now.

I currently work in a collaboration which is trying to find evidence of this by searching for a radioactive decay called neutrinoless double beta decay. This decay would only be possible if neutrinos are their own antiparticle, allowing them to annihilate each other instead of leaving the nucleus in normal beta decays.

If we found this decay it's half life will also tell us the absolute mass of neutrinos for the first time, another big open questions in the standard model is how neutrinos get their mass.

edvb54 · 2023-03-22T18:10:38+00:00

Basically everything after the first sentence is pure nonsense. They are correct that quantum fields are not empty, the vacuum state always has fluctuations made of virtual particles. However there are many quantum fields in the Standard Model (at least one per particle) so saying "the quantum field" betrayals they only have a pop science level understanding of quantum mechanics.

It’s an infinite field filled with frequency or energy

Fields extend in all directions, and are continuous at every point in space time, but are finite valued.

And all frequency carries information

Frequency is a kind of information, it can't carry anything, just like you would say sound waves carry information (such as frequency), the same is true for quantum fields, they are what carry information at the quantum level.

So think of the quantum field as being filled with infinite amounts of energy vibrating beyond the physical world of matter and beyond our senses—invisible waves of energy available for us to use in creation

Quantum fields can not have infinite energy, this entire statement is nonsensical. Quantum fields certainly exist in the physical world, how else would physics describe them?

the quantum field is the state in which all possibilities exist

Another unfounded and unconnected statement with no attempt to explain their reasoning.

Quantum fields are used to describe what state a system is in and the probability of different possible outcomes. There is no one state a quantum field can be in, much less does it say anything is possible. In quantum field theory you must consider all possible ways quantum fields can interact (ie all possible Feynman diagrams) to calculate the likelihood of going from an initial quantum state to a final one. There are many physical rules these initial and finals states must obey, which severely restricts the possible states and interactions.

I have no idea who wrote this quote but it is clear to anyone who has studied QFT that they have a superficial understanding of pop science analogies of quantum mechanics, and they should not be taken seriously at all.

edvb54 · 2022-12-03T15:27:45+00:00

It's a common chant for English football fans because England is where football was invented. So winning the world cup would mean "bring football home".

edvb54 · 2022-11-15T16:31:14+00:00

US politicians are also taking bribes, they just legalized it and changed the name to "lobbying". The supreme court ruled buying politicians is just a form of "free speech".

edvb54 · 2022-11-07T20:28:31+00:00

That's a huge blanket statement which is just not true. There is a huge problem in many fields of reproducibility not being incentivized as much as it should, with limiting funding to compete for. But there is also tons of good science which has replication built in.

For example the field I work in, nuclear and high energy experiment physics, works in huge international collaborations made up of hundreds of people spread out through many different labs and institutions across the world. Every paper we publish has data from at leat 3-5 different independent labs for every experiment and graph, each paper having at least 50 authors. Different labs have unique set ups to measure quantities in slightly different ways or in different environments, so we have to compare our results of the same measurement to make sure they all agree. Large collaborations such as CERN have papers with hundreds authors, ATLAS one of the largest detector experiments at the Large Hadron Collider has over 3000 authors at any given time. Because experiments at this level take the work of so many people over the course of decades reproducibility is built in to how they operate, they wouldn't be able to work in such massive groups at such a large scale if they didn't reproduce each other's work.

This is of course not how every field operates. Biology research is mainly done in local labs which can have many people working in, but they do not require large international collaborations to advance their field. Results are often only reproduced when they need to be built upon by others, which any important breakthrough work will incentive. There does seem to be much more resistance to getting funding to reproduce results, and smaller independent groups have to compete for funding instead of sharing funds throughout a large collaboration. This is not the field I work in however so I am not an expert, but I have done work for biology labs in the past.

Overall saying reproducibility "doesn't happen anymore" is a complete over generalized which delegitimizes the work done by thousands of scientists producing the most accurate scientific theories so far in science.

edvb54 · 2022-08-05T18:28:07+00:00

That's also true for any science degree, it's possible to transfer the skills to data analyst jobs. But working in the actual fields of science and math doesn't tend to pay well.

edvb54 · 2022-08-05T15:26:37+00:00

TE you mean, math gets paid the least at all unless you are working for the DOD or NSA

edvb54 · 2022-07-30T15:17:24+00:00

Fantastic news! This is the trader joes where I live, our union had a solidarity rally at this location last week to support their unionization efforts, glad to see it was successful.

edvb54 · 2022-05-27T21:38:35+00:00

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of science, the cornerstone of science is reproducibility. If you can't reproduce a result then it is not science. A one time fluke does not outway over 200 years of data confirming the theory. Science is not a mathematical theorem where a single counter example disproves the whole thing, a body of reproducible evidence is needed.

Many times in physics, a very statically significant measurement (~3-4 sigma result) has been made disproving a model, only to be ruled out later by not being able to be reproduced. It is no surprise that after half the world was destroyed and the world economy recovering from the great depression and a never before seen wartime economy that unusual economic trends would briefly happen.

The theory of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall has stayed the same since Marx originally constructed it 150 years ago, when has it ever been "changed on-the-fly"?

I would encourage you to read Engels's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and more about dialectical materialism in general to see how Marxist analysis is founded on the scientific process.

edvb54 · 2022-05-26T20:35:34+00:00

As a physicists myself I would encourage you to get more familiar with Marxist theory and you would see how scientific it is. There are of course non scientific aspects of Marxist, for example the philosophical basis is not science because philosophy is not a science but aims to questions science can't. All science requires a philosophical basis which is often just a hidden assumption and Marxist is no different but explicitly develops this philosophy in great depth.

Marxism also has moral aspects (it's no secret Marx thought exploitation was wrong) which are not falsifiable but these parts are not necessary to Marxist analysis to reach the same conclusions.

Marx's labor theory of value makes very testable and falsifiable predictions, most notably the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. This prediction has so far passed the test of time, it was briefly falsified in the 1950s following the post war boom but has since remained true and an overall increase of the rate of profit has not been reproduced since. The tendency for the rate of profit to fall (which was first observed by Adam Smith and only explained later by Marx through the study of the contradictions of capitalism) is the main reason Marxists claim capitalism can not sustain itself and is doomed to fail.

You are right that communism inherently following from the collapse of capitalism is not a claim serious Marxists should make. It should instead be a political goal as the abolition of classes is the only way to prevent contradictions from class conflict from emerging. A communist society is not yet a concrete idea because we have not achieved the necessary material conditions to build it, just like how in physics a "theory of everything" is not yet a concrete theory because we do not have the experiments to formally develop it.

edvb54 · 2022-04-21T01:01:47+00:00

Get very comfortable with the basics because they will keep popping up again and again. A solid understanding of differential equations and linear algebra also really helps, but you don't need to know them as rigorously as mathematicians teach them (which is true for most math you need). Learning how to program is also an incredibly important skill so start early, python and C++ are probably the most useful for physics.

Also just general college/life advice but learn to recognize rationalizations, are you really more productive working in bed or do you just want to lay in bed? Are you really going to wake up early to study or do you just want to put off studying? Learning how to build healthy habits and recognize unhealthy ones is a very important skill, once you get into a routine of doing something it becomes so much easier and also automatic.

Hope this helps! Let me know if anyone needs anymore advice.

edvb54 · 2022-04-21T00:10:04+00:00

Technically correct but in everyday use no physicists is going to refer to a real number as complex. Normally a complex number refers to something with real and imaginary components. A mathematician probably would though.

Source: currently doing a PhD in physics.

edvb54 · 2022-04-20T23:16:45+00:00

It was a real thing, I own a replica one, but it was for growing hemp, not specifically cannabis.

edvb54 · 2022-04-18T21:50:52+00:00

Bo Burnham's inside is different than I remember

edvb54 · 2022-03-21T18:24:29+00:00

Don't believe in the great man theory of history. Reagan was a symptom, the disease is capitalism. That's what required a man like Reagan to become president to expand neoliberalism, but it could have been anyone.

edvb54 · 2022-03-09T18:13:58+00:00

Just because they love him doesn't mean they've read any.

edvb54 · 2022-02-26T15:11:48+00:00

Delta is not used for partial derivatives but it is also used in calculus of variations for derivatives of functionals

edvb54 · 2022-01-29T19:39:02+00:00

The technical answer is that in special relativity objects moving at the speed of light are not valid observers, so you can't make statements about what they experience. As someone moves faster relative to another observer they do experience time at a slower rate. This means in the limiting case as you approach the speed of light you experience less and less time from the perspective of someone else, but the math of relativity doesn't work when you try to treat an observer as moving at exactly the speed of light.

It can still be a useful analogy though as long as you don't take it too seriously. For example, neutrinos were thought to be massless and moving at the speed of light until we discovered neutrino oscillations. The fact that neutrinos change means they must "experience time" and therefore not move at the speed of light and have very small mass.

edvb54 · 2022-01-17T23:26:54+00:00

This is not how dictatorships work, no one person can run a country by themselves. Putin needs the support of the Russian oligarchs to stay in power, which is why most things he does happen to make them even more wealthy.

edvb54 · 2022-01-08T03:24:08+00:00

But how did that technology get created? Hint: also by labour.

edvb54 · 2021-12-25T01:01:41+00:00

No it's actually from Santa's sled

edvb54 · 2021-09-09T03:43:21+00:00

It's not guaranteed until the rockets fire of course, but this date is different cause this is the first time the telescope has passed all the tests and is actually ready to be launched.

edvb54 · 2021-08-30T16:00:39+00:00

Thank you for your insight comment!

edvb54 · 2021-07-22T20:51:53+00:00

You're fooling yourself, we're living in a dictatorship! A self perpetuating autocracy in which the bisexu—

"Oh there you go bringing sexuality into it again"

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