Who are we? And what is our role in the universe? Information technology is radically changing not only how we deal with the world and make sense of it, or interact with each other, but also how we look at ourselves and understand our own existence and responsibilities. Philosophy Professor Floridi ( @Floridi ) will discuss such impact of information technology on our lives and on our self-understanding; he will take us along the Copernican revolution, the Darwinian revolution, the Freudian revolution right up to speed with the Turing revolution: a world of inforgs in a global environment ultimately made of information. Floridi will talk about expanding our ecological and ethical approach to both natural and man-made realities, in order to cope successfully with the new moral challenges posed by information technology. Ready for some philosophy? You bet!
http://www.tedxmaastricht.com
PLato said,"Look to the perfection of the heavens for truth," while Aristotle said "look around you at what is, if you would know the truth" To Remember: Eskesthai
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Information Technology
Thursday, October 16, 2014
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualia or phenomenal experiences — how sensations acquire characteristics, such as colours and tastes.[1] David Chalmers, who introduced the term "hard problem" of consciousness,[2]
contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to
discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus
attention, etc. Easy problems are easy because all that is required for
their solution is to specify a mechanism that can perform the function.
That is, their proposed solutions, regardless of how complex or poorly
understood they may be, can be entirely consistent with the modern
materialistic conception of natural phenomena. Chalmers claims that the
problem of experience is distinct from this set, and he argues that the
problem of experience will "persist even when the performance of all the
relevant functions is explained".[3]
The existence of a "hard problem" is controversial and has been disputed by some philosophers.[4][5] Providing an answer to this question could lie in understanding the roles that physical processes play in creating consciousness and the extent to which these processes create our subjective qualities of experience.[3]
Several questions about consciousness must be resolved in order to acquire a full understanding of it. These questions include, but are not limited to, whether being conscious could be wholly described in physical terms, such as the aggregation of neural processes in the brain. If consciousness cannot be explained exclusively by physical events, it must transcend the capabilities of physical systems and require an explanation of nonphysical means. For philosophers who assert that consciousness is nonphysical in nature, there remains a question about what outside of physical theory is required to explain consciousness.
Gottfried Leibniz wrote, as an example also known as Leibniz's gap:
Thomas Nagel has posited that experiences are essentially subjective (accessible only to the individual undergoing them), while physical states are essentially objective (accessible to multiple individuals). So at this stage, we have no idea what it could even mean to claim that an essentially subjective state just is an essentially non-subjective state. In other words, we have no idea of what reductivism really amounts to.[11]
New mysterianism, such as that of Colin McGinn, proposes that the human mind, in its current form, will not be able to explain consciousness.[12]
To show how people might be commonly fooled into overstating the powers of consciousness, Dennett describes a normal phenomenon called change blindness, a visual process that involves failure to detect scenery changes in a series of alternating images.[15] He uses this concept to argue that the overestimation of the brain's visual processing implies that the conception of our consciousness is likely not as pervasive as we make it out to be. He claims that this error of making consciousness more mysterious than it is could be a misstep in any developments toward an effective explanatory theory. Critics such as Galen Strawson reply that, in the case of consciousness, even a mistaken experience retains the essential face of experience that needs to be explained, contra Dennett.
To address the question of the hard problem, or how and why physical processes give rise to experience, Dennett states that the phenomenon of having experience is nothing more than the performance of functions or the production of behavior, which can also be referred to as the easy problems of consciousness.[4] He states that consciousness itself is driven simply by these functions, and to strip them away would wipe out any ability to identify thoughts, feelings, and consciousness altogether. So, unlike Chalmers and other dualists, Dennett says that the easy problems and the hard problem cannot be separated from each other. To him, the hard problem of experience is included among—not separate from—the easy problems, and therefore they can only be explained together as a cohesive unit.[14]
Dehaene's argument has similarities with those of Dennett. He says Chalmers' 'easy problems of consciousness' are actually the hard problems and the 'hard problems' are based only upon intuitions that, according to Dehaene, are continually shifting as understanding evolves. "Once our intuitions are educated ...Chalmers' hard problem will evaporate" and "qualia...will be viewed as a peculiar idea of the prescientific era, much like vitalism...[Just as science dispatched vitalism] the science of consciousness will eat away at the hard problem of consciousness until it vanishes."[5]
Like Dennett, Peter Hacker argues that the hard problem is fundamentally incoherent and that "consciousness studies," as it exists today, is "literally a total waste of time:"[13]
Glenn Carruthers and Elizabeth Schier argue that the main arguments for the existence of a hard problem -- philosophical zombies, Mary's room, and Nagel's bats -- are only persuasive if one already assumes that "consciousness must be independent of the structure and function of mental states, i.e. that there is a hard problem." Hence, the arguments beg the question. The authors suggest that "instead of letting our conclusions on the thought experiments guide our theories of consciousness, we should let our theories of consciousness guide our conclusions from the thought experiments."[16] Contrary to this line of argument, Chalmers says: "Some may be led to deny the possibility [of zombies] in order to make some theory come out right, but the justification of such theories should ride on the question of possibility, rather than the other way round".[17]:96
A notable deflationary account is the Higher-Order Thought theories of consciousness.[18][19] Peter Carruthers discusses "recognitional concepts of experience", that is, "a capacity to recognize [a] type of experience when it occurs in one's own mental life", and suggests such a capacity does not depend upon qualia.[20] Though the most common arguments against deflationary accounts and eliminative materialism is the argument from qualia, and that conscious experiences are irreducible to physical states - or that current popular definitions of "physical" are incomplete - the objection follows that the one and same reality can appear in different ways, and that the numerical difference of these ways is consistent with a unitary mode of existence of the reality. Critics of the deflationary approach object that qualia are a case where a single reality cannot have multiple appearances. As John Searle points out: "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality."[21]
Massimo Pigliucci distances himself from eliminativism, but he insists that the hard problem is still misguided, resulting from a "category mistake":[22]
The existence of a "hard problem" is controversial and has been disputed by some philosophers.[4][5] Providing an answer to this question could lie in understanding the roles that physical processes play in creating consciousness and the extent to which these processes create our subjective qualities of experience.[3]
Several questions about consciousness must be resolved in order to acquire a full understanding of it. These questions include, but are not limited to, whether being conscious could be wholly described in physical terms, such as the aggregation of neural processes in the brain. If consciousness cannot be explained exclusively by physical events, it must transcend the capabilities of physical systems and require an explanation of nonphysical means. For philosophers who assert that consciousness is nonphysical in nature, there remains a question about what outside of physical theory is required to explain consciousness.
Contents
Formulation of the problem
Chalmers' formulation
In Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, Chalmers wrote:[3]
“ It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. ”
Easy problems
Chalmers contrasts the Hard Problem with a number of (relatively) Easy Problems that consciousness presents. (He emphasizes that what the easy problems have in common is that they all represent some ability, or the performance of some function or behavior).- the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
- the integration of information by a cognitive system;
- the reportability of mental states;
- the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
- the focus of attention;
- the deliberate control of behavior;
- the difference between wakefulness and sleep.
Other formulations
Various formulations of the "hard problem":- "How is it that some organisms are subjects of experience?"
- "Why does awareness of sensory information exist at all?"
- "Why do qualia exist?"
- "Why is there a subjective component to experience?"
- "Why aren't we philosophical zombies?"
Historical predecessors
The hard problem has scholarly antecedents considerably earlier than Chalmers.Gottfried Leibniz wrote, as an example also known as Leibniz's gap:
Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception.[7]Isaac Newton wrote in a letter to Henry Oldenburg:
to determine by what modes or actions light produceth in our minds the phantasm of colour is not so easie.[8]T.H. Huxley remarked:
how it is that any thing so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.[9]
Responses
Scientific attempts
Main article: Neural correlates of consciousness
There have been scientific attempts to explain subjective aspects of consciousness, which is related to the binding problem in neuroscience. Many eminent theorists, including Francis Crick and Roger Penrose,
have worked in this field. Nevertheless, even as sophisticated accounts
are given, it is unclear if such theories address the hard problem. Eliminative materialist philosopher Patricia Smith Churchland has famously remarked about Penrose's theories that "Pixie dust in the synapses is about as explanatorily powerful as quantum coherence in the microtubules."[10]Consciousness is fundamental or elusive
Some philosophers, including David Chalmers and Alfred North Whitehead, argue that conscious experience is a fundamental constituent of the universe, a form of panpsychism sometimes referred to as panexperientialism. Chalmers argues that a "rich inner life" is not logically reducible to the functional properties of physical processes. He states that consciousness must be described using nonphysical means. This description involves a fundamental ingredient capable of clarifying phenomena that has not been explained using physical means. Use of this fundamental property, Chalmers argues, is necessary to explain certain functions of the world, much like other fundamental features, such as mass and time, and to explain significant principles in nature.Thomas Nagel has posited that experiences are essentially subjective (accessible only to the individual undergoing them), while physical states are essentially objective (accessible to multiple individuals). So at this stage, we have no idea what it could even mean to claim that an essentially subjective state just is an essentially non-subjective state. In other words, we have no idea of what reductivism really amounts to.[11]
New mysterianism, such as that of Colin McGinn, proposes that the human mind, in its current form, will not be able to explain consciousness.[12]
Deflationary accounts
Some philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett,[4] Stanislas Dehaene,[5] and Peter Hacker,[13] oppose the idea that there is a hard problem. These theorists argue that once we really come to understand what consciousness is, we will realize that the hard problem is unreal. For instance, Dennett asserts that the so-called hard problem will be solved in the process of answering the easy ones.[4] In contrast with Chalmers, he argues that consciousness is not a fundamental feature of the universe and instead will eventually be fully explained by natural phenomena. Instead of involving the nonphysical, he says, consciousness merely plays tricks on people so that it appears nonphysical—in other words, it simply seems like it requires nonphysical features to account for its powers. In this way, Dennett compares consciousness to stage magic and its capability to create extraordinary illusions out of ordinary things.[14]To show how people might be commonly fooled into overstating the powers of consciousness, Dennett describes a normal phenomenon called change blindness, a visual process that involves failure to detect scenery changes in a series of alternating images.[15] He uses this concept to argue that the overestimation of the brain's visual processing implies that the conception of our consciousness is likely not as pervasive as we make it out to be. He claims that this error of making consciousness more mysterious than it is could be a misstep in any developments toward an effective explanatory theory. Critics such as Galen Strawson reply that, in the case of consciousness, even a mistaken experience retains the essential face of experience that needs to be explained, contra Dennett.
To address the question of the hard problem, or how and why physical processes give rise to experience, Dennett states that the phenomenon of having experience is nothing more than the performance of functions or the production of behavior, which can also be referred to as the easy problems of consciousness.[4] He states that consciousness itself is driven simply by these functions, and to strip them away would wipe out any ability to identify thoughts, feelings, and consciousness altogether. So, unlike Chalmers and other dualists, Dennett says that the easy problems and the hard problem cannot be separated from each other. To him, the hard problem of experience is included among—not separate from—the easy problems, and therefore they can only be explained together as a cohesive unit.[14]
Dehaene's argument has similarities with those of Dennett. He says Chalmers' 'easy problems of consciousness' are actually the hard problems and the 'hard problems' are based only upon intuitions that, according to Dehaene, are continually shifting as understanding evolves. "Once our intuitions are educated ...Chalmers' hard problem will evaporate" and "qualia...will be viewed as a peculiar idea of the prescientific era, much like vitalism...[Just as science dispatched vitalism] the science of consciousness will eat away at the hard problem of consciousness until it vanishes."[5]
Like Dennett, Peter Hacker argues that the hard problem is fundamentally incoherent and that "consciousness studies," as it exists today, is "literally a total waste of time:"[13]
- “The whole endeavour of the consciousness studies community is absurd – they are in pursuit of a chimera. They misunderstand the nature of consciousness. The conception of consciousness which they have is incoherent. The questions they are asking don’t make sense. They have to go back to the drawing board and start all over again.”
Glenn Carruthers and Elizabeth Schier argue that the main arguments for the existence of a hard problem -- philosophical zombies, Mary's room, and Nagel's bats -- are only persuasive if one already assumes that "consciousness must be independent of the structure and function of mental states, i.e. that there is a hard problem." Hence, the arguments beg the question. The authors suggest that "instead of letting our conclusions on the thought experiments guide our theories of consciousness, we should let our theories of consciousness guide our conclusions from the thought experiments."[16] Contrary to this line of argument, Chalmers says: "Some may be led to deny the possibility [of zombies] in order to make some theory come out right, but the justification of such theories should ride on the question of possibility, rather than the other way round".[17]:96
A notable deflationary account is the Higher-Order Thought theories of consciousness.[18][19] Peter Carruthers discusses "recognitional concepts of experience", that is, "a capacity to recognize [a] type of experience when it occurs in one's own mental life", and suggests such a capacity does not depend upon qualia.[20] Though the most common arguments against deflationary accounts and eliminative materialism is the argument from qualia, and that conscious experiences are irreducible to physical states - or that current popular definitions of "physical" are incomplete - the objection follows that the one and same reality can appear in different ways, and that the numerical difference of these ways is consistent with a unitary mode of existence of the reality. Critics of the deflationary approach object that qualia are a case where a single reality cannot have multiple appearances. As John Searle points out: "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality."[21]
Massimo Pigliucci distances himself from eliminativism, but he insists that the hard problem is still misguided, resulting from a "category mistake":[22]
- Of course an explanation isn't the same as an experience, but that’s because the two are completely independent categories, like colors and triangles. It is obvious that I cannot experience what it is like to be you, but I can potentially have a complete explanation of how and why it is possible to be you.
References
- Stevan Harnad (1995). "Why and How We Are Not Zombies". Journal of Consciousness Studies 1: 164–167.
- See Cooney's foreword to the reprint of Chalmers' paper: Brian Cooney, ed, ed. (1999). "Chapter=27: Facing up to the problem of consciousness". The Place of Mind. Cengage Learning. pp. 382 ff. ISBN 0534528252.
- David Chalmers (1995). "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness"". Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3): 200–219. See also this link
- Daniel C. Dennett (2013). "The tuned deck". Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 310 ff. ISBN 0393240681. and also "Commentary on Chalmers": Dennett, Daniel C. (1996). "Facing backwards on the problem of consciousness". Journal of Consciousness Studies 3 (1): 4–6.
- Stanislas Dehaene (2014). Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. Viking Adult. p. 197. ISBN 0670025437.
- James S Trefil (1997). "Chapter 3: Will we ever understand consciousness?". One hundred and one things you don't know about science and no one else does either. Mariner Books. p. 15. ISBN 0-395-87740-7.
- Leibniz, Monadology, 17, as quoted by Istvan Aranyosi (2004). "Chalmers's zombie arguments" (draft ed.). Central European University Personal Pages.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Panpsychism
- The Elements of Physiology and Hygiene: A Text-book for Educational Institutions, by T.H. Huxley & W.J. Youmans. Appleton & Co., 1868 p. 178
- Churchland, Patricia Smith (2002). Brain-wise: studies in neurophilosophy. MIT Press. p. 197. ISBN 0-262-53200-X.
- Nagel, Thomas. "What is it like to be a bat?". Retrieved 9 December 2013.
- Colin McGinn (20 February 2012). "All machine and no ghost?". New Statesman. Retrieved 27 March 2012.
- Peter Hacker (2010). "Hacker's challenge". The Philosopher's Magazine 51 (51): 23–32.
- Daniel Dennett (2003). "Explaining the "Magic" of Consciousness". Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology 1 (1): 7–19. doi:10.1556/jcep.1.2003.1.2. See also this link.
- Daniel Dennett (1993). Consciousness Explained (Paperback ed.). Penguin Group. ISBN 0140128670.
- Glenn Carruthers; Elizabeth Schier (2012). "Dissolving the hard problem of consciousness". Consciousness Online fourth conference. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
- David J. Chalmers (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- The HOT theory and Antitheories
- Carruthers, Peter. "Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Peter Carruthers (2005). "Phenomenal concepts and higher-order experiments". Consciousness: Essays from a Higher-Order Perspective. Oxford University Press. pp. 79 ff. ISBN 0191535044.
- Searle, J.The Mystery of Consciousness, p111
- Massimo Pigliucci (2013). "What Hard Problem?". Philosophy Now (99).
Further reading
- The Objective Consciousness Revisited - Understanding the Nature of Consciousness by Robert G. Heyward
- The Hard Problem Is Dead by Teed Rockwell
- You can't argue with a Zombie by Jaron Lanier
- Looking to systems theory for a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience and evolutionary foundations for higher order thought Pharaoh, M.C. (online). Retrieved Jan.03 2008.
- Vadim Vasilyev (ru) (2009). "The Hard Problem of Consciousness and Two Arguments for Interactionism". Faith and Philosophy 26 (5 Special Issue): 514–526. doi:10.5840/faithphil200926552.
- Correlation vs. Causality: How/Why the Mind/Body Problem Is Hard by Stevan Harnad
External links
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Holometer
 |
| The sensitivity of various experiments to fluctuations in space and time. Horizontal axis is the log of apparatus size (or duration times the speed of light), in meters; vertical axis is the log of the RMS fluctuation amplitude in the same units. |
The Fermilab Holometer in Illinois is under construction and is intended to be the world's most sensitive laser interferometer when complete, surpassing the sensitivity of the GEO600 and LIGO systems, and theoretically able to detect holographic fluctuations in spacetime.[1][2][3]
According to the director of the project, the Holometer should be capable of detecting fluctuations in the light of a single attometer, meeting or exceeding the sensitivity required to detect the smallest units in the universe called Planck units.[1][4] Fermilab states: "Everyone is familiar these days with the blurry and pixelated images, or noisy sound transmission, associated with poor internet bandwidth. The Holometer seeks to detect the equivalent blurriness or noise in reality itself, associated with the ultimate frequency limit imposed by nature."[2]
***
How is holographic noise different from space-time foam?
John Wheeler's vision of quantum space-time was a roiling foam of virtual black holes. It was based on extrapolation of quantum field theory to the Planck scale. The holographic view is that space-time is not quantized like other fields, but emerges from a quantum system with fewer degrees of freedom than field theory. If this is right, foam is not the right way to visualize the smallest scales See: Holometer: Frequently asked Questions
***
The AdS/CFT correspondence is often described as a "holographic duality" because this relationship between the two theories is similar to the relationship between a three-dimensional object and its image as a hologram.[23] Although a hologram is two-dimensional, it encodes information about all three dimensions of the object it represents. In the same way, theories which are related by the AdS/CFT correspondence are conjectured to be exactly equivalent, despite living in different numbers of dimensions.
One physical system which has been studied using the AdS/CFT correspondence is the quark–gluon plasma, an exotic state of matter produced in particle accelerators. This state of matter arises for brief instants when heavy ions such as gold or lead nuclei are collided at high energies. Such collisions cause the quarks that make up atomic nuclei to deconfine at temperatures of approximately two trillion kelvins, conditions similar to those present at aroundseconds after the Big Bang.[41]
***
Entropy, if considered as information (see information entropy), is measured in bits. The total quantity of bits is related to the total degrees of freedom of matter/energy.
Thursday, October 09, 2014
Majorana Fermions Discovered
A Majorana fermion (/maɪəˈrɒnə ˈfɛərmiːɒn/[1]), also referred to as a Majorana particle, is a fermion that is its own antiparticle. They were hypothesized by Ettore Majorana in 1937. The term is sometimes used in opposition to a Dirac fermion, which describes fermions that are not their own antiparticles.
All of the Standard Model fermions except the neutrino behave as Dirac fermions at low energy (after electroweak symmetry breaking), but the nature of the neutrino is not settled and it may be either Dirac or Majorana. In condensed matter physics, Majorana fermions exist as quasiparticle excitations in superconductors and can be used to form Majorana bound states governed by non-abelian statistics.
***
 |
| Princeton University physicists built a powerful imaging device called a scanning-tunneling microscope and used it to capture an image of an elusive particle that behaves simultaneously like matter and antimatter. To avoid vibration, the microscope is cooled close to absolute zero and is suspended like a floating island in the floor above. The setup includes a 40-ton block of concrete, which is visible above the researchers. The research team includes, from left, graduate student Ilya Drozdov, postdoctoral researcher Sangjun Jeon, and professors of physics B. Andrei Bernevig and Ali Yazdani. (Photo by Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications) |
Princeton University scientists have observed an exotic particle that behaves simultaneously like matter and antimatter, a feat of math and engineering that could eventually enable powerful computers based on quantum mechanics. Capping decades of searching, Princeton scientists observe elusive particle that is its own antiparticle.
***
Majorana fermions are predicted to localize at the edge of a topological superconductor, a state of matter that can form when a ferromagnetic system is placed in proximity to a conventional superconductor with strong spin-orbit interaction. With the goal of realizing a one-dimensional topological superconductor, we have fabricated ferromagnetic iron (Fe) atomic chains on the surface of superconducting lead (Pb). Using high-resolution spectroscopic imaging techniques, we show that the onset of superconductivity, which gaps the electronic density of states in the bulk of the Fe chains, is accompanied by the appearance of zero energy end states. This spatially resolved signature provides strong evidence, corroborated by other observations, for the formation of a topological phase and edge-bound Majorana fermions in our atomic chains. Observation of Majorana fermions in ferromagnetic atomic chains on a superconductor
***
Saturday, October 04, 2014
Then, A Theory in the Abstract
 |
| ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment)Image Credit by CERN |
Collisions in the LHC generate temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the centre of the Sun. For part of each year the LHC provides collisions between lead ions, recreating in the laboratory conditions similar to those just after the big bang. See: Alice
***
You have to reach a certain point in which the experiments bring you to the question of what arises in the beginning and then update(See Susskind's Lecture 1: Theoretical Minimum.) So you figured out the time line here and saw that preceding this point in time there is a fundamental question about how the universe begins.
Your aware that the reductionist agenda has a dual purpose, to not only tell us about the matters at hand, but reveals something about the very nature of creation in the cosmos. All these satellites are sensor attributed to the spectrum allocations which we have given to in sensor design. These satellites then track for us. They give us information about what is evident as we examine the cosmos. People for some reason have totally missed this point about sensor development and cosmos related journeys.You develop what you need too, in order to examine exactly where we are living. Where you might one day hope to live? Rocks, become important because they may hold the value of what is needed while you are on that other planet or moon.
Why AMS given you can use the extended environment, or, design experiments given the weightlessness of space?
It may be hoped given the encouragement I give my grandson(very subtle) that he will give himself to the physics with which my later life has occupied me. Its a tough thing even as a parent, or grandparent to see these children become the new generation( the choices we could have made at their age) with which they can now become what we are so fondly attached.
But you know the rules right, about setting them free?:) At the same time, I know something that is needed, that he has, and if he chooses to "see further" then the experiment with which I can so easily shown above, then he will be able to venture further "if" he chooses to go into the abstract. But given that he might be 1 of 100, does this mean we should stop updating?
Just maybe, you young physicists of the white cloak today, will some day meet your younger counterparts and say hello to my grandson.
***
See Also:
Friday, October 03, 2014
Studying the Perfect Fluid
 |
| A simulated collision of lead ions, courtesy the ALICE experiment at CERN |
A
simulated collision of lead ions, courtesy the ALICE experiment at CERN
- See more at:
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2010/11/04/lhc-lead/#sthash.yxm9loVb.dpuf
Within five different approaches to parton propagation and energy loss in dense matter, a phenomenological study of experimental data on suppression of large-pT single inclusive hadrons in heavy-ion collisions at both the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was carried out. The evolution of bulk medium used in the study for parton propagation was given by 2 + 1 dimensional or 3 + 1 dimensional hydrodynamic models which are also constrained by experimental data on bulk hadron spectra. Values for the jet transport parameterqˆ at the center of the most central heavy-ion collisions are extracted or calculated within each model, with parameters for the medium properties that are constrained by experimental data on the hadron suppression factor See: Extracting the jet transport coefficient from jet quenching in high-energy heavy-ion collisions
***
See Also:
LHChamber Music
LHChamber Music, CERN scientists perform musical compositions created using data sonification of LHC experimental results (Video: CERN)
See Also:
Wednesday, October 01, 2014
Lecture 1: The Theoretical Minimum
Published on Feb 16, 2012 (January 9, 2012) Leonard Susskind provides an introduction to quantum mechanics. See: Lecture 1: The Theoretical Minimum
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Stellar flares seen from a nearby red dwarf star.
On April 23, NASA's Swift satellite detected the strongest, hottest, and longest-lasting sequence of stellar flares ever seen from a nearby red dwarf star. The initial blast from this record-setting series of explosions was as much as 10,000 times more powerful than the largest solar flare ever recorded. At its peak, the flare reached temperatures of 360 million degrees Fahrenheit (200 million Celsius), more than 12 times hotter than the center of the sun. The "superflare" came from one of the stars in a close binary system known as DG Canum Venaticorum, or DG CVn for short, located about 60 light-years away. Both stars are dim red dwarfs with masses and sizes about one-third of our sun's. They orbit each other at about three times Earth's average distance from the sun, which is too close for Swift to determine which star erupted. See: NASA | Swift Catches Mega Flares from a Mini Star
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