Fred56

Maybe Mr. Budding Einstein can work this lot out for everyone (and prove that his namesake was mistaken in claiming the opposite to the above, rather unfounded but otherwise emphatic statement): Unless, of course, he would rather put the photoelectric effect in the "blah blah" tray?

Mmm... blah blah blah Oh, and rah rah rah...

I used that particular word (survey) instead of using "astronomy" again tbh. The Sloan survey results have some good stuff about dwarfs, and there are truckloads of papers about unusual ones. Nothing more interesting than this occurred to me, but: there doesn't seem to be many threads about observational astronomy lately in this section (what's it called again?)... Dwarfs of the White kind? http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/1121/1 If anyone's interested, this is called AGB astronomy (Asymptotic Giant Branch). Stars that become white dwarfs (after a red giant stage, where they inflate and become somewhat rarified), are believed to start out as asymptotic stars, where the matter is spread over a larger area that contracts, eventually forming a compact object, about rocky planet size. The first white dwarf was spotted (unknowingly) back in the 19th century, but nowadays there are thousands being studied, with some quite unusual ones (with odd-looking spectra, like the carbon-atmosphere ones above). Stellar evolution and the models running on computers (and the supernova models) are big deals (if you're into cosmology). So I s'pose I should include a link to some online doco (a google book) http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KpRH1mAl7HIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA325&dq=astronomy+white+dwarfs+unusual+arizona+%27p+dufour%27&ots=oDjm2qbtLT&sig=hhpTxd0g_uhlDn3FdPhhkzeWtCU If you get into google books and do a search on 'AGB stars', there are quite a lot of entries.

"A Merry Xmas and Happy New Year from the management to all our customers. If what you have left with us over the past twelve months isn't complete rubbish, it will do 'til we get some." q. What did the proton say to the electron? a. "That's no charge, for you..."

External records, messages that are representative, or abstracted information from a human mind, represent absolutely zero information (content), because they are a channel. We can't receive any information from a book written in a language we don't understand. So the information in that sense, isn't in the book (you might be able to get another book, of exactly the same make and with the same pages, the exact weight and same amount of ink, and different symbols in it). The information is what ends up in (more than) one mind, from all those written words, or spoken words or sounds, music, images (we have very developed visual apparatus), and so on. The channels are noisy; we actually receive only tiny amounts of energy as information from the world, that we must then expend energy making into some kind of internal record, which we know is transient. This is another, well-known practical lesson in the existence of entropy (we even measure it), we are obliged to recall and review our knowledge constantly, and a group of minds can do this more effectively. So books and words, and all methods of acquiring and understanding that we have in the external world (all the computers that analyse characters, or translate languages, or search for combinations of strings of bits), are all channels, analytical in the Shannon sense, and Shannon's ideas of communication (and the entropy changes involved) come into play. We have ideas of certain measurement which logically include the idea of no measurement (zero or no result) and all measurement (infinite or complete results), and are forced to abstract these notions as mere vague symbols, as ideas of something that is beyond (all ideas). We can't communicate using 'nothing': communication, by definition, requires something, which is the channel for that information. We use the same idea for the channel as we do for the messages it 'transfers', from and to us and the world, or each other. We say the representation is also the information, but not so. We can understand the difference between a channel and the information it carries. A copper wire is a channel that can carry several different messages at once (a multiplexed channel), But the channel by itself can only modulate any message (it always has a certain noise level, or limit to the amount of information it can transmit), it can never provide a message itself, the messages require the medium (the copper wire), but are distinct from the channel. Books do not 'contain' information, they transmit the information that the words (that are understood, or decoded), contain as valid and syntactic elements (frames). A single photon, or its measurement, cannot represent anything more meaningful than a "Schrodinger's cat" state. An indeterminate state -will the message arrive?- is the only possible outcome, if there is no known channel, to measure or receive communication from. If 1. there is no channel, then 2. there is only a possibility of there being one at some point, so a single photon cannot send any information except this: "yes, there is a channel". If the single photon is also encoded (say it's polarised by a certain angle), this can be a message (of 1 bit), a yes/no message (these days, it's common to encode single photons using more than one quantum state 'variable', which is how quantum encryption is done). But you can't send a message with zero photons (or no bits), and a 0 bit isn't 'nothing', it has to be a real physical signal of some kind.

No, perhaps you could illustrate this by writing down a bit of your own. And I daresay you are translating everything you read, possibly, into your own version of English. Assuming you know what English means.

I think what you (and a couple others) are saying is you believe I am saying that you can "reverse the overall entropy increase." But I think (actually I'm fairly sure) that I have been saying (and still am) that you would need to (reverse the flow). This is something that you don't have, so thinking about having it is, well, just thinking. But let's believe things. P.S. There does seem to be something of a pattern here, is it a language thing? (I have a mixed Euro ancestry, German -my first name is fairly Saxon, French, probably Norman, etc, I tend to speak a bit germanically, and my writing reflects my speech, deux negatifs, or double entendre?)

I wonder how long everyone will keep thinking about this one (or about what they all think everyone else is saying).

Perhaps someone will be thinking about this question (or trying to) when they, and the universe, run out of energy (or the "ability" to reverse the flow of entropy, that they don't have to start with).

Everyone who has used a computer knows about "data loss", and the loss of work (documents they have been working on, or other "important" information). But the loss of external records is inevitable: the burning of the libraries at Alexandria, and computer crashes are examples of the applied science of entropy. External records, messages that are representative, or abstracted information from a human mind, represent absolutely zero information (content), because they are in fact, a channel. We cannot receive any information from a book written in a language we don't understand. So the information in that sense, isn't in the book (you might be able to get another book, of exactly the same make and with the same pages, just different symbols in it). The information is what ends up in (more than) one mind, from all those written words, or spoken words or sounds, music, images (we have very developed visual apparatus), and so on. The channels are noisy; we actually receive only tiny amounts of energy as information from the world, that we must then expend energy making into some kind of internal record, which we know is transient (we can forget it). This is another, well-known practical lesson in the existence of entropy (we even measure it), we are obliged to recall and review our knowledge constantly, and a group of minds can do this more effectively. So books and words, and all methods of acquiring and understanding that we have in the external world (all the computers that analyse characters, or translate languages, or search for combinations of strings of bits), are all channels, analytical in the Shannon sense, and Shannon's ideas of communication (and the entropy changes involved) come into play. We have ideas of certain measurement which logically include the idea of no measurement (zero or no result) and all measurement (infinite or complete results), and are forced to abstract these notions as mere vague symbols, as ideas of something that is beyond (all ideas). We can't communicate with 'nothing': communication, by definition, requires something, which is the channel for that information. We use the same idea for the channel as we do for the messages it 'transfers', from and to us and the world, or each other. part 2: We can understand the difference between a channel and the information it carries. A copper wire is a channel that can carry several different messages at once (a multiplexed channel), and these days often does so as part of a much wider network of devices (intelligent phones). But the channel by itself can only modulate any message (it always has a certain noise level, or limit to the amount of information it can transmit), it can never provide a message itself, the messages require the medium (the copper wire), but are distinct from the channel. Books do not 'contain' information, they transmit the information that the words (that are understood, or decoded), contain as valid and syntactic elements. A single photon, or its measurement, cannot represent anything more meaningful than a "Schrodinger's cat" state. An indeterminate state -will the message arrive?- is the only possible outcome if there is no known channel, to measure or receive communication from. Sending information back, through the same channel (duplexing), might be possible, but the reception of a message defines any (simplex) channel, and our senses are all one-way receivers. If 1. there is no channel, then 2. there is only a possibility of there being one at some point, so a single photon cannot send any information except this (yes, there is a channel). If the single photon is also encoded (say it's polarised by a certain angle), this can be a message (of 1 bit), a yes/no message (these days, it's common to encode single photons using more than one quantum state 'variable', which is how quantum encryption is done). But you can't send a message with zero photons (or no bits), and a 0 bit isn't 'nothing', it has to be a real physical signal of some kind.

Righty-ho then: When does A life (lowercase) start? It seems that we want a narrow definition, but 'start' is a moving target, which depends what you shoot at it with. A doctor would say at birth, because this is the survival of a (not all that cozy and snug) gestation period, in which the "new" life has developed from something like an amoeba, to a fish, to a reptile, then a weird-looking thing that eventually grows all the bits a human needs, or a primate, so we go through the primate evolution during this phase too. The first breath is arguably the end of the first risky stage of life (and this is something we share with a lot of other kinds of life, many insects and reptiles have a vulnerable development stage), when the egg-shell cracks, and a young chick breaks out and starts squawking to be fed, it's just the start of a rearing phase, that's extremely common in the animal kingdom. Humans have one of the longest adolescences amongst the animals. We don't lock young children away in jail with adults -they get treated quite differently, etc.

Well, it's kind of hard to buy a watch that isn't a standard-looking wind-up job, but you don't wind it any more (there's this little battery thingy inside). But did u know that the clock face with hands was the first major medieval institution of standard time? The village clock tower...

possum : I am able possim : I am enabled poteram : I was able possem : I was enabled potero : I will be able ? : I will be enabled? potui : I have been able potuerim: I have been enabled potueram: I would have been able potuissem: I would have been enabled potuero : I will have been able posse : to be able potuisse: to be enabled

Except that it's also perfectly ok to say that a function is it's output, and depends on its input. It's also fairly acceptable (where I come from), to say that because the input of a function can be the output of a function (what the hell, let's call it the range of another function, for accuracy), then they can be the same thing, in that sense. I dare you to define the domain of any function as not itself being the range of some other function, also. Even using set notation. And let's not forget Eulers series which has range and domain identical (what does identical mean again?) P.S. You still haven't described how a function is 'distinct' from its range , beyond that it's meant to be the black box -the rule that outputs something (but you have described the set of duples that represent the domain and range) Or maybe (one might) just ignore the black box and look at the output, say, and call it the same thing. This is ok to do, unless you actually want to look inside the box. So the function is what makes it 'tick', so to speak, but it's also (if you study electronics or EE), ok to equate with its output (the ticking). In other words "what it does" can mean both what it outputs (and therefore inputs), and what the internal workings are... This being a math thread, I obviously should have left my engineering glasses behind. Then again, looking at mathematical functions and electronic circuits (especially 'passive' ones), I think lends the electronic circuit model some clout in a math classroom, maybe. Even a small bulb attached to a battery is a 'function', or illustrates what a function is... P.P.S. Congratulations. I don't, but I have met students in their 3rd year of a CS degree who don't know the difference between a verb and a noun in their native language (one of them asked me to explain it)...

I recall a IS lecture about "Fukawe birds", which are a navigational paradigm, in database searches, or graph traversals, and so on. They are used to construct the query: "where the Fukawe?"...

This one's been done several times, I believe, if you're talking about a disaster scenario. Just do "The Poseidon Adventure", but change the scenery, and the cause of the 'die-saster'. I'll copyright the movie, and we're away laughing.. But Seriously, you'd need a lot of protection from gamma rays from a supernova or GRB, I understand, like several hundred kilometers of granite, say.

It's the way he looks, of course Q. How can you tell if an engineer is an extrovert? A. He looks at your shoes when he talks to you.

OK, just so I'm clear on this: when is this going to happen? When will we not be able to store energy unless violating the 2nd Law? Maybe "sometime before" entropy winds down the background level so there's no available energy to perform this task (or any other)?

So how many watches have any of you seen for sale that are digital, not Swiss movement (as seems to be the popular choice)? (I haven't changed my Gentoo distro's desktop clock yet from number display mode, 'shudder')

There are some theories that try to imagine or model how compartmentalisation happened, and at things like dripping or sploshing water, and bits of minerals (silicates, iron, any mineral surface or small pocket somewhere, say), and the panspermia concept: that life arrived in a meteorite. Because much of what occurs at the cellular level is self-assembling, or self regulating, and encapsulation is an important requirement, so how did it come about...

Let me rephrase that: energy [math]E [/math] is photons [math](\hbar\nu)[/math], which have a mass equivalent [math] (=E/c^2)[/math]; mass is the condensed form of energy, and has, or acquires, a (rotating) vector, or degree of freedom, that energy alone (photons with a pun) doesn't have. Mass can acquire energy otherwise, due to its inertial properties (say in a gravitational field, what the hey), or by absorbing energy, apart from the energy it is equivalent to -but the inertia it has means it can't ever reach the same travel velocity as energy. Charge is another kind of potential (also connected to photons), that behaves like gravity, but is balanced (gravity has no opposite 'charge').

Comment: A transitive riddle

Who has a good explanation for why we prefer watches and clocks that display the passage or progress of Time, as hands moving around a circular face -like a compass? Rather than numbers, or any other possible (especially nowadays) ways we can represent it (different colour changes, or sounds -which are only associated nowadays -we see the pointers on a face as the 'master' time)? What's so reassuring or compelling about hands, pointing at the current time of day? Even braille watches are like this, I believe, and most people who have a time display on their pc screen set it to a standard clock with a face.

`T ain` no thang... "Photons have long been believed to be completely hairless; some expect to find bald photons after all: this is (the scientists say) because they have lost their hair --possibly photon hairpieces will be discovered too" --yours, etc... WE sure need to measure change, or we are bound to observe it because we're changing too. But it's a number, for 'crying out loud'... --this was how the 'time' was first "told", in fact, and this is therefore a chronistic pun, which, like a colloquial sobriquet, is just "one of those things"

OK so it's how we classify it, according to whatever useful definition we need. If it's an enemy or a criminal (a bad person), it's a machine and we have to turn it off; if it's a fetus it can't think yet, a child can only think to some of the extent or understanding (complexity, stratification, abstraction), of an older human; we don't get to be 'wise' until we are 'running out' of life, and the entropy is pretty low, or stable...