"Incontrovertible" in Physics

Dr. Robert Park, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, former Executive Director of the American Physical Society

INCONTROVERTIBLE: APS FELLOW HAL LEWIS RESIGNS MEMBERSHIP.

Hal Lewis, a Fellow of the APS, has resigned his APS membership of 67 years. News stories described his resignation as a protest of the official APS position on global-warming; but that's not quite what his resignation letter says. He begins by recounting how things were before the serpent persuaded physicists to taste the fruit of the money tree. An oversight committee of "towering physicists beyond reproach" assured the independence of the study panel. The second paragraph is Hal's actual resignation: "How different it is now," he writes. "The giants no longer walk the earth. The money flood has become the raison detre of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame and I am forced with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society." Hal couldnt resist pissing on the APS Global Warming Statement, which he thinks is a scam. The APS statement uses the word "incontrovertible" to describe the evidence for or against global warming. Incontrovertible should be unacceptable to physicists. What sets physics apart from other ways of knowing is openness to revision if better information becomes available. Openness to new knowledge is the most important concept science can offer the world.


... Bob Park, U.Maryland, Physics Dept.

Emphasis mine. - S.Colyer

Jean Conklin (1926-2010)

Dwight Hall and Chapel, Yale


Jean Mieko (Morisuye) Conklin, 83, Masters in Biology and Social Anthropologist, of New Haven, CT, passed away peacefully on July 22, 2010.

A Memorial Service will be held today at Yale University, at Dwight Hall, at 3 pm.

Jean authored a book, An Ifugao Notebook, about her experiences with her husband, Hal, and their two children, in the Central Luzon rice farming region of the Philippines. Dr. Harold Conklin is Professor Emeritus in Yale's Anthropology Dept., a former Head of same, and is also Curator Emeritus of Yale's Peabody Museum.

Hal will be in attendance with their sons Bruce and Mark Conklin, family and friends, including me and 2 of my 4.

I knew Jean personally. She was a wonderful human being. She was utterly devoted to her husband, his career, and their children. She will be missed, but not forgotten.

Rest in peace, Jean of Sharon, Pennsylvania, and Yale.

Quotes For Our Times

From Peter Woit of Not Even Wrong:




As for the “paradox” that business leaders see a shortage of the kind of trained scientists and engineers they would like to hire at the wages they would like to pay, it appears to be the same paradoxical shortage I regularly encounter of first-class plane tickets to Paris available at the price I would like to pay for them.
... Peter Woit, The Gathering Storm: Category 5 10/14/2010




From the all-time Master of Melody:


"Too many people preaching practices, too many waiting for that lucky break.
Too many people holding back, I said "Maybe, baby, it's not too late.'"
... Paul McCartney, "Too Many People", "Ram" 1971



From Lubos Motl of The Reference Frame:

Prizewinner Lubos Motl receiving the Richard J. Plano Award Dissertation Prize in Physics and Astronomy from Graduate Program Director Prof. Jolie Cizewski at the April, 2002, Rutgers Departmental Awards Banquet.

After all, [Tawanda Johnson] is both female and black, so who could dare to suggest that she is just a hired gun with no comparative advantages who would have no business to be a relevant part of any serious scientific institution under any normal circumstances? Well, I will surely do that: this woman should be at most a janitor in APS, not a person whose reply is considered "enough" to "neutralize" important messages about the very structure of the APS such as the letter from Dr Lewis. And if you have approved this reply, Mr Callan, I am deeply disgusted by your immoral methods. You just suck.
... Lubos Motl, APS thinks that Tawanda may teach physics to Hal Lewis 10/13/201


Paul again:


"That was your first mistake. You took your lucky break and broke it in two.
Now what can be done for you? You broke it in two."
... Paul McCartney, "Too Many People", "Ram" 1971




From Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles:




The wheels on the bus go round and round,
round and round, round and round,
The wheels on the bus go round and round,
All through the town.

Heisenberg's on the bus, or maybe not,
maybe not, maybe not...

Schrödinger's cat on the bus is alive and dead,
alive and dead, alive and dead...

Einstein on the bus says "Don't play dice,"
"Don't play dice," "Don't play dice,"...

The Feynman on the bus plays bongo drums,
bongo drums, bongo drums...

Gell-Mann on the bus says "Eightfold Path,"
"Eightfold Path," "Eightfold Path,"...

Dirac on the bus says " ,"
" ," " ," ...

The baryons on the bus say "Quark quark quark,"
"Quark quark quark," "Quark quark quark."...

The fermions on the bus have spin-1/2,
spin-1/2, spin-1/2...

All the bosons on the bus are in one state,
in one state, in one state...

The neutrinos on the bus have almost no mass,
almost no mass, almost no mass...

The speed of the bus is less than c,
less than c, less than c...

The monkeys on the bus, they type Shakespeare,
type Shakespeare, type Shakespeare...

... Chad Orzel, The Physics Bus 10/11/2010

Cicero on Discovering Archimedes' Grave

Cicero (106-43 BC), Tusculan Disputations, Book V, Sections 64-66

But from Dionysius’s own city of Syracuse I will summon up from the dust—where his measuring rod once traced its lines — an obscure little man who lived many years later, Archimedes. When I was questor in Sicily [in 75 BC, 137 years after the death of Archimedes] I managed to track down his grave. The Syracusians knew nothing about it, and indeed denied that any such thing existed. But there it was, completely surrounded and hidden by bushes of brambles and thorns. I remembered having heard of some simple lines of verse which had been inscribed on his tomb, referring to a sphere and cylinder modelled in stone on top of the grave. And so I took a good look round all the numerous tombs that stand beside the Agrigentine Gate. Finally I noted a little column just visible above the scrub: it was surmounted by a sphere and a cylinder. I immediately said to the Syracusans, some of whose leading citizens were with me at the time, that I believed this was the very object I had been looking for. Men were sent in with sickles to clear the site, and when a path to the monument had been opened we walked right up to it. And the verses were still visible, though approximately the second half of each line had been worn away.

Non ego iam cum huius vita, qua taetrius miserius detestabilius escogitare nihil possum, Platonis aut Archytae vitam comparabo, doctorum hominum et plane sapientium: ex eadem urbe humilem homunculum a pulvere et radio excitabo, qui multis annis post fuit, Archimedem. Cuius ego quaestor ignoratum ab Syracusanis, cum esse omnino negarent, saeptum undique et vestitum vepribus et dumetis indagavi sepulcrum. Tenebam enim quosdam senariolos, quos in eius monumento esse inscriptos acceperam, qui declarabant in summo sepulcro sphaeram esse positam cum cylindro. Ego autem cum omnia conlustrarem oculis—est enim ad portas Agragantinas magna frequentia sepulcrorum -, animum adverti columellam non multum e dumis eminentem, in qua inerat sphaerae figura et cylindri. Atque ego statim Syracusanis—erant autem principes mecum—dixi me illud ipsum arbitrari esse, quod quaererem. lnmissi cum falcibus multi purgarunt et aperuerunt locum. Quo cum patefactus esset aditus, ad adversam basim accessimus. Apparebat epigramma exesis posterioribus partibus versiculorum dimidiatum fere.

So one of the most famous cities in the Greek world, and in former days a great centre of learning as well, would have remained in total ignorance of the tomb of the most brilliant citizen it had ever produced, had a man from Arpinum not come and pointed it out!

Ita nobilissima Graeciae civitas, quondam vero etiam doctissima, sui civis unius acutissimi monumentum ignorasset, nisi ab homine Arpinate didicisset.

• Translation by Michael Grant in Cicero - On the Good Life, Penguin Books, New York, 1971, Pages 86-87.

Algorithmic Entropy and Thermodynamics

A very nice way that Physics, Mathematics, and Computer Science can all fit together is a field known as Algorithmic Information Theory which was launched in 1960 by Ray Solomonoff (1926-2009). Algorithmic information theory was later developed independently by Andrey Kolmogorov, in 1965 and Gregory Chaitin, around 1966.

The wonderful John Baez, wonderful because he takes the "boring" out of Mathematics and replaces it with "fun and exciting", of Azimuth has a nice take on it in a new paper he wrote with Computer Scientist Mike Stay and which John explains: here.

Briefly and to whet your whistle:

Which of the following strings of data have more entropy (degree of randomness)?

00000000000000000000000

or

01010101010101010101010

or

11001000011000011101111

or

01101010001010001010001

Well, the first one has the least entropy, because a program to print it (PRINT 0, Repeat) is the simplest, therefore it has the most order.

The second is almost as simple (PRINT 01, Repeat), but just not quite as much. So it has slightly more entropy because its one digit longer and therefore a touch more random. It could have been 02 to 99, whereas the first could have been only 0-9.

It turns out the third one is truly random, therefore it has the greatest entropy. There are so many possibilities, but only one way to list (order) it and that is to just list it.

The last one has great order if you recognize it as the place holdings of the prime numbers.

The upshot is that the physics of Thermodynamics (in this case, dE = T dS – P d V + μ dN) is helping Mathematics for a change, rather than the other way around. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

If you're wondering about applications, one important one would be in the emerging field of Artificial Intelligence, which we may achieve even before locating any natural intelligence here on our home planet. :-) From the Wiki entry for Ray Solomonoff:

Although he is best known for algorithmic probability and his general theory of inductive inference, he made many other important discoveries throughout his life, most of them directed toward his goal in artificial intelligence: to develop a machine that could solve hard problems using probabilistic methods.

Further reading: The Algorithmic Information Theory resource page and Scholarpedia's Algorithmic information Theory page.