Did any of you guys have to learn Fortran? I'm learning it now for Computational Physics and it seems pretty neat, kinda quirky syntax if you're coming from C++, imho. Then again it's 40 year-old language.
I did not but I know all the astro people in my department had to know it.
Also holy fuck physicists make such ugly code, here my prof closes a couple of files:
[code]
CLOSE (1)
CLOSE (3) ! name.coo
close (8) ! shell.dat
close (11) ! cputime.dat
[/code]
Also I still don't know if it's Fortran 77, 90 or 95...
I just looked at the comment section on a phys.org article for the first time. It's like a crackpot convention.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;44214985]I just looked at the comment section on a phys.org article for the first time. It's like a crackpot convention.[/QUOTE]
link?
[QUOTE=Falubii;44218166]link?[/QUOTE]
[url]http://phys.org/news/2014-03-evidence-dark-particle.html[/url]
[quote]Ah yes, in the search for dark matter, leprechauns, and unicorns even that which falsifies supports the theory. Must be nice...[/quote]
[quote]Most short-lived particles are just decay resonance states. The equal but opposite charges forming the binary photon structure actually have a mass (associated with charge) and defeats big bang theory, which requires the "defined" zero photon mass. How many more stop-gaps must be invented to justify the continuation of "universal expansion"?[/quote]
Some are far, far worse however. Also, I'm not sure yet whether or not half the crackpots on there are Zephir (whom you should know if you've ever been to /r/physics). Certainly anything that references AWT or aether is him.
Do these people just go to the glossary of physics books and start stringing together random words?
Oh man, fucking Zephir, he's truly a mystery to me. He somehow picked up so much jargon that I have a hard time distinguishing him from actual physicists in a very narrow research area.
I wonder if you could "fix" him with a decent physics training, or if he's lost forever.
[QUOTE=Number-41;44224311]Oh man, fucking Zephir, he's truly a mystery to me. He somehow picked up so much jargon that I have a hard time distinguishing him from actual physicists in a very narrow research area.
I wonder if you could "fix" him with a decent physics training, or if he's lost forever.[/QUOTE]
Well he thinks it's totally fine to have a unified theory of everything with no mathematics involved so I'm pretty sure he's unsalvagable.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;44226512]Well he thinks it's totally fine to have a unified theory of everything with no mathematics involved so I'm pretty sure he's unsalvagable.[/QUOTE]
He might be on to something, I'm learning GR/Tensors at the moment and sometimes I look down at my notes and wonder if it is really maths at all...
[QUOTE=Lord Pirate;44232724]He might be on to something, I'm learning GR/Tensors at the moment and sometimes I look down at my notes and wonder if it is really maths at all...[/QUOTE]
[img]http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/Images/eqn_1.jpg[/img]
Doesn't look like math to me.
[editline]14th March 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Number-41;44224311]Oh man, fucking Zephir, he's truly a mystery to me. He somehow picked up so much jargon that I have a hard time distinguishing him from actual physicists in a very narrow research area.
I wonder if you could "fix" him with a decent physics training, or if he's lost forever.[/QUOTE]
After looking this guy up, Christ he needs help.
[QUOTE=Lord Pirate;44232724]He might be on to something, I'm learning GR/Tensors at the moment and sometimes I look down at my notes and wonder if it is really maths at all...[/QUOTE]
Tensors are gr8 fite me
I just hate when professors make you do all sorts of calculations and coordinate transformations of uninteresting tensors. It's good math practice but it also obscures useful concepts. There are a few places where it's good and necessary (transforming the Schwarzschild metric to Kruskal-Szekeres coordinates for instance) but for the most part "calculate every component of the Riemann tensor of this metric I made up in three bases!" is a pointless exercise.
[IMG]http://puu.sh/7whz2.jpg[/IMG]
[url]https://plot.ly/[/url]
These are some sexy goddamn graphs, [URL="http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/plotly-graphs/"]and it even has a Matlab API[/URL]
Edit:
[URL="http://www.reddit.com/user/big_ongoing"]looks like Zephyr's back [/URL] :v:
So I was reading the wikipedia article on lightning and read something interesting I had never heard before (though apparently this was from 2009). Lightning seems to produce some amount of antimatter. [url]https://www.sciencenews.org/article/signature-antimatter-detected-lightning[/url]
Only available to subscribing members. :c
It was an interesting paragraph though.
Ugh, I'm working my way through Zwiebach's string theory text. Why am I seeing c's everywhere? We're theorists, dammit (or else why are we reading string theory textbooks). Let's get with the Planck units already. Why are we waiting 150 or so pages to introduce a stupidly nice measurement system that makes all of our equations much more elegant? Why does the line interval have a minus sign in front of it? Why does it have the same sign as the proper time, so that when Planck units are introduced they just become the same thing? What's the point of having two concepts, then!?
argh! Pick better conventions!
So what do you actually study? Just theoretical physics?
I'm interested in continuing to learn physics after graduating and completing my ICT degree. Planning on spending the summer studying high school physics and math, so I can retake the final exams in September and then next year I can try getting into a good university. Dunno what I'd choose, but nuclear/particle/accelerator physics seems interesting.
I just got a degree in general physics and math but I guess you could say the closest thing I have to a specialty is general relativity since that's what my undergrad research was on. Currently I don't study anything because I'm not in school, but when I go back to grad school I intend to study string theory. If that turns out to be too difficult (string theory is not really "in favor" at the moment) I might settle on something related and theoretical, maybe whatever the most promising lead on quantum gravity is at the time.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;44480772]I just got a degree in general physics and math but I guess you could say the closest thing I have to a specialty is general relativity since that's what my undergrad research was on. Currently I don't study anything because I'm not in school, but when I go back to grad school I intend to study string theory. If that turns out to be too difficult (string theory is not really "in favor" at the moment) I might settle on something related and theoretical, maybe whatever the most promising lead on quantum gravity is at the time.[/QUOTE]
I've heard people talk about String Theory here at my Uni in Sweden, that the research on ST has kind of hit a "stand still".
Is this complete bullshit or is there something to it?
[QUOTE=booster;44480896]I've heard people talk about String Theory here at my Uni in Sweden, that the research on ST has kind of hit a "stand still".
Is this complete bullshit or is there something to it?[/QUOTE]
It's not really at a standstill, but it is relatively slow right now. The progression of string theory has been characterized by two big periods where there was a ton of research going on and several lulls like now. Progress has been slow in string theory overall, but honestly I think it's been far and above the most promising in string theory than any other contender in quantum gravity.
Many physicists seem to dislike string theory and one of the reasons why that I see is there are some big problems with it. I've never really understood that criticism. It's still unarguably the most fleshed out and promising field of research in quantum gravity, and I don't think many physicists would claim a theory of quantum gravity is unimportant. So what if it's slow? It sucks, but no one is forcing you to work on it. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to shit on a whole field just because it's going to slow for your liking.
I'm getting more excited for next year by looking at all the courses available at the university I was thinking applying for (Jyväskylä). Seriously wouldn't have thought 3 or even 2 years ago that I'd be going for a physics degree. But yea, graduating in June from high school and then I'll spend a year (or two, not sure how long it takes) finishing my ICT degree which will be good backup if learning physics doesn't go well, I think.
[editline]8th April 2014[/editline]
Only thing I'm afraid of is having motivational problems or just simply not understanding anything.
[QUOTE=Hattiwatti;44484077]I'm getting more excited for next year by looking at all the courses available at the university I was thinking applying for (Jyväskylä). Seriously wouldn't have thought 3 or even 2 years ago that I'd be going for a physics degree. But yea, graduating in June from high school and then I'll spend a year (or two, not sure how long it takes) finishing my ICT degree which will be good backup if learning physics doesn't go well, I think.
[editline]8th April 2014[/editline]
Only thing I'm afraid of is having motivational problems or just simply not understanding anything.[/QUOTE]
Motivational problems can be tough. Find stuff you're interested in and want to learn and it won't be hard to motivate yourself to learn everything you need to understand it. Not understanding stuff will happen a lot. Like, every damn day it felt like, "Oh no, I don't get this! Is this the end of my abilities as a physicist!?" You just need a bit of perseverance. Reread definitions etc. and if that doesn't work, the definitions they depend on. If you really are having trouble, go to your professor's office hours and just tell them you're not getting the intuition behind x topic and could they maybe give you a motivating example or something.
From a physics colloquium on BICEP2 yesterday:
[img]http://www.moma.org/collection_images/resized/075/w500h420/CRI_133075.jpg[/img]
[I]Artist's rendition of B-mode polarization.[/I]
It got a pretty good laugh.
lol we are learning about electromagnetic waves and an engineer said, "This is too theoretical, what are the applications of these?" Not in a curious way, more like a "this is dumb" way.
Yesterday I got a copy of [I]The Principles of Quantum Mechanics[/I] by Dirac, a third edition printed in 1949, for $3.
pretty fuckin happy about that
My grandpa is awesome and has tons of books. He gave me all 3 volumes of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Unfortunately I haven't got around to reading them yet.
I was just at a talk about searching for neutrinoless double beta decay in order to determine whether or not neutrinos are Majorana particles. At the end of the talk, after an hour of explaining all this, somebody asked if it was possible for a particle to be its own antiparticle. :v:
[QUOTE=Falubii;44627169]I was just at a talk about searching for neutrinoless double beta decay in order to determine whether or not neutrinos are Majorana particles. At the end of the talk, after an hour of explaining all this, somebody asked if it was possible for a particle to be its own antiparticle. :v:[/QUOTE]
Was it a student or something?
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;44627191]Was it a student or something?[/QUOTE]
Yeah. At least they showed up I guess, lots of undergrads don't bother going.
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