sci.physics.research: research-level only?
Michael Weiss
Do the proposed moderators for sci.physics.research regard research-level
questions only as appropriate, or is any "real physics" suitable, so long
as it is not in the FAQ?
A few examples, to make the question more concrete:
1. There have been a few posts recently on Huygens' principle. John Baez
posted at his usual erudite level on two ways to see that HP holds for
all odd dimensions, except 1, and fails in all even dimensions. I was
puzzled about the exception of dimension 1, and Herbert Kranzer
straightened me out. There have also been a couple of posts on
Hadamard's "method of descent". (Dave Ring's question on the descent
from 5 to 3 dimensions remains unanswered.)
Little of this could be called current research, I would think, since
most of it is in Courant-Hilbert. (John: is the conformal invariance
stuff somewhere in Courant-Hilbert? How old is Lax's stuff?)
2. About a year ago, someone posted a paradox involving a collision
between an infinitely massive object and an object of finite mass. The
resolution hinged on the fact that momentum depends linearly on
velocity (in Newtonian dynamics) but energy depends quadratically.
The level here is high-school physics, the math just algebra. I found
it a fun puzzle to work out; I wish I'd seen it in high-school
3. I asked recently about the QM explanation of ferro-magnetism, and got a
couple of very informative posts.
4. QM at all levels generates a lot of questions. Some recent examples:
(a) What is the "size" of an elementary particle? (b) What is the
difference between angular momentum in classical physics and in QM?
(c) Why do eigenstates of the position operator "spread out" with time,
while eigenstates of the momentum operator do not? (d) Why is the
angular momentum of a free particle quantized, when the momentum isn't?
5. GR also generates a lot of questions. I'll give one example, from
maybe a year ago: does it make any sense to ask whether the universe as
a whole is rotating (Mach's principle, Newton's buckets)?
Elementary SR and thermodynamics also produce their share of questions.
For some reason, the SR posts to sci.physics mostly rehash stuff already in
the FAQ, but there are occasional exceptions.
Should sci.physics.research include such threads? If its goal is to serve
the needs of research physicists only, then I guess not.
(Sci.math.research does seem to have this kind of charter.)
I would prefer a newsgroup that did include such stuff. It's great to have
a forum where amateurs such as myself can pester professionals with
questions for the sheer love of the subject, and toss in their own two
cents when they think they have something to say. (I think
"sci.physics.moderated" is a better name for such a group than
"sci.physics.research".)
On the other hand, the moderators will be doing the work of filtering, and
professionals have their own needs, so I merely state my preference.
Finally, Dale has pointed out that sci.physics will still exist. True
enough. It will still have Abian and co., plus endless threads on
"Religion and Science", "Jesus loves you", "the SSC--- boon or boondoggle?"
etc. etc. It will still be worth wading through the dreck, if sci.physics
contains a reasonable percentage of stuff like:
Dale's series on the Feynman sprinkler problem;
Dale's mini-essay on film boiling;
Dale's posts on Hunt's book, "The Maxwellians";
The first 3 or 4 posts in the thread, started (if memory serves)
by Dale, on how much theory had to do with the invention
of the transistor;
Posts by Dale and others in the recent "GR without Einstein" thread;
and many others. (I mention only Dale's posts here because he has come
under unmerited attack as a proposed moderator.) Still better to have such
stuff without the dreck...
Cameron Randale Bass
>
>Do the proposed moderators for sci.physics.research regard research-level
>questions only as appropriate, or is any "real physics" suitable, so long
>as it is not in the FAQ?
Real physics is suitable, though 'any' may be too strong a qualifier.
After the sci.physics discussion earlier, a consensus arose along
the lines of Matt's original posting. The feeling was that the
barrier not be 'research' quality postings, but
'serious' postings about physics. This was reflected in the charter
(along with the inclusion of various other information-type
things).
[examples deleted]
All of your examples seem to me to have elements (and postings)
that would be suitable if posted to the proposed group. The proposed
group is not to be in competition with professional journals.
>Elementary SR and thermodynamics also produce their share of questions.
>For some reason, the SR posts to sci.physics mostly rehash stuff already in
>the FAQ, but there are occasional exceptions.
Seems to me that it depends on how elementary. Things of interest, yes.
Barn and pole, no. Keep in mind that sci.physics still exists
for all and sundry purposes.
>Should sci.physics.research include such threads? If its goal is to serve
>the needs of research physicists only, then I guess not.
>(Sci.math.research does seem to have this kind of charter.)
The group was not intended to be as restrictive as sci.math.research.
I hope that the proposed sci.physics.research will be a bit more busy
than that. The sparseness of sci.math.research was one of the
things that shaped the proposed charter.
dale bass
--
C. R. Bass cr...@virginia.edu
Department of Wildebeest
Transvaal (804) 924-7926
john baez
Do the proposed moderators for sci.physics.research regard research-level
questions only as appropriate, or is any "real physics" suitable, so long
as it is not in the FAQ?
A few examples, to make the question more concrete:
1. There have been a few posts recently on Huygens' principle. John Baez
posted at his usual erudite level on two ways to see that HP holds for
all odd dimensions, except 1, and fails in all even dimensions. I was
puzzled about the exception of dimension 1, and Herbert Kranzer
straightened me out. There have also been a couple of posts on
Hadamard's "method of descent". (Dave Ring's question on the
descent from 5 to 3 dimensions remains unanswered.)
Little of this could be called current research, I would think, since
most of it is in Courant-Hilbert. (John: is the conformal invariance
stuff somewhere in Courant-Hilbert? How old is Lax's stuff?)
--
The conformal approach is considerably newer than Courant-Hilbert.
Lax's stuff (actually Lax/Phillips) is 1978, and my favorite paper on
the subject, Branson's "Group Reps Arising from Lorentz Conformal
Geometry", is in the 1987 Journal of Functional Analysis (vol. 73, don't
know what pages). So I see no reason to exclude this stuff from
sci.physics.research. Note that even old questions can admit new and
interesting answers. The moderators will exclude questions that have
been asked 10^6 or more times on sci.physics (and, I hope, continue to
compile a list of such questions), but not questions that have been
dealt with in (e.g.) Courant-Hilbert. The moderators also get to decide
whether *answers* should be posted, emailed to the questioner, or posted
on sci.physics.
2. About a year ago, someone posted a paradox involving a collision
between an infinitely massive object and an object of finite mass. The
resolution hinged on the fact that momentum depends linearly on
velocity (in Newtonian dynamics) but energy depends quadratically.
The level here is high-school physics, the math just algebra. I found
it a fun puzzle to work out; I wish I'd seen it in high-school.
--
A borderline case in my mind. What do other moderators think? I
would be inclined to let it in but exclude all but one article that
resolved the puzzle - or perhaps, if I was feeling energetic, I would
include it and append a brief resolution myself. Real physicists can
stand an article like this, but not what often occurs on sci.physics - a
protracted thread, all too often full of invective and misinformation.
3. I asked recently about the QM explanation of ferro-magnetism, and got a
couple of very informative posts.
--
This seems fine to me. As with 1, a REALLY GOOD answer could easily work its
way up to research-level physics.
4. QM at all levels generates a lot of questions. Some recent examples:
(a) What is the "size" of an elementary particle? (b) What is the
difference between angular momentum in classical physics and in QM?
(c) Why do eigenstates of the position operator "spread out" with time,
while eigenstates of the momentum operator do not? (d) Why is the
angular momentum of a free particle quantized, when the momentum isn't?
--
In the best of worlds all of these would be in the FAQ, but that'd require
a FAQ that's pretty close to a course on quantum theory. In the meantime,
I think that sufficiently informative answers to these things deserve to be
posted. What do other moderators think?
5. GR also generates a lot of questions. I'll give one example, from
maybe a year ago: does it make any sense to ask whether the universe as
a whole is rotating (Mach's principle, Newton's buckets)?
--
This is a hoary old chestnut -- precisely the sort of thing that tends to lead
to endless pseudophilosophical divagation -- so the basic question should be
in the FAQ, and fairly stringent requirements should be placed on further
discussion of it. (In general, I guess I want to be tougher on topics that
lead to murky philosophizing -- "does time really exist?" -- and gentler on
topics that, while elementary, are clearly physics and admit terse and
correct answers -- "what is a radionuclide?" In the latter case I would admit
the question but encourage answers via email.)
I too think that sci.physics.moderated would be a better name for what
I'm after, but somehow when I came back from Christmas break sci.physics.research
is what it was called; I don't care about the name so much but I would
like other moderators to say a bit more about what they think the group
should be like. There seems to be a sentiment among the moderators that
about 20 posts a day is a nice volume level, and if that were a goal
each moderator would aim to accept about 5 posts a day, and deal with the
quality issue accordingly, though one shouldn't be too constipated about this
sort of thing.
Cameron Randale Bass
[examples deleted]
>like other moderators to say a bit more about what they think the group
>should be like. There seems to be a sentiment among the moderators that
>about 20 posts a day is a nice volume level, and if that were a goal
>each moderator would aim to accept about 5 posts a day, and deal with the
>quality issue accordingly, though one shouldn't be too constipated about this
>sort of thing.
This is a good point. Though I agree we should probably be relaxed about
specific numbers, 5 per day seems about right. And I think it is
suitable to be more relaxed about 'hoary chestnuts' of limited
duration if the candidate stream is 6 per person per
day rather than 40 per person per day.
My feeling, though, is this is not exactly Physics-101 (nor is
sci.physics for that matter). This medium is notoriously bad
at 'teaching' basic matters that one should probably get from
more standard sources. This is simply because much of the information is
incomplete or misleading or bad. Usenet is definitely not
a substitute for actually learning something.
So, my feeling is that 'hoary old chestnuts' should not be included
if there is a strong chance the audience is going to groan
"Oh, I've seen that four thousand times", even if it is not
explicitly in the FAQ. Most of the SR 'paradoxes' seem to come
under this heading. It seems that SR paradoxes are sci.physics's
counterpart to sci.math's 'Monte Hall problem'.
I hope sci.physics.research becomes a medium place where people can
comfortably discuss more interesting matters of physics.
brett mcinnes
: 5. GR also generates a lot of questions. I'll give one example, from
: maybe a year ago: does it make any sense to ask whether the universe as
: a whole is rotating (Mach's principle, Newton's buckets)?
:
: --
: This is a hoary old chestnut -- precisely the sort of thing that tends to lead
: to endless pseudophilosophical divagation -- so the basic question should be
: in the FAQ, and fairly stringent requirements should be placed on further
: discussion of it.
of murky philosophising goes on inside the heads of research level
[indeed, celebrated] physicists and that the new group is an appropriate
place for such people seeking therapy. For example, who has not heard that
the problem with string theory is that we don't know the analogue of the
principle of equivalence? Here we have a case where murky philosophising
could affect the course of entire research programmes. The mere fact that
a topic has been debated ad nauseam does not imply that professionals
understand it. Even the grandfather of them all, the Twins, is not an
exception: most people still think it has something to do with
acceleration. Having said that, I must say that I welcome the new
group,partly because this one is a bit of a joke [though it is still far
superior to sci.math], partly because the volume is so great that a lot of
discussions get swept away while I am thinking about my reply, etcetc
Vaughan R. Pratt
>I'm after, but somehow when I came back from Christmas break sci.physics.research
Now that the moderators have stated their platforms, the prospect of
simply making sci.physics into a moderated group seems a whole lot less
threatening than it did at first.
A straw poll: taking the promised platforms at their face value, just
how many people here would feel that their rights were being
unacceptably trampled if sci.physics was simply turned into a moderated
group?
No sense giving up a nice monicker like sci.physics if it turns out
that this will benefit only a miniscule minority.
--
Vaughan Pratt There's safety in certain numbers.
Cameron Randale Bass
I hate to belabor this point, but this is not a proposal to
turn sci.physics into a moderated newsgroup. It is a formal
proposal to create a *new* newsgroup with a different charter
and a different purpose. The formal newsgroup creation process
has been followed by Matt down to the discussion stage, which
we are still in.
However, sci.physics will still exist in all its wondrous glory.
Consideration of moderating sci.physics would be separate,
and I suspect that the support for such a move is minimal to
nonexistent (and you'd have to find some moderators).
I know that I, for one, do not want to have sci.physics moderated.
dale bass
--
C. R. Bass cr...@virginia.edu
Department of Mechanical,
Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering
University of Virginia (804) 924-7926
William Johnson
>questions only as appropriate, or is any "real physics" suitable, so long
>as it is not in the FAQ?
I agree with John and Dale: subject to the carrying capacity of the group (I
originally proposed the 20-a-day ideal and think it's sensible), err on the
side of allowing "any 'real physics'." As for your examples:
>1. There have been a few posts recently on Huygens' principle.
Generally fair game, although I would look hard for new content in followups
after the first one. The fact that a subject is elucidated in a textbook
somewhere does *not* necessarily rule it out of bounds for s.p.r -- although
it may lead to a moderator's note aiming the poster (and other interested
readers) at that textbook and directing followups to e-mail unless they
contain something new and interesting.
>2. About a year ago, someone posted a paradox involving a collision
> between an infinitely massive object and an object of finite mass.
I didn't see those postings, but based on your description probably would
*not* accept them; the word "paradox" strikes a negative note with me
vis-a-vis the speculativeness filter, and when you add the details of this
particular paradox ...
>3. I asked recently about the QM explanation of ferro-magnetism, and got a
> couple of very informative posts.
I agree with John; same guidelines as example 1.
>4. QM at all levels generates a lot of questions. Some recent examples:
FAQ fodder, if the FAQ is done right. (BTW, I hope that one of the first
postings to sci.physics.research will be a call from Scott Chase to help make
the FAQ file more comprehensive and user-friendly than it is today; there
seems to be a net-wide trend in this direction that sci.physics could benefit
from.)
>5. GR also generates a lot of questions. I'll give one example, from
> maybe a year ago: does it make any sense to ask whether the universe as
> a whole is rotating (Mach's principle, Newton's buckets)?
Hmmmm. This would depend *very* strongly on the details of the postings.
>Should sci.physics.research include such threads? If its goal is to serve
>the needs of research physicists only, then I guess not.
I agree with John that sci.physics.research should have a more open-minded
goal than that: not to serve the researcher's "needs" as much as to reduce
the noise level to the point that the researcher will contribute. In general,
professionals who lurk in Usenet groups don't get turned off by being
"pestered" with honest if amateur-based questions; it's the subsequent flamage
and degradation of the signal that causes the loss of interest. That's what
moderation should avoid, if we do our job right.
--
Bill Johnson | My suggestion for an Official
Los Alamos National Laboratory | Usenet Motto: "If you have nothing
Los Alamos, New Mexico USA | to say, then come on in, this is the
!cmcl2!lanl!mwj (m...@lanl.gov) | place for you, tell us all about it!"
John C. Baez
>ba...@guitar.ucr.edu (john baez) writes:
>: 5. GR also generates a lot of questions. I'll give one example, from
>: maybe a year ago: does it make any sense to ask whether the universe as
>: a whole is rotating (Mach's principle, Newton's buckets)?
>:
>: --
>: This is a hoary old chestnut -- precisely the sort of thing that tends to lead
>: to endless pseudophilosophical divagation -- so the basic question should be
>: in the FAQ, and fairly stringent requirements should be placed on further
>: discussion of it.
> Can you be more specific? :) My observations suggest that a great deal
>of murky philosophising goes on inside the heads of research level
>[indeed, celebrated] physicists and that the new group is an appropriate
>place for such people seeking therapy. For example, who has not heard that
>the problem with string theory is that we don't know the analogue of the
>principle of equivalence? Here we have a case where murky philosophising
>could affect the course of entire research programmes.
Certainly if this were 1920 I would be in favor of discussions of the
interpretation of QM on sci.physics.research, and straightening out
currently relevant murk would indeed be a laudable function for this
proposed newsgroup. I would not like old murk to drive out the new murk
on sci.physics.research, though.
>The mere fact that
>a topic has been debated ad nauseam does not imply that professionals
>understand it.
Indeed, but it's not clear that still more debate of hoary chestnuts is the
best use of sci.physics.research. I am sure sci.physics will continue
to be a forum for such debate, and there is also the ever-growing FAQ.
Daniel E. Platt
|> In article <1993Jan9.0...@nuscc.nus.sg> matm...@nuscc.nus.sg (brett mcinnes) writes:
|> >ba...@guitar.ucr.edu (john baez) writes:
|> >: 5. GR also generates a lot of questions. I'll give one example, from
|> >: maybe a year ago: does it make any sense to ask whether the universe as
|> >: a whole is rotating (Mach's principle, Newton's buckets)?
|> >:
|> >: --
|> >: This is a hoary old chestnut -- precisely the sort of thing that tends to lead
|> >: to endless pseudophilosophical divagation -- so the basic question should be
|> >: in the FAQ, and fairly stringent requirements should be placed on further
|> >: discussion of it.
|> > Can you be more specific? :) My observations suggest that a great deal
|> >of murky philosophising goes on inside the heads of research level
|> >[indeed, celebrated] physicists and that the new group is an appropriate
|> >place for such people seeking therapy. For example, who has not heard that
|> >the problem with string theory is that we don't know the analogue of the
|> >principle of equivalence? Here we have a case where murky philosophising
|> >could affect the course of entire research programmes.
|>
|> Certainly if this were 1920 I would be in favor of discussions of the
|> interpretation of QM on sci.physics.research, and straightening out
|> currently relevant murk would indeed be a laudable function for this
|> proposed newsgroup. I would not like old murk to drive out the new murk
|> on sci.physics.research, though.
There's still serious work going on in foundations of QM. Some of these
are considered appropriately significant for publication in PRL. There's
also enough interest in ergodic theory and questions involving the
foundation of Stat Mech that they show up in Journal of Statistical Physics.
Part of the problem is that these questions are still open and not
completely answered.
|>
|> >The mere fact that
|> >a topic has been debated ad nauseam does not imply that professionals
|> >understand it.
|>
|> Indeed, but it's not clear that still more debate of hoary chestnuts is the
|> best use of sci.physics.research. I am sure sci.physics will continue
|> to be a forum for such debate, and there is also the ever-growing FAQ.
|>
Some of the kinds of questions that would be appropriate would be requests
for citations of recent papers on a topic, or things that could aid in
pursuing deeper serious research into an area. For example, I wanted to
know what the most current citations on classical self-force were (it
looked like renormalization to me), but I have yet to get an answer (lost
in the noise, or it wasn't the kind of thing people could answer off the
top of their heads). In any case, I'd hope that I could post such a
question to S.P.R and expect to get it posted.
Dan
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel E. Platt pl...@watson.ibm.com
The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John C. Baez
>| John Baez wrote:
>|> Certainly if this were 1920 I would be in favor of discussions of
the
>|> interpretation of QM on sci.physics.research, and straightening out
>|> currently relevant murk would indeed be a laudable function for this
>|> proposed newsgroup. I would not like old murk to drive out the new
murk
>|> on sci.physics.research, though.
>
>There's still serious work going on in foundations of QM. Some of
these
>are considered appropriately significant for publication in PRL.
There's
>also enough interest in ergodic theory and questions involving the
>foundation of Stat Mech that they show up in Journal of Statistical
Physics.
>Part of the problem is that these questions are still open and not
>completely answered.
I agree completely, at least for some interpretation of the phrase
"these questions". There are lots of foundational questions in physics
that have been answered and are now "hoary old chestnuts" that every
bright physics student thinks of and either answers for herself or posts
to sci.physics, where, hopefully, an illuminating answer is forthcoming,
perhaps along with some unilluminating ones. There are also a lot of
foundational questions whose answers are not completely known, and about
which people are still writing publishable papers. To make matters
quite tricky, there is often violent disagreement about which category a
given question falls in! I.e., the very question about which questions
are old versus new murk is itself murky. This is of course the very
nature of "foundational" research: one debates, not only the questions,
but the question of which are the right questions, and what are the
right ways of answering them (if any).
As Daryl McCullough pointed out, discussing these issues on sci.physics
will spare the moderators of the proposed sci.physics.research from
having to make decisions in a realm about which even "experts" come into
violent disagreement. It will also allow utterly untrammeled freedom of
debate. On the other hand, as a would-be moderator I promise to uphold
the charter that we're now voting on, using my best judgement and a
dollop of generosity, and the charter certainly does not exclude posts
about
foundational issues.
Daniel E. Platt
There's also at times a tendency for practicing physicists to disdain
foundational questions. Active physicists who are at the cutting edge
of their fields as younger physicists find that they may have missed the
next revolution, which comes up and passes them by. What they find they
know about are 'old questions' that can be taken to be foundational.
The younger generation looks at the older group and say that they've
gone of and become philosophical, and they should get rid of the old
'dead wood.' When I was an undergrad, I'd expressed an interest in
ergodic theory. It was carefully explained to me that no real physics
was going on there, that the questions were of interest primarily to
mathematicians. Yet, with the explosion of research that came with
computers, chaos, complexity, KAM, etc, the questions have become
'important' again, and not just the purview of 'dead wood.'
Having worked for publication of various papers over the last few years,
I've seen that there can be extreme disagreement between referees on
any paper. It almost has to do with the luck of the draw more than
whether the paper is of serious interest.
|>
|> As Daryl McCullough pointed out, discussing these issues on sci.physics
|> will spare the moderators of the proposed sci.physics.research from
|> having to make decisions in a realm about which even "experts" come into
|> violent disagreement. It will also allow utterly untrammeled freedom of
|> debate. On the other hand, as a would-be moderator I promise to uphold
|> the charter that we're now voting on, using my best judgement and a
|> dollop of generosity, and the charter certainly does not exclude posts
|> about
|> foundational issues.
|>
This sounds like a fair view (as fair as any refereed or moderated discussion
can realistically be). I feel fairly molified.