Interesting Links for 23-9-2011

[andrewducker]

• Single-sex schooling does not improve academic performance and can lead to gender stereotyping
  (tags: gender education)
• Mind-reading technology reconstructs videos from brain scans
  (tags: mri brains video TheFuture)
• Doctor Who season 7 pushed back to autumn 2012
  (tags: drwho)
• Draw a Stickman. Awesome, awesome fun.
  (tags: art games animation)
• The 29 tweets project - tell your life story in 28 tweets in February
  (tags: twitter life biography)
• Particles found to break speed of light. Anyone got more on this?
  (tags: science physics wtf einstein light)
• Computer simulation shows Solar System once had an extra planet
  (tags: astronomy)
• Disney's Dinosaur: A Christian Film Review
  (tags: Disney dinosaurs funny christianity)
• Could laser propulsion open up space?
  (tags: space lasers technology future)

Comments

[matgb]

The timing of the next Who season is old news, surely? Moffat's been on record for ages saying it's just not scary in midsummer.

[andrewducker]

We still don't have anything actually official, so far as I know. Moffat's given conflicting information, that I've heard.

[miss_s_b]

I know you posted somewhere how you were getting this to work. Is it doable for someone as dim as me? Because I am really missing it.

[andrewducker]

http://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/2485572.html

And yes, I'd imagine so. If you get stuck then ping me on IM and I'll try and talk you through it.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

On the possible FTL particles see Slashdot, if you haven't already.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I did wonder when those rumours surfaced of the BBC deciding to only have 7 episodes of Doctor Who next year, if it would turn out to be the case.

Sad to see them cutting back on programming, instead of cutting back on executive numbers and perks.

[andrewducker]

Well, the other half and the whole of the next season are happening in 2013, so we're getting as many shows, just pushed back by six months.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

And if there is a second 6 month pushback with the second half of next season, then it amounts to essentially a seasons worth of skipped episodes. So the BBC have found a way to save a whole seasons worth of expense?

Or is my maths faulty there...

[andrewducker]

At the cost of lower ratings, yes.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I don't have anything more on the particles breaking the speed of light thing, but I do have the quote of the century from Subir Sarkar, head of particle theory at the University of Oxford:

"If we do not have causality, we are buggered."

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

We're buggered, but the thing buggering us may not have actually done the buggering yet...

[drjon.livejournal.com]

This².

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

But having observed the buggering, we can presumably have confidence that the possibility wave will collapse down into actual buggery.

Much to the discomfort of us all.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

This.

[andrewducker]

Well then, we may well be buggered. I doubt it, but if we are, such is like :->

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I strongly suspect it is going to turn out to be an observational error, but if not, then very exciting times for Physics and science in general.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

I spoke with a quantum physicist about a theory I have. She said 'you have as much a chance of being right as anyone else'

which is nice.

we're both kinda hoping the Higgs Boson is not found, and Supersymetry is nonsense.
basically, string theory started to fall apart a while back and pretty much everyone involved is bloody sick of it. Or so I hear. I suppose it's inevitable when you've spent 50 years doing maths on something that is 100% made up.

[I am not a physicist, but I know many]
[also, my commentary may not be completely accurate. ahem]

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

All I know about string theory is that they'd been trying to find some actual evidence for it for years now, but hadn't been able to find anything. So as time progressed, it has been looking ropier.

It does look a bit like the search for the Higgs Boson has failed too. Which. Yes. The scientists will have to be hitting the sci-fi books to try and come up with a new theory to work on.

[andrewducker]

It's worse and better than that with String Theory. They've not, so far, come up with an experiment that would differentiate String Theory from, well, any other theory. The kinds of energies needed to get down to the level where you can spot the effects of things 20 orders of magnitude smaller than protons are so high that we just ain't doing that kind of thing in our own solar system, because we don't have a backup one.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Does that mean it's very possible that Physics will soon hit a dead-end in terms of how much further they can go?

[andrewducker]

Well, going down the way hits some limits in what's testable at the kinds of energies we have access to. But there's still lots of things to test, and the LHC has a long and useful lifespan ahead of it.

But physics isn't just about knowing what the smallest possible thing is, there's oodles of stuff we don't understand well - we still don't have anything like a complete picture of the boundaries of physics and chemistry.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Must be a bit frustrating for them. I remember when the LHC was being unveiled, they had this whole thing about several colliders being in a race to be the first to discover the Higgs Boson. Now it seems like they are in a race to be the first to conclusively prove the Higgs Boson doesn't exist.

[andrewducker]

Conclusively proving that there is no Higgs Boson would be an impressive achievement, opening up the floor to all sorts of alternatives, and revolutionising chunks of Physics. It would be very exciting.

[mair_in_grenderich]

it has been looking ropier

... that sounds like a good thing for a string theory, mm?

[chuma.livejournal.com]

I believe the joke I was told yesterday was:

A barman says "I'm afraid we don't serve neutrinos here"
A Neutrino walks into a bar.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Ha. Brilliant. Bravo. :)

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Doctor Who -- so basically the season goes from being in the spring to being in the spring & autumn, to being in the autumn & following spring... we're losing a year here!

[drjon.livejournal.com]

I don't think there'll be more until other teams have reported on their attempts at replication.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

indeedy.

notwithstanding that these results are more accurate replicas of an experiment a few years back.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

The Christian review of Dinosaur made me a little sad. Sad that people feel as threatened as I think the author feels.

Saying that, the idea of a committee of people trying to combine plastic dinosaur toys in to as many sexual positions as possible is beyond parody.

[andrewducker]

Should I point out that Landover Baptist is a satire site?

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

That would be helpful. There are a lot of vulnerable idiots out there who might not be paying sufficient attention and be tempted to make a fool of themselves on the Internet.

[ami-bender.livejournal.com]

That is by far one of the best responses i have ever read. Bravo!

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

:-)

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

In fairness to your good self, I started to check roughly 1/4 through the review for signs of satire outwith the review itself.

Colbert would be proud.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I was proud of myself -- I totally failed to read the site title or URL, or any of the meta-tags on the link, but spotted it was a parody in the first paragraph. OTOH, I'm disappointed in myself -- I promised myself I WOULD check those things before reading an article :)