Visiting Princeton, the American home to Albert Einstein, I’m reminded of one of my favorite “paradoxes” of special relativity. And, even more so, one of my favorite versions of this paradox which, when I first heard it, it blew my mind. What paradox is this of which I speak? The twin paradox of course! Really just the plain old twin paradox? No. Much better than that: the twin paradox in donut space!
Continue reading “Twins in Donut Space”
This Side of Paradise
Quantum Algorithms and the Strange Nature of Quantum Theory
Over at Information Processing, the InfoProcessor talks about teaching Bell’s theorem:
I find that the hardest thing about teaching this material in class is that, after half a year of training students’ brains to think quantum mechanically, it is extremely difficult to get them to feel the weirdness of Bell’s theorem and spooky action. It all seems quite normal to them in the context of the course — they know how to calculate, and that’s just how quantum mechanics works!
Continue reading “Quantum Algorithms and the Strange Nature of Quantum Theory”
The Same Title?
On the arxiv Friday:
arXiv:0802.4248
Title: Coexistence of qubit effects
Authors: Peter Stano, Daniel Reitzner, Teiko Heinosaari
Comments: A paper with identical title is being published on the arXiv simultaneously by Paul Busch and Heinz-Jurgen Schmidt. These authors solve the same problem independently with a different method.
and
arXiv:0802.4167
Title: Coexistence of qubit effects
Authors: Paul Busch, Heinz-Jürgen Schmidt
Comments: A paper with identical title is being published on the arXiv simultaneously by Teiko Heinosaari, Daniel Reitzner and Peter Stano. These authors solve the same problem independently with a different method
Chosing the same title seems a bit strange to me. I mean simultaneous result posting happens quite frequently, but with the same title? But at least this answers a question I’ve always had which is whether the arxiv allows papers with the same title.
You Versus the Chimp
And they says humans are the smart ones:
Morpho Towers
Happy Leap Friday! For your enjoyment, some ferromagnetic fluids jiving to a piano piece:
Slandering Ants Anthropically
Another checkmark in front of the “antrhopic reasoning is whack”:
arXiv:0802.4121
Title: Ants are not Conscious
Authors: Russell K. Standish
Anthropic reasoning is a form of statistical reasoning based upon finding oneself a member of a particular reference class of conscious beings. By considering empirical distribution functions defined over animal life on Earth, we can deduce that the vast bulk of animal life is unlikely to be conscious. As a side effect of these deliberations, I also show that naturally occurring fragmentation/coalescence processes give rise to a power law distribution of fragment sizes, a previously unknown mechanism for generating power laws.
Scirate.com Trackbacks
Some of you know (and use) the website I created a year ago, Scirate.com, a place where arXiv papers can be voted for digg style and comments can be left on the papers. After a while of not tinkering much with the website I’m beginning to add more features that I’ve been thinking about for a while now. The first feature is just a small one: the ability for the website to send trackbacks to the arXiv when someone comments on a paper. After some false starts I think I’ve got this feature up and running, and indeed the first trackback now appears for arXiv:0802.3351.
Now, of course, the bigger question is how to get more participation for the website from the more scientists (not everyone is as ungrumpy as the quantum computing community, it seems.)
Assorted Technology Bits
Technology tidbits of assorted flavors:
- I think I just made myself dizzy.
- Multi-touch to the max, dude!
- What does it take to build the next Silicon Valley (besides Gallium Arsenide?) Via John Cook’s Venture Blog comes this report.
- Bill Gates uses LinkedIn and asks: “How can we do more to encourage young people to pursue careers in science and technology?” (Is it wrong that my knee jerk reaction is “eliminate middle school?” 🙂 Oh and look I have more LinkedIn connections than Bill Gates! He has more dollars, though, I guess. I bet I have more joke-like “Bacon” paraphernalia though!
HD Shroud of Turin
Coming soon to a desktop near you: Your own digital Jesus. (Someone to hear your prayers. Someone who’s there. As much as a collection of bits representing the image of a sheet can be there, I guess that is.)
Yeah I just wrote this post because upon reading the article I couldn’t get that damn Depeche Mode song out of my head (or the Johnny Cash version.) Begone you fowl occupier of my neurons which could actually be doing some work!