Nick @internic@qoto.org
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- he/him/his
Theoretical physicist by training (PhD in quantum open systems/quantum information), University lecturer for a bit, and currently paying the bills as an engineer working in optical communication (implementation) and quantum communication (concepts), though still pursuing a little science on the side. I'm interested in physics and math, of course, but I enjoy learning about really any area of science, philosophy, and many other academic areas as well. My biggest other interest is hiking and generally being out in nature.
Joined Nov 2022
@johncarlosbaez I guess my question is would they classify it as artificial gravity any time they accelerate quickly in their car and feel pressed back into their seat? I would guess not. But what you're saying is along the lines of the definition I gave above, experiencing weight due to something other than the presence of mass.
It's just funny that people speak of "artificial gravity" as if it's a well-defined concept, but it's not really clear we agree on exactly what we mean by either term in this phrase. @wrog
@johncarlosbaez I guess in a rough sense that's similar to the motivation behind p-adic numbers. @BartoszMilewski
@franco_vazza I feel like one of the reasons that trains are more popular in Europe (where I assume these were taken) than in the US has to simply be the scenery. I already prefer trains to driving, but with the ability to enjoy such scenery it's not even close!
@BartoszMilewski @johncarlosbaez Yes, I guess any orbit could be thought of as a continuous function R -> C, and then the epicycles would just be a Fourier transform, so they could under suitable conditions be convergent under some norm rather than asymptotic like a perturbative expansion.
I'm not familiar with the amplituhedron, but wouldn't the problems to be resolved be generic to perturbation theory (not specific to quantum field theory)?
@BartoszMilewski @johncarlosbaez Is it the case that with epicycles, as with Feynman diagrams, that adding more and more eventually gets you into trouble?
@gregeganSF I've really been puzzled by how many (fairly technologically sophisticated people) talk about getting generative LLMs to make summaries for them. While I'm not sure if you might be able to train a model for the purpose of making summaries, my impression is that if you ask a generative AI model to summarize some document that's not really what it will do; it will actually generate something that looks like a summary of something statistically similar to the source you wanted summarized. If the source in question is fairly similar to other sources on related topics, this might result in something like a reasonable summary, but it is no way guaranteed to. And I would guess this would have systematic problems, in addition to random errors, e.g. perhaps when the document to be summarized has an unusual structure or heterodox conclusion. I had wondered if perhaps I was wrong and maybe these models had special features for summarization (as they added for, say, doing math).
Nick
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My blog got featured on a computer computerphile video about path tracing, neat!
Video: https://youtu.be/3OKj0SQ_UTw?si=Qn9oXAll5l8gzM6j
Blog post: https://blog.demofox.org/2016/09/21/path-tracing-getting-started-with-diffuse-and-emissive/
Nick
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"Women are NOT for Engineering," claimed a 1956 NSF article. Pearl Young proved them wrong, earning triple majors and joining NASA's predecessor in 1922. An aerospace professor reflects on her trailblazing legacy: https://theconversation.com/pearl-young-the-first-woman-to-work-in-a-technical-role-at-nasa-overcame-barriers-and-raised-hell-her-legacy-continues-today-242873
#WomenInSTEM #WomensHistory
Nick
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Nick
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Irish reunification has to happen in the next couple of weeks if we're going to stay in line with Star Trek canon. Just saying.
@wrog As I was acknowledging, I think the semantics are a bit unclear, but I guess I'd consider it to be gravity if spacetime has non-zero intrinsic curvature (not true of the set of uniformly accelerated observers), so, yes, that relates to tides. Of course, the entire point of the equivalence principle is that for an infinitesimal little lab you can't tell the difference, but assuming you can look out and see things further way then you can distinguish.
Nick
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🚀 Astrodon Needs Your Support! 🪐
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Every little bit helps keep our cosmic corner of the Fediverse thriving. Thank you for being part of this incredible journey! 💫
Nick
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Headlines for news articles too long for you to read in your busy day?
Why not have an LLM probabilistically “summarise” them into something even shorter that’s easier to take in at a glance, and … might or might not say the same thing as the original.
Nick
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I was really curious what would be this article, based on the title. The answer was, oddly, that there was not much there. I really don't understand what the point of the article was. But it brings up an odd question in my mind: what does the phrase "artificial gravity" really mean?
I think both phenomena discussed in the article are situations where momentum or stress exerts non-negligible gravitational influence, instead of mass, but that's just what general relativity predicts, so should that really be considered "artificial" gravity? What about the apparent gravity experienced inside, say, a rotating space station? Arguably that's not gravity at all.
I guess I'd just never before appreciated how odd the notion of "artificial gravity" is. I think if you look at how it's often used, "artificial gravity" probably usually means any phenomenon where people or objects experience having weight which is not due to the presence of mass nearby (which means it can include things that are not artificial and things that are not gravity).
The mind-melting reasons we can’t make artificial gravity on Earth https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/artificial-gravity-on-earth?utm_source=flipbo...
Nick
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After a week of tinkering I have, I think, finally finished standing up my own #Mastodon instance. I was surprised by how straight forward it was and I thought it might be useful to share my approach, for those who may be considering doing the same.
I should make it clear that there are far more useful guides out there and I am by no means an expert - I am just a mathematician who enjoys tinkering with things. There will be nothing profound in the thread below, but I hope it is useful.
🧵 1/N
Nick
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Incredible essay about the importance and challenges of digital archival by Maxwell Neely-Cohen, as well as the various imperfect strategies to achieve “century-scale” digital archives.
https://lil.law.harvard.edu/century-scale-storage/
"We picked a century scale because most physical objects can survive 100 years in good care. It is attainable, and yet we selected it because the design of mainstream digital storage mediums are nowhere close to even considering this mark."
1/
@j_bertolotti @gregeganSF Honestly, I think it's still better that the Mastodon equivalent, looking at the #science hashtag. But the bigger selling point for the Bluesky approach is that due to the design of algorithmic choice, in principle people can offer better-curated science feeds in the future (by some combination of algorithmic and manual curation), whereas following #science or #physics here will continue to work just as poorly in the future.
@hacks4pancakes I think some people believe that Mastodon's moderation model is not ultimately workable, basically because different groups of people have incompatible notions of what discourse is acceptable on what topics, i.e. what should get a CW and what should earn a ban. And ultimately this is too complex a spectrum to be solved by sorting into servers with different norms (especially when in some cases server A doesn't want to federate with server B if they federate with server C). In this view, the Bluesky approach of labeling and composable moderation is ultimately more likely to be workable (because it is more flexible), even if the currently available labelers aren't good yet.
@GrapheneOS This just makes me think of how Authy coincidentally prompted me for a review just after it had abruptly stopped working on my device running #GrapheneOS due to the Play Integrity check. Needless to say, I was not kind.
Oddly, I had not immediately removed Authy, and recently I opened it again to remind myself what the message said when it failed to work, and to my surprise it was functioning again. I just opened it on my phone running 2024120200 and it works. I had been wondering if Authy decided to reverse course at some point and I missed it (though they've burned their bridges with me either way).
Nick
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Three weeks ago I wrote "How decentralized is Bluesky really?" https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
Shortly thereafter, @bnewbold wrote his response: https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lbvbtqrg5t2t
I have written my (final) response blogpost: https://dustycloud.org/blog/re-re-bluesky-decentralization/
And as last time, 🧵. Buckle up.
- Pronouns
- he/him/his
Theoretical physicist by training (PhD in quantum open systems/quantum information), University lecturer for a bit, and currently paying the bills as an engineer working in optical communication (implementation) and quantum communication (concepts), though still pursuing a little science on the side. I'm interested in physics and math, of course, but I enjoy learning about really any area of science, philosophy, and many other academic areas as well. My biggest other interest is hiking and generally being out in nature.
Joined Nov 2022
