5 ms·

As long as the storage mechanism is not explained, I'll assume a statistical fluke.

by DoubleMalt 11y ago

James001 11y ago
Why? We discover many phenomenon that we don't have a mechanism of action for.
- DoubleMalt 11y ago
  Can you give an example? From a real science, not psychology or economy.
  - tudorw 11y ago
    This maybe http://io9.gizmodo.com/scientists-discover-a-new-link-between-the-brain-and-th-1710560159 http://io9.gizmodo.com/scientists-discover-a-new-link-betwee...
  - gus_massa 11y ago
    It's difficult to find an example that is not yet solved, but some discoveries had no good explanations for a time: LGM (Little green men): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-1 High temperature superconductivity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductivity#Possible_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconducti... And depending of the details about what you consider an explanation, we can include gravity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton It probably involves a family of alleged particle that nobody had seen, but with a few approximations you will probably get General Relativity and with more approximations Newtonian Gravity. Anyway, why do gravitons interact with quarks?
    - raattgift 11y ago
      I'll try to answer your last question ("why do gravitons interact with quarks") and the implicit one ("why hasn't anyone seen a graviton?") as well. You yourself are a pile of mostly quarks (and gluons) whose behaviour with respect to the surface of the Earth is extremely well described by General Relativity. There are plenty of large astrophysical objects which are mainly quarks-and-gluons and they follow General Relativity (GR) exactly. The non-gravitational behaviour of all these objects is (within measurability) exactly described by the Standard Model, and if we divide them up into constituent parts -- right down to subatomic particles -- the description remains accurate. The description of the gravitational behaviour of these objects should also continue as we divide them into ever smaller parts. Quarks feel all four fundamental forces, so they must interact with the respective force carriers. Gauge bosons are exchanged between elementary particles in a gauge theory (like the Standard Model), and carry the fundamental forces. Gravitons are directly comparable with photons, which mediate the other long range fundamental force; both should be massless because they are long-range. Classical light waves have spin-0 symmetry, and photons are spin-0; classical gravitational gravitational waves have spin-2 symmetry, so a quantization of them must preserve that. The simplest graviton extension to the Standard Model works very well when gravitational effects are weak, but fails when gravitational effects are strong, largely because gravitons are self-interacting (unlike photons, at least at tree level). This seen in classical theories: the Maxwell equations are linear; the Einstein Field Equations are not. Schrödinger's equation is linear; quantum gravitational equations almost certainly will not be. Weinberg's dimensional power counting of Feynman diagrams works for renormalizing field content described by Schrödinger's equation; that approach doesn't work for the gravitational field content for diagrams with more than one loop of gravitons. Directly detecting an individual graviton will be difficult; you're interacting with enormous numbers of gravitational waves (even more than the number of light waves you are interacting with), but unlike the photon, the individual effect of each graviton is too weak to detect with anything close to current technology. (see for example http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0601043 http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0601043 ) Finally, we might arrive at another theory of gravity that doesn't have gravitons, although that would be a surprising result.
VrtualTrapezoid 11y ago
"Using computational modelling, the scientists explained this phenomenon in terms of a combination of two factors. Firstly, salt stress causes a delay in cell division, leading to synchronization of cell cycles; secondly, survival probability depends on the individual bacterial cell's position in the cell cycle at the time of the second exposure. As a result of the cell cycle synchronization, the sensitivity of the population changes over time. Previously exposed populations may be more tolerant to future stress events, but they may sometimes even be more sensitive than populations with no previous exposure."
- sangnoir 11y ago
  > Previously exposed populations may be more tolerant to future stress events, but they may sometimes even be more sensitive than populations with no previous exposure The last caveat undoes the whole research paper; it's not really memory, but a timing issue. All they did was exploit the synced the cell division cycles: they might have chosen the 2-hour mark (or got really lucky) as that was when the cell-division cycle was most (or somewhat) resilient. This is similar to saying "batching all network writes to only happen in the first 30 seconds of every minute may make your network more resilient to random 5-second disconnections between data centers, or it make make it more sensitive". This is obviously dependent on which part of the cycle the disconnection happens! Maybe I should write that paper...
  - jrapdx3 11y ago
    Yes but can we say human memory is not also (at least in part) a product of timing? Conceivably memory is mediated by synchronizing activity of certain neurons, after all, phase coupled neuronal signaling[0] is an element of brain functioning. Perhaps the bacteria encode information about their environment using low-level phase coupling. Probably not like that at all, it's just a thought. [0] http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/1/81.long http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/1/81.long

As long as the storage mechanism is not explained, I'll assume a statistical fluke.

James001 11y ago

Why? We discover many phenomenon that we don't have a mechanism of action for.

DoubleMalt 11y ago
Can you give an example? From a real science, not psychology or economy.
- tudorw 11y ago
  This maybe http://io9.gizmodo.com/scientists-discover-a-new-link-between-the-brain-and-th-1710560159 http://io9.gizmodo.com/scientists-discover-a-new-link-betwee...
- gus_massa 11y ago
  It's difficult to find an example that is not yet solved, but some discoveries had no good explanations for a time: LGM (Little green men): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-1 High temperature superconductivity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductivity#Possible_mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconducti... And depending of the details about what you consider an explanation, we can include gravity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton It probably involves a family of alleged particle that nobody had seen, but with a few approximations you will probably get General Relativity and with more approximations Newtonian Gravity. Anyway, why do gravitons interact with quarks?
  - raattgift 11y ago
    I'll try to answer your last question ("why do gravitons interact with quarks") and the implicit one ("why hasn't anyone seen a graviton?") as well. You yourself are a pile of mostly quarks (and gluons) whose behaviour with respect to the surface of the Earth is extremely well described by General Relativity. There are plenty of large astrophysical objects which are mainly quarks-and-gluons and they follow General Relativity (GR) exactly. The non-gravitational behaviour of all these objects is (within measurability) exactly described by the Standard Model, and if we divide them up into constituent parts -- right down to subatomic particles -- the description remains accurate. The description of the gravitational behaviour of these objects should also continue as we divide them into ever smaller parts. Quarks feel all four fundamental forces, so they must interact with the respective force carriers. Gauge bosons are exchanged between elementary particles in a gauge theory (like the Standard Model), and carry the fundamental forces. Gravitons are directly comparable with photons, which mediate the other long range fundamental force; both should be massless because they are long-range. Classical light waves have spin-0 symmetry, and photons are spin-0; classical gravitational gravitational waves have spin-2 symmetry, so a quantization of them must preserve that. The simplest graviton extension to the Standard Model works very well when gravitational effects are weak, but fails when gravitational effects are strong, largely because gravitons are self-interacting (unlike photons, at least at tree level). This seen in classical theories: the Maxwell equations are linear; the Einstein Field Equations are not. Schrödinger's equation is linear; quantum gravitational equations almost certainly will not be. Weinberg's dimensional power counting of Feynman diagrams works for renormalizing field content described by Schrödinger's equation; that approach doesn't work for the gravitational field content for diagrams with more than one loop of gravitons. Directly detecting an individual graviton will be difficult; you're interacting with enormous numbers of gravitational waves (even more than the number of light waves you are interacting with), but unlike the photon, the individual effect of each graviton is too weak to detect with anything close to current technology. (see for example http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0601043 http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0601043 ) Finally, we might arrive at another theory of gravity that doesn't have gravitons, although that would be a surprising result.

VrtualTrapezoid 11y ago

"Using computational modelling, the scientists explained this phenomenon in terms of a combination of two factors. Firstly, salt stress causes a delay in cell division, leading to synchronization of cell cycles; secondly, survival probability depends on the individual bacterial cell's position in the cell cycle at the time of the second exposure. As a result of the cell cycle synchronization, the sensitivity of the population changes over time. Previously exposed populations may be more tolerant to future stress events, but they may sometimes even be more sensitive than populations with no previous exposure."

sangnoir 11y ago
> Previously exposed populations may be more tolerant to future stress events, but they may sometimes even be more sensitive than populations with no previous exposure The last caveat undoes the whole research paper; it's not really memory, but a timing issue. All they did was exploit the synced the cell division cycles: they might have chosen the 2-hour mark (or got really lucky) as that was when the cell-division cycle was most (or somewhat) resilient. This is similar to saying "batching all network writes to only happen in the first 30 seconds of every minute may make your network more resilient to random 5-second disconnections between data centers, or it make make it more sensitive". This is obviously dependent on which part of the cycle the disconnection happens! Maybe I should write that paper...
- jrapdx3 11y ago
  Yes but can we say human memory is not also (at least in part) a product of timing? Conceivably memory is mediated by synchronizing activity of certain neurons, after all, phase coupled neuronal signaling[0] is an element of brain functioning. Perhaps the bacteria encode information about their environment using low-level phase coupling. Probably not like that at all, it's just a thought. [0] http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/1/81.long http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/1/81.long