splat

21 ms·

151.
by splat 15y ago
If I were being charitable I might think that he was referring to conservation of baryon number or lepton number...but all other indicators point to him not knowing what he's talking about. I'm actually pretty surprised that this paper was
152.
by splat 15y ago
>> The term is really just a placeholder for the fact that something is providing a long-scale repulsive force > How is that not contrived? All the phrase "dark energy" means is that the expansion of the universe is accelerating
153.
by splat 15y ago
I have to disagree with you about dark matter and dark energy seeming contrived. First it's hard to call dark energy "contrived" when it hasn't really been contrived, conceived, or created at all. That is, no one has really made any strong
154.
by splat 15y ago
Another good rule of thumb is not to put too much stock in any papers typeset in Microsoft Word rather than LaTeX (as this one was). Perhaps I'll give it a closer look if it ever gets any citations, but I wouldn't put much money on that ha
155.
by splat 15y ago
Point taken, good catch.
156.
by splat 15y ago
I'm reminded of two other "embarrassing" open problems. A perfect number is a number whose divisors sum to return the original number. Thus, 6 is a perfect number since 1 + 2 + 3 = 6. 28 is also a perfect number since 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 =
157.
by splat 15y ago
This is assuming that there is a trial at all. The Obama administration has already made clear that it has the power to execute US citizens without trial.
158.
by splat 15y ago
> An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar. The bartender turns to them, takes one look, and says, "What is this - some kind of joke?" If that's a meta-joke, then I suppose the version I heard is a meta-meta-joke: A pri
159.
by splat 15y ago
I think that the author's point is that these latencies would, in fact, add a systematic bias to the measurements (i.e. they would shift the results, not add noise). I interpreted "added or subtracted" to mean that this bias could either b
160.
by splat 15y ago
The paper is now up: http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897
161.
Does Disease Cause Autocracy?(reason.com)
1 points by splat 15y ago|0 comments
162.
by splat 15y ago
With the standard caveat that past performance does not guarantee future results, the historical average real return on the stock market has been >~7% [1, 2, 3, 4]. Assuming someone starts saving for retirement at a young age (say, ear
163.
by splat 15y ago
> 85-120 degrees Celsius would be how earth was like during the age of the dinosaurs. Are you sure about that? I know that some extremophiles can survive temperatures in excess of 100 degrees C, but they're all single-celled creatures.
164.
by splat 15y ago
Even if you do, your total assets are taxed. If you're rich enough, you'll lose ~35% of what you have if you decide to expatriate.
165.
by splat 15y ago
Either way our model of physics is off. Currently, the most reasonable explanation for dark matter is that it consists of some unknown, weakly-interacting particle. However, the standard model of physics predicts the existance of no such
166.
by splat 15y ago
I suspect that forcing donations to be anonymous would come into conflict with the first amendment.
167.
by splat 15y ago
If that's the case, then the first words out of your mouth if you are ever interrogated are "I would like to exercise my right to remain silent." If you say that, then the police are legally required to stop the interrogation then and ther
168.
by splat 15y ago
It is matter, in that it behaves gravitationally the same way that ordinary matter does. (Unlike dark energy, which does not behave the same way ordinary matter does; dark energy is actually poorly named because it does not behave like ord
169.
by splat 15y ago
> If we didn't have those cosmological problems that need explaining, no one would be suggesting dark matter. The thing is, the dark matter hypothesis explains more than just certain cosmological problems. It also explains the rotation
170.
by splat 15y ago
Once you start assuming malevolence for an action that can just as easily be explained by incompetence, you very quickly start to step into tin-foil-hat territory.
171.
by splat 15y ago
Interestingly, the last widow of a Civil War veteran died only three years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maudie_Hopkins
172.
by splat 15y ago
I doubt it. The United States already has the best rail infrastructure in the world for cargo. The problem is that rail is relatively slow and you still need to get your goods from the rail station to whatever store or factory they're nee
173.
by splat 15y ago
I would guess that Delaware tops the list in paying more than is spent on it just because so many corporations are registered there, so the corporate income tax they pay appears to originate from Delaware. Minnesota in second place surpris
174.
by splat 15y ago
> They have some idea that August 2 is not really a hard deadline ... What happens on August 2 is that the United States of America runs out of cash. This seems to conflict with this article [1]: > But several new reports — from UBS
175.
by splat 15y ago
Their more important enemies are also probably more difficult to attack.
176.
by splat 15y ago
The false positive rate seems to have been revised to 40% since I last checked, but my reference is here (though they cite the Morton & Johnson paper, too): http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011ApJ...736...19B The 10% false positive rate
177.
by splat 15y ago
It's more a by-product of the fact that the Kepler mission has produced so many planet candidates (with an estimated ~50% false positive rate) that it would require about 30 years of telescope time on the world's largest telescopes to actua
178.
by splat 15y ago
Their goal is to maximize destruction given the resources they have. If they had a button that instantly destroy the US, of course they would press it. But the fact is that they don't have such a button; they have very limited resources.
179.
by splat 15y ago
There's also the problem of the cost of publishing a paper in the first place. In my field (astronomy), publishing a paper in a peer-reviewed journal will cost you at least $1000 with an extra $100 for every table in it. You can easily sp
180.
by splat 15y ago
Yeah. The age of the universe is known pretty solidly. Galaxy formation theories on the other hand are still pretty shaky.

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