brummm

Just a note, the Planck lenght is not the smallest possible distance. The plank length is where quantum and graviational effects are of the same "size" and as such, both our theory for gravity and our theory for quantum physics are guaranteed to break down.

It has nothing to do with smallest possible length or something like that and it's just a common mistake in non-scientific physics articles that has sadly spread.

There is other live with almost 100% certainty in the universe. The number of galaxies, stars and planets across the whole universe is just too large for this not to be true.

The thought that humans might be the only life in the universe to me seems like the 21st century equivalent of believing earth is the center of the universe.

No it's not. It's a state facilitated oligopoly situation, which is the ideal end state for any industry as part of capitalism short of a monopoly. Guaranteed high income for everybody involved and disruption essentially not possible.

So I think one conceptual issue that makes this so hard to understand is that we tend to imagine a physical reality where light is a wave or a stream of particles. However, that is absolutely wrong. Both the wave and the particle concept are mental models we have constructed to explain light as a phenomenon and to calculate things. And in their respective realms, they work exceptionally well.

However, where things start to get complicated is when the models give different results. However, this doesn't mean something is wrong, it just means the mental model we use to make sense of nature is stretched beyond where it's applicable.

So to preface, light is neither a stream of particles or some sort of wave like the ones on the surface of water. Light is the excitation of the electromagnetic field and is described by a quantum field theory called the standard model. So. photons are 0-dimensional (so no size) excitations of this field and they interact with matter like our eyes, surfaces, sensors in an experiment and produce physical effects.

That's not really correct. A torus is a 2-dimensional manifold that can be embedded into 3-dimensional Riemannian space. The author of the article is correct talking about a three dimensional torus as it's defined as S^1 x S^1 x S^1. You can also check the wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torus) that defines an n-dimensional torus in the same way.

Germany splits students into different schools starting 5th grade and it's absolutely great.

Just a small comment about the speed of light. The way we now define the speed of light, measuring it doesn't really make sense anymore. The speed of light is now DEFINED as 299792458 m/s and the meter definition is based on the speed of light. So in principle, one can only measure the meter and not the speed of light anymore.

It's not related directly. However, the parent comment to mine talked about choosing the US because "Freedom of speech is of the highest priority for me". My comment was that I don't get this at all. I would value other things way higher and hence I asked about it.

Coming from Europe, this obsession with "free speech" that Americans have is kind of weird to me. How is that more important to you than affordable education and healthcare and reasonable gun policies where every crazy person cannot have 10 guns at home? And I am not trying to be insulting here, I just really cannot understand this.

In Germany, human dignity is the highest good and free speech ends where it would impede human dignity. Hence, there is good reason to ban Nazi salutes and symbols.

Your comment reminds me of an old math professor of mine that told an anecdote about some famous mathematician that used to have a very promising student. However, after a while the student left and a colleague to the famous mathematician asked about the student. The mathematician said: "He lacked creativity, so he left mathematics and became a writer."

Hmm, this is stuff physicists learn in their first year undergrad classes for mathematical foundations. Seems to me it's the very definition of beginner.

For a long time I loved reading comments to news stories or other discussions on reddit, for example.

But I have found that most comments are actually at the very least misinformed, often wrong and clearly not very educated and I have started asking myself why I am exposing myself to this low quality messages. (There are of course notable exceptions found aplenty)

Realizing this, I have stopped reading most comments and generally just stick to a few main newspaper sites that still have decent journalism.

In Germany they have a three track school system which is great:

- The first track is the high school degree that includes 13 years of school and afterwards allows people to attend university. Generally the students with the best grades attend this track. Everybody learns English as a first foreign language starting grade 3 nowadays in all tracks, but starting grade 7 students in this track have to pick either French or Latin as their second (and then in 9th grade have the choice to pick the other one as a third language). Further, math and science education are much faster and better compared to the other tracks. - The middle track starts learning French as a second foreign language in grade 9 and the whole track only includes 10 years. It is geared towards people that will do an apprenticeship afterwards, for example in business or some other non-university subjects. - The third track is the lowest track for the worst performing students and does not include any second foreign languages. It's only 9 years of school and these are the people that often go into trades jobs like car mechanics, contractors, etc.

Personally I think this is a great systems. Students that can learn more and faster get to learn with students similar to them and are not slowed down by students that can't keep up. Students in the other tracks afterwards can continue on to eventually get the higher degrees through various different ways if they want and are able to.

There is a slight mistake in the article. The standard model does not describe the neutrinos. In the standard model neutrinos are massless particles, but in reality they are not.

I mean, replication failures are a result of bad science, bad analysis and a poor understanding of statistics in many cases. It's not so much a crisis in the state of human knowledge but the state of the education of the scientists in those other disciplines.

Of course it's fucking Doug Ford...

The number of partners does in no way tell you much about the amount of sex people have. A person could have a single partner their whole life but bang every day. Compare that to a person who hooks up with a new person once every two weeks. The first person has 14 times more sex than the second but the number of partners would paint a very different picture.

Apple watch can save a few MP3s. My really old one can save at least a couple of albums and I never carry my phone with me. The watch connects to bluetooth headphones.

This seems like a random collection of equations from a 1st/2nd year undergrad physics class + Black Scholes.

I think one of the major reasons is that physicists actually understand math and statistics and from the first year of university learn how to design, run and analyze experiments properly and quantify uncertainty.

This is a big difference to humanities or even biology.

Sounds sensible to me. Similar laws exist for negligence with physical products that cause damages.

The Latex created PDF's are 100 times more pleasant to read though.

Yes they do.

Also crazy large doctor salaries. The US pays way more to doctors than for example many European countries.

They are very traditional and common in Germany. I remember making them in primary school and selling at something like a "bake sale".

If you are a physicist, Abraham Pais' "Subtle is the Lord" about Einstein's accomplishments in physics is an absolutely unique and amazing book. However, I didn't ask if you are a physicist for no reason. It talks mainly about the science and not about Einstein's personal life and you will need a physics education to follow along.

There is a very clear definition of convexity, as can be seen here [1] on Wikipedia. Nothing to discuss about with regards to definition.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convex_set

I don't think Vikings is a Netflix show.

I think this is a ridiculous opinion to have.

I actually think unvaccinated people were treated way to well in Germany. They are a very loud minority in society and have managed to really hamper the progress against covid.

Compare this to Canada where the government implemented much bigger restrictions on unvaccinated people (no restaurants, no train travel, no air travel) and the overall vaccination rate is ~10% higher. And the current rise in cases is nowhere near Germany.

The majority are unvaccinated people. It's really their own god damn fault for not getting vaccinated. At the most there should be a lockdown for unvaccinated people.