Recent content by Wolfman29

I understand that it is likely just a coincidence (with apophenia and cognitive biases thrown in, as Teichii said), but (and I hate to say this...) that doesn't mean that there isn't something to it. In particular, the fact that the cross product can be defined by seven dimensions (you learn...

Hi everyone. I'm almost done with my senior year of university (and will be going to Davis in the fall for the Ph.D. program), and something occurred to me yesterday: the number 3 is very prevalent in our universe. So my question is "Why?" A few examples: As far as we can tell, there are only...

I was afraid I was coming off that way. Thanks for point that out!

I plan on running it by some profs as well - figured I would get your opinions as well though! I was afraid that coming from ASU would hinder me, but that's what I get, I suppose, for not doing extracurriculars in high school. Anyway, I'm really not sure if any of the profs I know here know any...

Hi everyone. I recently finished a first draft for a statement of purpose for CalTech (I know, I know - I figured it would be the first one I draft - I have others I will be modelling off of this one soon enough), and I have a few (well, maybe more than a few) concerns about how I wrote it and...

If we use simple models of the magnets, the problem becomes a lot easier. And we have done that - we have modeled the magnets and attempted to get good results that way, and the results were decent. Unfortunately, those results weren't as good as we had hoped. So, we wanted to get better results...

You are correct on both fronts - unfortunately, effectively unnoticeable changes in the beam at one point can cause dramatic changes in the beam downstream (especially at a few specific points), so it's hard to predict the desired beam shape at any given point. We simply have several parameters...

Right - sorry. The word dimension can be ambiguous because it is used differently in different contexts. With regard to the first quote - multiplying dimensions is fine. It's the adding of units which makes it tricky, right? Multiplying diemsnions is fine, as you said. But adding dimensions...

Yes, the optimization function better be dimensionally consistent, because it's not even an equation! It's just a black-box model using Monte Carlo methods. But that's a different story. Well, the firefly algorithm seems to be decent and relatively quick. The reason why I think physical...

Hi everyone. I hope this is in the proper place - not sure where to put it. Anyway, I am working on an optimization problem in the research I am doing and my partner and I have found that in order to quickly converge on a solution using a specific PSO (the firefly algorithm - it's awesome, look...

Actually, I am working on a model with no internal heating. I would just place it close enough to its sun to keep it at a constant temperature.

Ideally, the planet would be entirely water. That's the hypothesis. With an iron core, we can have internal heating, no unusual forms of ice, etc. That's probably a fairly easy problem to solve.

Hmm. Interesting. I suppose this would require doing the math to calculate the thickness of the planet. This model is getting significantly more complex than I predicted, significantly more quickly. I wonder if there are any greenhouse effect models for this kind of situation out there?

I do plan on going to the limit where the planet will have a solid core. I just did a quick calculation, and for a 3000km radius planet, we are looking at more than 1 GPa at the core, assuming constant density

Yes - I am assuming a surface temperature of about 20 degrees.