What is the newest installment of 'Random Thoughts' on Physics Forums?

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The discussion revolves around frustrations with current documentary programming, particularly criticizing the History Channel's focus on sensational topics like time travel conspiracies instead of real historical content. Participants express disappointment over National Geographic's sale to Fox, fearing a decline in quality programming. The conversation shifts to lighter topics, including humorous anecdotes about everyday life, such as a malfunctioning kitchen fan discovered to be blocked by installation instructions. There are also discussions about the challenges of understanding various dialects in Belgium, the complexities of language, and personal experiences with weather and housing in California. Members share their thoughts on food, including a peculiar dish of zucchini pancakes served with strawberry yogurt, and delve into mathematical concepts related to sandwich cutting and the properties of numbers. The thread captures a blend of serious commentary and lighthearted banter, reflecting a diverse range of interests and perspectives among participants.
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  • #5,054
Got my MSc. Next up, PhD. Abstract nonsense and semigroup theory o_O
 
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  • #5,055
nuuskur said:
Got my MSc. Next up, PhD. Abstract nonsense and semigroup theory o_O
Semigroups play a role in automaton theory and encryption theory as far as I remember, so abstract nonsense is relative.
 
  • #5,056
nuuskur said:
Got my MSc.
Congrats!
nuuskur said:
Next up, PhD. Abstract nonsense and semigroup theory o_O
Semigroup theory is only half as difficult as group theory, right? :wink:
 
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  • #5,057
Ibix said:
Congrats!

Semigroup theory is only half as difficult as group theory, right? :wink:
You mean that simple halfgroups are semisimple?
 
  • #5,058
fresh_42 said:
You mean that simple halfgroups are semisimple?
Sounds completely plausible to me...
 
  • #5,059
nuuskur said:
Abstract nonsense and semigroup theory o_O
What types of semigroups? Have you formulated a well-defined PhD question yet?

I'm just curious because I've been trying to use Lie semigroups (actually Lie monoids) in some research, but had difficulty finding useful literature.
 
  • #5,060
strangerep said:
What types of semigroups? Have you formulated a well-defined PhD question yet?

I'm just curious because I've been trying to use Lie semigroups (actually Lie monoids) in some research, but had difficulty finding useful literature.
I confess, there is little literature known to me, as well, when it comes to recent developments in the theory.

In short, the goals for the PhD work is to generalise a description of Morita equivalence to factorisable semigroups (S=SS). This is quite a recent problem, starting early 90s and some remarkable advances occurring only ten years ago for semigroups with local units (a significantly smaller subclass than factorisables).
 
  • #5,061
strangerep said:
I'm just curious because I've been trying to use Lie semigroups (actually Lie monoids) in some research, but had difficulty finding useful literature.
Do you get a reasonable structure on the tangent spaces? I mean, you basically drop the minus sign in the commutator, don't you? And the detour to tangent spaces is the basic tool in Lie theory.
 
  • #5,062
This question belongs here as I've been drinking lots of cold beer (brain fart). Explain your take on it like I'm 6 years old. Just a random thought in random thoughts.

If the James Webb Telescope is being placed so far out that it can't ever be serviced, what's stopping it from getting damaged by high speed space debris? IIRC, Hubble has 'bullet holes' from high speed debris. The JWT looks like it mainly relies on huge glass planes/lenses which I'd of thought wouldn't last long with said random bombardment.

I'm actually worried that it's launch might fail.
 
  • #5,063
fresh_42 said:
strangerep said:
[Lie semigroups...]
Do you get a reasonable structure on the tangent spaces? I mean, you basically drop the minus sign in the commutator, don't you? [...]
That's not what I'm doing. I basically have 2 time-asymmetric Poincare-like algebras, acting on a double cone (in spacetime) with vertex removed. I.e., recall the null double cone in relativity, on a manifold locally Minkowskian. Then imagine different representations of a Poincare-like algebra acting on the forward and backward nappes of the double cone, such that in the forward (resp. backward) only forward (resp. backward) time translations are allowed.

So, at every point of the base manifold, my "tangent spaces" are this type of double cone, instead of a Minkowski space.

It's doing my head in for several years now. :headbang:
 
  • #5,064
strangerep said:
I basically have 2 time-asymmetric Poincare-like algebras, acting on a double cone (in spacetime) with vertex removed.
Do you have a multiplication table for it? What makes them "like"? And can we continue in LA? Ooops, I meant the linear algebra forum, not LA (Ca).

I am asking because I am interested in the Poincaré algebra from another point of view.
 
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  • #5,065
fresh_42 said:
[...] can we continue in LA [forum]?
I can't say much more on the public PF forums, since it's unpublished.

I'll PM you later today.
 
  • #5,066
The leaf blower is a symbol of our time:
It shifts a problem from one place to another without solving it, and making a lot of noise.
 
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  • #5,067
France set a new record yesterday: 114.5 °F
 
  • #5,069
Looks a bit like the original Star Trek set, only with fewer colors and bigger.
 
  • #5,070
fresh_42 said:
making a lot of [insert]whining[/insert]noise.
 
  • #5,071
skyshrimp said:
This question belongs here as I've been drinking lots of cold beer (brain fart). Explain your take on it like I'm 6 years old. Just a random thought in random thoughts.

If the James Webb Telescope is being placed so far out that it can't ever be serviced, what's stopping it from getting damaged by high speed space debris? IIRC, Hubble has 'bullet holes' from high speed debris. The JWT looks like it mainly relies on huge glass planes/lenses which I'd of thought wouldn't last long with said random bombardment.

I'm actually worried that it's launch might fail.
It will take hits every year but they will be mainly microscopic and damages will take time to accumulate.
March 2021 is the last date for launch I read.
If they get to the stage where micro damage to the mirrors is about to be a possibility then the project will have been successful.
Fingers crossed.
 
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  • #5,072
Something is wrong with me. I want to willingly learn about Galois theory mid-summer o_O
 
  • #5,073
nuuskur said:
Something is wrong with me. I want to willingly learn about Galois theory mid-summer o_O
Better to learn what Galois thought, than to learn what he did!

Galois theory is one of the most beautiful encapsulated theories in mathematics. And that it solves all three classical problems once and for all is a nice application.
 
  • #5,074
fresh_42 said:
Better to learn what Galois thought, than to learn what he did!
It turns out that duality is a useful mathematical concept; duelity less so.
 
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  • #5,075
Artin wrote a nice little book about it - old fashioned, i.e. pre-Bourbaki.
 
  • #5,076
Ibix said:
It turns out that duality is a useful mathematical concept; duelity less so.
In a way it is both in this case, isn't it?
 
  • #5,077
fresh_42 said:
In a way it is both in this case, isn't it?
I don't follow. Are you suggesting that duels are the duals of duals?
 
  • #5,078
...or that duals and duels duelled for Galois' attention?
 
  • #5,079
Ibix said:
I don't follow. Are you suggesting that duels are the duals of duals?
No, that towers of groups corresponding one-to-one to towers of fields is a form of duality.
 
  • #5,080
fresh_42 said:
No, that towers of groups corresponding one-to-one to towers of fields is a form of duality.
I don't know enough about Galois to appreciate that, I'm afraid. Perhaps @nuuskur will run a study group...
 
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  • #5,081
Why can't philosophy be concise? Or is it possible to make it concise, but it's avoided intentionally? Is there too much effort involved in precision? What is there to gain from obscurity apart from stringing a lot of fancy sounding words together and trying to make it look like it's profound or complex?
*Initiate pulling out hair in 3 ..2 ..1 *

What is the group complexity of a human mind, provided it could be modeled as an automaton? Is there a non-trivial lower bound? Does every philosophy major's mind contain an isomorphic copy of a certain subautomaton?
 
  • #5,082
nuuskur said:
Why can't philosophy be concise? Or is it possible to make it concise, but it's avoided intentionally?
This is unfair towards philosophy. E.g. Kant was very interested in precision, which is why he is so hard to read. Wittgenstein investigated the language itself as major transport of information.

We all know about the ambiguity of language which is why we use formulas. Even something as simple as a quantification is immensely difficult in language, so that we use ##\forall \, , \,\exists## if in doubt. Compare the many threads here and the number of posts related to problem description instead of problem solution! These are indicators that verbal language is immanent ambiguous. Hence philosophers have to deal with a tool that is all but perfect. This does not mean they do not try, it means that they carry a handicap they cannot get rid of.
 
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  • #5,083
fresh_42 said:
This is unfair towards philosophy. E.g. Kant was very interested in precision, which is why he is so hard to read. Wittgenstein investigated the language itself as major transport of information.

We all know about the ambiguity of language which is why we use formulas. Even something as simple as a quantification is immensely difficult in language, so that we use ##\forall \, , \,\exists## if in doubt. Compare the many threads here and the number of posts related to problem description instead of problem solution! These are indicators that verbal language is immanent ambiguous. Hence philosophers have to deal with a tool that is all but perfect. This does not mean they do not try, it means that they carry a handicap they cannot get rid of.
I would say 'inherently' ambiguous. It flows better.
 
  • #5,084
Finally got time to finally play through Witcher 3. I'm MIA for a couple of days o0)
 
  • #5,085
nuuskur said:
Why can't philosophy be concise? Or is it possible to make it concise, but it's avoided intentionally? Is there too much effort involved in precision? What is there to gain from obscurity apart from stringing a lot of fancy sounding words together and trying to make it look like it's profound or complex?
*Initiate pulling out hair in 3 ..2 ..1 *

What is the group complexity of a human mind, provided it could be modeled as an automaton? Is there a non-trivial lower bound? Does every philosophy major's mind contain an isomorphic copy of a certain subautomaton?
Once you can make something clear and precises , point the basic concepts, it stops being part of the realm of Philosophy, at least as I understand it. Philosophy deals in a relatively open-ended way about the topics it addresses. Notice , e.g., Psychology was once part of Philosophy. Once main assumptions, results , schemas were made precise, it started becoming something other than Philosophy. Unless you're referring to the study of people named 'Phil' ( the other Philosophy) , that is my take.
 
  • #5,086
More parsing confusions:

"What a Bautism" ? Actually Whataboutism, a relatively new word.

Newscaster: " Until Next time I'm Erika" * : Until Next time America

*And then my shouting, next I saw him in the street, in-between shows: " Hello Erika!"

" Give me Chicken over Ice" : Give me Chicken over Rice. Note I am not saying that I prefer Chicken to Rice ( Nor Ice) nor anything about Condoleeza Rice ( The best brand of rice!). Do you like Condoleeza rice? No, I prefer Uncle Ben's.
 
  • #5,087
Sorry for my mental Diarrhea. mail.com just deleted 98% of my mails for no reason I can gather. I checked the mail settings and for each folder except for Spam, where settings are to delete after 30 days, the settings are to store mail indefinitely.
 
  • #5,088
my number theory has gone down the drain, I can't even prove something elementary like ##[a,(b,c)] = ([a,b],[a,c]) ##
 
  • #5,089
nuuskur said:
my number theory has gone down the drain, I can't even prove something elementary like ##[a,(b,c)] = ([a,b],[a,c]) ##
The elegant way by ideals or by foot via prime decomposition? In any case, I guess it is simply too hot.
 
  • #5,090
fresh_42 said:
via prime decomposition
If I calculated correctly, we'd need to justify
<br /> \max \{k_j, \min \{l_j,r_j\}\} = \min \{\max\{k_j,l_j\},\max \{k_j,r_j\}\}<br />
where a = \prod _{j=1}^n p_j^{k_j},\ b = \prod _{j=1}^n p_j^{l_j}, \ c = \prod _{j=1}^n p_j^{r_j}. I've no idea how to analyse such a statement other than case by case :/ Looks like some kind of distributivity. Need to dust off my lattice theory

It is hot .. and humid, that's worse.
 
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  • #5,091
I am each year newly amazed and fascinated:

75,000 metal rocker on some farmer fields of a northern 2,000 people village, and it looks as if Scandinavia has more hard rocker than citizens: Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Dutch bands. They even have a beer pipeline!

I miss Lemmy.
 
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  • #5,092
fresh_42 said:
I am each year newly amazed and fascinated:

75,000 metal rocker on some farmer fields of a northern 2,000 people village, and it looks as if Scandinavia has more hard rocker than citizens: Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Dutch bands. They even have a beer pipeline!

I miss Lemmy.
That is a festival I could get on board with.
 
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  • #5,093
pinball1970 said:
That is a festival I could get on board with.
Yes. It is a bit like alien meets bumpkin, but both love it. Harder, faster, louder, but the local firefighters band with trumpets and tubas opens the festival. They broadcast it on tv right now and I think there is also a livestream. I thought "Frisians among themselves" as I saw all those bands from North Sea countries. And yes, Lemmy was there eight times, so the North Sea country UK also contributed.

I think this entire thing is a bit British: understatement, international, rural, beer, beer, beer, and making friends with everybody. No, wonder, England is close and the people around the coastlines are rather similar.
 
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  • #5,094
fresh_42 said:
Yes. It is a bit like alien meets bumpkin, but both love it. Harder, faster, louder, but the local firefighters band with trumpets and tubas opens the festival. They broadcast it on tv right now and I think there is also a livestream. I thought "Frisians among themselves" as I saw all those bands from North Sea countries. And yes, Lemmy was there eight times, so the North Sea country UK also contributed.
Lemmy was a legend, he didn't stop.
It sounds great, the sound out doors tends to be hit and miss but I love that vibe.
Not sure I could handle all day drinking and crashing out in a tent.
Certainly not 2 or 3 days.
 
  • #5,095
pinball1970 said:
Lemmy was a legend, he didn't stop.
He is one of those persons to whom the following quote fits:
"Joe [Cocker] will sing Madonna from stage even with half a liver! "
(A fellow student once said at the mensa table long ago)
Guess, Keith belongs in that club as well.
 
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  • #5,096
pinball1970 said:
Not sure I could handle all day drinking and crashing out in a tent.
Certainly not 2 or 3 days.
Me neither ... meanwhile.
But the atmosphere looks great, especially at night.
 
  • #5,097
fresh_42 said:
Me neither ... meanwhile.
But the atmosphere looks great, especially at night.
I'll check it out for sure
 
  • #5,098
pinball1970 said:
I'll check it out for sure
There's a youtube clip from 2006 (75 min.):
 
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  • #5,099
Some clever insight:

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit,
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad, and
Philosophy is wondering if that means ketchup/catsup is a smoothie.
 
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  • #5,100
nuuskur said:
my number theory has gone down the drain, I can't even prove something elementary like ##[a,(b,c)] = ([a,b],[a,c]) ##
I must be a maths dilettante. I see distribution but leave proofs to others. How trusting.

nuuskur said:
If I calculated correctly, we'd need to justify
<br /> \max \{k_j, \min \{l_j,r_j\}\} = \min \{\max\{k_j,l_j\},\max \{k_j,r_j\}\}<br />
where a = \prod _{j=1}^n p_j^{k_j},\ b = \prod _{j=1}^n p_j^{l_j}, \ c = \prod _{j=1}^n p_j^{r_j}. I've no idea how to analyse such a statement other than case by case :/ Looks like some kind of distributivity. Need to dust off my lattice theory

It is hot .. and humid, that's worse.

Appears to me to be good old min-max theorem. But dilettantes do tend to over simplify.
To day I shall contemplate how best to dust a lattice. :cool:
 
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