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14 years ago
Our views of the physical world are changing rapidly. Humanity's continuing search for coherent structures in physics, biology, and cosmology has frequently led to surprises as well as confusion. Discovering new phenomena is one thing, putting them into context with other pieces of knowledge, and inferring their fundamental consequences is quite something else. There are controversies, differences of opinion, and sometimes even religious feelings which come into play. These should be discussed openly.From the website of the journal Foundations of Physics, which appears to have accepted Carl Brannen's paper on spin path integrals. Congratulations, Carl.
Kea, I used to think that they win if we leave. Now I think the only way we'll win is if we leave. In droves. Then they'll have to fund studies to find out why we're leaving. Then they'll overhaul the system. It won't happen fast enough to help people like us in general.
The CKM elements $| V_{td} |$ and $| V_{ts} |$ cannot be measured from tree level decays of the top quark, so one has to rely on determinations from $B \overline{B}$ oscillations mediated by box diagrams or loop mediated rare K and B decays. Theoretical uncertainties in hadronic effects limit the accuracy of the current determinations.The 2008 review suggests that $| V_{td} / V_{ts} | < 0.216$, and this bound is broken by the parameter fits (which used this data) in recent posts. Although this fit was rough, it yields a value of $0.242$, which is significantly higher than the Fermilab estimate. It is still within the other bounds given by $B$ and $K$ rates. Note, however, that the current best estimates for CKM parameters also puts $| V_{td} / V_{ts} | $ at too high a value, so perhaps one should not take this bound too seriously, since it relies on Standard Model calculations.
The email I wrote was an attempt to deal with a difficult and complex organisational problem internal to the conference.Translation: some people at Imperial, perhaps not Valentini personally, like to protect the university's fine reputation. Valentini seems to think this is OK, because that's how things work, right? But he realises that
The internet is an evolving medium, and one can query the suitability of standard constraints in this context.Oh, yes, we can. And we will. Let us not forget the guy with the broken guitar, whose YouTube video resulted in a $10%$ fall in stock value for United Airlines. An Electronic Mob it may be, but revolutionary mobs are not merely noisy crowds. And I would like somebody to explain to me how I'm less human than people who play 20th century politics.