Thursday, December 8, 2011

Quote of the Week

It is really the case that there are brilliant loners out there and that there is some kind of conspiracy by the physics “establishment” to prevent their voices being heard?
Mike Duff, Imperial College
(warning: paper contains graphic language, but is mostly amusing)

15 comments:

  1. Of course Woity Toity immediately deleted my brief on topic comment on his post, because I can't possibly ever have had an intelligent conversation with an EPSRC officer, even though I went to the Oxford employees private EPSRC seminars in 2009 ...

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  2. See page 14 for comments about viXra and Phil, who is permitted to exist because he is a String Fan.

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  3. Ah, so you proof read the paper for Duff then, Phil. One of the in crowd now, then, I see. Not ashamed to put us crackpots in our place ...

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  4. Meanwhile on the BBC, Ellis calls next week's expected God particle the Holy Grail.

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  5. BBC quote: Journalists are being told to wait for the briefing after next week's scientific meeting, but researchers whom Susan Watts spoke to in the coffee shops of Cern were finding it hard to keep the smiles from their faces.

    Oh yeah, I bet they're pissing themselves laughing at all the silly theorists waiting for a 125 GeV fairy.

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  6. You can find amusing that the Holy Grail is actually a composite.

    Archeologist Antonio Beltran was authorised to disassembly it and he found that while the cup (which has a break, by the way) was of roman kind, the basis was a different object, perhaps arabic in origin, perhaps a gift during some peace treaty. The Eschenbachesque inscription is in the basis, and it is actually an arabic writting which could have been misinterpreted as "Lapits Exillis". In my country, Aragon,there is no doubt that the Grail was shown in Siresa (Serres?) and then in San Juan de la Peña at the age when the poets, from Troyes to Torroella, were writting the modern histories.

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  7. Well, lets see if Phil keeps to navigate between two seas or joins Mowgli, "Man-Pack and Wolf-Pack have cast me out". A feeling that I have frequently.

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  8. Nice bit of history there, Alejandro. Phil has no need to navigate anywhere, since (i) he has always sided clearly with the stringers and (ii) he doesn't offer anything in the way of controversial opinions about physics. The people who need to navigate around Huffy Duff are his students, who know now that categorical quantum information theory is the basis of Quantum Gravity, and might want jobs at Perimeter or Harvard. Women and minorities like me don't need to naviagte anywhere, because we don't exist.

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  9. Of course, there is no need to pity a student of Huffy Duff. I am sure they will all get nice postdocs, probably in Europe or Asia.

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  10. Hi Kea, ive been thinking about this announcement and what it could mean if the rumours are true that they are going to announce a 3 sigma signal at 125 GeV. Well one thing i thought is that this could be the establishment making an effective "non announcement" ie. that this 3 sigma could easily be explained away with more data but it tantalisingly hints at discovery to keep the "funding decision makers" happy for the next year while lead ion collisions take place. It isn't that far from the realms of reality since the LHC employs a lot of people and with the eurozone facing a double dip recession, there are a lot of jobs on the line. Is government still going to be willing to support the work at the LHC when they are told that the "god particle" they were promised doesnt actually exist. If the boy's network (plus Lisa et al.) of string theory is anything to go by, i wouldnt put it past the physics cronyism to extend itself to tweaking the odd graph to ensure their bellys are full for years to come. Just a thought. I will be skeptical no matter what result is announced.

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  11. Hi, vortices1. Yes, a 3 sigma non-result would be extremely irritating. But I think we must trust CMS and ATLAS to analyse the data honestly and professionally, fully accounting for look-elsewhere effects and so on. In that case, a good fairy exclusion is almost certainly what we'll see next week.

    The publicity machine will then go into hard drive to explain that we need a 6 sigma exclusion, and that the Dec 2011 exclusion is inconclusive. By the time they admit that fairies don't exist, all the stringers and loopies will be working on categorical quantum gravity anyway, and they'll be saying they never believed in fairies.

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  12. Lol i certainly hope there will be an exclusion, but it seems too good to be true, especially with all these rumours. I will be deeply disappointed in some of the bloggers who have access to the data like jester at resonaances and tomasso for QD2, theyve both made so called "non-comments" on the matter but i still felt they pushed these rumours over at lubos, woit and gibbs blogs. This waiting is very irritating... but we will find out soon enough what all this fuss is about. 2011 has made me incredibly cynical about the results that particle physics is announcing, so many high sigma "discoveries" announced and then shot down the next week lest we mention superluminal neutrinos.

    I also agree that the stringer and loopies will indeed backtrack and be as fickle as usual.

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  13. When a graphic ramble like this is automatically approved by Marxiv and other work is censored, it speaks volumes.

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  14. Louise, the Imperial ArXiv has always allowed arbitrary commentary from members of the Boys Club. I understand that it must be very difficult for the stringers to come to grips with the fact that the foundations of their physics are so deeply flawed. But at the end of the day, they are more knowledgeable than the vast majority of their critics.

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