Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT strips 3931-3935 (4th to 8th February 2019)
Case:
Line 3 seems a bit weird - It looks like a standard multi-particle Schrödinger-equation, but the independent variable of the state-vector \psi being "q t" instead of "t" (or is this q_i?) confuses me - could be that q is meant to be a scaling factor, but normally, q and k are used to denote momentum. Could be the result of a partial Fourier-transform, but then the Laplace operator in the kinetic term should have been transformed, too?
Could also be I need another coffee to get brain started.
Line 4 looks like a metric in the general relativity sense (rather than special relativity), and I have trouble seeing what it has to do with the other 3 lines. It looks like "3 lines of Quantum theory, one line of general relativity" and the two don't normally go together easily (special relativity, otoh, can and is readily incorporated into the usual quantum field theories).
(Also, whatwith the Lorentz-factor being the ratio of coordinate time over proper time (dt/dtau), line 4 pretty much says that in the situation considered here you cannot extract a simple Lorentz-factor, since not all of the terms on the r.h.s. are proportional to dt^2? Though I have to admit my shameful ignorance of much of general relativity, so that might just me being ignorant of a common generalization of the definition of the Lorentz-factor in general relativity ...)
Am I sitting on my brain? :psyduck:
eschaton:
Dropping out of lurking mode to ask - is the bald guy with a mustache supposed to be a famous historical mathematician or physicist? He's wearing kinda an old-fashioned suit, so that was my first thought.
Maybe it's supposed to be Max Planck? He has the bald head, the mustache, usually wore bow ties for pictures, and was German after all.
zioninavision:
So far it is uncertain as to whether Emily will specifically be sent into Roko to help find and adjust what might be causing her limited integration with the new body!
Perhaps within, there would be some type of bread palace, a version of Northampton made entirely from bread, or, maybe a temporary switch to action-adventure within a bread temple/dungeon that holds an embodiment of the disconnect?
Moreso, maybe the rest of Roko's original self is still inhabiting the original body within her own layered AI consciousness and would need Emily or someone else to go in and talk to them!
BenRG:
@Case,
My guess is that Jeph copied some equations from some source that are meant to demonstrate that information can only radiate outwards from a source at c and cannot travel faster (and, thus, cannot travel in a negative-t direction, based on the mathematical indistinguishability between transluminal motion and travelling backwards in time. If this is no longer current, pray grant me pardon as my understanding of such things comes from 1970s/1980s sources).
Case:
--- Quote from: eschaton on 06 Feb 2019, 05:41 ---Dropping out of lurking mode to ask - is the bald guy with a mustache supposed to be a famous historical mathematician or physicist? He's wearing kinda an old-fashioned suit, so that was my first thought.
Maybe it's supposed to be Max Planck? He has the bald head, the mustache, usually wore bow ties for pictures, and was German after all.
--- End quote ---
Well, the bald head & mustache could also point to Dirac, Sommerfeld, Thompson ... :-D
I don't think it's necessarily meant to be a specific historical physicist so much as a type that may have been 'not uncommon' at US physics departments during a short period of time around the end of WW-II - back in the foundational period of quantum theory and relativity, Germany-, and specifically Göttingen, was the Mecca of theoretical physics, and physicists would learn German to be able to be were the music is. Starting in the 1920s/30s, American Unis (particularly MIT) started aggressive hiring practises to attract foreign talent, and with the rise of the Nazis, and later the race between the US and the Soviet union for German engineers and physicists, I guess you got them 'a dime a dozen'.
So there (probably) was a period when you'd hear a lot of German on US physics campuses (there are some remnants of that in (nominally) English math and physics-jargon, e.g. English-language textbooks talking about Eigenvalues of linear operators), even from non-German physicists (consider also, that even in Europe, German native speakers aren't necessarily German nationals - Austrians speak German, too, as do a lot of Swiss. And until WW-I, a sizeable share of German-heritage communities in the US offered bilingual German/English education).
Contemporary German physicists rarely wear bow ties and most of us speak pretty decent Inglese (either that, or I missed another memo ...), whatwith English being the current lingua franca in physics.
P.S.: Planck would be a possibility if we purely consider looks, but methinks that'd be a bit ahistoric - firstly, he died in 1947 and never lived in the US, and secondly, old Max had a cold-ass stare that'd make a Borg squirm. Don't think was the type to chat up random barristas. Very Kaiserreich, very Prussian.
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