The last proton | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

The last proton | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

Boycott Arizona and Georgia

Michael Moore is clearly stating to show Georgia authorities we do not like them.  A few months back Arizona passed a Law victimizing my people: Mexicans.

I know that few people are even aware of this blog with my name. Nevertheless, I have this to write about the storm I see coming.

In the worst  case scenario I see new countries  being formed, pockets of anti-rational communities, against rational ones. If that happens, the rational ones will win.

At this point, after the boycott to Arizona, and the one started by Moore to Georgia, I support both. I do not want anti-rational beings trying to kill us rational ones.

Numbers in Me'phaa

one=timba
two=riammà
three=riatsu
four=riatco
five=vitsu
six=majùù
seven=migiyùù
nine=minagùhua
ten=gùhua

 Tlpanec or Me'phaa [link]

Good Theory?

If my theory is any good; I should be understanding more papers easily.

No Higgs, but a Mischievous Neutrino $$\nu$$

Freeman Dyson: The Universe is as interesting as it can be!

Here I am waiting for  God, or rather the God Particle, and I get this granny killer from left field!

$$\nu_{\mu}$$ is a tachion!

What next? My real Granma Tayde coming from the dead and complaining to her only physicist relative?

[link]

The Probability Class is Over!

Things could always be better, I inspired some students. I think.

My Contribution

I am a math professor in a third world country, working at a university at the bottom of the intellectual ladder. My family lives in the US, because my wife and kids feel better there. I also feel better that they are there. Some of my students love me, others couldn't care less. I am organizing some science lectures, and helping develop new course of study.

My younger peers, are trying to make do, looking for more classes to teach in other universities.

What is my contribution?

I expect to affect 10% oft he students, the rest are not ready for a career in science. The odds are too much against them. I hope to be wrong about this.

This semester I will keep working here. Finally I see some contributions I can make to Physics. You can read my preliminary ideas in this blog. There is a lot of work to do. I followed with my heart in my hands, so to say, the saga of Troy Davis. (Wikipedia). He is dead and I am not. I should hurry up with my work.

Intuition

Getting back in shape. I ran some Mathematica examples with random numbers. I did calculate $$\pi$$ many years ago with a Texas Instruments (TI) programmable calculator I bought. I wonder where that electronic wonder is. I also bought a little computer in Boston, Radio Shack I believe it was. It even had an ink printer. All that while my thesis adviser had access to multimillion dollar  computer equipment, as he was getting ready to calculate the proton mass with the MILC collaboration. Neither them, nor I got universal acclaim, at least my effort was more modest.

I got some PCs at the Autonomous University of Puebla in the early 80s. I played with mappings, and even got two papers published. All along I was convinced that there was more than number crunching. Now I have some insights I want to develop; without having spent huge amounts of computer time. Some people are close to ideas I have gained. One is David Deutsch, and  other Stephen Wolfram.

I have a ten second Python script calculating $$\pi$$ to two exact figures. My TI used to take hours for this feat. In the mind frame of the Singularity, I guess this is expected. More than the actual time each simulation takes, what I emphasize here is what does it mean?

In a few hours the State of Georgia will kill Troy Davis. He must be thinking fast right now. I do not know when my time is due, but I have to concentrate nonetheless.

More important than the ten seconds the Python script takes to estimate this ratio of circumference to diameter, I think it is important to notice how long it takes me now to run the simulation, and how much it took me earlier in the day. I had forgotten how to run a script. So I was typing the damn thing every time, now I wrote the script pi.py, and I just type in my terminal python pi.py, wait ten seconds and voilà.

According to professor Deutsch, what distinguishes us from every thing we know, is our ability to EXPLAIN. We are universal explainers. He also points out that explanations are generative, i.e., given an explanation we can change the world.

What can I explain, once I am getting my programmer's mojo back?

A program is an explanation, so good, that even a computer can understand it.

Programming Again

If  I do this twelve times a million times I get $$\frac{\pi }{2}$$ with two exact digits.

Did I have to wait this long?

I always need a reason to do something. I think I have a reason now, and I hope I have enough time to catch up.

A Pole, a Jew, a Mexican, and a Brit

This is not a joke, I write about two friends, and two scientists I greatly admire. They are Bogdan Mielnik, David Deutsch, Mendieta and Roger Penrose.

Maybe Deutsch is not Jewish, he was born in Haifa, so surely somebody in his family is. My friend Bogdan was born in Poland, and even though he spends time in Mexico, he doesn't seem like somebody I will consider Catholic. Mendieta is Mexican, but does not strike me as very Catholic. Finally Penrose was born in England, and I don't have a clue about his religious beliefs. I just thought the title will be catchy. They are all very smart, though. That is why I bring them to this blog note.

Bogdan is the only person from Mexico that is quoted in Penrose's "Road to Reality" book; besides I remember a talk he gave that inspired me, he used fiction works to explain Modern Physics, in particular he pointed out that H.G. Wells, came up with the idea of four  dimensional space-time, before Einstein and Minkowski did.

Mendieta is researching Fractal Geometry, for a PhD degree in Mathematics Education. He has written science fiction stories also.

I am reading "The Beginning of Infinity", by Deutsch. He uses fiction to explain his worldview. Finally I just bought "Cycles of Time" by Penrose. I know that he brings, in this book, to the general public, his idea that there have been more than one Big Bang events.

My interest is to bring Information Theory to its place inside of the Framework of Theoretical Physics.

Deutsch is trying to convince us that Everett's Many World Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is a good framework, so he delves into the multiverse.

All I want to know is what role does curve fitting play, in Theoretical Physics. Maybe the Universe is a Computer, maybe there are Equations somewhere in the sky waiting for us to find them. Be it is as it may, all I want to know is if a generalized data fitting algorithm, is enough of a guide to find the best descriptions of Reality.

Kepler-16

I am reading  a paper by the team that discovered Kepler-16 ( it is an eccentric low-mass eclipsing binary with a circumbinary transiting planet). I had the opportunity to participate in E-791, at Fermilab. Observational and experimental physicists devote a good deal of time analyzing methods. As a theoretical physicist, I must confess, I did not consider that much work all that necessary.

Now it is different. I do not believe that some precious formulas exist somewhere - out there - for some smart guy, or gal, to just grasp all of a sudden, and truth will be revealed.  I tend to believe now, that Theoretical Physics is an exercise in sophisticated curve fitting, maybe more like, program finding, to fit data.

To really convince my tribe of this view, I have to prove to their satisfaction, that the beautiful mathematics invented ( discovered?) to fit data can be obtained this way, the equations are: Einstein's General Relativity, Maxwell's Equations, and last but not least, the Weinberg-Salam-Glasow Standard Model of Elementary Particles.

The more I think about these tasks, the more I worry that nobody is going to believe me.

Oh well.

Error

A Scientific Method should identify error.

The statement: There are humans because conditions are right, is not scientific. By the same token, the statement,  the Universal Gravitational constant, cannot deviate from present value, because we would disappear if it did, is not scientific.

We can think of methods to check these ideas, maybe by looking at the evolution of the Universe, since the Big Bang, but without observational corroboration, the Anthropic Principle, and the Fine Tuning Principle are not testable.

Somebody I know in Canada has predicted the number of black holes observed, based on evolutionary hypotheses. As far as I know there is no widespread acceptance of this prediction. Given the sorry state of Research in Motion, or the job situation for intellectuals there in Canada, and if he doesn't want to become a stripper, he should hurry up getting a Nobel Prize, if he wants his Institute running for a long time, at least as long as he is alive.

On the other hand Stephen Wolfram is doing well for himself.

Way to go Steve!

Aspiring physicist take note, next month we will know who will get the Nobel Physics Prize. Already Markus Greiner, got the MacArthur Fellowship.

powerSet

This simple script produces any Power Set given a Set.

There is a book, very popular in our Mathematics Education department, Why Johnny can't add., by the late Morris Kline. Professor Kline made the point that Modern Mathematics was not properly taught to American children in the fifties and early sixties, leading to a huge failure; the children did not understand Set Theory, and they couldn't add either.

I believe, that that first try did accomplish something.

Teachers and students were told that the era of rote memorization of algorithms, without any intention of ever knowing what an algorithm was, had ended.

Children are not computers, and the effort to convert them into bad computers didn't serve any purpose, while real computers were already invented. At a minimum it was useless,  and at the other extreme view, the one I now hold, it was abusive. Children are not computers.

The New Scientific Method, has to introduce, in the best possible way, the role of computers. As a first try, here I write the steps of the New Scientific Method, in a concise way.

1. Observe
2. Compute
3. Compare

A possible name for this baby is OCC.

I have now three names to choose from: SHC, SCH, or OCC.

The Python program above maybe, could be taught to children. I do not know yet.

New Scientific Method

Obviously I have to invent a better name. Something is new only temporarily. Here I start this process of naming the baby.

Method is central for this endeavour.

I think that we have a social construct of reality. Reality in my view, is asymptotically known. Evidence shows we have changed what we mean by reality. I propose to study the method we use for this asymptotic process. This method is closer to us and we have a better chance of knowing it, than reality itself.

Methodological studies are currently being made, to name one, we have the Moscow Methodological Circle, MMC, with the late Gregory Shchedrovitsky, as its creator.

You can read about Shchedrovitsky's method in the NYT.

My hypothesis is that the scientific method, more than presently acknowledged, is a curve fitting method. The least squares method would be one of its predecessors. I also consider, that the use of instruments is fundamental to this method, and in particular, that universal computers are essential for an understanding of reality.

Another author guiding my thoughts is Oxford physics professor David Deutsch.

With so many S,C, and Hs, I should call my method, the SCH method. Maybe SHC? That will depend and which one of this gentlemen wins my heart and mind. Oh well.

We need a new demarcation principle also, Michael Schemer has one: Has to be generative. Read in Sciam what he means: [link].

"This demarcation criterion of usefulness has the advantage of being bottom-up instead of top-down, egalitarian instead of elitist, nondiscriminatory instead of prejudicial. Let science consumers in the marketplace of ideas determine what constitutes good science, starting with the scientists themselves and filtering through the editors, educators and readers. As for potential consumers of pseudo­science, that’s what skeptics are for, but as always, caveat emptor."

UAGro-UAM 2009

Photos of Eduardo (45)

Photos of Eduardo (45)

What Here?

I have over twenty blogs (thanks Google). The one at which I write more frequently  is Relevant Science. The purpose of that blog is to give guidance to high school kids considering a science career. Nevertheless, I believe that I have too many issues going on there. Lately I got noticed by a group of people -- Lev claims they are spammers -- I put them in News on Relevant Science.

Here I will write my stuff.

Right now my stuff is a New Scientific Method. You can say anything you want about me, but not that I do not have high expectations for my work.

If you do follow this site, it is because you believe that I can deliver, thank you.

Welcome to my blog ( it has my name!).

Hello World!

I take my name before somebody else does. I also own @EduardoCantoral. in twitter.