Ancestors

Toot

Written by Prof. Sam Lawler on 2025-01-17 at 14:05

Really really glad I can do all my meetings today on Zoom!

Blue = "travel not recommended"

Red = "road closed"

There were some giant drifts out in the barnyard which the goats were extremely annoyed about climbing over (come on, you're GOATS! You can climb over things!) But I still have power despite all the wind, so yay, work from home day (with kids home too, since the buses aren't running)

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Descendants

Written by Prof. Sam Lawler on 2025-01-17 at 14:17

One of my meetings is the first PhD committee meeting for a student doing particle physics. I am now frantically googling all the words in the title of her first paper because although I am a professor in a physics department, physics is HUGE and this is WAY outside what I study.

Ok what the hell is a parton... no not Dolly, thanks DDG... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parton_(particle_physics)

Oh a thing with lots of hard math that Feynman proposed. Boy it's going to be a long day.

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Written by Prof. Sam Lawler on 2025-01-17 at 14:23

"Sea quarks"?! Now you're just making stuff up. Quantum mechanics is ridiculous.

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Written by Esslar2 on 2025-01-17 at 14:25

@sundogplanets This remark reminds me delightfully of David Hume's declaration: "Metaphysics? Burn it!"

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Written by Clive Thompson on 2025-01-17 at 14:25

@sundogplanets

😂

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Written by David Chisnall (Now with 50% more sarcasm!) on 2025-01-17 at 14:28

@sundogplanets That does indeed sound strange.

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Written by John Francis on 2025-01-17 at 14:33

@sundogplanets maybe she meant "C quarks"?

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Written by Different Drummer on 2025-01-17 at 14:35

@sundogplanets And Muons don't even moo.

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Written by Brie Mmm on 2025-01-17 at 14:40

@sundogplanets As quark is a type of cheese, maybe there are quantum sea goats involved.

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Written by Eye on 2025-01-17 at 15:12

@brie @sundogplanets

I like this idea! 😄

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Written by Helen Clayton on 2025-01-17 at 15:18

@sundogplanets they sound cute!

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Written by jesuiSatire …ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ on 2025-01-17 at 15:49

@sundogplanets

In other words: It is.

Thx for pointing out.

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Written by BashStKid on 2025-01-17 at 16:05

@sundogplanets There’s a nonlocal superposition between ‘stuff I made up’ and ‘ridiculous enough to be true’.

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Written by teledyn 𓂀 on 2025-01-17 at 16:49

@sundogplanets

You should know this from astrophysics: Nature enjoys messing with us. 😅

"oh my goodness, my children have figured out the vcr, how cute, I think I'll flip the panel and unveil those twenty other buttons now…"

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Written by Mike on 2025-01-17 at 17:36

@sundogplanets Yet it has a certain charm.

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Written by Debbie Goldsmith 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈⧖ on 2025-01-17 at 17:54

@sundogplanets The confinement in non-Abelian QFTs like QCD makes the insides of mesons and hadrons really weird!

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Written by Prof. Sam Lawler on 2025-01-17 at 18:00

@dgoldsmith There was some talk about QCD in the thesis intro...I did not understand it! I like rocks. Big, cold rocks. This is way too abstract! (Super interesting, but wow)

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Written by Debbie Goldsmith 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈⧖ on 2025-01-17 at 18:07

@sundogplanets Without getting into the group theory the main difference between QED (electromagnetism) and QCD (strong nuclear force) is that photons don't have an electric charge, but gluons do have a color charge. That's what leads to confinement: the "lines of force," instead of spreading out as in QED, attract each other, so they form tubes that act like rubber bands. That's why you get quark confinement: if you try to pull them apart you just make more quarks from the energy! 1/2

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Written by Debbie Goldsmith 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈⧖ on 2025-01-17 at 18:14

@sundogplanets Inside a meson (two quarks) or hadron (three quarks) instead of a tube you have something like a sack which, in addition to the real quarks, is full of virtual gluons and virtual quarks—these latter are the "sea quarks." Basically, because gluons interact with each other you always get closed structures with net zero color charge and a lot going on inside.

Yes, QM and QFT are definitely weird, but also very beautiful and interesting. As are big cold rocks! 2/2

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Written by rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua on 2025-01-17 at 14:27

@sundogplanets

I'll offer a beer to the scientist who will call a new particle "moron".

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Written by James Endres Howell on 2025-01-17 at 20:38

@GustavinoBevilacqua @sundogplanets Morons are a proper subset, albeit very common, of the elementary particle of sociology, the person

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Written by Tony Wells on 2025-01-17 at 14:29

@sundogplanets

We need a new even larger Hadron Collider to detect the Dolly Parton

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Written by Obot 50549535 ❄️ on 2025-01-17 at 14:47

@sundogplanets I don't think the thesis committee had been invented when I was in grad school -- the first time I discussed my research with someone outside my research group was my thesis defense.

That was not a good system.

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Written by Terry Yaki on 2025-01-17 at 17:00

@sundogplanets it's a dyslexic proton

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Written by Schamschula on 2025-01-17 at 18:39

@sundogplanets In physics it’s not unusual for a thesis committee member to be unfamiliar with the subject. A fellow PhD candidate was working on a subject that only he and our advisor fully understood (in my weekly meetings with the advisor I had also discussed my colleague’s research, so I was familiar with it). As he was giving his oral defense, it very apparent that most of the committee had no clue!

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Written by Olson on 2025-01-18 at 14:38

@sundogplanets Wow, you live close to when my mother was born over a hundred years ago. I saw the farm when we traveled up there. Dinky farm. Tiny house was still standing, but root cellar was caved in.

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