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suresh
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Post by suresh »

Elusive Gravitational Waves Seen Directly for the First Time

Direct detection of gravitational waves by LIGO is confirmed. They have seen the merger of two large black holes into one large black hole plus a huge amount of energy released via gravitational waves. Indirect evidence for gravitational waves was first shown by Hulse and Taylor in 1974 for which they received the Nobel prize in 1993 (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/ ... ates/1993/). We now have a new window into space-time using gravitational waves instead of optical waves.
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Post by prasen9 »

Suresh, is this a pretty solid observation? That is, this is not some signs/hints/most-probable-explanations/due-to-instrumentation-errors but solid observations, right? By my reading, it seems solid, but, I am a novice.
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Yes, it is a solid observation. They expect to see more events this year!
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Post by prasen9 »

Thanks.

On another note, an AI algorithm has "mastered" Go. Computers have solved checkers and are better than human beings in chess (Elo rating: 3300+) versus 2900-ish for humans. Go is a more interesting game than chess. Chess is a simple game :-) for computers. More here
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DNA reveals unknown ancient migration to India. From SE Asia Back to India The news is more than a year old, but, I thought I'd share.
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prasen9 wrote:DNA reveals unknown ancient migration to India. From SE Asia Back to India The news is more than a year old, but, I thought I'd share.
Thanks, Prasen. Wow! ... I was not aware of this research, but I have had almost NO DOUBT that this happened, for quite a while. I had written in the "interesting things" thread about Korean and Dravidian connection and that it is VERY old. I had had a theory for quite some time (that I have told to many of my Korean friends but was reluctant to tell Indians, for fear that somebody would kill me) that Korean or some pre-Chinese language from east Asia was the origin of Dravidian languages in India (or that they at least significantly affected Dravidian languages, though the reverse simply doesn't seem to have happened), indicating a migration of some sort into India from the east with a language. I had just written a few days ago in our "interesting thing I found" thread about a limited version of that theory, talking about the Bengal area as a fulcrum (where the migration came into the subcontinent). I just had no proof and thought it was possibly a naive theory by me, but had figured I'd wait for some genetic research to throw some light. Looks like it has.

I have not been able to find much research into many of the aboriginal languages in the stretch from Korea to India (where some of these language movements happened in prehistoric times) to see if any near-extinct language shows the similarity that Korean and Dravidian show. I have generally drawn a blank so far on it. It seems like they have all been fully removed by Chinese and Sanskrit influences in those areas. Only the end points (south tip of the Indian subcontinent and the Korean peninsula) has the remains of the old languages! .. Interestingly some languages in the Australia/ new Guinea areas show some connection (a branch of migration possibly happening through the Indonesian islands with those being sort of the end points showing the remnants of that great old proto-language)
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Amazing article @Prasen sir. The film "Moneyball" was fascinating as to how numbers cut across the biases we humans have. Germany made use of analytics with heat maps (collabd with SAP I think) in their 2014 WC, sabermetrics became more prominent after Oakland A's run and I'm sure lot of sports use it. That's why I always wishfully think if some Indian IT company can sponsor some of our tennis players and help them with some pre-game stats (As it is, Infosys has sealed a partnership with ATP)

A closer look at 2008 champions league final penalty shoot out
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Physicists prove that absolute zero is not attainable. Absolute zero impossible.

There was another article which I honestly do not understand. Colder than absolute zero. It is also supposed to be hotter than infinity. Which sort of implies a circular scale. Maybe Suresh can explain what this negative temperature is ...
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For most systems, the maximum energy of the system is unbounded from above. However, for artificial systems (where other degree of freedom are ignored) such a spin systems, there is an upper and lower bound on energy. For such systems, negative temperatures can be defined formally. I haven't read the paper mentioned in the linked article but I guess it must be of this kind. I will check that and get back to you.
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Thanks.
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Do you know that you now can track where Elon Mask's Tesla is in space?
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The @ego_virgo & @LIGO network finds mystery object in 'Mass Gap' of 2.6 solar masses, merging with a black hole of 23 solar masses.
Is it the heaviest known neutron star, or the lightest known black hole? Either way it breaks a record

Press release: https://bit.ly/2YraBtu
(Emphasis is mine)

Source: https://twitter.com/ICC_UB/status/12754 ... 13633?s=20
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Perelman's papers which had all the essential ingredients to solve the Poincare conjecture were only posted on the arXiv and not peer reviewed. However, it was clear to the mathematical community that this was serious advance and possibly lead to a complete proof. The Clay Mathematical Institute wanted to decide whether Perelman's papers were enough for him to be eligible for the million dollar prize for solving the conjecture. They commissioned two mathematicians, John Morgan and Gang Tian, who set about filling in the gaps in the proof of Perelman. This appeared in the form of a 500 page book titled "Ricci Flow and the Poincare conjecture" published jointly by the American Mathematical Society and the Clay Mathematical Society. The book is available here. The most interesting part of the story is that neither Morgan nor Tian ever claimed credit for the proof even though it took them 500 pages to complete the proof! The honesty of mathematicians is something to appreciate.

I request you to compare this with the recent attempt to whet the (claimed) proof of the Riemann Hypothesis with a committee of non-mathematicians.
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