The Sports-India Community

Popular perception definitely covers job prospects. I can understand people worrying about jobs if they studied in a small and unknown place but why should that be an issue if you are getting into a place that is a brand name and the sheer fact that you have graduated from such a place opens up doors which would not have otherwise opened.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews I do not want to comment on whether big physics pays off, but, in general, it is foolhardy to cut research. A study in the U.S. showed that the government generates $2.2 for every $1 invested in research. By definition, some research will fail and it is quite hard to predict which idea will work beforehand but the key lies in trying a lot of things and some things work out. Thus, more investment in research at this time would pay off wrt the bottom-line up to a point and more innovation would spur more economic growth in the future. I think the U.S., Europe and Japan as well as other countries have not yet reached that point and should invest more in research.

--pm [For the sake of full disclosure: I have obvious conflicts of interest as several of my research projects are funded by government agencies.]

I am not sure if this is the right place for this post but I am fascinated by India's effort to assign unique IDs to its citizens. I sincerely hope that the project is successful. I am sure there will be a lot of issues but it is an effort that would help a lot of people (and our government).

"You have a whole mass of people who are shut out of society," Mr. Nilekani says. "A lack of identity is a big source of exclusion. You're giving them a key to social services."

India Launches Project to ID 1.2 Billion People

This is absolutely spectacular...

Census Uncovers Oceans' Deep Secrets

Researchers participating in the census say they have now pinpointed about 250,000 species that live in the sea, but estimate that another 750,000 species still elude human discovery.

Several findings were rich and strange: a hairy new species dubbed the yeti crab; a 21-foot-long squid; a new species of lobster weighing 8.8 pounds; an ancient shrimp thought to have become extinct 50 million years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/scien ... ml?_r=1&hp

Interesting - and also rather gratifying to me that a dude who won an IgNobel prize now wins a Nobel

LHC/Higgs Boson progress. Since Suresh won't do his job, or actually, since he is busy at his real job, I need to bring this to your notice. http://www.huliq.com/12092/god-particle ... n-director And: Super-symmetry in doubt? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14680570

Prasen,

I am kind of turned off by the fact that the press has started to report "results" straight from conferences where preliminary results are presented to whet the scientists' appetite. Results can appear and disappear and hence I have added quotes in the previous sentence. The recent "results" are from Lepton-Photon 2011 that just ended in TIFR Mumbai.

It is nice to see the window where the Higgs might appear narrowing down. To most of us, finding just the Higgs would be the most boring news. The Higgs particle, if found, would be the first fundamental spin zero particle -- all known particles have spin half (electron/neutrino/quarks) or spin one (photon/W/Z bosons). It is entirely possible that the Higgs particle is a made up of other stuff just as the proton/neutron are made up of quarks and gluons.

Suresh

Suresh,

Thanks for the information and the explanation. As long as the press reports precisely what was said that is fine with me. I suppose we have different cultures in different disciplines. Yes, care should be taken so that there are no mis-interpretations. But, I am still curious about whether the Higgs exists or not. You can tell I am not a physicist

Regards,
Prasenjit

So Suresh, neutrinos traveling faster than light? Comments?

One of these days they will figure out what maya is, in old Indian science... Jay

prasen9 wrote:So Suresh, neutrinos traveling faster than light? Comments?

I suspect that a simpler explanation to what is being observed will appear soon. I am yet to see the paper and hence can't comment on anything technically.

The full PDF of the paper is here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897

Hopefully our resident physicists can opine. The one detail this layman found interesting is that Fermilab seems to have done a similar experiment in 2007 and did not find any faster than c behavior.

@Prashant MINOS (Fermilab) also found a positive value but the error bars were too big to be considered significant. The new result is a 6 sigma result and can't be disregarded. Here are some interesting numbers:

Distance from CERN(Geneva) to detector at Gran Sasso Italy: (730534.61 ± 0.20) m
They are able to measure the distance of 730km to an accuracy of 20cm!
The final result is: (v-c)/c = (2.48 ± 0.28 (stat.) ± 0.30 (sys.)) ×1e-5.

So the discrepancy is one part in 10^(-5). I don't have any deep comments.

Hallelujah, whoever thought neutrinos would be doing spinach too WADA is running an enquiry. Stay tuned.