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Comment: Simple behavior... (Score 4, Interesting) 49

by Physics Dude (#40629745) Attached to: The Secret of Cornstarch Physics

I thought this was well understood and have explained it to my nieces/nephews and many others.

Corn starch as packaged for sale consists of VERY small grains (see When mixed with water in appropriate proportions, they exhibit the same behavior as sand at the beach's edge where it will apear to dry when stepped on and when the pressure is removed will return to being very wet.

This has to do with dense packing behavior: When undisturbed, the particles naturally form a relatively dense packing due to it's low energy configuration. watter fills the space beween the particles. By disturbing the dense packing by applying an external force, the space beween particles increases alowing for more water to be stored in the inter-particle space. The natural dense packing will occur once the disruptive forces have disipated, so to remain in the more 'solid' state, the dense-packing arangement must constantly be disturbed.

If this research is aimed at the reason for the natural dense-packing in the first place, I thought that was also well understood. Am I missing something?

Comment: Re:why not go all the way and say for X cash you g (Score 1) 232

by Physics Dude (#40576611) Attached to: University Sues Student For Graduating Early
I have to agree. I remember when I was young being quite confused at the purpose of school. It seemed so totally worthless for teaching information. It actually took me a few years before I realized what it was for other than babysitting. Especially in kindergarten... just playing with toys, story time, nap time, ... really? Any actual instruction was so minimal it seemed inconsequential. Then in later grades most of the year was spent reviewing the previous year an adding a tiny bit more - especially math. I was starving for education and they would provide only crumbs.

Comment: Re:Occam's Razor - Dark matter is nothing special (Score 1) 190

by Physics Dude (#40570937) Attached to: Dark Matter Filament Finally Found

Yes, it's being additive which is why gravity dominates the large-scale structure of the universe (not accounting for dark energy). Electromagnetism likes to cancel out, while gravity likes to build and build.

Actually, althought net charge generally cancels out at large scales, currents and electromagnetic fields likely don't. The argument in the past has generally been that if there are large charge differences they will flow to cancel out. While this does happen, the flow is a current which creates a magnetic field so that when the charges are all finally neutralized, the magnetic field collapses and continues to drive the current. Same principle as a relaxation oscillator but on huge scales. We have observed plasma filaments carrying currents within our solar system and with the vast amount of plasma in the universe and it's excellent conductivity it would seem naive to assume that this wouldn't extend to larger scales. Large scale computer models using Maxwell's equations and the known laws governing plasma show galactic rotation curves that match observation without the need for 'Dark Mater', and unlike 'Dark Mater' or 'Dark Energy', these laws are experimentally verifiable and reproducible in the lab).

IMHO, the assumption that all electromagnetic effects can be ignored at large scales has led us down the ever more bizarre path of Dark Mater, Dark Energy, Cosmic Strings, etc. and many scientists are finally seeing the mountain of evidence that is building to overthrow that assumption. We can see magnetic effects on the sun where massive currents and fields produce CMEs, sunspots are known to be magentically produced phenomena, x-ray emmisions from commets show they have a direct high voltage electrical interaction with the solar environment, ...

The Internet

ICANN Mistakenly Publishes Applicant Addresses 52

Posted by samzenpus
from the was-that-wrong? dept.
angry tapir writes "ICANN's program to expand the number of domains on the internet has suffered another embarrassing setback. The organization has been forced to temporarily take down details of domain suffix applications after it inadvertently published the addresses of applicants. In April, ICANN was forced to suspend the application process after it was found that its system could reveal details about top-level domain applicants. The organization is already facing criticism for its proposal to deal with TLD applications in batches of 500 instead of all at once."

Comment: Re:Low level radiation (Score 1) 140

Yes, hormesis has been shown in many many low level radiation studies. When you get to higher levels, things look pretty linear but at lower levels you generally see a standard dose-response type of curve.

I haven't had time to read the article fully yet, but the research I have seen seems to contradict the summary of the article. The regulatory agencies have been trying to suppress studies and research on radiation hormesis for quite some time, and have misrepresented scientific findings in many ways. I guess they're apposed to losing out on the multi-billion dollar industry of managing harmless levels of radiation.

Comment: Re:jury trials cost more money (Score 1) 897

by Physics Dude (#39343591) Attached to: How To Crash the US Justice System: Demand a Trial

...blah blah blah... It seems to me that he is also implicitly blaming America for the self-directed and self-interested bad behavior of other nations, like Iran. ...

Pretty far off base IMHO... You should try actually READING what Ron Paul says instead of regurgitating what you hear on TV. Specifically, try reading chapter 2 in his book "The Revolution: A manifesto" if you want to understand his foreign policy views, which he backs up with intelligent, logical, and rational arguments and reasoning.

If you have different ideas that's fine, but by misrepresenting what he stands for, you just sound like a tool for big-media and big-government anti-constitutionalists.

Comment: Re:Stop it. (Score 0) 290

by Physics Dude (#39188013) Attached to: Santorum Defends Robocalls To Democrats

Here's an ML function call to help you figure it out without Slashdot intervention: fun caresAboutYourFreedom(candidate : Democrat) = 0 | caresAboutYourFreedom(candidate : Republican) = 0

More like...

fun caresAboutYourFreedom(candidate : Democrat) = 0
| caresAboutYourFreedom(candidate : RonPaul) = 1
| caresAboutYourFreedom(candidate : Republican) = 0

Do some reading man. ;)

Comment: Re:The real enemy of freedom is... the media? (Score 1) 409

by Physics Dude (#38691772) Attached to: US Government Seeks Extradition of UK Student For File-Sharing

At this point anyone running for office who would fix this mess is either demonized by the media, or just outright ignored.

So, you just had to bring Ron Paul into this. ;-)

When I first heard him, I was astonished that any US politician still existed that actually respected and tried to defend the Constitution. I was kind of in shock.


Crysis 2 Update a Perfect Case of Wasted Polygons 159

Posted by Soulskill
from the almost-as-many-as-starfox dept.
crookedvulture writes "Crytek made news earlier this summer by releasing a big DirectX 11 update for the PC version of its latest game, Crysis 2. Among other things, the update added extensive tessellation to render in-game elements with a much higher number of polygons. Unfortunately, it looks like most of those extra polygons have been wasted on flat objects that don't require more detail or on invisible layers of water that are rendered even in scenes made up entirely of dry land. Screenshots showing the tessellated polygon meshes for various items make the issue pretty obvious, and developer tools confirm graphics cards are wasting substantial resources rendering these useless or unseen polygons. Interestingly, Nvidia had a hand in getting the DirectX 11 update rolled out, and its GeForce graphic cards just happen to perform better with heavy tessellation than AMD's competing Radeons."
