A friendship beyond QM

This is an excerpt from the book,"The Breakthrough" by G.Venkataraman :

'...arguments on matters concerning physics never came in the way of friendship between Bohr and Einstein. They were both truly great, rising above differences in their scientific viewpoints. Bohr came to India around 1960, and i vividly recall a lecture he gave to a crowded audience in the TIFR, Bombay. Bohr was then over seventy, and he spoke about his longstanding debate with Einstein. He presented slide after slide of experimental apparatus visualized by Einstein and also himself in their various gedanken experiments. Bohr then went on to patiently explain how Einstein was in error. The sound system wasn't good and Bohr's accent wasn't easy to follow. Frankly, i did not understand one word of what Bohr said! And yet i sat there spellbound because Bohr had lectured as if the audience did not exist and as if there was Einstein sitting in front of him. In fact, when Bohr came to the end ,he did not exult in joy (since his arguments upheld quantum mechanics). Instead, he was in tears, unhappy perhaps about having won an argument against his dearest friend.'

Another one, by Abraham Pais:

'I began to grasp not only the thread of Bohr's arguments but also their purpose. Just as in many sports a player goes through warming up exercises before entering the arena, so Bohr would relive the struggles which it took before the content of quantum mechanics was understood and accepted. I can say that in Bohr's mind this struggle started all over every single day...Einstein appeared forever his leading spiritual partner- even after the latter's death he would argue with him as if Einstein were still alive.'

jokes jokes jokes!

1) Why are topologists unhappy at Alexander?
Simple,he cut the guardian's knot!

2) A topologist wanted to buy a doughnut, but since it was not available, he brought a coffee cup!

3) What did Cantor order when he visited Saravana Bhavan?
Set dosai!

4) This is more of poetry than a joke:
The conjugate pair commute to another dimension, and in a field, exchange rings! The simple groups watch the operator perform the complex analysis, as the pair causally kiss and kill... of course,all this is a lie!!

Senti-mental me!

A few days back,i finished an excellent book named,"A Tour of the Calculus" by David Berlinski. I really liked the last paragraph of acknowledgments section, and i thought i could share it with all here:

"When we both were young, Daniel Gallin and I collaborated on a number of mathematical projects. We rented a sunny studio in San Francisco and talked away the golden afternoons. It was those conversations that revealed to me not what mathematics was-that i thought i knew-but how it should be done. I will always treasure the memory of the days we spent together, when we thought that time would never end."

These beautiful lines reminded me of the days i spent with my friends' circle in hostel,"talking away the golden afternoons", and golden evenings too, gobbling down cups of coffee at chota canteen, or chips from ambani's shop! This post is dedicated to all those friends of mine!:)

Who says numbers cant get romantic?

For those who think that numbers cant get romantic, or for that matter express any feelings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kissing_number_problem

Oh yeah, other weird names you might like to check:

Happy ending problem- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Ending_problem
No hair theorem- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_hair_theorem

and lets end this with a romantic mnemonic taught to help remember the spectral classification of stars:
O,B,A,F,G,K,M can be remembered by,"oh be a fine girl,kiss me!"

latest mokkais!

why is the tv very close to a geographer?
because it does remote sensing!

how does mathematics connect a cat and a fox through internet?
simple,cat-e-nary!:D

The guilt of the chaotic butterfly!

The journey to my office is about two hours from my home.while in the bus,i generally doze off,but at other times,when i dont feel like sleeping,i try observing more closely my random thoughts.one such thought was about the curious case of the guilty butterfly!

The popular butterfly effect says that flapping of a butterfly's wings causes a hurricane on the far side of the globe!so is it that the butterfly is guilty of taking so many lives?i also thought of another question-what about its "karma" (i felt it would be fun to view this concept of karma i keep hearing every now and then in terms of this)?i shall address the first question briefly,but the second one i prefer leaving open for more comments!:D

Of course,it would be a mistake to conclude that the butterfly is solely responsible for the hurricane. It might take many many butterflies to flap their wings at certain conditions to obtain the essential statistical features to trigger the hurricane. These tiny disturbances is what is manifested as a hurricane. Its something like a contraption,if you would like to call it that way!

This is associated with the well known but widely misunderstood chaos theory. The butterfly effect is closely related to what are called strange attractors, the most famous of them being the lorentz attractor. They give an insight into the fact that chaotic systems can be predicted over a short span of time (of course,short here is relative, im not addresing that question since it depends on what we choose to be our system) but not in the long term. That is because our accuracy to predict the system's behavior gets lower and lower; however, the system remains on the same attractor.

Now to the second question- however small it is, the butterfly is still guilty of contributing to a hurricane. what consequence does it have on its karma? does doing an act "unkowingly" add to it? or is it that its contribution to a hurricane is a pre-programmed part of the pattern(im opening the option of a fatalistic approach since this is another topic that i have heard a lot about), and hence it is destined to do so?

Since my second question deviates from science, i thought i could also discuss another crazy thought that crossed my mind with respect to chaos. I came across the fact that moon's tides stabilize the earth against influences that would otherwise lead to chaotic motion,causing rapid shifts of climate in "Taming the Infinite" by Ian Stewart(an excellent book). That lead me to wonder how guilty Piccolo would have felt after destroying the moon with a single blast to stop Gohan from causing any destruction in his monster form in dragonball Z. Of course,the creators of the series did not allow anything to happen to the planet in spite of the missing moon!:D

Tech mokkais forever!

What did the paleontologist tell the doc when he got a severe cold?

die-nose-aur!

How do you convert sambar into gold?

by putting 24 carrots into it!(courtesy jetix)

Tech mokkais return!!

Why little john never signs deals in closed rooms?

he is 'clause'trophobic!

Why does the athlete who fears frogs not prefer bad tracks?

he is bad-track-ophobic!(batrachophobic) 

Which movie does a neophobic hate?

Matrix!

How does a dwarf wearing colourful dress solve equations with no exact solution?

using the runge-kutta method!(runge=colour,kutta=short)

A mechanical engineer working for the navy was travelling in a ship when he got a stroke and fell unconscious.what did the doc do to revive him?

he used the navy-er st(r)okes equations!(navier-stokes)

tech mokkais v2..0

What does a snake become when it sees a boar with an aura around it?

simple,auroboros!

Which network connection does an amoeba use?

Cellone

This message was sent through tachyons.since it is superluminal,i believe you already got it!ps-no epr correlations here!(this was an sms i sent one fine day to my friends!:))

How did kekule find out that ben witnessed the murder?

simple,kekule discovered ben-seen(benzene)

Tech mokkais!

im going to post here some tech mokkais that i often think of while in class (come on,what else are classes for?)...not all "jokes" are mine,some have been contributed by my great friends too,and ill acknowledge their names wherever required (playing fair...i cant get all insults,can i?)!and yeah,ill keep updating too,since ill most probably end up doing the same in office too!:D

1) Why was supersymmetry theory considered lazy?(this was from jetix)

because it slepton! (sleptons are considered to be the super-partners of leptons as per this theory)

2) There is this city where many health resorts are built in a line.which bird would you find commonly there?

simple.sparrow! (spa row)

3) In which nation does paan parag not sell?

simple,japan! (jaa paan)

4) Height of chauvinism:

why are there only kingpins?

5) Where would the general manager of AT and T bell labs go on a holiday?

simple,belgium! (bell GM)

6) Why did the sick man leave the land of vampires?

simple,he was in "trance ill vain ia"!

FIDE world chess championship 2010

The world chess championship match (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship) is on between Vaselin Topalov (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veselin_Topalov) and Vishy Anand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viswanathan_Anand)...they have played five games now (as on 30th april 2010), and Vishy leads 3-2.

The first game was a shocker as Vishy,playing black, lost without much resistance to Topalov in Grunfeld defence.People attributed this to the delay in Vishy's arrival to Sofia (where the match is being held) because of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.Also,there was this theory that he was 5 years older to Topalov,and that the age factor gave the latter an advantage.I do not disagree that age is an important factor,but modern chess has come a long way with players focussing on overall physical fitness.

Vishy bounced back strongly in the second with a convincing victory in Catalan,playing white.He had a strong passer on b7 by 41st move, and Topalov resigned in the 43rd.

The third was a draw in Slav,and the fourth was simply brilliant as Vishy sacrificed a knight to launch a strong kingside attack to seal a win.The fourth game was again Catalan,where Topalov tried hanging on to an extra pawn on his queenside and soon found himself in a bit of trouble when anand rang the warning bells with Ng4!

The fifth was Slav again,and the players repeated the 3rd game till the fifteenth move,where anand was the first to deviate with h5 instead of h6,which he played earlier.Certainly not a game for newbies thanks to its positional nature,this game reached a draw.

For those that are interested in following the games live:

http://www.anand-topalov.com/

http://www.chessnc.com/en/online

http://live.chessdom.com/anand-topalov-2010-g4.html

first post in this blog!!

this is the first post in this blog!:)