Sometime this Monday afternoon, Cosmic Variance welcomed its 10 millionth visitor. Yay us! (And yay all the visitors!)
14 thoughts on “Milestone Watch”
Comments are closed.
Sometime this Monday afternoon, Cosmic Variance welcomed its 10 millionth visitor. Yay us! (And yay all the visitors!)
Comments are closed.
First!
Congratulations!
Congratulations, Sean. Been a visitor every day since reading From Eternety to Here. Fine read.
The quality of existing scientific knowledge is endangered as yet another science-blog has registered its ten-millionth visitor. We need to be mindful of the available resources and priotitize and ration their consumption if we do not want to see the demise of science. Entrance initiation requirements must be reinstated and reinforced vigorously in order to reestablish the exclusiveness of the scientific community. The avergae Jo has no room here. Average Jo, leave now or die later…
And yet a Beiber video on youtube has 47 million views. If only the people would care as much about science as Beiber, the world would be a much better place.
Congrats! May the next 10 million be accumulated quickly and without spammy or flaming comments.
so that message I got about being the 10 millionth visitor and winning an iPad was for real!?? 😉
Congratulations.
Your blogging is a thrilling peek into the science-making “kitchen”.
Profound thanks and Best of wishes
Can mega-visits be put to good use? Consider the Polymath Project sponsored by Timothy Gowers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Gowers .
Could thousands of interested Internetians combine their efforts to solve the
Problem of the Rotation rate of Saturn: Why does the magnetosphere of Saturn exhibit a (slowly changing) periodicity close to that at which the planet’s clouds rotate? What is the true rotation rate of Saturn’s deep interior?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics
Congratulations and best of wishes.
Schrodinger’s cat is based on a misunderstanding of the Copenhagen interpretation. To see why, let’s assume someone sets up a double slit experiment and lets it run all night on its own. The next morning he observes the well known pattern of tiny dots. Are you saying that at this moment there are suddenly thousands of simultaneous collapses of thousands of wave functions? Of course not. Each wave function already collapsed at the moment of its interaction with the photographic plate. No “observer” was necessary. What the observer ultimately sees is the pattern formed as the result of all those previous wave function collapses.
Similarly, when the “particle” interacts with the apparatus of the cat experiment, THAT is when its wave function collapses. NOT when the observer opens the box to see whether the cat is alive or dead. The collapse of the wave function occurs when a quantum “particle” interacts with the experimental apparatus, not when someone observes that result at a later time.
Yes, given the conditions of the cat setup, there is a 50/50 chance that a particle decayed and thus a 50/50 chance that the cat is alive or dead. But it is only the first probability that is relevant to the Copenhagen interpretation. The second has nothing to do with quantum mechanics at all. If you flip a coin to determine whether or not to shoot a cat, there will be a 50/50 chance that the cat will die. In this case, the likelihood of a particle decay is equivalent to flipping the coin. That’s all there is to it.
Awwwwwesome! You know it was me, right? 😀
Congrats, Doc! This is one of my favorite blogs, and I check it every day.
I have no Idea if this platform will reach someone who can investigate the possibility of the veracity of this Idea. Would it be possible to envelope the Earth with some kind of resiluent barrier which would slow the astroid/comet and eject in the reverse of it’s original trajectory, or at the very least a trajectory which would be of no harm. I realize action/ reaction but the barrior could be formed in such a way as to absorb the enegry and use that stored enegry to proform the ejection.
I am but a un educated yokel but the idea, while not possible with the tecenology available, if research were to be directed toward finding such force sheild barrior type of defense. It’s ramifacations would be far reaching.
I can only hope this reaches someone who will, at the various levels, at least give this idea pause for conjecture. Thank You, James Parker