smoky/glass

Physics are great, partly because I’ve never understood anything related to physics that is more complex than a car covering a specific distance per hour. However, today I stumbled across an article by Dariusz Miskowiec who shows “that the concept of quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter consisting of uncorrelated quarks, and gluons, has a fundamental problem”, whereas he claims that he’ll base his explanation on “simple physics arguments”. Cool, I thought. He’s got my attention.

A quark-gluon plasma (QGP) forms when the density or temperature of hadrons (particles consisting of quarks) exceeds a certain level, for example by heating. A QGP is believed to be in the inside of neutron stars and to have been the biggest part of all matter that was around in the initial moment after the big bang. Dariusz Miskowiec doesn’t explain this in his paper, which is not necessary, by the way, because we all know it already, don’t we? Instead he wants you to make a gedanken experiment (the Germans, they have a word for everything) by imagining one cubic mm of QGP with a temperature “well above the critical temperature” that is stretched to dimensions of 10 fm x 10 fm x 1,000 light years. If you then connect both ends you have a GQP ring with a diameter of 1,000 light years. So far, so good.

If you now cut the ring at one point the hadronization would start at the two loose ends (the plasma would create hadrons). This would go on into both directions of the ring, until the ring would disappear. Now, this hasn’t been anything extremely interesting yet, but I know your next question: What will happen if you cut the ring at two different points (but at the same time)? The two ends would be seperated by a distance of light years, of course. The plasma would hadronize again, but only until the rest of the ring would have a non-neutral color charge! Honestly, I can’t tell you what this means, but it sounds like a hell lot of fun, because we started from a physically allowed state, always abided by physics laws, but we ended up with something that is forbidden.

Up to this point in the article I realized something: The explanation is in no way based on “simple” physics arguments… I don’t even understand the problem Mr. Miskowiec is talking about. After all, I decided that the world would be better off without me writing about the quark-gluon plasma paradox (although I love paradoxes, no kidding) and that a better way of getting you interested in the QGP paradox is a link, which follows below. Enjoy.

http://xxx.lanl.gov/pdf/0707.0923

Funny news article on BBC: British blamed for Basra badgers

Word spread among the populace that UK troops had introduced strange man-eating, bear-like beasts into the area to sow panic.
(…)
But several of the creatures, caught and killed by local farmers, have been identified by experts as honey badgers.
(…)
UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.”

“My Grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.” - Henny Youngman

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Postini, a global leader in on-demand communications security and compliance solutions serving more than 35,000 businesses and 10 million users worldwide. Postini’s services — which include message security, archiving, encryption, and policy enforcement — can be used to protect a company’s email, instant messaging, and other web-based communications. Under the terms of the agreement, Google will acquire Postini for $625 million in cash, subject to working capital and other adjustments, and Postini will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google. The agreement is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of the third quarter 2007.

This is still a rumor, and I cannot confirm it, but it does indeed make sense that Microsoft is considering to buy Facebook for $6 billion. Though, Google has its eyes on Facebook too and Big-G is likely to make a bid much higher than $6 billon for the hot web2.0 company. As said, right now it’s just a rumor, but it should be interesting to see how this will play out in the end.

Guy is, well, he is a smart guy. Guy Kawasaki has been Apple Macintosh evangelist for years before he founded the venture capital firm Garage Technology Ventures which makes direct investments in technology companies and Internet start-ups. I’ve learned a great deal on Guy’s blog, where, as he says, he wants to empower entrepreneurs. In fact, many of his blog posts teach you more than you could ever learn in school. For example, take his August 2006 blog post “Ten Things to Learn This School Year“:

It seems to me that schools often teach the opposite of what’s necessary for the real world. Perhaps in school people have plenty of time and no money, so long papers, emails, and presentations are not a problem. However, people in the real world have plenty of money (or at least more money) and no time. This is a list of what I wished I learned in school before I graduated.

What follows is a list of ten great advices like “How to explain something in thirty seconds” or “How to write a five-sentence email”. In school they teach you how to write ten-page essays, but what they don’t teach you is how to get all your important arguments into one page or less. It’s always been my opinion that what you learn in school is much more theoretical than it is practical (read: useful).

Therefore, take ten minutes of your time and read Guy’s blog post mentioned above, because it will be ten minutes well-spent.

Link: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/08/ten_things_to_l.html