Guild Wars Wiki talk:Elections/2009-12 bureaucrat election/Misery

Yes, it is my hero. --Frosty 16:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I thought we could nominate humans only... Or does the election policy prevent nominating a horse? - J.P.Talk 05:51, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

secund Titani Ertan 09:45, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Me and bureaucracy

I'm going to accept this nomination and see what happens, but I'm also going to be honest. My life has been getting pretty busy, I'm losing interest (it's been a long time since I've really played Guild Wars seriously) and I'm working on other things. I'm going to England over Christmas, leaving on the 24th and will have no access to a computer until the 3rd of January next year, so I'm not going to be here when the election ends or over half the voting. If you have questions to ask me, please ask before then. When I get back, I am going to check the results of the election, regardless of the outcome, I think I am going to be quite a bit less active. If I have retained my seat I will maintain a level of activity required to perform my duties. In either case I think I'll step away from editing articles and entering policy discussion for a while. I've felt like this for a while, maybe a month or two, but I took the fact that I was elected seriously and knew I was elected in part because of my level of activity and the edits I made and decided to maintain it. I think even with reduced activity I am still a good candidate and I'll always be contactable through the publicly available email address on the bureaucrats page and think I would enable emails to notify me of new messages on my talk page and see how that panned out. We all know how important messages on my talk page usually are.

If you are new to this whole election thing, previous statements made by me on bureacracy can be found here and here.

It's your call what you want from your bureacrat. I'm not super enthused about anyone on the list who has accepted nominations so far taking over my seat, but if am not here there is no reason for me to care anyway. I'm going to think over the next couple of days and see if there is anyone else I'd like to nominate. If I lose my seat I am giving Tanetris permission to remove my bureacrat status and promote my replacement, because I think he would get a kick out of it because he hates me. I realise something like this would happen anyway, but it is nice to tell everyone that I won't be butthurt in advance. Misery 20:49, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Mizzles for wiki president. —ǥrɩɳsɧƴɖɩđđɭɘş 22:46, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I just wanted to add that now there are people running who I wouldn't mind being bureaucrats, so do what you like. Misery 12:49, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Your first paragraph is quite surprising. Not possibly spending as much time as you would like to and non-commitment declaration is quite normal for a declined nomination. Hardly for an accepted nomination... Elephant 21:43, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

At the time I wrote it I wasn't comfortable with any other nominees becoming a bureaucrat. I also believe in choice, an election with only one viable candidate is no election at all. I'm coming second at the moment, so I feel justified in running. I don't actually particularly want to be a bureaucrat, never really have. That's good, because it meant I didn't have to lie. I think you also misunderstand something, I'm planning on spending exactly as much time on here as I want to, not much. The only reason I would be around would be to meet my commitments, how is that a non-commitment declaration? Misery 21:48, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

mgrinshpon's questions

You're a scientist and a bcrat. That makes you the most eligible to answer this question.

From an article: The quantum vacuum has fascinated physicists ever since Hendrik Casimir and Dirk Polder suggested in 1948 that it would exert a force on a pair of narrowly separated conducting plates. Their idea was eventually confirmed when the force was measured in 1997. Just how to exploit this force is still not clear, however.

In recent years, a new way of thinking about the quantum vacuum has emerged which has vastly more potential. And today, one physicist describes how it could be used to create propulsion.

Before we discuss that, let's track back a little. According to quantum mechanics, any vacuum will be filled with electromagnetic waves leaping in and out of existence. It turns out that these waves can have various measurable effects, such as the Casimir-Polder force.

The new approach focuses on the momentum associated with these electromagnetic fields rather than the force they exert. The question is whether it is possible to modify this momentum because, if you can, you should receive an equal and opposite kick. That's what rocket scientists call propulsion.

Today, Alex Feigel at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, a government lab in Yavne Israel, suggests an entirely new way to modify the momentum of the quantum vacuum and how this can be exploited to generate propulsion.

Feigel's approach combines two well-established ideas. The first is the Lorentz force experienced by a charged particle in electric and magnetic fields that are crossed. The second is the magnetoelectric effect--the phenomenon in which an external magnetic field induces a polarised internal electric field in certain materials and vice versa.

The question that Feigel asks is in what circumstances the electromagnetic fields in a quantum vacuum can exert a Lorentz force. The answer is that the quantum vacuum constantly interacts with magnetoelectric materials generating Lorentz forces. Most of the time, however, these forces sum to zero.

Hwever, Feigel says there are four cases in which the forces do not sum to zero. Two of these are already known, for example confining the quantum field between two plates, which excludes longer wavelength waves.

But Feigel says the two others offer entirely new ways to exploit the quantum vacuum using magnetoelectric nanoparticles to interact with the electromagnetic fields it contains.

The first method is to rapidly aggregate a number of magnetoelectric nanoparticles, a process which influences the boundary conditions for higher frequency electromagnetic waves, generating a force.

The second is simply to rotate a group of magnetoelectric nanoparticles, which also generates a Lorentz force.

Either way, the result is a change in velocity. As Feigel puts it: "mechanical action of quantum vacuum on magneto-electric objects may be observable and have a significant value."

The beauty of Feigel's idea is that it can be easily tested. He suggests building an addressable array of magnetoelectric nanoparticles, perhaps made of a material such as FeGaO3 which has a magnetoelectric constant of 10^-4 in a weak magnetic field.

These nanoparticles simply have to be rotated in the required way to generate a force. Feigel calls it a magnetoelectric quantum wheel.

Of course, nobody is getting a free lunch here. "Although the proposed engine will consume energy for manipulation of the particles, the propulsion will occur without any loss of mass," says Feigel. He even suggests, with masterful understatement, that this might have practical implications."

I was curious. In the Casmir effect, the force is between 2 plates moving away from each other so the momentum is preserved. Why isn't this happening here? Is this because one "plate" would be the ship and the other "plate" is the electromagnetic field itself (Maxwell: EM waves can carry momentum)? —ǥrɩɳsɧƴɖɩđđɭɘş 23:17, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Furthermore, I tried doing the dirac equation and some weird answers every time I did it. Any ideas/suggestions? —ǥrɩɳsɧƴɖɩđđɭɘş 06:19, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Now, this is precisely my field, so my comments should be taken with a grain of salt, but allow me to attempt to shed some light. I believe you hit the nail on the head when you highlighted the fact that electromagnetic waves carry momentum. I prefer to think of such things in the particle description of light where each photon has a momentum described by p = hbar*k, k being the angular wavenumber describing the wave used to describe the photon. My familiarity with the Casimir effect is passing, but it is described in some cases using the concept of virtual photons, which also have a certain momentum. I'm not really comfortable with the concept of describing the electromagnetic field as a "plate" in your analogy and would look away from the standard situation where the Casimir effect manifests in the two plate system towards a mass driver propulsion system, which is what I believe is being aimed for here. Essentially the goal of the nanoparticle manipulation as far as I can tell is to make sure that the generation of these virtual photons is anisotropic by changing the boundary conditions, such that there is a net change in momentum of all the virtual photons together in one direction which must be offset by a change in the momentum of whatever is generating the photons to preserve momentum. I assume this is being thought of in relation to deep space travel, where due to a lack of friction even very small forces are valuable. The value, as mentioned in the article, of this particular force is the fact that no mass is lost. When using a standard mass driver system for propulsion, you run out of fuel when you run out of mass, but if you can induce this force by manipulating the magnetic nanoparticles using energy gained through solar panels or thermal generation, then you would never run out of fuel and could in principal travel forever.

Now, as mentioned, this isn't really my field and my understanding from the article was that this effect has not yet been tested and was proposed as the result of a thought experiment, so it is possible that it doesn't even work. That would point towards a flaw in the current understanding of Casimir forces or quantum mechanics. I haven't really looked into this at all and have only attacked the problem at the shallowest of levels, but does that answer satisfy you? If not I can read into it some and consult with some of my esteemed colleagues who are more familiar with the effect. I have been using electromagnetic probes, so the Casimir effect doesn't really factor into my work.

As for the Dirac Equation, I've never actually used it or really looked at it at all, I skipped quantum field theory for now as I do not need it. What exactly are the strange answers that are coming up? Are you concerned by negative energy solutions? You may want to look into hole theory for an explanation of that. Misery 10:40, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

And now for something completely different…

A doctor in Hackney has confirmed that Schrödinger's cat is indeed dead. A man had accidently opened the box earlier, looking for batteries, and after police were called, he claimed the cat was alive. The police though, being naturally skeptical of anyone looking for batteries, had a local veterinarian check the cat’s health and found the cat to be quite dead. The man who opened the box has been taken into custody and charged with Verschränkung.

In other news, String theory still has some loose ends. *chuckles* Now for the weather…

We’ll be having a strong scientific front moving through the area with a small chance of politics.

Now…

Get on with it! Sardaukar 11:39, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

But how did the vet know the cat was dead without opening the box? Once it was out of the box it was no longer Schrödinger's cat, only cat's contained within their original unopened boxes belong to Mr Schrödinger. -- Salome 14:33, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh dear! *Disappears in a puff of logic* ;D Sardaukar 00:28, 15 December 2009 (UTC)