I'm confused. It sounds like they though neutrinos were Weyl points, and neutrinos are real particles. But it also sounds like this experiment created quasiparticles. So are Weyl points still a proposed real particle? Or was it only ever theorized to be some kind of emergent phenomenon? Or did they really create a new type of real particle?
It's one of those cases where condensed matter physicists study a system which satisfies equations known from (more) fundamental theories. Other recurring examples are "black holes" in the lab [1] and "AdS/CFT" (of string theory fame) in solid state and quark-gluon plasma physics [2].
That aside, there is a mathematically well-defined sense in which Weyl fermions are the most "fundamental" fermions: the other kinds you hear about, Dirac and Majorana, can all be written as combinations of Weyl fermions. To make a Dirac, you take two Weyls of opposite helicity and couple them with a common mass term. To make a Majorana, you impose an additional algebraic condition on the two Weyls (take the complex conjugate of Weyl #2, reshuffle it a bit, and you get Weyl #1).
The most significant thing here is the mass term. When you look at the equations, it's immediately obvious that what the mass term does is mix the two Weyls in a Dirac: even if you prepare a pure state of one Weyl, as soon as you set the clock ticking, the mass term will turn it into a mix of two Weyls... unless the mass is exactly 0.
So a less mystifying way to describe the achievement of "making Weyl fermions" is simply "making massless fermions".
You mean Weyl _fermions_. Weyl fermions obey the Weyl equation, and Majorana fermions the Majorana equation. Majorana fermions are their own anti-particles, while Weyl fermions are not. They are cousins of the Dirac equation (think about how a Dirac point and a Weyl point are related). There is still some debate about whether neutrinos are Weyl or Majorana fermions.
"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." - JBS Haldane
This is almost certainly true when you consider almost nobody understands what as humanity we actually know right now about the universe.
The chance that the smartest person in the world is just smart enough to understand exactly how the universe works is very unlikely considering understanding of the universe has never been under evolutional selection. We are going to have to wait for the Singularity to tell us how it really works :)
The first is rather well protected. They tried to ban animal snuff videos for example and it was overturned. Hate speech is protected as well, whereas it is prohibited in most (all?) European countries.
You can buy ammunition in Switzerland in a gun store with nothing more than the equivalent of a an American "background check", i.e. no criminal convictions and/or mental health history.
Why do you feel that way? Biologically that's not really the way humans were designed. It's unfortunate that the modern first world economy and society is so incompatible with biology.
I know this is just pissing in the wind (and you just used the term from the article), but "gun safety" already means something. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_safety> This type of language engineering annoys me.
I have always wondered how dance/ballet is recorded, and I'm not surprised it comes down to video. But music is more limited data I think, an opinion supported by the fact that sheet music exists and sheet dance is still questionable.
There's a passage in a piano piece I'm having trouble with and I tried watching videos of pros on youtube to figure out how to play it. It was frustrating and almost useless. The video goes by too fast. Granted, I was looking for technical details, not notes, but I think notes would be almost as hard.
E.g. Can you tell what notes are being played in the video below?
They're complaining because they see the general trend.
When it's getting to the point where you don't just have to go outside, which is reasonable, or even go outside but avoid high traffic areas, but instead to go to this one specific spot outside, and there are people advocating banning smoking outdoors altogether it starts to get ridiculous.
I find it a strange comparison to the marijuana legalization movement.
EDIT: correction: they have actually banned smoking outside in certain places. (http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/23/new.york.smoking.ban/) So you can't smoke indoors. You can't smoke outdoors. But fuck 'em, they're smokers, so who cares.
Why should smokers have the right to pollute the air in public places? We all have to breathe that stuff, you know.
Also you seem to be ignoring the "certain places" part of this ban. It doesn't say you can't smoke outdoors. It says you can't smoke in public parks, public beaches, and similar places.
You can smoke outdoors on your own property. You can smoke indoors in your own property.
The general trend is simply that smokers are free to enjoy their smokes in ways that don't affect others.
I can't quite tell what you're trying to say here, but I interpret this as my desire not to be exposed to secondhand smoke being somehow an infringement of other people's pursuit of happiness.
I really don't care what you do to make yourself happy as long as it doesn't harm other people. Your right to smoke stops at other people's lungs.
Do a lot of people in NYC have "outdoors" on their own property? I suspect not. Do a lot of people in NYC even own their own homes? Because most rentals disallow smoking. So in order to smoke, you have to outright buy a house or condo. Yeah, that's a reasonable compromise.
In any case, there are a lot of activities that are impractical in a large city. Try finding a place where you can have a bonfire in NYC, for example. Yet nobody is up in arms about that.
Do you know why most rentals disallow smoking? Because smoking ruins properties. It's not some vendetta against smokers, it's a pure financial consideration. It's the same reason they don't want you taking a sledgehammer to the walls, or putting sandpaper on the soles of your shoes.
Given that, why should anyone let you destroy their stuff in this way?
You have to go to the curb to smoke in some cities now (I've seen it in the Bay, don't know the specifics).
While I don't disagree re: property destruction, they'll make you pay for any damage anyway, so it would probably make more sense as a choice. "$2000 carpet replacement + cleaning + re-painting fee for smoking in this apartment" would surely dissuade some, but if it was the actual cost of labor + materials to restore the apartment to pre-smoking conditions (including smell), I think that's reasonable. Having pets, they sure do make you pay for any bit of messed up carpet, so as long as it's not leaking through the floors / into the hallways / billowing out the windows, why not give people the choice to pay for what they're messing up instead of outright banning it?
If i was king of the world, i would probably indeed be okay with banning smoking inside of public buildings (including bars, whatever), but i think it's really rather silly to ban smoking in open-air areas, like the pavement in front of a bar. I mean, who is complaining about the cars driving past, which in my personal and very humble opinion are much more bothersome than cigarette smoke.
There is an argument to be made that if and only if we ban cars in inner cities (which would be wonderful -- they're smelly, very dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists alike, and detrimental to the environment to boot), then i would be okay with also banning smoking outside. If you think it stinks, stand elsewhere, and i don't have data on this, but i imagine that the influence of cigarette smoke on climate change is vanishingly small compared to the thousands of kilograms of CO2 put out by cars on a continual basis.
But yeah, i happen to find drivers a lot more offensive than smokers.
Actually aside from minor memory problems after long term exposure (years) all reports suggest pure marijuana is very healthy, so no, no comparison with it.
If I started burning lithium batteries probably people will complain even if I do it outside or if I put it in my lungs, why should nicotine be any different?
I've long since considered getting stink spray, basically the concentrated aerosol version of what is in a stink bomb, and spraying it in any smoking areas. If you can pollute the air with second hand smoke, I can pollute the air with stink. For added effect, I would want the container to look like a cigarette.
They are not a protected class, but that doesn't mean you have to go out of your way to screw them over. In your example, they could just move the smoking area, couldn't they?
> They are not a protected class, but that doesn't mean you have to go out of your way to screw them over.
They've gone out of their way to screw themselves over; I see no particular reason to accommodate them. (Obvious exception for people who really do pre-date the widespread knowledge that cigarettes are both addictive and harmful, but that's a decreasing subset of smokers.)
> In your example, they could just move the smoking area, couldn't they?
Off campus, preferably. If you can't go eight hours without your drug of choice (especially one that harms the people around you when you use it), perhaps you have a bigger problem than an intentional lack of accommodations at your workplace.
Because they're people? And they're accommodating you by smoking only where it's allowed? So maybe out of the kindness of your heart you could leave them a place to smoke?
Off campus, preferably. If you can't go eight hours
without your drug of choice (especially one that harms
the people around you when you use it), perhaps you have
a bigger problem than an intentional lack of
accommodations at your workplace.
> Because they're people? And they're accommodating you by smoking only where it's allowed? So maybe out of the kindness of your heart you could leave them a place to smoke?
Their habit harms the health of everyone around them. Your comments make it seem like you don't understand that fact. Being mean or nice has nothing to do with any of it, it's about not inflicting harm on people that choose not to smoke.
"Accommodating them" referred to moving the designated smoking area so that the other poster's path wasn't near it. So "accommodating them" means making a small effort so both smokers and non smokers can get what they want. It does not mean forcing non smokers to breathe smoke.
>Because they're people? And they're accommodating you by smoking only where it's allowed? So maybe out of the kindness of your heart you could leave them a place to smoke?
Because banning all areas to smoke it a kinder attitude as it eliminates any appearance of acceptance of smoking.
Many non-western countries have very, very different attitudes about smoking (India, Ukraine, Russia, etc), and we get a lot of H1-B's from those countries.
