Worth watching, Freemon Dyson life stories -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs1jGsn61p8&list=PLVV0r6CmEs...
Freeman Dyson Has Died
41–50 of 267 posts
Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died
#42Infinite in All Directions is still one of my favorite science books.
"Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many common features. They share these features also with other enterprises such as art, literature, and music. The most salient features of all these enterprises are discipline and diversity. Discipline to submerge the individual fantasy in a greater whole. Diversity to give scope to the infinite variety of human souls and temperaments. Without discipline there can be no greatness. Without diversity there can be no freedom. Greatness for the enterprise, freedom for the individual- these are the two themes, contrasting but not incompatible, that make up the history of science and the history of religion."
Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died
#43Noted physicist slain by oldest foe, gravity: "Mia Dyson says her father, at the age of 96 still regularly went to his office at Princeton University. On Wednesday, on such a visit, she says he suffered a fall and died of his injuries Friday morning." TBIs and elder falling are a terrifying source of morbidity and mortality. So many old people start their terminal decline when they fall, for no particularly good reas…
I am not sure how long it'd take to become socially acceptable, but I would bet we could make robotic tails for the elderly to help with balancing... accelerometer, motors and a few counterweights, controller and battery.
Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died
#44Noted physicist slain by oldest foe, gravity: "Mia Dyson says her father, at the age of 96 still regularly went to his office at Princeton University. On Wednesday, on such a visit, she says he suffered a fall and died of his injuries Friday morning." TBIs and elder falling are a terrifying source of morbidity and mortality. So many old people start their terminal decline when they fall, for no particularly good reas…
head trauma ?
oh.. Traumatic Brain Injury.
good point, let's make elders angle protection trendy and desireable
Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died
#45I think last week someone mentioned the dyson sphere with a link to wiki. It said he regretted they named it after him.
Huh, I'd be curious to see that source. I know he somewhat recanted the idea of a Dyson sphere , as it is completely impractical even with unimagined technology (re: tensile strength of the materials, and preventing such a megastructure from falling into the sun whenever a rock hits it). But he later proposed the idea of a Dyson swarm , an extremely large array of solar-sucking satellites orbiting the sun as an idea…
One thing that's slightly interesting about Dyson Sphere's is that spherical shells of matter exert exactly no gravitational pull at any point in their interiors. That is, the integral of gravitational pull over the whole shell is identically 0 for every point inside the shell.* This goes for any force that falls off by the inverse square rule, e.g. the electrostatic force.
In short, there's no practical way to stick an atmosphere, much less a civilization composed of life forms that depend on gravity, to the inside of the sphere, even if the other engineering challenges could be overcome.
* One thing that's suddenly more interesting to me now is if the space at any point is being "pulled" equally in all directions, resulting in zero force, or if the bends in space-time cancel out. In the limit, for example, could you "tear" space-time inside a dense enough and/or heavy enough shell of matter?
Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died
#46I really feel like it's worth having this discussion: the black bar for Freeman Dyson, but not for Katherine Johnson who died earlier this week.
At the time I thought it was likely because she wasn't _directly_ involved in computing and tried to write it off, but Freeman seems to be as related to the page as her. I bring it up because it really does speak to how a community decides who they want to include or not. Unless I've missed some specific guidelines, it sends unwelcoming signals to me.
Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died
#47About 4 years ago, I was a grad student in astrophysics at Princeton. Dyson worked at the Institute for Advanced Study which, while not officially part of the university was essentially an extension of the various departments (shared colloquiums, any researcher there was a valid thesis adviser, etc.). The grad students have a tradition (or used to) called “Thunch” (Thursday Lunch) where they invite someone to come ha…
He would sometimes eat lunch with us postdocs (just randomly, on a whim) when I was a postdoc at IAS. He would always have something interesting to say or ask, generally about science but often offbeat or unexpected -- you couldn't help but notice both his wide-ranging intellectual interests (our field was not quite within his main expertise) and his very gracious manner in starting conversations that both he and we would learn from.
Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died
#48Noted physicist slain by oldest foe, gravity: "Mia Dyson says her father, at the age of 96 still regularly went to his office at Princeton University. On Wednesday, on such a visit, she says he suffered a fall and died of his injuries Friday morning." TBIs and elder falling are a terrifying source of morbidity and mortality. So many old people start their terminal decline when they fall, for no particularly good reas…
I am not sure how long it'd take to become socially acceptable, but I would bet we could make robotic tails for the elderly to help with balancing... accelerometer, motors and a few counterweights, controller and battery.
A lot of people have psychological hurdles to even using a cane. Something like "I raised N children, I powered through my career, I have been a strong independent human being as far as I can remember, why should I use a cane?"
Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died
#49Noted physicist slain by oldest foe, gravity: "Mia Dyson says her father, at the age of 96 still regularly went to his office at Princeton University. On Wednesday, on such a visit, she says he suffered a fall and died of his injuries Friday morning." TBIs and elder falling are a terrifying source of morbidity and mortality. So many old people start their terminal decline when they fall, for no particularly good reas…
You might be interested in the Gravity Research Foundation[1]. It was founded in 1948 by Roger Babson, who also founded Babson College. Babson described gravity as "Our Enemy Number One" and blamed it for the drowning death of his sister. He hoped the foundation would lead to the discovery of an anti-gravity material.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Research_Foundation
Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died
#50He was the sanest mind on climate change: https://e360.yale.edu/features/freeman_dyson_takes_on_the_cl...
> Dyson contends that since carbon dioxide is good for plants, a warmer planet could be a very good thing. And if CO2 does get to be a problem, Dyson believes we can just do some genetic engineering to create a new species of super-tree that can suck up the excess. Forever the optimist!
He put too much trust into mankind. I think it's a problem really good people have almost always; they underestimate how original they are.