Jim Baen's Universe-Vol 2 Num 2
Page 33
But on to Travis' gentle response.
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Hi Stephen,
Your article is interesting and makes you think, but I'd say it is completely wrong and misrepresenting what an "intrinsic property" of a subatomic particle is.
You have confused a real "extrinsic" phenomenon, AKA the angular momentum of a spinning ball, with an "intrinsic" property. The angular momentum of electrons is actually a thing called "intrinsic angular momentum" and is only real in that we call it angular momentum or spin. The classical idea of a spinning charged cloud is unstable and can't actually exist. The electron is a quantum phenomenon and therefore must follow the strange statistics of such. The spin is not a perpetual input of energy rather than it is just a property of the phenomena known as an "electron" that we describe as a particle mathematically.
Your rebut in that some researchers in Holland have learned to manipulate the spin of an electron really doesn't help. There is a statistical probability of having an electron at one particular spin or another and these folks have managed to use some form of quantum connectedness to manipulate those statistics.
As far as calling them perpetual energy devices. Well perpetual energy would imply that integrated over time the energy production from an electron's field is infinite. However, when you interact with that electron you change its energy state and decrease its energy level. Oh you don't decrease the spin but you might change the spin handedness. But it is kind of like saying that a guy that wears a blue shirt all the time is perpetual motion because the blue shirt never changes and he never takes it off. Spin is just the shirt that the electron wears...all the time.
There is another issue that hasn't been considered either and that is the fact that the electron is a fundamental chunk of our universe...a piece of it that can't be made smaller. It can be converted to a photon, which also has an intrinsic spin angular momentum but it is not perpetual.
Aha! There is my answer. All that an electron is can be converted to a spin 1 boson (photon) which, as can be easily shown, has a finite energy of E=hc/lambda. And that photon can only be absorbed up once to use it for energy and therefore it is not an infinite perpetual energy source.
Regards,
Travis
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When asked for more clarification he responded patiently, but with emphasis, that until one can accept the quantum particle aspect of the electron then one will never understand that spin and axis are only pieces of an equation that have no comparison to a ball spinning on an
axis.
I asked if he was saying that because an electron's "spin" is statistical, and therefore has no geometrical orientation, that the Dutch researchers were wrong in their claim that they are now able to point what they referred to as "its axis" in any direction. Because if they are right, then the spin does have a geometrical orientation and "spin" is not just a classical word for something which is not really rotating.
"The axis of the electron is just a way of saying blue shirt, red shirt, or striped shirt," he said, emphasizing that "an electron is not a ball spinning about on an axis like a planet. This is the hardest thing for even Ph.D. level physicists to comprehend. A particle is a mathematical tool we use to describe an electron. But the electron is an electron, not a particle. Oh, you'll hear physicist say that an electron is a particle. What that really means is that an electron is an entity that we use particle math to describe the way it interacts with the environment that we know how to measure."
Referring to the Dutch researchers, he said, "These guys that can 'point' the electron axis are simply changing its shirt. What they are really doing is taking a bunch of electrons and statistically forcing some of them to be in a box of red shirts. Then they can cause a quantum thing to happen that allows them to switch shirts with a box of blue ones."
For a moment I thought I had him. "There are no two ways about this," I said, "either electron spins have a geometrical 'axis' or they don't. Granted, since electrons must rotate twice to return to their original orientation it's clear that they do not rotate in only three dimensional space. But even saying that their rotation extends into four or more dimensions of space is no escape from geometry. And of course if they rotate there is motion. Which is something your blue shirt lacks."
But his response was, "Wrong interpretation of my input. There is a geometrical 'axis' if you will but that really means again, red shirt or blue shirt. And trying to imply and/or apply a classical idea of a ball oriented about an axis spinning and there being motion involved really has nothing to do [with] a quantum particle. Classical reality is completely meaningless and different and does not apply."
For the uninitiated, physics has its own secret equivalent of rock/paper/scissors. Thinking I could trump his quantum beats classical, I pulled out causality. "Saying that electrons are fundamental particles is not sufficient to lay their behavior to rest. They have properties, and all properties are caused by something. There is no level below which we can stop searching for causes. We may not be able to find the causes, but they are there, waiting for us. Waiting for the day when we improve the power or subtlety of our equipment or the power or subtlety of our intellectual models."
But I underestimated his desire to know the mysteries which cause the quantum properties of subatomic particles. Mysteries which work below those quantum properties and so—in my opinion if no one else's—are unlikely to be subject to them.
"Again, you misunderstood me," he said. "I agree with every word in [that] paragraph. My point was that it is very likely that an electron is simply a manifestation of an actual piece of spacetime that cannot be reduced to anything else unless it is converted to a photon which would be another manifestation of spacetime."
He went on to say, "I am a firm proponent of the fact that we know diddly about the universe and will continue to peel back the layers of the cosmic onion. But, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Electrons are just manifestations of spacetime that emit certain unusual properties that when described via macroscopic ideas such as spinning balls confuses the living hell out of most people."
He summed up his primary point with: "We must really and truly put our minds outside the classical ideas box and start thinking along the path of the weirdness that is quantum physics."
Thanks, Doc.
* * *
Doctor Travis S. Taylor is a scientist and engineer, as well as an author of fiction and non-fiction. His primary occupation is as a contractor working on projects for NASA, the Department of Defense and the intelligence community.
His current projects include advanced propulsion systems, ideas to help win the global war on terrorism, engineering future combat systems and helping to design the crew exploration vehicle for NASA's return to the moon.
He has a doctorate in optical science and engineering, a bachelor's in electrical engineering, and three master's degrees: one in astronomy, one in physics and one in aerospace engineering.
He's known as Doc Travis to readers of his hard science fiction novels. These include Warp Speed and its sequel The Quantum Connection, both of which involve the development and use of faster-than-light travel.
Von Neumann's War—which he co-wrote with the bestselling author John Ringo—asks the question: "how would we defend ourselves if our solar system was invaded by billions of self-replicating robotic machines sent here to prepare the place for the arrival of their creators?" Doc Travis was a natural for writing this novel since he had already written a nonfiction book which dealt seriously, and scientifically, with many of this problem's features. That book is available in paperback from Amazon.com and is titled: An Introduction to Planetary Defense: A Study of Modern Warfare Applied to Extra-terrestrial Invasion.
You can learn more about Doc Travis at his website: http://www.doctravis.com/
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Link to the news item quoted in the article:
Dutch physicists get a grip on the spin of a single electron.
17 August 2006
by M&C
http://www.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=4b3e55d0-1a34-4388-b3ca-acbe48c87696〈=en
* * *
Slush
Written by Mike Resnick
Everyone talks about slush, but no one does anything about it. Except read it. Very reluctantly.
But it's what keeps us going. Sooner or later just about every author you've ever heard of, or will ever hear of, comes out of a slushpile. Sooner or later every editor reads slush, if not all of it, then at least the slush that's passed up the line to him by the people who are paid to read nothing but slush.
If you go to enough conventions, sooner or later you're going to attend a panel with a title like "It Came From the Slush Pile," in which editors discuss—humorously, it is to be hoped—the most awful stories ever to appear in their slush piles. I never participate in such panels, because I think it smacks of a certain cruelty. I don't like making fun of people who are trying their best to become writers, and of course you never know if one of them is in the audience, sitting there being quietly humiliated by editors poking fun at his lack of skill.
Every now and then someone who has attended such a panel asks me if slush is really like that. The answer, alas, is that it's every bit that bad and nowhere near that amusing.
So let's talk about slush a bit, since I have never, in four decades in the publishing industry, seen a small slush pile.
Why do we have them at all?
An editor is a lot more than a purchasing agent. He has to work hand-in-glove with writers. He has to attend sales meetings. He has to sort out his budget. He has to work with his artists and his art director. He has to work with his columnists. He has to balance his issue, which becomes quite interesting when a story he was depending on—or a segment of a serial—comes in late or not at all. He has to justify what he is doing to his publisher—and when it doesn't work, he has to justify his continuing employment to his publisher. In this field, he has to attend conventions and glad-hand authors, especially authors who are writing for rival magazines and whom he would like to have writing for his magazine. And he has to read dozens of stories every week.
The amazing part is that he gets it all done. What he can't get done is reading 250 or more unsolicited stories a week. He knows that he's got to look at all the journeyman writers, all the award winners, all the agented stuff (though these days a majority of agents don't want to be bothered with short fiction) . . . but he simply hasn't got enough hours in the week to read 250 stories by the authors he doesn't know, the authors whose accomplishments are either nonexistent or at least unknown to him. By arbitrary definition, those stories are known as slush, and until someone reads them they reside in what is known as the slush pile.
And since he hasn't got time to read them himself, the editor—or his boss—hires slush readers, who are usually referred to by the more dignified title of first readers. They wade through the slush, always hoping they'll find the next Asimov or Lackey in the pile, and usually going home wondering if any author they read that day actually graduated grammar school.
So . . . that's slush, and that's where stories go until the author has developed enough of a reputation to get his work out of the slush pile.
What are the odds?
For twelve years I wrote a bi-monthly column for the Hugo-nominated semiprozine Speculations titled "Ask Bwana" (no, I didn't choose the name), in which I gave not artistic but career advice to hopeful science fiction writers. And one day, in the mid-1990s, someone asked me that very question: what are the odds of selling your story out of the slush pile?
I didn't know, so I asked some editors.
Gardner Dozois, who was editing Asimov's at the time, told me that he got about a thousand slush stories a month. How many did he buy? Three a year. Odds against selling a slush story to Asimov's? 4,000-to-1 against.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch was editing F&SF at the same time, and I asked her the same question. Her answer differed only in degree. She got about 7,500 slush submissions a year, and bought seven or eight. So the odds against selling a slush story to F&SF were minimally better: 1,000-to-1 against.
But you know what? People do come out of the slush pile. I did. Eric Flint did. Anne McCaffrey did. Nancy Kress did. Joe Haldeman did. And so did 95% of the authors you can name, the authors you see on the Hugo and Nebula ballots and the bestseller lists every year.
You've got to be good, and you've got to be a little bit lucky, but most of all you've got to persevere.
Now . . . are there any tips for getting out of the slush pile?
Yeah, there are.
The first is: learn how to format a story, whether on paper or in phosphors. You wouldn't believe how many stories are left at the starting gate just over that.
Second, check your spelling and punctuation. Again, that seems awfully basic, and in truth no good story ever failed to sell because of a couple of typos . . . but a sloppy manuscript implies that the author had no respect for his work and his craft, and if he didn't then why should the reader (and in this case, the slush reader)?
Okay, any high school teacher could have told you that. Now for something they don't tell you.
Third, spend 90% of your effort working on Page 1. If you don't capture the slush reader by the bottom of that first page, the odds are hundreds to one that you've already lost the battle.
Let me tell you a depressing little truth. Back in my starving-editor days in the late 1960s, I edited a trio of men's magazines. And it was company policy to fire any first reader who couldn't reject a story every two minutes, because that's how fast they arrived. That means he had to open the envelope, pull out the story, read that opening page, attach a rejection slip, stuff and seal the envelope, and put it in the outgoing mail tray, all in 120 seconds. If you hadn't captured him by paragraph 2, he never got to all those gems that you had up ahead on pages 8 and 19 and 22.
When I joined JimBaen's Universe there was a ton of slush that had been passed on by our enthusiastic but inexperienced staff. The reason I so characterize them (and they are still enthused, but no longer inexperienced) is because the slush reader, when he or she would forward a story to Eric or me, would write a brief comment . . . and I came to too damned many comments that said, in essence, "It starts slow, but it gets really good on Page 7." I didn't even have to read those, because that's an automatic reject. Our subscribers are not being paid to wade through all the junk to get to Page 7; if we haven't captured them in the first couple of pages, the odds are that they'll stop reading that story and go on to one by a major author (we don't lack for them), or at least a known commodity.
There are many other reasons for rejecting a slush story (beyond the fact that most of them are simply not written at a professional level). In the mystery field, it's an old and honored tradition to create a detective, and present him with one crime after another for the remainder of his (and the author's) career. Doesn't work in science fiction. We've got all time and space to play with, and twice-told tales don't cut it, not in the magazine with the highest word rates around. It is essential for the hopeful science fiction writer to be well-read in the field. (There used to be a rejection slip back in the 1970s, I can't remember the magazine now, where there were 8 or 10 reasons for rejection, and the editor would check the one that applied. One of them, and it was checked more often than you might think, was "Heinlein did it better. And earlier.")
A quartet of helpful tips:
There's no sense nagging an editor about your story. The odds are that he hasn't seen it yet (and indeed may never see it, if the slush reader doesn't pass it on to him)—and you have no idea who's reading his slush pile.
You will no doubt come up with several innovative scams for getting your story out of the slush pile. Trust me: they may be new to you, but there won't be any that the editor hasn't seen a few dozen times.
Don't lie about your credits. They are too easy to verify.
Don't brag about your amateur or semi-pro "sales." They won't impre
ss any professional editor, and if appears that you think otherwise it tends to scream "bush league."
Ready for one final unhappy truth? A slush story can't be as good as a story by a "name" writer; it's got to be better. It is a simple fact that if Asimov's puts Connie Willis's name or my name on the cover, they know from past experience that we will draw a certain number of additional readers. Same as when F&SF runs Harlan Ellison or Ray Bradbury on their cover, or when Analog's cover brags about a new Lois McMaster Bujold or Robert J. Sawyer story. If you're going to knock one of these authors, or the dozens of others you can name, out of an issue, you've got to have written one hell of a story.