Bill Washburn, Fresno, CA

[William A Washburn]

I’m retired at 64 years after 40 years of Computer Systems Analysis. However, I still do some contracting.

My BS is in applied mathematics after about two years studying physics. I moved to math after having to drop E&M. Physics is still my first true love. I am now studying (current) physics and finding that much has changed in forty years. I’m also closely following the CERN LHC synchrotron in Switzerland.

I’ve done ham radio for years (WA6QGR) and here are a few photos of the 2.4 GHz stuff I was doing about five years back:
http://billwashburn.home.comcast.net/~b ... _radio.htm

johnf...You're right about HF but at my QTH I have CCRs that don't allow antennas.
That's why I did satellite (until AO0 died). I actually remember a qsl w NewZeeland.

[johnf]

William
welcome quite a few are hams I am no exception ZL2TUD active on 2m and HF
HF sucks at the moment but is getting better --all the better for Charles and his experiment
As Far as I know the laws of physics haven't changed since the 1970's when they were drummed into my brain albeit for a few subatomic particles being discovered like what the LHC is doing in search of the mysterious Higgs.
granted experimental physics has changed a bit due to new detectors and way better electronics and computers to dig the digitised signals out of the noise.
This forum is for enhancing knowledge and general science gas bagging (watercooler for lesser items)

[Doug Coulter]

Welcome, William.

Yes, lots of hams here, I'm one of the few who isn't, but I'm ham-friendly and an SWL. I've done quite a lot of RF work myself, but never got the license. Had a 1rst class FCC at one time though. (what you need to do commercial radio) We definitely hit the hamfests in search of nice gear at a good price when we can.

John's right -- not many real changes in physics other than the ongoing drive for a theory of everything. I kind of like Ed Witten's work myself, because it has some fun implications if he's on the right track, and Curtis is working on a TOE that is interesting as well, and it might all tie in. But none of the really new stuff is experimentally verified or makes predictions we can easily test yet.
Well, string theory (or m theory) does post-dict gravity, at least. A good book on it without math is Richard Greene's "The Elegant Universe", I found that one very good, but keep losing copies, as when I lend it, it never comes back. He's written a few, but that's the good one. It has one of the best coverages of relativity I've ever seen in the bargain, really makes the issues clear.

Interesting that CERN switched to lead from protons and is for now leaving the Higg's search to Fermilab, which is extending their run for that. One of our members works at CERN, perhaps I can ping him and get him to give us a report on what's going on now.

With fusors, we're working in an area that is a bit strange. In the rush to go to the sexier stuff at the time (sub-nuclear), a lot of lower energy physics got left without completion, and that's where we are, so many are hoping for a little low hanging fruit there, or some more predictions of things. I've seen quite a lot of strange "emergent" behavior in mine, and the laws explain it fine in hindsight, but don't predict it at all, sort of like the 3 body gravitational problem. Many life works are involved in plasmas and glow discharges, and group behavior is still being worked out today, so there's some stuff still to be worked out. Not that long ago, the tokomak boys for example found that at very much higher currents, the instabilities they'd been seeing and working out endless math descriptions for just goes away, and invalidates all their prior math that doesn't predict this at all. So there's still room for us to do something worthwhile. Not that any of us are building tokomaks (that I know of).

Anyway, welcome and enjoy. We have some real high quality people here, and we like to help one another.

[chrismb]

[]

[chrismb]

I happen to have a licence also, M3UUU. I am not intentionally active on any bands.

I have also posited a GUT elsewhere, but whenever I do so I get the impression that there is little interest for the simple reason that it predicts nothing different to the current conglomeration of laws/theories. Funnily enough, I think mine is a highly insightful theory for precisely the same reason(!), that it predicts nothing new....

Actually, I've recently thought of one experiment that it might predict to behave differently to current paradigms, but I have been thinking on it a while before splurging it up. Everyone seems to have a GUT and so no-one is really listening to anyone else's, especially if it doesn't conclude any different outcomes to the current set of thinking.

But that's for another thread, and this one is to welcome William, so... Hi!