Does global warming cause tornadoes?

It was sort of inevitable that the deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma would ultimately be blamed on global warming and CO2 by someone. While most people – including those alarmed by "climate change" – reject this attribution, you can find pretty powerful people who promote this incredible link.



Senator Barbara Boxer was perhaps the most powerful person who enthusiastically supported the idea that the tornado outbreak was a message from Nature telling us to introduce new carbon taxes. She really sounds religious.

You may find lots of stories in the media that discuss a possible connection between tornadoes and the enhanced greenhouse effect. Thankfully, almost all of them (e.g. NY Daily News, Washington Examiner) say that there's no connection. But Barbara Boxer knows that such a connection would strengthen the case for the new taxes – so it must be a part of the consensus, right?

Without actually thinking about the science or asking researchers, leftwingers generally assume that whatever is convenient for their "cause" must be a part of the "scientific consensus".

Augustin-Louis Cauchy: an anniversary

By the number of mathematical papers he wrote, Augustin-Louis Cauchy was second just to Leonhard Euler. As many college freshmen may testify, more theorems and concepts in mathematics were named after Cauchy than anyone else. And a conservative theoretical physicist shouldn't omit a CV of Cauchy because Cauchy was... well... very conservative!

He died on May 23rd, 1857, i.e. exactly 156 years ago. But before he managed to do that, he had to do many other things. For example, he had to be born – in August 1789, just a month after Bastille was stormed by a crowd on the street, a mess we often call the beginning of the French Revolution.

Intriguing spectra of finite unified theories (FUT)

In November, I discussed FUTs (finite unified theories) which are \(\NNN=1\) supersymmetric grand-unification-inspired versions of MSSM with the additional constraint that the divergences already cancel at the level of the effective field theory. This finiteness boils down to the vanishing of the beta-functions, some anomalous dimensions, and some relationships between the gauge and Yukawa couplings.

This condition doesn't seem to be a "must" – the divergences may very well be taken care of by the high-energy phenomena (string theory ultimately takes care of all divergences so its approximations don't have to be finite by themselves) – but it is an aesthetically intriguing condition, anyway. Now, the same authors released a new paper

Finite Theories Before and After the Discovery of a Higgs Boson at the LHC (S. Heinemeyer, M. Mondragon, G. Zoupanos)

where they calculate some new predictions and intriguing details.

A proof of the Riemann Hypothesis using the convergence of an integral

Thursday morning update: After many hours, I decided that there is a critical error in the otherwise cleverly constructed proof. On page 138 (discussing Lemma 3), second part, he says "whence the function converges absolutely" essentially for any \(z\) with a real positive part. But it seems he hasn't really established that (except for circular reasoning) because if RH is false, and it may be false, the numerator \(|\psi(e^t)-e^t|\) goes like \(e^{at}\) for some positive \(a\) and the region of convergence is shifted by \(a\). So the "absolute" part of the convergence isn't correctly proven, it seems to me. Maybe it's enough to prove the "ordinary" convergence but I suspect that there could be a similar error in the \(g_1\) part of Lemma 3, too. Apologies if I am making a mistake.

Some people talk about the proof of "almost twin" prime integers separated by at most 70 million or something like that. I am not terribly excited by this result even if it is true. It's always more interesting to talk about somewhat promising proofs to the Riemann Hypothesis, not only because of the $1 million that will be given to the first person who solves the old puzzle.

Many people have thought that they had a proof but the candidate proofs have always failed so far. So you must understand it is extremely likely that we have another example of a failure here. But I am going to tell you, anyway. It would be great if some readers spend a sufficient time and energy by reading the paper. Please don't be repelled by the idiosyncratic Chinese English. Even I can recognize that it's not how a native speaker would formulate the ideas. ;-)

吴豪聪

That's his real name. Today, Hao-cong [first name] Wu [surname] of China sent me his new paper with a somewhat strange title (linguistically)

Showing How to Imply Proving The Riemann Hypothesis (PDF full)

published in the European Journal of Mathematical Sciences. How does the proof work?

Ask questions to James Hansen

Today, at 5 p.m. Boston Daylight Savings Time (11 p.m. Central European Time), James Hansen will give a talk over here.



Live Video streaming by Ustream

It's being claimed that you will be allowed to ask a question when he's finished.

Anthony Zee: Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell

Škoda is not just a carmaker; it is producing happy drivers. And you may see that even the engines in the factory are having a great time.

In the same way, Anthony Zee – as Zvi Bern noticed – decided to make many readers fall in love with the physics of general relativity by having written this wonderful tome, Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell. Bern said that the goal wasn't to create new experts but Zee corrected him that he wanted to make the readers fall in love so deeply that they may dream about becoming experts, too. And the clearly enthusiastic Anthony had to enjoy the writing of the book, too.

I received this large, almost 900-page scripture on Einstein's theory yesterday. Obviously, I haven't read the whole book yet but I may have spent more time with it than most readers (more than zero) so that I can tell you why you should buy it and what philosophy, style, and content you may expect.

Tommaso Dorigo impressed by a cold fusion paper

...but the paper is 100% crackpottery...

In his text "Is Cold Fusion For Real?", Tommaso Dorigo seems highly impressed by the following new Italian-Swedish preprint about cold fusion:

Indication of anomalous heat energy production in a reactor device

They claim that an Andrea-Rossi-style tube with nickel and hydrogen produced 10+ times more energy per liter of fuel than any known chemical reaction, as measured by thermal imaging cameras during 96- and 116-hour experimental runs.



Image credit: Rossi, Kullander, Essén and the e-Cat, retrieved from energydigital.com.

Dorigo says that "the conclusions of the tests are at the very least startling". He "continue[s] to believe in the scam hypothesis, but [he] must admit that this study impressed [him] for its reported result." Also, he must say that "[he] will from now on follow more closely the developing story of Rossi's E-CAT...".

Light Dirac RH sneutrinos seen by CDMS and others?

What is dark matter made of?

We almost know that its mass should be dominated by a new light particle species that is heavy enough so that it moves rather slowly relatively to the speed of light ("cold" dark matter). Because dark matter isn't gone yet, such a particle must be stable or almost exactly stable – lifetime in billions of years, to say the least.



The lightest particle carrying a "new type of charge" is the best explanation why it's stable. By far the most popular clarification what this new charge is is the R-parity, a new "sign" introduced by SUSY. All the known particles in the Standard Model have the R-parity equal to \(+1\) which is why the Standard Model interactions never produce individual superpartners whose R-parity is \(-1\). For the Standard Model particles, the R-parity may be written as \((-1)^{3B-3L+2J}\) where the odd coefficients may be replaced by any odd integers (although some values may be more correct for the exotic particles).

Investigation of the largest Czech credit union: assaulting the victims

...including your humble correspondent...

Another annoying event occurred to me on Friday – and it's still happening and will be happening for quite some time.

I learned that the Czech National Bank, the supervisor of our financial markets, began to audit MSD (imsd.cz) or Metropolitan Credit Union (the largest Czech credit union) where I sent a very large amount of money on Tuesday. The transaction wasn't completed (which is why I started to be interested in the situation on Friday) and the money should have been returned but they remained in the air, invisible at both places. Today, I learned from the chairman of MSD that a reverse transaction (sending the money back from MSD) was ordered by MSD last Wednesday but it wasn't allowed because the authorities began to block outgoing payments (approximately) on that very day (?) and they didn't do it right.

Between Friday and today (Monday), I was gradually learning what was happening. The audit by the Czech National Bank that found it suspicious that the percentage of "loans given by MSD that need monitoring" is extremely low, was apparently combined with another (totally independent?) intervention, an investigation (by the Supreme Office of Prosecutors in Prague, whatever is the right English translation) of two large loans worth $50 million in total which are apparently fraudulent (attempts to rob most of the members of MSD such as myself by some individuals).

Ways to discover matrix string theory

...more precisely screwing string theory...

The 5,250+ TRF blog entries discuss various topics, mostly scientific ones, including minor advances. However, there isn't any text on this website that would talk about matrix string theory (inpendently found 2 months later by a herald who inaugurated the new Dutch king and an ex-co-author of mine along with two twins).



If you search for the closest topic, you will find one article about Matrix theory published a year ago and a supplement about membranes in Matrix theory that was added a week later.

President is right to veto Martin Putna's professorship

What is the most intensely discussed event in the Czech news these days?

Czech president Miloš Zeman decided to reject the recommendation of an academic council at the Charles University and not to name Dr Martin C. Putna as a full professor. The title "professor" is supposed to be somewhat more special in Czechia because the people with this proper title are named by the president of the country personally. In some sense, they're more analogous to the holders of the National Medal of Science. Like the amnesty, pardons, and members of the constitutional courts, the ability to influence the composition of the full professors is one of the traces of the power of the Czech president – a role that has become largely ceremonial over the decades.

Judging by the screaming in the media and comments and votes in various discussions, about 95% if not 99% of the people in the political parties, schools, and various intellectuals and pseudointellectuals criticize president Zeman for the decision. I can't even imagine how isolated I would feel if I belonged to that environment. In certain cases, one simply has to remain a dissident. When one dares to agree with such a decision by the president of the country, it's clearly one of these heresies.

It must be politically incorrect to point out that Mr Putna is a decadent moron and bigot who shouldn't be considered a good scholar – and who would clearly devaluate and humiliate the ring of the word "professor" if he were elected one. President Zeman must see it in a similar way and he wrote the justification of the refusal to the ministry of education. Many people are screaming that he must publish the justification except that 1) it's not the president's duty, 2) it would only lead to an escalation of the problems. How would it help if President Zeman pointed out that from a scholarly perspective, Mr Putna is just a pile of politically correct decadent crap? (Update, Sunday: Zeman suggested that the problem with Putna was his presence at Prague Pride, a gay parade.)

William Happer on CNBC

Things have improved a little bit in the attitude of the media to the climate debate.



Click here if you don't see a proper video above.

This is what Princeton physicist Prof Will Happer was allowed to point out on TV – and it wasn't even Fox News! ;-)

String theory = Bayesian inference?

The following paper by Jonathan Heckman of Harvard is either wrong, or trivial, or revolutionary:

Statistical Inference and String Theory

I don't understand it so far but Jonathan claims that one may derive the equations of general relativity – and, in fact, the equations of string theory – from something as general as Bayesian inference by a collective of agents.

Valtr Komárek: 1930-2013

U.S.: As predicted and discussed on TRF exactly 3 months ago, Ernest Moniz became the new U.S. secretary of energy.

Valtr Komárek died today (Fox News). He was one of the key minds behind the Velvet Revolution, in some sense a senior collaborator of the current Czech president and the previous one, and a left-wing politician whom I respected – and be sure they make up a very exclusive set.



His unusual biography reflects the dramatic history of Czechoslovakia and the whole world in the 20th century.

Novim Group: "Just Science" AGW app

Paul O. helped me to possess an iPod Touch, because of my modest contributions to his Our Climate app. I have downloaded about 500 applications on the device and the new addition today is called Just Science. This free app occupies about 50 megabytes on your iDevice.



It was created by the Novim Group led by Michael Ditmore at UC Santa Barbara; the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team led by Richard Muller belongs to the group.

The application does one thing only – it shows you a map of the globe with animated colorful maps showing how the temperature was changing between 1800 or so and today in various regions around stations that reported and on a monthly basis.

Richard Dawid: String Theory and the Scientific Method

Richard Dawid is a philosopher of science who was trained as a high-energy theoretical physicist and his new book that you may pre-order – it will be released at the end of June – isn't another addition to the rants by endless rows of populist crackpots, jerks, and imbeciles who try to criticize string theory without a glimpse of a rational justification (those extraordinarily stupid and dishonest books peaked about 7 years ago).

Instead, it is a philosopher's attempt to identify and localize, name, summarize, articulate, and present the reasons why string theory could have become the definition of status quo in the state-of-the-art theoretical physics despite the fact that the most natural conditions that string theory has something "new and direct" to say about seem to be inaccessible far from the currently doable experiments.

IRS was used to intimidate political opposition in the U.S.

During my decade in the U.S., my tax returns got audited at least twice – both of them had to be fixed when I was already back in Europe and Obama was in charge (2009, for 2007); one was federal and the other one was a Massachusetts tax audit under Deval Patrick (related to 2006, done in 2010). The number seems high to everyone and I view it as rather strong evidence that it's no coincidence.

A scandal in the U.S. strengthens the case:

IRS official knew in 2011 of 'Tea Party' targeting: watchdog report

In 2011, the tax-collecting organization was specifically harassing tax-exempt social welfare charities with keywords indicating that they were Tea Party-affiliated or conservative in general. Their applications were selectively delayed, they were ordered to publish the names of all the sponsors, and so on, and so on.

Feynman, Schwarzschild: anniversaries

Richard Feynman would celebrate his 95th birthday today.

BBC2 on Sunday: The Fantastic Mr Feynman to be aired; Telegraph review. Those who pay TV fees in the UK are probably allowed to download the video via this torrent. Well, they can watch it via iPlayer, too.

One of the most colorful and ingenious physicists of the 20th century would deserve much more than a blog entry – so just like in the cases of other giants, I will abandon all attempts to write a would-be comprehensive biography.



Instead, you may watch this 37-minute NOVA interview (above) filmed in 1973. You're also invited to remind yourself about the story of Feynman and feminists (the latter were clearly immensely obnoxious already decades ago). Interestingly, you may look what I wrote exactly five years ago.

Why we should work hard to raise the CO2 concentration

Many texts about the climate and related issues are highly, boringly repetitive. I believe that a typical person who regularly follows the research and debate about similar issues has heard 99% of the things that are written about the climate change or carbon dioxide etc. Even the research that claims to be new is often just rehashing some memes that have been around – and we usually have very good reasons to suspect that the results of the research were decided before the research was performed.



But there are some good exceptions. Two days ago, ex-moonwalker Harrison Schmitt and physics professor Will Happer of Princeton wrote an opinion article for the Wall Street Journal from which I could have learned some new things:

Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer: In Defense of Carbon Dioxide

---

The demonized chemical compound is a boon to plant life and has little correlation with global temperature.

The basic theme of the article is simple and most of us learned it as fifth-graders: CO₂ is primarily the plant food while its other implications for Nature are negligible in comparison. Humanitarian organizations should work hard to help the mankind to increase the CO₂ concentration and it's surprising that virtually all of them are failing to do so.

In the honor of the heterotic string

Heterosis or the hybrid vigor or outbreeding enhancement is the lucky event (and an important component of Darwin's evolution) in which the offspring has qualitites that surpass both parents, usually because it inherits the good characteristics from both.



The parents are on both sides.

If you search for "heterosis" or "hybrid vigor" via Google Images, you get lots of pictures of corn, puppies, cows, fictitious animal species, and Barack Obama, among other things.

In 1985, four Princeton physicists ignited the second part of the first superstring revolution (that began in 1984) when they discovered the cleverly named heterotic string in their two papers. These men, Gross+Harvey+Martinec+Rohm, are sometimes referred to as the Princeton String Quartet. You won't find any concert of theirs on YouTube but there are lots of pieces by the Brentano String Quartet playing at Princeton.