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Monday, August 08, 2005

The amateur physicist attempts D-squared amplification in answer to a DeLong query

D-squared presented the intuition brilliantly (I don't know about this D-Squared guy but I know of a Daniel Davies who is f*ing brilliant).

Imagine the positron and the electron under water. The electron pushes water away from the positron and so swims toward the positron. This leaves a bubble (vacume not air). For some totally mysterious reason the bubble floats over to the positron which finds itself with water on one side and nothing on the other (towards to photon). Thus the water pushes the positron into the bubble that came over and the positron moves towards the electron.

This intuition isn't really close to what is happening. It's much more like the positron is a bubble and the electron is a fish displacing water. The point is when the bubble moves East that means water is moving west. so if a drop of water breaks off the fish facing side of the bubble and goes to the other side, the bubble moves towards the fish. If the drop pulls on the water next to it as it is breaking off the fish facing side of the bubble it pulls the fish towards the bubble.

These stories are bad science (BS for short). However, positrons really really are like electron holes (as in you know real key to making computers work) because empty space is, in a way, really really like a silicon crystal. I suppose any people who read this far are really really worried that I am totally confusing the real universe with cyberspace.

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