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It looks like one of the authors is on HN with us. Can you offer any insight into the cause of the confusing language in the "Science News" piece? It reads li
by smurpy 5y ago
It looks like one of the authors is on HN with us. Can you offer any insight into the cause of the confusing language in the "Science News" piece? It reads like it was written by a bot not a human.
In the sentence "With the theory physicists Gregory Breit and John Wheeler were able to prove that when two high-energy photons collide, a positron and an electron arise, i.e. matter is formed" shouldn't the word be "predict" not "prove"?
A more flagrant example of a strange word choice for a human science writer to make is "A direct conversion would require a laser that emits gamma-ray photons in a highly concentrated steel." Shouldn't the word "steel" instead be "beam"? This seems like the sort of thing an uncomprehending bot might do, conflate those two words.
Are my the nits I've picked, above, unfounded? Does the author of the original paper have any information which might suggest that an actual human wrote the "Science News" piece?
If not I would suggest that we've got a bot on the loose! Eeek!
Further, I think I'm seeing rather a lot of "content" floating around recently which smacks of machine origins.
Also, to Daniel... Great paper. Amazing stuff!
- jdbburg 5y agoAuthor here, thanks! I am not familiar with this website (science-news.co) so I cannot comment on the quality of the writing (or human origin). I agree with you that "prove" should be "predict" - they did not prove anything except that from a theory standpoint, this process can happen in quantum mechanics. The sentence about lasers is also strange, I have no idea what is meant there. My only guess is that it might be trying to describe some laser experiment that uses lasers to "heat" a hohlraum to produce a field of photons. Then some other high energy photon beam is used to collide with the photons inside the hohlraum. edit: Original article from DOE press release is here with a bit more info: https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=119023 https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=119023
- dang 5y agoOk, we've changed the URL to that from https://science-news.co/scientists-create-matter-from-pure-light-proving-the-breit-wheeler-effect/ https://science-news.co/scientists-create-matter-from-pure-l.... Thanks!
- perihelions 5y agoDang, the old URL is the Google translation of a German-language magazine article (not attributed, so it's functionally plagiarism): https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/physik/materie-aus-purem-licht-erzeugt-13375299 https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/physik/mater... You've previously asked for examples [0] of this type of fraud on HN: so this is one example! Credit to 'smurpy' in this thread, who noticed the 'bot'-like writing style. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27295943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27295943
- dang 5y agoThank you! I have banned the site.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y agoAutomated synonym replacement is the current cutting edge in plagiarism, or more generously, avoiding automated plagiarism detection. There was recently a large scandal in which some large number of scientific papers were traced to a ghostwriting house via their automated synonyms. So my guess would be that the science news "author" is rewording things to avoid stepping on another author's copyright.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago> So my guess would be that the science news "author" is rewording things to avoid stepping on another author's copyright. And doing it badly...
- raducu 5y agoHow can two photons collide? Aren't photons force carriers/bosons?
- eigenhombre 5y agoYes, photons are bosons / force carriers, but they interact with charged particles, and in this case produce e+ e- pairs via this Feynman diagram [1]. By rotating the diagram in spacetime, you get different known interactions: pair production (this topic), pair annihilation (same diagram running the other way in time), and, if memory serves, Compton scattering. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-photon_physics#/media/File:Photons_interaction_for_fermion-antifermion_pair.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-photon_physics#/media/File...
- dr_dshiv 5y agoSo, can photons interact and produce matter without particles to interact with?
- BizarroLand 5y agoOne of the consequences of E=MC^2 is that there is a strong implication that energy can be converted directly into energy and vice versa. Photons, although mass-less, have energy and can therefore be converted into matter under some circumstances.
- adamc 5y agoI think you mean "directly into matter".
- BizarroLand 5y agoYes. Thank you! Apparently my well intentioned ramblings can be directly converted into brain farts.
- api 5y ago
- acchow 5y agoAlthough in propositional logic we can say: x ⊢ y which means "x proves y".
- perihelions 5y agoIt's Google's machine translation of a German-language article, https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/physik/materie-aus-purem-licht-erzeugt-13375299 https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/physik/mater...
- ThePadawan 5y agoGood shout! The German article definitely misspells Strahl (beam) as Stahl (steel), which makes no sense in context.