Open Password – Monday June 20, 2022
#1090
WikiLeaks – Julian Assange – Interior Minister Priti – Extradition to the USA – Human Rights – Journalism – Belamrsh – War crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq
Scientific revolutions – Physics – Measurement errors – Lars Jaeger – Particle physics – Steven Weinberg – Sheldon Glashow – Abdus Salam – Quantum field theory of the weak nuclear force – Quantum electrodynamics – Theory of the electroweak force – Strong nuclear force – Gravitational force – Elementary particles – General relativity – Standard model for the microcosm – Gravitation theory – Lorenz Group – Grand Unification Theory – 24-dimensional SU(5) group – Particle accelerators – Quantum theory – Theory of Everything – Dark matter – Dark energy – Fifth fundamental force – Albert Einstein – Femilab – W bosons – David Toback – Paradigm shift – CERN – Large Hadron Colliger
Outsell – ESG Scores – Unstructured Content – Financial Segment Providers – Postbank Digital Study 2022 – Online Buyers – Between Resource Conservation and Sustainability – Packaging Waste – Ecological Shipping – Thomas Brosch – Digital Natives
WikiLeaks: Assange’s extradition almost certain
Title:
Scientific revolutions:
On the way to new basic theories in physics Or are the measurements just inaccurate? – By Lars Jaeger
III.
Heard While Outselling or listening to the customer
Developing ESG Scores Using Unstructured Content
IV.
Postbank digital study 2022
Online buyers between resource conservation and sustainability – Ten percent of Germans are reducing online purchases for ecological reasons – Younger people are more willing
to limit their own online consumption
WikiLeaks
Assange’s extradition almost certain
“The WikiLeaks founder faces up to 175 years in prison in the USA. The British government has now agreed to the extradition of Assange. … The years-long tug of war over the extradition of Julian Assange is probably over: the WikiLeaks founder can be extradited to the United States. Interior Minister Priti Patel signed a corresponding extradition order, her ministry announced on Friday.
Both governments had argued for twelve years over Assange’s extradition. He faces a total of 18 charges in the USA , including for espionage. In April, a British court recently ruled that the WikiLeaks founder could be extradited. But the British government still had to agree. This has now happened with Patel’s vote.
Although Assange still has the opportunity to appeal the decision, it is now almost certain that he will be extradited to the USA and tried there. Immediately after Patel’s decision, WikiLeaks announced that it would appeal the verdict.
The Assange case is currently the most important dispute over press freedom worldwide for human rights and journalist organizations: Julian Assange is co-founder of the WikiLeaks platform, which makes documents publicly available to everyone. Since 2020 he has been in British extradition custody in the high-security Belmarsh prison. In 2010, Assange leaked several diplomatic cables via WikiLeaks that put the United States in a bad light. “WikiLeaks, and therefore Assange, also came into Washington’s sights as a result of publications about war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq .”
WikiLeaks founder: British government clears way for Julian Assange to be extradited to the USA, in: Der Spiegel, June 17th
Scientific revolutions
On the way to new basic theories in physics Or are the measurements just inaccurate?
By Lars Jaeger
Lars Jaeger
The last major theory in particle physics that radically changed the foundations of physics was developed in the late 1960s by Steven Weinberg, Sheldon Glashow and Abdus Salam. They managed to integrate the quantum field theory of the weak nuclear force with quantum electrodynamics as two different sides of a single theory. Physicists call this “theory of the electroweak force”. It is characterized by the gauge invariance of the SU(2) x U(1) group – an expression that every particle physicist, some other physicists and mathematicians and no one else knows (and which cannot be easily explained here either).
All particle physics is now characterized by this theory together with the theory of the strong nuclear force (which is given by the gauge invariance of the eight-dimensional SU(3) group) which developed at a fairly contemporaneous time. Accordingly, particle theory is characterized by the invariance group SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1). In addition, there is the gravitational force, which acts as the fourth force in general physics – for example in our lives. However, this is so weak for elementary particles compared to the strong and weak nuclear force that it plays no role in particle physics – it only has to be taken into account for large bodies such as planets and suns.
This is what constitutes today’s physics – four forces that act on bodies from suns to elementary particles. The theories on this are more than 50 years old (the general theory of relativity even over a hundred years) and have remained unchanged to this day. It is no exaggeration to say that it could hardly be further from the desired elegant overall theory of physics:
- on the one hand with the inelegant symmetry structure in the standard model for the microcosm (the SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1) group)
- on the other hand, the theory of gravity, which is completely independent of it and is fundamentally not compatible with the symmetry group that applies in the microcosm.
The latter is the symmetry that includes the general theory of relativity, which describes gravity, as well as the general Lorenz group (which, like SU(3) and SU(2), represents a local symmetry group) – the latter with all translations in space and time, that is, local shifts, rotations and Velocity transformations. Seen as a whole, the entirety of the symmetry groups represents a rather abstruse and anything but elegant, uniform structure. This contradicts the ideas of physicists, according to which physics should be explained and presented elegantly without contradictions and uniformly.
There have been a large number of convincing theories for the three forces in elementary particle theory for many years, which combine all symmetries into an overall symmetry group. In this context, physicists speak of the “Grand Unification Theory” (GUT). Among them, the 24-dimensional SU(5) group is probably the most popular. These and all other groups cannot yet be tested empirically. This is because the energy scales that would force the groups to reveal themselves in experiments are many orders of magnitude higher than physicists are currently able to achieve in experimental particle accelerators.
But couldn’t some properties of these theories already be demonstrated at lower energy levels? The 24-dimensional invariance transformation matrix of the SU(5) group predicts at certain energies various new particles that could possibly be found at lower energies. However, these have not yet been discovered.
We also don’t know how the gravitational force should be integrated. There are theories about this too. However, to validate or falsify this required several more orders of magnitude of energy. In addition, the ultimate theory requires a unification of quantum theory and general relativity (a “Theory of Everything” (TOE)), which, however, contradict each other in many points and are therefore fundamentally incompatible.
Nothing has been added to this inelegant particle model in the last five decades. The values of numerous important parameters (17 in total) cannot be deduced from the model, but must be determined experimentally. Doing this in detail was the main task of two generations of particle physicists. Today’s physicists are aware that their particle theory and/or general relativity need to be updated because they cannot explain phenomena that are 99% certain. Specifically, this concerns the presence of invisible matter in space, the so-called “dark matter”, and the continued acceleration of the expansion of the universe by a force called “dark energy”.
There may currently be a change here. Recently, physicists have been speculating about whether they have identified a fifth fundamental force in some experiments that are not yet entirely clear. This kind of assumption is not fundamentally new. Einstein and his contemporaries were already discussing whether there might be a fifth force (albeit a completely different one than the one assumed today). For about a year now, measurements of certain particles have been emerging that deviate from the Standard Model, albeit only to a very small extent, making the deviation difficult to detect.
The team from Femilab in Illinois claims to have discovered that the particles known as W bosons (responsible for the weak nuclear force) appear to be slightly more massive than predicted in the theories. Prof. David Toback, a co-spokesperson for the project at Femilab, even described the measurement as “shocking”. He told the media: “The discovery could lead to the development of a new, more comprehensive theory about how the universe works. If the results are confirmed by other experiments, the world will look different. (Then there would have to be) a paradigm shift. The hope is that this result will perhaps break the dam.”
However, scientists found only a tiny difference in the mass of W bosons compared to what standard particle physics theory suggests – not even 0.1%. There is therefore a not insignificant probability that the results are measurement errors. This could also be supported by the fact that the most accurate measurement of W bosons to date contradicts two of the next most accurate measurements from two experiments that agree with the Standard Model.
These considerations have led to CERN (near Geneva) wanting to restart an accelerator that has just been renovated and cleaned. This does not have the highest particle collision energy that can be achieved today at CERN. But this accelerator is particularly good when it comes to the measurement accuracy for the crucial determination here. If the Large Hadron Colliger (LHC) confirms the previous results, this could, according to CERN, “be the first of many new results that could herald the biggest change in our understanding of the universe since Einstein’s theories of relativity more than a hundred years ago.”
We all secretly hope, physicists and non-physicists alike, that the terribly inelegant standard particle model will be replaced by a new physics that could perhaps even be further developed into a comprehensively expanded theory. But are less than 0.1% changes in particle physics measurements enough? Let’s remember: The first prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity wasn’t particularly great either: under the influence of the sun, the angle of the rays of other stars passing the sun changes by eight arcseconds, i.e. about one five-hundredth of a single degree (more precisely 1/450). This brought Einstein the crown of physics overnight.
Lars Jaeger has published many articles in Open Password about, among other things, quantum physics and Internet companies. He lives near Zurich, where he has built two companies that advise institutional financial investors. At the same time, he maintains blogs on science and current affairs. His next book entitled “Ways out of the climate catastrophe” will be published by Springer Verlag in autumn 2021 .
Heard While Outselling*
Or: Listen to the customer
Developing ESG Scores Using Unstructured Content
We’re in constant communication with firms in the financial, credit and risk markets. The Financial Information & Solutions and GRC Solutions segments remained strong in 2021, with ESG initiatives driving momentum in new product development.
Financial segment providers are talking to us about methods of developing ESG scores using unstructured content, such as ESG-related news. GRC segment providers are focusing on the propensity for non-financial companies to seek ESG insight in their third-party screening processes.
* Outsell is Open Password’s international partner
Postbank digital study 2022
Online shoppers between resource conservation
and sustainability
Ten percent of Germans are reducing online purchases for ecological reasons
Younger people are more willing to limit their own online consumption
(Postbank) More than 80 percent of Germans support a ban on the destruction of returns. Online retailers should be encouraged to be more sustainable. The people surveyed do not want to change their own purchasing behavior on the Internet – neither by reducing the volume nor by avoiding returns. It is particularly difficult for people over 40 to reduce online shopping. These are the results of the representative Postbank digital study 2022.
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Against waste and unnecessary packaging waste
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84 percent of German citizens would like it if online retailers were prohibited from destroying returns. Three quarters of Germans prefer providers who use as little or sustainable packaging material as possible. “Customers are now paying attention to the issue of sustainability in many areas. In online retail, this particularly applies to the question of packaging waste and ecological shipping.
“Any company that pays attention to this and acts sustainably will score points with consumers,” says Thomas Brosch, Head of Digital Sales at Postbank. At least half of German citizens would be willing to pick up orders at a central pickup station near their place of residence considered more sustainable than bringing the goods to every buyer’s home.
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Only a few are currently restricting their online purchases.
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For ecological reasons, only ten percent of those surveyed are currently trying to reduce their online purchases or avoid them altogether. 27 percent of online shoppers order goods that they know they will return, such as clothing in different sizes. One in seven people do not think about ecological aspects when shopping online. Nevertheless, four out of ten Germans say that when ordering online, they make sure to collect the desired products and receive them in one delivery.
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Contradictory tendencies among those under 40
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There are contradictory tendencies in the group of under-40s. Here, comparatively often attempts are made to reduce purchases on the Internet due to ecological factors. Specifically: 17 percent would like to order less online in the future and pay more attention to ecological features. This puts them well above the national average of ten percent. On the other hand, more than one in two digital natives often order from restaurants or delivery services. This means you accept disposable packaging for meals. Among older people this is only 19 percent. More than four out of ten people under 40 also use disposable packaging such as coffee-to-go cups.
For the “Postbank Digital Study 2022 – The Digital Germans” 3,050 Germans were surveyed representatively in January and February of this year. With this study, Postbank is examining for the eighth year in a row what developments are taking place in the various areas of people’s lives
German citizens are becoming increasingly aware of digitalization in general and financial issues in particular.
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