Title: Owner of a famous cat..

Author: Alan Lenton

Date: 21 September 2006 20:47:34 +01:00 or Thu, 21 September 2006 20:47:34 +01:00

Summary: [21-9-2006] Wave equations with a difference!

Body: One of the most fascinating things I read about this week, wasn't about programming at all.It was hard science.

For some time now scientists have started to take mariners' tales of giant waves - up to 100 ft high - seriously, instead of dismissing them out of hand.

The existence of such waves has been proved by satellite observations, and it turns out that they are much more frequent than even the sailors thought.

However, so far, scientists have not been able to come up with a convincing model of how these waves come into existence. All the predictions gave waves of only half the height of the observed waves. Now a bunch of scientists based in Sweden and Germany have used Schrodinger's (Yes, the owner of the famous cat!) wave equations to successfully model the giant waves.

Why is this exciting? Because Schrodinger's equations are only supposed to work on atomic sized objects. Not only is this good news for ships because it should be possible to predict where giant waves are likely to occurs, but it raises the possibility of breakthroughs using the wave equations in other non-atomic sized situations.

http://www.physorg.com/news77381892.html

Notes: 

More fields may be available via dynamicdata ..