Physics

Occupy Hilbert Space. A simple example for the 99%.

Occupy Hilbert Space is a quirky event proposed by a Facebook friend of mine.   A Hilbert space is a formal mathematical construct in which the information about a physical system is represented by vectors.  In physics we most often encounter the concept ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Dec 31 2011 - 12:57pm

Symmetry and the principle of Nature:

In this century, I believe that Physics will enter into an another remarkable area of basic understanding which we can not discover yet. No, I am not saying about the experimental facts of CERN or Fermilab. I am saying about a completely new aspect of Phy ...

Blog Post - Dr. Subhabrata M... - Jan 2 2012 - 7:46pm

Spinning the Interaction Story: Attraction and Repulsion (3 of 3)

The more I read on this topic, the less confident I get. If you wish to read a solid technical explanation, I recommend a reply by David Simmons-Duffin sent to me by Henry. It all comes down to Lorentz invariance and unitarity when considering propagators ...

Blog Post - Doug Sweetser - Jan 3 2012 - 1:03am

A Statistical Issue In The Opera Measurement

Update: I have modified the title of this post [originally: "Opera's Statistical Booboo"] and the text below (in places I marked accordingly) upon realizing, thanks to a very good point raised by a reader in the comments thread below, that ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Jan 4 2012 - 9:04am

How Belief Could Be Physically Effective Through Quantum Physics I

Precognition is under scientific investigation, though often with the aim to obtain null-results in order to discredit such ideas. In fact, “extra-sensory perception” (ESP) and “precognition”, “premonition”, “presentiment”, and so on are misleading terms, ...

Article - Sascha Vongehr - Jan 16 2012 - 12:14am

Help High School Kids Visit CERN!

Through my colleague Marco Cirelli I got to know about the effort of 36 high-school student of Charlottesville (VA), who are fund-raising for a trip to CERN this spring. I thus visited their home page, and got favourably impressed with the organization of ...

Blog Post - Tommaso Dorigo - Jan 6 2012 - 5:01am

How Airplanes Fly- The Real Story (With Experimental Verification!)

How do airplanes fly? The next time you find yourself in an airplane, look around at your fellow passengers. How many of them would be able to explain to you what force keeps the hundreds of tons  of metal up in the air? How about yourself? Would you be ab ...

Article - Johannes Koelman - Jan 8 2012 - 11:18pm

The Einstein Expansion Paradox

The universe expands. The galaxies, as they depart ever further from one another, are classically and even in Einstein’s special theory of relativity, described as dust particles: The universe as a cloud of dust expanding through space. However, in Einstei ...

Article - Sascha Vongehr - Jan 10 2012 - 9:52pm

Hubble Eventually Did Not Believe in Big Bang: Associated Press

Edwin Hubble's observation about the spectral redshift from nearby ``nebulae'' (galaxy < 10 Mpc), published in 1929 got interpreted in terms of an ``Expanding Universe'' and eventually the ``Big Bang Model''. This inte ...

Blog Post - Abhas Mitra - Jan 9 2012 - 7:23am

A Limited Toy Model for Classical Gravity

Start the year off with a new toy model for gravity. It is a toy, so let's just play with it and see what we learn. Feel free in the comments section to vote if I should keep this toy or return it for a refund. At a minimum, the toy must do three thi ...

Blog Post - Doug Sweetser - Jan 10 2012 - 8:43pm