Physics

The Boring Universe: Is Inflation Incredibly Fast Or Painfully Slow?

Welcome to my first blog entry ever! That the Big Bang is the start of the universe, the mysterious “point of creation”, is stated often still today, even by prominent physicists. It is also not true. The Big Bang is what you get when you back-extrapolate ...

Article - Sascha Vongehr - Aug 16 2011 - 9:17pm

The Plot Of The Week- How Long Do W Bosons Live?

Being still in the middle of a rather long vacation (now in the Italian eastern alps), my blogging power is limited. So today I will just offer you some thoughts on the recent measurements of a fundamental parameter of the Standard Model called "W bos ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Aug 18 2010 - 10:59am

Failing Tools

A long time ago (≈1975) I was involved in establishing a world standard for the measurement of the Optical Transfer Function (OTF). It is better known as its modulus, the Modulation Transfer Function (MTF). The OTF combines the MTF with the Phase Transfer ...

Article - Hans van Leunen - Aug 19 2010 - 2:05pm

Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen discovered X-rays in Giessen

This monument is situated just opposite Sudanlage 6, which housed world famous lineage of Institute of Plant Nutrition which was once headed by Professor Dr  Justus von Liebig, in Giessen, Germany, subsequnelty Professors  of great eminence  The Universit ...

Blog Post - Ashwani Kumar - Aug 19 2010 - 2:19pm

What's Wrong With Dark Energy?

A young fisherman in a distant past looks across the sea and ponders: " What an unimaginably big stretch of water! " He has no idea where it ends or even if it ends. But he knows one thing: over time spans of many years the rainfall into the sea ...

Article - Johannes Koelman - Aug 20 2010 - 2:20pm

Painfully Slow Inflation

During cosmic inflation, the universe's volume doubles only about 260 times. Not much, but still, if this happens during an amazingly short time duration Δ t, it would be an amazingly fast process. Lets see about this. The duration of cosmic inflation ...

Article - Sascha Vongehr - Jan 13 2012 - 7:59pm

Fundamental Physics: Fine Tuning Or Coincidence?

Coincidences in fundamental physics, sometimes in the form of so called “fine tunings”; what are they? Generally speaking, some parameter happens to have a value very close to some other interesting number, and we do not see why. Often, some totally unrela ...

Article - Sascha Vongehr - Dec 6 2011 - 5:37am

The Language Barrier Attacked (2 – Eigen)

When I was in my late teens, my father (a chemical engineer) took an interest in quantum mechanics.  Two words from his conversation at that time stuck in my mind, namely Hamiltonian and eigenfunction.  The former was almost certainly due to the  Scottish ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Aug 24 2010 - 4:17pm

And They Keep Running

On Friday evening I was in Tesero, where a crowd of 150 interested laypersons attended my talk on particle physics, organized by the very active Gruppo Astrofili Fiemme. There, among other things, I discussed the challenge that is on between the Fermilab e ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Aug 23 2010 - 10:35am

100 Million Times Slower Than Light: The Lameness Of Cosmic Inflation

Is cosmic inflation faster than the speed of light? ...

Article - Sascha Vongehr - Aug 16 2011 - 9:38pm