I typically add samples of books to my Kindle library when considering purchases. While examining my Kindle library yesterday, I started reading a sample of Art Hobson’s 2017 book Tales of the Quantum: Understanding Physics’ Most Fundamental Theory and then became interested in his background. A Google search found biographical information, references to his books,… Continue reading Point particles RIP
A trip down memory lane this week led me to the topic of this post. In exchanging emails with a fellow alumnus, I mentioned the book A Canticle for Leibowitz1 which we read in a freshman English class. He remembered the professor’s name. That led to an exploration of my file cabinets and the class… Continue reading Two cultures redux
In the 2014 science fiction action film Lucy, there’s a scene in a car where Lucy sees the radio frequency signals (streams) from cell phones and manipulates that part of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum with gestures in order to listen to a call in progress. We are forever enveloped in an EM jumble, as Feynman… Continue reading EM jumble
Space.com posted an article on June 15, 2017, which is a good summary of this topic — “What is dark matter?” Roughly 80 percent of the mass of the universe is made up of material that scientists cannot directly observe. Known as dark matter, this bizarre ingredient does not emit light or energy. So why… Continue reading Hidden in plain sight — dark matter
My meditation on our common sense, everyday experience of physics and the 10^n and 10^-n reality was facilitated by MSNBC this morning — there was a segment with Neil deGrasse Tyson promoting his latest book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. A brief Q&A offered some additional context and memorable quotes. For example, Galileo’s famous quote that “The… Continue reading “Star man” as rock star
In reading Louisa Gilder’s book The Age of Entanglement, I was reminded of Bohr’s correspondence principle1 (originally analogy principle and also referred to as “Bohr’s magic wand”). I hadn’t thought about it much lately. Other than a few times in Lederman’s book Quantum Physics for Poets, the term wasn’t referenced in the other physics books… Continue reading Correspondence principle RIP?
Have you ever counted the number of things that you own which use lasers?1 One of the best know devices emerging from our understanding of quantum physics is the laser. Remember the meaning of the acronym? Laser pointers are cool, eh. We rely on lasers for communications, entertainment, health & safety, defense, retail services, manufacturing,… Continue reading How to create entangled photon pairs
In the chapter “Beyond this horizon,” Sean Carroll discusses two related problems involving properties of empty space. Before discussing the vacuum energy problem, he profiles the so-called hierarchy problem in the cosmic energy scale. It’s about the effects of virtual particles. The energy scale that characterizes the weak interactions (the Higgs field value, 246 GeV)… Continue reading Sisyphean hierarchy
[“Models of the quantum vacuum” series] A theoretical physicist walks into a bar. The bartender says, “What can I get you?” The physicist says, “Nothing.” The bartender gives the physicist an empty glass. The physicist says, “Thanks, that’s plenty!” Physicists take emptiness quite seriously. So-called empty space is an important area of study and research.… Continue reading Empty dumpty
Here’s my take on gauge symmetry after reading about the concept (some references are listed below). There are mathematical frameworks for space, and in physics there are equations of motion for space. A mathematical framework deals with geometric and numeric objects. In everyday life we basically equate these objects with a Euclidean space using the… Continue reading Symmetry → connection field → force of nature
