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Undergraduate interest in research is a good thing; it’s even better if they aspire to publish their work for review and consideration from a broader audience. First, we should consider what it means to be publishable. Usually, “publishable” means a paper contains a novel and interesting result in either theory or experiment that is more…
When I first wrote this part of the series, I wasn’t quite sure if I should include this. for most people submitting to most of the physics journals, this isn’t an issue. But considering the number of very bright students, we have on here, inevitably some of you might consider submitting a manuscript to…
At this stage, you are well into your Ph.D. research work, and depending on what area of physics you are in, you may already start producing new results. This next part of the series will cover an extremely important aspect of your graduate work that is typically not covered (sometimes not even required)…
From Concept to Manuscript You’ve done the science. You had an idea, performed an extensive literature review, designed an experiment, ran the experiment, mucked the experiment up, repeated the cycle until you generated meaningful results, conducted a rigorous analysis and now, finally, you’ve written up your results complete with fancy graphs. You want to share…
Abstract It took until the last century for physicists and mathematicians in the Netherlands to question the Euclidean concept of dimension as length, width, and height. Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer published a ground-breaking paper On the Natural Concept of Dimension (Amsterdam, [2]) in 1913 about the mathematical definition of dimension picking up a thought from…
Introduction Series play a decisive role in many branches of mathematics. They accompanied mathematical developments from Zeno of Elea (##5##-th century BC) and Archimedes of Syracuse (##3##-th century BC), to the fundamental building blocks of calculus from the ##17##-th century on, up to modern Lie theory which is crucial for our understanding of quantum theory….
Introduction When doing mathematics, we usually take for granted what natural numbers, integers, and rationals are. They are pretty intuitive. Going from rational numbers to reals is more complicated. The easiest way at the start is probably infinite decimals. Dedekind Cuts can be used to get a bit more fancy. A Dedekind cut is a…
Abstract There is so much to say about the many endeavors by professional scientists to explain to us the world. The list is long: Carl Sagan, Harald Lesch, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sabine Hossenfelder, Michio Kaku, and I even saw Roger Penrose and Steven Hawking on tv. The list is – of course – considerably longer…
A central principle of Physics Forums regarding homework help is not to provide solutions on demand but to guide students along a path to the answer. The rationale behind this principle is articulated in the familiar saying, “If you give a hungry man a fish, you feed him for a day; if you teach him…
In this article, we will look at why there are maximum mass limits for objects that are supported against gravity by degeneracy pressure instead of kinetic pressure. We will look at the two known cases of this, white dwarfs and neutron stars; but it should be noted that similar arguments will apply to any postulated…
Part 1: Overview Part 2: Mathematical Details Part 3: Implications In a previous article, I described in general terms the model of gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric massive object, first published by Oppenheimer and Snyder in their classic 1939 paper. In this follow-up article, I will give further mathematical details about the model, using…
Part 1: Overview Part 2: Mathematical Details Part 3: Implications Most people who have spent any time at all studying GR are familiar with the Schwarzschild solution. (A series of Insights articles discusses the key properties of that solution.) Much of that familiarity probably derives from the fact that the Schwarzschild solution describes a black…
I often read questions about our classification scheme that we use on physicsforums.com to sort posts by science fields and subjects, what has to be studied first in order to learn something else, what is a good way through physics or mathematics in self-study or simply about the desire to understand, e.g. general relativity…
An entire book could easily be written about the history of numbers from ancient Babylon and India, over Abu Dscha’far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Chwarizmi (##\sim ## 780 – 845), Gerbert of Aurillac aka pope Silvester II. (##\sim ## 950 – 1003), Leonardo da Pisa Fibonacci (##\sim## 1170 – 1240), Johann Carl Friedrich Gauß (1777 –…
* Oct. 25th, 1811 † May 31st, 1832 … or why squaring the circle is doomed. Galois died in a duel at the age of twenty. Yet, he gave us what we now call Galois theory. It decides all three ancient classical problems, squaring the circle, doubling the cube, and partitioning angles into three…
P or NP This article deals with the complexity of calculations and in particular the meaning of ##P\stackrel{?}{\neq}NP## Before we explain what P and NP actually are, we have to solve a far bigger problem: What is a calculation? And how do we measure its complexity? Many people might answer, that a calculation is an…
Riemann Hypothesis History The Riemann Hypothesis is one of the most famous and long-standing unsolved problems in mathematics, specifically in the field of number theory. It’s named after the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann, who introduced the hypothesis in 1859. RH: All non-trivial zeros of the Riemannian zeta-function lie on the critical line. ERH: All zeros…
We use integration to measure lengths, areas, or volumes. This is a geometrical interpretation, but we want to examine an analytical interpretation that leads us to Integration reverses differentiation. Hence let us start with differentiation. Weierstraß Definition of Derivatives ##f## is differentiable at ##x## if there is a linear map ##D_{x}f##, such that \begin{equation*} \underbrace{D_{x}(f)}_{\text{Derivative}}\cdot…
Superdeterminism as a way to resolve the mystery of quantum entanglement is generally not taken seriously in the foundations community, as explained in this video by Sabine Hossenfelder (posted in Dec 2021). In her video, she argues that superdeterminism should be taken seriously, indeed it is what quantum mechanics (QM) is screaming for us to…
(based on https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/teaching-sr-without-simultaneity.1011051/post-6588952 and https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/689291/148184 ) In my earlier Insight Spacetime Diagrams of Light Clocks, I stated without proof that the areas of all light-clock diamonds are equal. In my article, “Relativity on Rotated Graph Paper”, Am. J. Phys. 84, 344 (2016) I provided algebraic proof. In the penultimate draft, I had a non-algebraic motivating…
Introduction Every secondary school student who has encountered trigonometry in his/her Math syllabus will most likely have come across the sine, cosine, and area rules which are typically used to solve triangles in which certain information is supplied and the remainder are to be calculated. Somewhat surprisingly (because it is relatively simple to derive), the…
Key Points Quantum mechanics is known for its strangeness, including phenomena like wave-particle duality, which allows particles to behave like waves. The double-slit experiment is a key demonstration of this duality, showing that even single particles, like photons, exhibit wave-like behavior. When the experiment measures which slit a particle goes through, it behaves like a…
Introduction A recent homework problem that appeared in the forums was concerned with maximizing the horizontal range of a projectile subject to the launch site being a fixed height above the ground upon which the projectile eventually impacted. A number of interesting methods of solution arose so the idea of this article is to present…
Confessions of a moderate Bayesian part 3 Read part 1: How to Get Started with Bayesian Statistics Read part 2: Frequentist Probability vs Bayesian Probability Bayesian statistics by and for non-statisticians https://www.cafepress.com/physicsforums.13280237 Background One of the things that I like about Bayesian statistics is that it rather closely matches the way that I think about…
Confessions of a moderate Bayesian, part 1 Bayesian statistics by and for non-statisticians https://www.cafepress.com/physicsforums.13265286 Background I am a statistics enthusiast, although I am not a statistician. My training is in biomedical engineering, and I have been heavily involved in the research and development of novel medical imaging technologies for the bulk of my career. Due…
All undergraduate physics majors are shown how the counterintuitive aspects (“mysteries”) of time dilation and length contraction in special relativity (SR) follow from the light postulate, i.e., that everyone measures the same value for the speed of light c, regardless of their motion relative to the source (see this Insight, for example). And, we can…
We asked our PF Advisors “How do you see the rise in A.I. affecting STEM in the lab, classroom, industry and or in everyday society?”. We got so many great responses we need to split them into parts, here are the first several. This is part 3. Read part 1 here and part 2 here. Enjoy!…
We asked our PF Advisors “How do you see the rise in A.I. affecting STEM in the lab, classroom, industry and or in everyday society?”. We got so many great responses we need to split them into parts, here are the first several. Enjoy! Ranger Mike If things run true as before, and I have…
Key Points Hubble‘s law (redshift of galaxies) and Doppler effect provides direct evidence for the universe expanding away from our reference point, implying the universe is expanding. Low temperatures due to expansion from initial high temperatures at the big bang, supported by radio astronomy signals from stars, galaxies, radio galaxies, quasars and pulsars. Cosmic Microwave…
The Google Doodle for 2 February 2020 celebrated Mary Somerville, the Scottish polymath and science writer, and with Caroline Herschel, the joint first-ever woman to be made an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society. Born in Jedburgh, Scotland, in 1780, Somerville received little formal education compared to her brothers. Largely self-taught, she pursued academic…
Authorship Contributions From Anorlunda You may want to believe the article you read, or the video you saw, or you may be very proud of your PMM invention. It can be very difficult to analyze what is inside the box to find the flaw. Maybe we can’t find it. Maybe nobody can find it. If…
Note: This Insight was previously titled, “Answering Mermin’s Challenge with Wilczek’s Challenge.” While that version of this Insight did not involve any particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, it did involve the block universe interpretation of special relativity. I have updated this Insight to remove the block universe interpretation, so that it now answers Mermin’s challenge…
Introduction In a previous article “Calculating the Balmer Alpha Line” we mentioned how accurate predictions of the spectral lines of singly ionized Helium were of considerable importance in persuading the scientific community that Danish physicist Niels Bohr was on the right track in respect of his groundbreaking atomic model first published in 1913. In this…
For reference purposes and to help focus discussions on Physics Forums in interpretation questions on the real issues, there is a need for fixing the common ground. There is no consensus about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and – not surprisingly – there is disagreement even among the mentors and science advisors here on Physics…
We are happy to have Michio Kaku answer some questions from the community. This interview was originally held in 2004. Michio Kaku is an American theoretical physicist, futurist, and popularizer of science (science communicator). He is a professor of theoretical physics in the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. Kaku has written several books about physics and related topics, has made frequent…
In this Insight I will introduce the quantum mystery called “Wigner’s friend” using Healey’s version [1] of Frauchiger and Renner’s (FR’s) version [2] of Wigner’s version [3]. As with much of physics, the explication becomes more succinct and comprehensible with each successive rendering. I will show how this mystery results from treating classical information (behaving…
Financial options (the right to purchase (“call“) or sell (“put“) stock (or other assets)) at a fixed price at a future date have been around for a long time. They are attractive for the option buyer since his/her total risk is the premium (price) paid for the option, as contrasted with futures contracts which are…
About Physics Forums Values and Mission Our goal is to provide a community for people (whether students, professional scientists, or hobbyists) to learn and discuss science as it is currently generally understood and practiced by the professional scientific community. As our name suggests, our main focus is on physics, but we also have forums for…
We asked our PF Advisors to tell us what academic advice would you tell your 18 year old self. Here are their responses… Thanks to all the PF Advisors that shared their academic advice. We have more questions for them in the near future. Stay tuned for another “Ask the Advisors”!
Paper discussion: Solar system expansion and strong equivalence principle as seen by the NASA MESSENGER mission. Antonio Genova, Erwan Mazarico, Sander Goossens, Frank G. Lemoine, Gregory A. Neumann, David E. Smith & Maria T. Zuber. Nature Communications volume 9, Article number: 289. Key Points Students of physics learn about the sun‘s gravitational influence which causes planets to…
This is one chapter in a series on Mathematical Quantum Field Theory The previous chapter is: 15. Interacting quantum fields. 16. Renormalization In this chapter we discuss the following topics: Epstein-Glaser normalization Stückelberg-Petermann re-normalization UV-Regularization via Counterterms Wilson-Polchinski effective QFT flow Renormalization group flow Gell-Mann & Low RG Flow In the previous chapter we have…
This is one chapter in a series on Mathematical Quantum Field Theory. The previous chapter is 14. Free quantum fields. The next chapter is 16. Renormalization. 15. Interacting quantum fields In this chapter we discuss the following topics: Free field vacua Perturbative S-matrices Conceptual remarks Interacting field observables Time-ordered products (“Re”-)Normalization Feynman perturbation series Effective…
It is said that you should accomplish three things in life: Plant a tree. Have a child. Write a book. Out of the three, I have completed at least one. At the time of writing this Insight, my textbook “Mathematical Methods for Physics and Engineering” just hit the virtual online shelves. This Insight will…
Please give us a brief background on yourself Over 40 years ago, I studied mathematics, physics and computer science in Freiburg and Berlin (Germany). My Ph.D. thesis was in pure mathematics, but I was later drawn more and more into applied mathematics. Since 1994 I am a full professor of mathematics at the University of…
Intransitive dice are sets of dice that don’t follow the usual rules for “is better/larger than”. If A<B and B<C, then A<C. If Bob runs faster than Alice and Charlie runs faster than Bob, then Charlie runs faster than Alice. If die B wins against die A (larger number wins) and die C wins against…
Key Points Published paper studied how knots in polymers respond to an external flow field and how the knot affects the response of the polymer Experiments and simulations of knotted polymer chains being stretched by an extensional flow field The coil–stretch transition occurs when the flow is weak enough for the molecule to relax to…
A new paper from a collaboration of Canadian physicists has demonstrated how simply twirling a wire through a solution of DNA molecules can align the molecules around the wire, similar to the way that twirling a fork can align noodles around it. The paper was published in Physical Review X (PRX), an open-access journal that…
Many people here know that I am a “Bohmian”, i.e. an adherent of a very non-orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM). Indeed, in the past, I have published a lot of papers on Bohmian mechanics in peer-reviewed journals from 2004 to 2012. So how can I not worry and love orthodox QM? As a “Bohmian”,…
The EPS conference was a week ago, and many new results and future plans were shown. A good general overview has been collected by Paris Sphicas in his Summary slides. I had a look at some presentations and collected things I personally found interesting. Warning: The selection is heavily biased, I cannot cover everything, and…
In terms of wavelength, peak solar radiation occurs at about 500 nm. Interestingly, this is well within the range of human vision. When solar radiation is plotted against frequency instead of wavelength, the peak is found to be at about 340 THz. It may come as a shock that when 340 THz is converted to…
We have an amazing count of over 320 Insights published at Physics Forums. Now we test to see how much you remember from some of them. If you need a hint feel free to read the corresponding Insight which is linked at the end of the question. Good Luck and remember to read future Insights…
Read part 1 -Backyards, Barns, Bayous When I was offered a job at the Air Force Academy, it seemed like an opportunity to exercise both my commitment to academic rigor and my desire to serve my country while continuing with the basement and boat ramp approach to research. Since I was faculty in the Department of…
During and even after the recent US election campaign, there were numerous reports of fake news, made-up news, and other kinds of news that were deemed either outright fabrication or inaccurate or incomplete reporting of something to skewer it into one point of view or another. While the outright-fabricated news can easily be spotted eventually,…
Not long after Einstein published his Field Equation, the first exact solution was found by Karl Schwarzschild. This solution is one of the best known and most often discussed, and its properties have played a significant role in the development of General Relativity as a theory, as well as in efforts to find a…
21st-century science labors under the myth that good experimental science requires expensive lab facilities in a university or institutional setting. We have the example of Marie and Pierre Curie discovering radium in an abandoned shed, Lavoisier’s seminal Chemistry work in his home laboratory, and Isaac Newton’s seminal work in optics in his mother’s farmhouse (Woolsthorpe Manor)…
Browse All Articles Here is an alphabetical list of all Physics Forums Insights grouped by format and then discipline. It is auto updated as new Insights are published. Enjoy! Articles FAQs Guides Tutorials Interviews Quizzes
For those who don’t know the great David Hestenes, he is the inventor of the geometric algebra formalism of physics. Here we go! 1) What is the best application of geometric algebra in theoretical physics that you can think of? In other words, what application shows the power and elegance of geometric algebra best? The…
The article, “Governmental policy is wrecking science,” makes some interesting points but is fundamentally in error, because government policy is only a small part of the problem. The government is depending on scientists and teachers to police students and each other regarding scientific and academic integrity. To a harmful extent, scientists and teachers are failing…
We are pleased to introduce David J. Griffiths. Professor Griffiths is one of the most successful physics textbook writers. Odds are if you studied physics in college, you’ve used one of his textbooks. We are pleased and honored to obtain some of his insights on the quantum and academic world. Here we go! Please give us a…
This Insight is a follow-up to my earlier tutorial Insight (Spacetime Diagrams of Light Clocks). I gave it a different name because I am placing more emphasis on Relativity and invariance, and I want to discuss more advanced methods involving “causal diamonds” (rather than just the “clock diamonds” in the earlier Insight). I will assume…
On Hardware Quality It is impossible to test quality into a product. Quality must be designed into the product. The hardware designer is always responsible for the production yield. The purpose of production tests is to check production quality, not product quality. When the prototype fulfills all marketing requirements, you are only 40% done The…
Give us a little background on yourself? I was born in Washington DC, grew up in Texas, bachelor’s in physics from Harvard in 1978 but found a career in system software instead. Son of two law professors and grandson of a third, raised a Quaker although it didn’t stick, keep a small fleet of well-rusted…
Bayes’ Theorem: Balancing predictive success with falsifiability Despite its murky logical pedigree, confirmation is a key part of learning. After all, some of the greatest achievements of science are unabashed confirmations, from the discovery of acquired immunity to the gauge theory of particle physics. But because we cannot isolate a unique hypothesis from the…
We are pleased to introduce Peter Krautzberger. Peter is a manager for MathJax. MathJax is the technology behind the display of equations on Physics Forums. “The core of the MathJax project is the development of its state-of-the-art, open source, JavaScript platform for display of mathematics.” Please give us a bit background on yourself from growing up…
In the early 20th century, an eccentric businessman named Roger Babson declared gravity to be mankind’s greatest threat. He devoted part of his fortune to defeating it, creating the Gravity Research Foundation which sponsors a yearly essay contest focused on the understanding of gravity. This contest has been won by the likes of Stephen Hawking…
Three million years ago, the grandfathers of our genus used sharpened stones to chop wood and cut bone. Today, surgeons use fiber optic-guided lasers to clear microblockages in the heart. Within our own lives, we’ve gone from burning our mouths on hot soup as children to cautiously blowing on the first spoonful as adults….
PeterDonis is a Physics Mentor at Physics Forums Give us a little background on PeterDonis I have been interested in science since childhood. I have two degrees in Nuclear Engineering, but they were actually in the field of fusion, not fission, so they might just as well have been labeled as degrees in plasma…
In any forum where science is discussed, there will always be people who have a great new personal theory and can’t understand why no one else is interested in it. Here at PF we have rules about this, but I want to look at the more general question of why there is apparently so little…
It’s a calculation which you can find in any textbook on General Relativity (GR): when gravity is weak and does not vary with time, and when particles are traveling slowly with respect to the speed of light, GR becomes good old Newtonian gravity again. However, this is done at the level of equations of motion….
Abstract Over the past few years, the author and his wife have served as teachers, qualified scientists, mentors, and/or parents on dozens of science projects assisting students ranging from elementary school projects that can be completed in a weekend to high school and college freshmen projects that take a semester or year to complete and…
Instantaneous Power The formula for power is: ##P=V\cdot I## , power= voltage*current. We call that, instantaneous power. Even when ##V## and ##I## are changing in time, ##P=V\cdot I## applies for each instant. It matters not if the ##V## or ##I## changes are `sinusoidal, what their frequency is, or even if they are aperiodic. ##P=V\cdot…
Please give us a bit of background on your life and professional experience Life: Born educated in Italy, then 10 years in the States and 15 in France. I got to physics late: before I was more into the hippies dreams or trying to overthrow the Italian government. Professional: in my third university year I…
Read part 1 of this interview. Tell us about your experience with past projects like “This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics”. I was hired by U.C. Riverside back in 1989. I was lonely and bored, since Lisa was back on the other coast. So, I spent a lot of evenings on the computer. We had…
We are pleased to introduce you to Theoretical Physicist and PF Member Garrett Lisi. Known for riding waves and developing a unique theory of everything. Read on! Tell us a little bit about growing up in San Diego The part of San Diego where I grew up — Rancho Santa Fe — was pretty idyllic. I…
The 1990s saw the widespread adoption of network technology on two fronts: Office automation and factory automation. But while office automation soon standardized on Ethernet (for volume reasons) and TCP/IP (due to the Internet explosion), factory automation fragmented into a number of incompatible field busses (a Fieldbus is the common designation for an automation network)….
Give us a brief history of Borek Note: text below is of a negative pedagogical value, don’t read it if you are younger than 20, attending school or still naïvely hoping for the best. I was born half a century ago, in a galaxy far, far away. So far away our laws were all shifted…
Historically, life is categorized into three broad domains: bacteria, archaea, and eukaryota. Whereas bacteria and archaea are almost all relatively simple, single-celled microorganisms, humans and all other forms of complex, multi-cellular life (including all other animals, plants, and fungi) are classified as eukaryotes, so understanding the evolution of eukaryotes is important for understanding the origin…
This is a new Interview category for Insights. While I line up some great new interviews I’ll be migrating some previous mentor interviews. ZapperZ is a staff emeritus at Physics Forums Can you give us a brief history of ZapperZ? Without reveal things that are answers to a few of the security questions to my accounts, I would say…
Resistance to complex math seems to never die out. I see it frequently in PF posts. Often it takes the form of challenges rather than questions. First challenge: Complex is just a mathematical trick that has nothing to do with the physics. Second challenge: Everything that complex does can be accomplished by ordinary real numbers. …
Look in your standard cosmology textbook (in my case, the closest one at hand is Barbara Ryden’s Introduction to Cosmology) and go to the section which describes the experimental discovery of dark matter. Two of the things you will likely find in there are the following pieces of information: The virial theorem applied to the…
LightCone 8 is a versatile tabulating/charting cosmological calculator, useful for understanding the expansion history of the universe (and even some future expansion), based upon the Lambda-Cold-Dark-Matter (LCDM) model. Part I of this mini-series gives a broad overview of the user interface and the main functions. Follow-on parts will highlight some specific uses and techniques. 1.1…
Introduction In this Insight, I will go over the background information for the Millennium Prize problems and briefly describe three of them. A future Insight will contain brief descriptions of the remaining four problems. In 1900, David Hilbert presented 23 of the most important open problems in mathematics at a conference of the International Congress…
Earth’s gravitational field at the surface is approximately 9.8 Newtons/kilogram, or equivalently, 9.8 meters/second/second. But how does that change due to its shape, rotation, and composition and various locations along its surface and within its interior? This article will answer those questions. Key Points Earth’s gravitational field at the surface is approximately 9.8 Newtons/kilogram. The…
The purpose of this article is to discuss the title question from several different viewpoints, in order to show that it isn’t as simple as it looks. We will look at some common misconceptions that lead people to think the answer must be “no”, and we will look at some of the issues involved that…
What causes cancer? For the most part, cancer is a disease that arises from mutations in the body that accumulate over time. These mutations knock out key tumor suppressor genes involved in repairing DNA or regulating cell division and activate oncogenes that can drive cells to divide uncontrollably and invade other tissues. But where do…
[Back in 2011, I wrote a FAQ entry for physicsforums on the steady state model and why it is no longer viable. I’ve learned more about the theory since then, and it turns out that Fred Hoyle was a lot cleverer than I’d assumed. The following is an update to that FAQ that, while more…
In parts 1 and 2 of this 5-part Insights series, I explained the blockworld (BW) implication of special relativity. In part 3, I introduced general relativity (GR) and brought BW to bear on general relativistic cosmology to ‘explain’ what puzzles so many people about big bang cosmology, i.e., the origin of the universe. The bottom…
In parts 1 and 2 of this 5-part Insights series, I explained the blockworld (BW) implication of special relativity (SR). In part 3, I introduced general relativity (GR) and brought BW to bear on general relativistic cosmology to ‘explain’ what puzzles so many people about big bang cosmology, i.e., the origin of the universe….
In parts 1 and 2 of this 5-part Insights series, I explained the blockworld (BW) implication of special relativity (SR). Geroch sums up the BW perspective nicely with this quote[1]: There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. In particular, one does not think of particles as…
In part 1 of this 5-part Insights series, I introduced two consequences of the second postulate of special relativity (SR): time dilation (“moving clocks run slow”) and length contraction (“moving objects shrink”). Since moving clocks run slow, if you and observers at rest with respect to you (hereafter simply “you”) see me moving, you…
In this article, I will discuss how these images of atoms are made, what exactly we are looking at, and what it really means to see an atom. Over the decades there have been many attempts, claims, and misconceptions surrounding what atoms really look like and how we can photograph them. Let’s set that all…
A long time ago I read a paper in the IEEEProceedings recounting the history of the superheterodyne receiver. Overall it was a very interesting and informative article, with one exception: in it the author remarked that the modulation (or mixing) principle was really nothing new, is already known to piano tuners who traditionally used a…
Key Points Jérôme Duplat and Emmanuel Villermaux published a paper in Physical Review Letters (PRL) to generate centimeter–sized vacuum bubbles in water with miniature laser–driven explosions Observed the flash of light produced as the bubble collapsed, a phenomenon known as sonoluminescence Measured the temperature inside the bubble to be upwards of 20,000 Kelvin Bubbles generated by…
General relativity predicts that disturbances in the gravitational field propagate as gravitational waves, and that low-amplitude gravitational waves travel at the speed of light. Gravitational waves have never been detected directly, but the loss of energy from the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar has been checked to high precision against GR’s predictions of the power emitted in…
The previous article in this series claimed that the mathematics of the 21st century that had fallen into the 1970s in the form of string theory is the same mathematics that Grothendieck had dreamed about in his pursuit of stacks around that same time, and which meanwhile has come to full existence: higher geometry…
While the world didn’t end, after all, 15 years back at the turn of the millennium, in hindsight it is curious that, almost unnoticed, something grand did come to a halt around that time. Or almost. The 90s had seen a firework of structural insight into the mathematical nature of string theory, an unprecedented…
Many physics majors believe that pursuing a Ph.D. in physics requires they make a choice between theory and experiment. Due to my weaknesses in math, I thought I had chosen to be an experimentalist when I chose an experimentalist as my mentor for grad school. But as I chased interesting projects, I ended up publishing…
I am going to backtrack a little bit and talk about writing your Curriculum Vitae (CV) and what you should focus on in search of a job in physics. This includes looking for a Postdoctoral position, a research position, and possibly a faculty position at a university. I am going to base this…
If you intend to pursue an academic/research career, chances are, you will need postdoctoral experience. This is typically a 2 to 3-year appointment either at a university, national laboratories, or industrial laboratories such as Bell Lab. It is not uncommon for someone to do 2 postdoctoral positions before finding suitable employment. So this…
In the previous chapter, we have reached the point where you have finished with your thesis defense, and also thesis submission to the graduate school. You are all set to go into the nasty physics world and look for a job. If that is your case, then you are SCREWED! You do NOT…