# All Questions

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### Shouldn't Quantum Mechanics change in a black hole?

I recently learnt that the conservation laws are a consequence of the symmetries of space and time (the Lagrangian in Newton mechanics). Since space-time change in a black hole wouldn't quantum ...
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### Refractive Index of Super Critical Fluids

I'm studying optics at the moment and I am wondering how the refractive index changes when a liquid is in super critical state? Thank you.
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### Is it wasteful to use a heating element, instead of doing useful work?

Consider a computer CPU consuming electrical energy to perform calculations and consequently emitting heat. Assumption: That a CPU consuming x Watts of power, emits the same amount of heat as an ...
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### Can alimentary packaging film be used to make a Fabry-Perot interferometer?

An alimentary packaging film consists on a thin plastic layer. If we put two of this films one on the other, could this acts as a Fabry-Perot interferometer? (I don't have the appropriate material at ...
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### Divergent Series

Why is it that divergent series make sense? Specifically, by basic calculus a sum such as $1 - 1 + 1 ...$ describes a divergent series (where divergent := non-convergent sequence of partial sums) ...
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### Does this commutation relation hold?

I was wondering whether it is true that $[L_x^2,x^2+y^2+z^2]=0$. I could not find it in the internet and therefore I wanted to ask here whether anybody here knows that this is true or false.
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### Question on the Electroweak vacuum decay

Is there any current estimate of the electroweak vacuum lifetime based on the recent measurement of the Higgs boson and the top quark masses?
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### Why is an exciton only observed when we excite to the conduction band and not to other electronic level inside the bandgap?

Excitons can be observed when we excite electrons to the conduction band. I don't know about excitons being observed when we excite the electrons to an electronic level that would eventually be in ...
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### How does the tester screwdriver work? [closed]

How does the tester screwdriver work? If I put the tester screwdriver inside a "phase" hole of an electric socket, it lits up. If I press my finger against the metal cap on top of the screwdriver. ...
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### Work done by Lorentz Force in case of motional emf

In the classical example of the slidewire generator where the rod slides on a U-shaped conductor in a magnetic field, we get a charge separation due to the Lorentz force. The way the induced emf is ...
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### Laser beam position using galvanometer

In 3D printing techniques like SLA and SLS use lasers for solidifying a cross section / layer of the model that is printed. These machines, as far as I know, use XY laser scanners to project the laser ...
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### Evidences against Supersymmetry [closed]

Recently, some experiments show that the supersymmetry is not realised by Nature according to the simple models that we currently have. Nevertheless, it is far from saying that the "game is over" as ...
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### Why are there dust particles on TV screens?

My professor gave us the following reason: The screen is positively charged. When dust particles fly near it, the positive charges in the screen induce a charge in the dust particle, pulling the ...
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### What is the amount of EM energy from the sun reaching the earth as a function of wavelength?

The question stems from a desire to know if more light from the sun in the infrared wavelengths has more energy than light at say yellow or violet wavelengths - at the Earth's surface. I'm guessing a ...
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### Lenses and benefit of exact fourier transform

I have learned in an Optics class that a lens will "compute" the Fourier Transform of an electromagnetic wave passing through it at the focal point behind it (but with a quadratic phase). However, ...
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### What is the appropriate device for measuring energy loss from collision with surface?

The surface of a running track (i.e. cinder or rubber) has an effect on a runner's performance. I would like to get some device for measuring how much energy a runner loses on each surfaces. I've ...
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### Compatibility conditions of spinors and Riemannian Metrics

I came across an interesting article by Montesinos (J. Geom. Phys. 2 (1985), no. 2, 145–153.). In it, he finds that spin structures (as lifts of $SO(4)$) are not compatible with all Riemannian metrics ...
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### Can the Cosmological Constant explain an accelerated expansion?

From what I've learned so far, it appears that all models that attempt to explain the expansion of the universe are either based on Lambda-CDM or quintessence. The former support a big bang with ...
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### Degeneracy and the unitarity of a gauge theory with a non-compact gauge group

The topological ground state degeneracy(g.s.d.) provides useful information for a topological field theory(TQFT), such as this post shows some example. To count g.s.d., it seems to be equivalent to ...
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### How much energy does the most powerful supernova release in any form other than neutrinos?

I have read most of the supernova article on wikipedia, and there are a lot of numbers and different types of supernovae so I am confused. What I need to know is how much energy is released from some ...
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### Why can't we see things swallowed by black holes?

Apologies in advance, I'm a layman with only a school-level education in physics. If an object approaching the event horizon of a black hole has its light cone progressively bent towards the black ...
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### Born rule and Feynman propagators

Let us assume that we want to describe the full process of photon emission by electron A and absorption by electron B. Therefore electron B must be on the forward lightcone of electron A. In the ...
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### Liouville's theorem on integrable Hamiltonian systems is a let down

I read a proof of Liouville’s theorem on integrable Hamiltonian systems. According to the theorem, an autonomous Hamiltonian system can be integrated in quadratures, given $n$ involutive first ...
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### Classical point particles to classical fields

I often hear that in the continuum limit we can study large numbers of particles as fields. I always imagined that by removing all bounds on the number of particles (while keeping total energy, ...
### Is $v(p)\exp(ipx)$ really the positron wave function?
In many textbooks the negative energy solution of the Dirac equation is quoted as describing the positron. Actually I don't understand this. For me $v(p)\exp(ipx)$ is the wave function of an electron ...