# All Questions

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### Reason behind formation of doublets in diffraction spectrum

like if you see is Sodium (and also in Mercury), there are two discrete lines of Yellow color.. What's the reason behind formation of doublets?
549 views

### Accurate way to measure angular spread of a laser beam

While doing an experiment to measure the angular spread (or say divergence) of a beam of laser (which in my case was an inexpensive diode laser), what is the most accurate way of measuring the ...
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### How does interpreting negative energy electrons as positrons solve the negative energy problem?

How does interpreting negative energy electrons as positive energy positrons solve the negative energy problem? How does change of “interpretation” without fixing the mathematics have such a profound ...
7k views

### Is it possible to create a parachute large enough to stop all velocity?

This idea came to me while playing Kerbal Space Program. I noticed that the larger my parachute was, the slower my rocket would fall back down to Kerbin. I would like to know if it is possible to ...
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### Are Wormholes predicted by the theory of general relativity?

Just like it predicted gravitational time dilation, gravitational lensing. What does it mean to predict something, Does it mean that we'll find wormholes in nature one day?
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### Questions after watching the movie Interstellar [closed]

Awesome movie, but as a physics student, some questions do crop up When they travel to the watery planet, they say that 1 hour on this planet is 7 yrs om earth. How is this possible? Is the planet ...
299 views

### Lagrangian and Hamiltonian EOM with dissipative force

I am trying to write the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian for the forced Harmonic oscillator before quantizing it to get to the quantum picture. For EOM $$m\ddot{q}+\beta\dot{q}+kq=f(t),$$ I write the ...
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### No-hair theorems for naked singularities?

For black holes, we have no-hair theorems that say, under certain assumptions about the matter fields, that they are uniquely characterized by just a few parameters. Are there any such theorem for ...
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### Finding the expectation value of the annihilation operator with respect to a given state

Using dirac notation we were given a state vector $$|\Psi(t=0)\rangle = A\sum\limits_{q=0}^Q \frac{1}{(q+i)} |\phi_q\rangle$$ Where $\phi$ is part of a complete orthonormal set. I found the ...
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### Pivotal door - how is the load distributed?

A pivotal door, where instead of the door hung or cantilevered from the hinges screwed to the frame, the door is hung using a top and bottom pivot. The bottom pivot assembly's the floor-spring is ...
175 views

### why do metals feel cold when electron moves at Fermi velocity?

This might be a very elementary question. Considering that electrons in typical metals have very high Fermi velocity, why is it that when you touch a metal you feel cold? My intuition tells me that ...
126 views

### How does a magnetic monopole break time reversal symmetry?

I read in the article on the magnetic monopole in the German Wikipedia that the path of an electrically charged particle in the field of a magnetic monopole breaks time reversal symmetry. This means, ...
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### Do all the spacelike curve terminate at the spatial infinity $i_0$ in the Penrose Diagram of a Schwarzchild black hole?

Let's restrict to the radial direction, so the metric can be expressed as $ds^2=-(1-r_S/r)dt^2+(1-r_S/r)^{-1}dr^2$ with $r_S$ the Schwarzchild radius. Expressed in Kruskal coordinates, the metric is ...
139 views

### Issue on sign convention with optics

I have a problem understanding the sign conventions used in the equations that describe the imaging properties of mirrors - in particular, when and why should I use a positive or negative number for ...
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### space representation of a local potential

Why is it that for a local potential $V$: $$\langle x | V | x' \rangle = V(x) \langle x | x' \rangle = V(x) \delta(x - x')$$ I saw this being used in a book but without any explanation. The part with ...
122 views

### Superposition and simultaneous observation

Trying to understand superposition. Ok, so double slit experiment. The multiple paths the particle simultaneously travels interfere with each other but as it is absorbed, it chooses one "actual" ...
212 views

### Penrose diagram for spacetime which flows to $AdS_{2}$ at infinity

Consider I have the following 2 dimensional spacetime $(t,z)$: $$ds^2=\frac{4}{z^{2}}\left(1+\frac{1}{z}\right)^{-1}(-dt^{2}+dz^{2}).\tag{1}$$ When $z\rightarrow \infty$ we have ...
48 views

### Is chain reaction possible in stable isotopes?

Is nuclear chain reaction possible in isotope that is considered stable? Are there examples?
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### $\beta^+$ decay question

I read that all baryons apart from the proton itself decay into protons (why though?) and that mesons do not decay into protons due to having less mass than protons. Thus it makes sense for the ...
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### Why are centrifuge space-station designs not a reality? [duplicate]

Considering how useful it could be for the crew of a space station to have at their disposal a 1g environment (or more) at the rim to a 0g environment at the axis of rotation, why aren't modern space ...
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### Is the overall force of a test charge in a electromagnetic field always the same?

I had a conversation with my physics teacher today about electric fields and he told me something I couldn't believe and because I found no information elsewhere I am going to ask you guys. Imagine a ...
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### Is the charge distribution for an electric field unique?

If the electric field and boundary conditions are known exactly for a region of space, is it true that there exists only one charge distribution in that region of space that could have produced it? ...
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### Are there any known physical implementations of quantum gates?

I was wondering if there are any known implementations of a small number of quantum gates that can interact with each other. Certainly we don't have a "complete" set of quantum gates (where ...