All Questions

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Can the Kramers–Kronig relation be used to correct transfer function measurements?

In experimental physics, we often make measurements of linear transfer functions; these are complex-valued functions of frequency. If the underlying system is causal, then the transfer function must ...
1k views

Physics of simple collisions

I'm building a physics simulator for a graphics course, and so far I have it implementing gravitational and Coulomb forces. I want to add collisions next, but I'm not exactly sure how to go about ...
301 views

Will physic object in a perfect environment last/exist forever?

We know,i.e. wood/steel tables in earth will completely broken or disappear in a very future day. If we put the table in a perfect/ideal environment (maybe in vacuum), will the disappear/broken still ...
592 views

Is This The Answer To Artificial Gravity?

Einstein teaches that as an object gets faster, its relativistic mass increases... Newton teaches that as an object's mass increases, so does it's gravitational pull... So... if you a tethered some ...
350 views

Could a bubble of photons make a spaceship massless? [closed]

I'm not sure how theoretically possible this is but my question is... If we could somehow make a perfect bubble of photons (a massless bubble) and put a spaceship inside it, could it therefore ...
639 views

Are the solutions in radicals of cubic and quartic of any use in physics?

We all know that there are analytic formulae to solve quadratic, cubic and quartic polynomial equations. But it seems to me that the only solution that widely used is physics is the solution of ...
452 views

Why is a suspended spinning body of liquid prolate?

Instead of a flat disc one would expect the centrifugal forces to push it in.. The body is not in a container but suspended in air spinning horizontally (i.e. left to right or vice-versa) - how to do ...
2k views

Gravitational force between two masses

I get it that there will be a gravitational force between objects attracted towards gravity but can there be a gravitational force between two objects resting on horizontal plane? In other words, does ...
110 views

Is there a chance for Earth to have an additional satellite someday?

I am just an space enthusiast and not a physics professional so pardon me if this is not the right place to ask. As title says, is there a chance for our Earth to have additional satellite(s) like our ...
8k views

Why is the decibel scale logarithmic?

Could someone explain in simple terms (let's say, limited to a high school calculus vocabulary) why decibels are measured on a logarithmic scale? (This isn't homework, just good old fashioned ...
2k views

Time as a Hermitian operator in QM?

In non-relativistic QM, on one hand we have the following relations: $$\langle x | P | \psi \rangle ~=~ -i \hbar \frac{\partial}{\partial x} \psi(x),$$ \langle p | X | \psi \rangle ~=~ i \hbar ...
203 views

Can Gravity be described in terms of velocities and rotations of local Minkowski space?

In the paper The River Model of Black Holes: Am.J.Phys.76:519-532,2008, Andrew J. S. Hamilton, Jason P. Lisle http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0411060 The authors give a way of describing the action of a ...
933 views

What sort of jobs do physics graduates with B.Sc/M.Sc get? [closed]

I've been told that in countries like Israel the truth of the matter is that the only available work for B.Sc./M.Sc. in physics/math is only to be high school teacher. To do serious stuff you need to ...
4k views

What is the electric field generated by a spinning magnet?

Consider a cylinder of permanently magnetized material, with uniform magnetization pointing along the cylindrical symmetry axis (the $z$-direction). The magnet is rotating about its cylindrical ...
86 views

Why are unorientable strings with reversed orientations different?

If a string is unorientable, why is the a string with reversed orientation different from the initial string? Why do we have Kalb-Ramond 2-forms?
1k views

Active gravitational mass of the electron

In PSE here electrons are added to a sphere and gravitational modifications are expected. My question is: Is there any experiment that show that a negatively charged object is source of a stronger ...
300 views

Singing: Resonance body open-closed or closed-closed?

Googling yields contradictory results, so here my question: When I sing, my vocal chords vibrate, but my whole body is the resonance body, right? So I would say that when I think about standing waves ...
914 views

Are modified theories of gravity credible?

I'm a statistician with a little training in physics and would just like to know the general consensus on a few things. I'm reading a book by John Moffat which basically tries to state how GR makes ...
142 views

Star trace in the sky

If the space of universe is expanding at fast rates..(even faster than light) Why we do not see the trace of the stars? A possible answer could be that the stars are only moving away but mantaining ...
1k views

How does fluoroscopy (x-ray) imaging work in practice?

I know the basics, that by measuring how much x-ray signal reaches each 'pixel' on the receiver we can measure how much has been absorbed. But this gives only a single channel of information, e.g a ...
179 views

What is the stress-energy distribution of a string in target space?

If $| \psi \rangle$ is a string mode, how do you compute $\langle \psi | \hat{T}^{\mu\nu}(\vec{x}) | \psi \rangle$ where $\vec{x}$ is a point in target space? This information will tell us the energy ...
4k views

Why are Saturn's rings so thin?

Take a look at this picture (from APOD http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110308.html): I presume that rocks within rings smash each other. Below the picture there is a note which says that Saturn's rings ...
575 views

Gravity theories with the equivalence principle but different from GR

Einstein's general relativity assumes the equivalence of acceleration and gravitation. Is there a general class of gravity theories that have this property but disagree with general relativity? Will ...
308 views

Maxwell's Demon - laser cooling

There’s an interesting article on Scientific American that tells how to cool individual atoms to within a very tiny fraction of Absolute Zero. It uses two laser beams acting on a very cold rarified ...
160 views

Knotted token-ring network

Suppose we have a rigid token-ring network. An observer at any node can seemingly determine the angular momentum of the network by measuring the time it takes for a packet to travel around the ring ...
456 views

What allows the modified Urca process to work at lower density than direct Urca in neutron star cooling?

The dominant method of neutron star cooling is neutrino emission. There are two regimes usually presented, the "direct Urca" and "modified Urca" processes, each of which are sequences of neutron decay ...
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Rigor in quantum field theory

Quantum field theory is a broad subject and has the reputation of using methods which are mathematically desiring. For example working with and subtracting infinities or the use of path integrals, ...
364 views

What are the coloured bands in this “Pale Blue Dot” picture?

You can see Earth in the right most band in this image: What are these bands doing in space?! Can somebody please explain the coloured bands in this image?
2k views

Which metals can cause magnetic interference (passively)?

I am developing an application that uses the magnetometer inside smart-phones to detect orientation w.r.t. the Earth's magnetic field. I have noticed that when the phone is held close to a metal ...
243 views

M2-brane wrapped twice around $S^1$

M-theory wrapped around $S^1$ is type IIA, especially in the limit of zero radius. An M2-brane wrapped around $S^1$ once is a type IIA string. The zero mode anyway. In the limit of very small radius, ...
1k views

Why are four-vectors needed in the Dirac equation, when there are 4 linearly independent 2D matrices?

I was taught that for the Dirac-equation to "work", you need matrices of the following form: $Tr(\alpha^i) = 0$. Eigenvalues +1 or -1 2 previous points together: equal number of negative and ...
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Are water waves (i.e. on the surface of the ocean) longitudinal or transverse?

I'm convinced that water waves for example: are a combination of longitudinal and transverse. Any references or proofs of this or otherwise?
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Sound - what happens with the particles when a wave passes

I'm having some problems in understanding the principles of sound propagation. The wave propagates though air (for example) exerts compression, which is followed by rarefaction. I think I got than ...
935 views

Calculate stainless steel pole necking limit

Background Trying to determine how much weight a post can support without necking when a monitor is attached to an articulated arm: a cantilever problem. Problem There are three objects involved in ...
219 views

Orbifolds of the $c =1$ Bosonic theory on a circle

For a $c=1$ Boson on a circle at the self-dual rdius, we get an enhanced gauge symmetry $\hat{SU}(2)_1$. It is said that we can orbifold this model by any finite subgroup of $SU(2)$ since $SU(2)$ is a ...
780 views

Explaining Arrow of Time with Entropy

WARNING: Possibly a naive post. Hi guys. I just watched on BBC, [some show] yesterday (sunday) where the host talked about Arrow of Time, where by 2nd law of thermodynamics states that "nature" is ...
4k views

Why are bicycle pedal threads' handedness left on the left and right on the right?

I understand the reason that bicycle pedals are oppositely threaded on either side. What I don't understand is why it works because I'm missing something. Take the right pedal for example. It's ...
5k views

Why can you see virtual images?

In optics it is widely mentioned real images are projectable onto screens whereas virtual ones can only be seen by a person. Isn't that contradictory? I mean in order to see the virtual image it has ...
813 views

What if LHC finds SUSY?

Here and on many other forums and blogs people ask the question "What if LHC does not find SUSY?". I would like to ask the opposite. What if it finds it? What would the implications be? Is it going to ...
431 views

What's a good reference for the electrodynamics of moving media?

The answer to a previous question suggests that a moving, permanently magnetized material has an effective electric polarization $\vec{v}\times\vec{M}$. This is easy to check in the case of ...
198 views

How to understand order emerging from many-body system?

Like the order behavior shown in the image, is it due to the universality of some fundamental mathematic theory? Is there some general physics explanation for it? - edit: This question comes after ...
290 views

Is causality synonymous with continuity?

In general relativity, we use the term "time-like" to state that two events can influence one another. In fact, in order for an event to physically interact with another one, they have to be ...
211 views

What are the chances that a deadly asteroid will hit Earth in the next decade?

What are the chances that an asteroid that will kill multiple people will hit Earth in the next decade?
731 views

Fresnel transform

How is it possible to encrypt multiple images using fresnel transform and inverse the operation to de-multiplex those images?
6k views

Does vacuum (empty space) exist? [closed]

Added: 5 times down vote for now! Down voter is this religion or physics, please try to explain your decision. I'm confused about this. In physics we know for a vacuum, but I think that there is a ...
1k views

What defines the mass of elementary particle?

The electron is particle. The mass of electron is $9.10938215(45)\times 10^{−31}\, {\rm kg}$. But why is the mass exactly what it is? What in physics defines the mass of elementary particle?
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Finding the mass of bed/Patient [closed]

One of my friends has a problem and we don't know how to get this done, We want to to know the mass of a patient who is laying on a bed. One scales was put under the foot of a bed and weighed 232kg ...
537 views

Calculate the electric field of a moving infinite magnet, without boosting

Consider a rectangular slab of permanently magnetized material. The slab's dimensions are $L_x$, $L_y$, and $L_z$, and the slab is uniformly magnetized in the $\hat{x}$-direction. The slab is not ...