Physics

Did you ever wonder why both, Einstein’s relativity theory and quantum physics, in theory as well as experiment, seem obsessed with the nature of light? The velocity of light, light clocks, entangled photons, and so on – why is it always light? This preoccupation is no coincidence. It comes directly from the fact that light does not actually exist. Think I am nuts yet? Today, I will tell you why relativity theory makes the non-existence of light obvious. The next time, I will show that this odd seeming fact only confirms what is known from entirely unrelated quantum mechanics: classical…

The origin of physical dynamics and the reason of existence of special relativity are explored. This endeavour is started by analysing the logic of nature. Next, only mathematics is used in order to explore the dynamics of this model of physical reality. The model that is described here annihilates the old reality and creates a new reality at each dynamic step. Hilbert space cannot treat dynamics. It contains nothing that supports dynamics. In the contrary, dynamics manages the Hilbert spaces. Like traditional quantum logic, Hilbert space cannot treat physical fields. By embedding the…

"The only use I know of a confidence interval is to have confidence in it" L. J. Savage, in "The foundations of statistical inference", Methuen, London (1962).

A week ago a meeting was held in Chamonix to discuss in detail the schedule for the near future of the Large Hadron Collider, and to take a decision on the schedule, in particular for 2012. Previously, for 2012 a long shutdown had been foreseen, to allow the retro-fitting of LHC with systems which will prevent future incidents such as the one of September 2008. The possibility that ATLAS and CMS would only get about one inverse femtobarn worth of proton-proton collisions in 2011, and then stay inactive until late 2013, was rather disappointing for the experimenters. CMS and AtLAS would then…

"Lotteries are a tax on people who are bad at math" Anonymous

"Call it entropy [..] nobody knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.” -- Von Neumann to Shannon. Have a look at below picture. You see a binary pattern. This pattern is formed by a hexagonal pattern of empty (yellow) spots and blue disks. The pattern repeats. If you carefully inspection the figure, you will discover that the repeating unit consists of 31 spots (with 15 of these empty, and 16 occupied). Let's consider a simple question: How many bits do you need to fully specify the image displayed? Regular readers of this column know where I…

Just a quick post today, to show the invariant mass distirbution of pairs of opposite-sign muons collected by the ATLAS and CMS experiment. Such plots are incredibly rich in information, as they contain the signal of ten different resonant states, and allow one to figure out the masses and production rates that these particles have, as well as the resolution of the detectors. I have shown an early such plot by CMS some time ago, but now the graph has been updated to contain all the relevant data collected in 2010 by the detector. What is more, I could find the corresponding picture by ATLAS:…

An introduction of Dye sensitized solar cell Energy resources: As we know there are some ways to get energy so that electrical can be generated, like fossil fuel, solar power, nuclear power, wind power, tidal power, geothermal power etc.1 In all these resources, fossil fuel (including coal, oil and gas) has contributed a lot in the history, and even nowadays, it is the major energy resource for human being. However, this is not a renewable energy resource, and products from the burning of fossil fuel contribute to the pollution of the atmosphere. For the developments of our next generation,…

I challenged you to come up with a short and ‘philosophical’ reason for why the tip of a plank can fall faster than free fall. The point was not to explain the experiment but to teach a lesson about critical thinking, waterproof argumentation, and so on. ‘Philosophical’ means: Get to the vital core and convince with fundamental insight.“ No formulas that a layman cannot comprehend, so, basically no formulas. Lady Gaga on her bike with a black hole between her legs – Artist’s impression. Always make a leggy girl showing legs the first picture (even girls and boob guys like leggy girls). The…

I just read with interest some slides portraying the situation of male/female differences in the employment at the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics, the institute I myself work for. I do not wish to make a summary here, but just paste a graph which I find interesting. The graph compares male and female employment in the University with the one in the INFN, for corresponding levels of employment. I must say I do not fully understand the way the percentages are cooked up, since the first three categories should be the same for the category "university" and "INFN", while they show…