1

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Is there a simple explanation of Bell's experiment?

« on: 21/12/2020 10:45:50 »

Philip Ball, the science writer, whilst giving a lecture at the RI on entanglement said: "Personally, I have never seen an explanation of John Bell's experiment that is at all easy to follow".

2

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Could gravity be like temperature and not be able to be quantised?

« on: 03/09/2020 13:00:30 »

So much work into unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics but could the effort have been made elsewhere?

3

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / I rate 'many worlds' people together with flat-earthers. Am I wrong?

« on: 06/08/2020 20:09:34 »

Both possess beliefs that I find unconvincing.
The former harder to prove erroneous than the latter.

4

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Has physics made any meaningful progress in the last 40 years?

« on: 05/06/2020 18:47:19 »

Sabine Hossenfelder asked this when she launched her book 'Lost in Math'.

She cited the LHC not discovering new fundamental particles and physicists relying on unscientific methods to develop new theories. She criticised how they became obsessed with 'beauty' in their equations.
 
She said they should concentrate on resolving inconsistencies in existing theories citing the missing quantization of gravity, the measurement problem and aspects of dark matter/energy.

5

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / What are the implications of a change in the Hubble constant?

« on: 09/08/2019 19:26:28 »

I am asking this after Wendy Freedman and Adam Riess recently made their case for different expansion rates of the universe.

6

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Could the universe be a simulation?

« on: 15/04/2019 18:43:34 »

Recent expressed views ranged from a reluctant yes from Zohreh Davoudi to no from Lisa Randall and maybe's from Max Tegmark and David Chalmers.

7

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / When will quantum supremacy be achieved?

« on: 16/03/2019 14:42:52 »

The date seems to have slipped through 2017 and 2018.
Could 2019 be a possibility?

8

New Theories / Could our universe have an antimatter partner?

« on: 10/01/2019 08:02:24 »

Neil Turok and his colleagues at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics are suggesting that an anti-universe before the Big Bang when time ran backwards and was dominated by antimatter instead of matter.

They say it naturally explains the existence of dark matter.

9

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Why did Einstein think we are we all wrong?

« on: 31/12/2018 17:21:59 »

Towards the end of his life, Einstein said
"All these years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the question - what are light quanta? Every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it but he is mistaken.''

10

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Could dark matter and dark energy be unified into a single phenomenon?

« on: 10/12/2018 14:28:52 »

Published in Astronomy and Astrophysics, by Dr. Jamie Farnes from the Oxford e-Research Centre, Department of Engineering Science, offers a new explanation. Dr. Farnes says: "We now think that both dark matter and dark energy can be unified into a fluid which possesses a type of negative gravity, repelling all other material around them. Although this matter is peculiar to us, it suggests that our cosmos is symmetrical in both positive and negative qualities.

11

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Which force is stronger...gravitation or dark energy?

« on: 12/06/2018 20:09:03 »

Galaxies collide but the expansion of the universe accelerates. This appears counterintuitive like a lot of cosmology and quantum mechanics.

12

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Is dark energy real?

« on: 19/03/2018 10:06:18 »

The accelerating expansion of the universe due to a mysterious quantity called “dark energy” may not be real, according to research claiming it might simply be an artefact caused by the physical structure of the cosmos.
The findings, reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, claims the fit of Type Ia supernovae to a model universe with no dark energy appears to be slightly better than the fit using the standard dark energy model.

13

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Will humans ever understand quantum physics?

« on: 14/03/2018 17:44:15 »

In the same way that chimpanzees will never understand classical physics, have humans just not got the intellectual capacity to understand quantum mechanics?

14

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / What will the James Webb telescope reveal?

« on: 18/05/2016 19:15:46 »

Hubble produced many surprises.

Would anybody like to speculate on what unexpected things the James Webb telescope might reveal?

15

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Why do some forces operate at very small distances and others at very large?

« on: 11/05/2016 21:20:35 »

Here I am thinking of gravity and the strong nuclear force.

16

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Why does an interference pattern occur when electrons are fired one at time?

« on: 26/04/2016 10:39:32 »

Like so many people I am fascinated by the double slit experiment. One of its most baffling features is what happens when electrons are fired one at a time. I would have thought that an interference pattern could not be produced in this situation.

17

Technology / Is there a working quantum computer?

« on: 14/04/2016 20:08:40 »

After many decades of development has a working quantum computer that lives up to the claims made for it actually operating?

18

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / What is the Universe?

« on: 04/04/2016 19:29:04 »

In relation to our universe what are peoples theories to the age old question – “what the hell is it all about” ?

19

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / How does the detector work in the double slit experiment?

« on: 08/03/2016 19:30:40 »

In the double slit experiment electrons will produce a diffraction pattern on the screen. But when a detector is placed to detect an electron going through a slit the wave function collapses and we see two bands on the screen.

I would like to know how the detector actually works.

20

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / What is spin when referred to as a property of a particle?

« on: 20/02/2016 20:13:18 »

Without using analogies can anybody explain what exactly spin is when it is referred to as a property of a particle.