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Tag: energy
POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON April 1, 2024
I’m beginning a period of travel and public speaking, so new posts may be a bit limited for a time. (Meanwhile, explore this site’s other offerings!) Tomorrow, Thursday March 28th, I’ll be in Nashville, at Vanderbilt University’s department of physics and astronomy, giving a talk (at 4 pm) about the subjects covered in my recent book. Next, on Wednesday April 3rd (6 pm) I’ll be in Cambridge, Massachusetts, giving a public talk about the book at the Harvard Science Center, as organized by the Harvard Bookstore (the wonderful independent book store located right in Harvard Square.) [Free, but RSVP.]
Then I’ll be on the west coast for a couple of weeks; if you live out there, check out this site’s upcoming-events page. And if you can’t attend any of these events, you can always listen to the recent podcasts that I’ve been on, with Sean Carroll (here) and with Daniel Whiteson (part 1 and part 2.)
More physics coming soon!
POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON March 27, 2024
I recently pointed out that there are unfamiliar types of standing waves that violate the rules of the standing waves that we most often encounter in life (typically through musical instruments, or when playing with ropes and Slinkys) and in school (typically in a first-year physics class.) I’ve given you some animations here and here, along with some verbal explanation, that show how the two types of standing waves behave.
Today I’ll show you what lies “under the hood” — and how you yourself could make these unfamiliar standing waves with a perfectly ordinary physical system. (Another example, along with the relevance of this whole subject to the Higgs field, is discussed in chapter 20 of the book.)
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POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON March 25, 2024
[Note Added: 9:30pm Eastern] Unfortunately this storm has consisted of a very bright spike of high activity and a very quick turnoff. It might restart, but it might not. Data below shows recorded activity in three-hour intervals — and the red or very high orange is where you’d want things to be for mid-latitude auroras.
Quick note: a powerful double solar flare from two groups of sunspots occurred on Friday. This in turn produced a significant blast of subatomic particles and magnetic field, called a Coronal Mass Ejection [CME], which headed in the direction of Earth. This CME arrived at Earth earlier than expected — a few hours ago — which also means it was probably stronger than expected, too. For those currently in darkness and close enough to the poles, it is probably generating strong auroras, also known as the Northern and Southern Lights.
No one knows how long this storm will continue, but check your skies tonight if you are in Europe especially, and possibly North America as well. The higher your latitude and the earlier your nightfall compared to now, the better your chances.
POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON March 24, 2024
One of the most challenging aspects of writing a book or blog about the universe (as physicists currently understand it) is that both writer and reader must confront the concept of fields. The problem isn’t that fields are intrinsically that complicated. It’s that they are an unfamiliar abstraction — and novel abstractions of any sort are always difficult both for a writer to describe and for a reader to grasp.
What I’ll do today is give an explanation of fields that is complementary to the one that appears in the book’s chapters 13 and 14. The book’s approach is slow, methodical, and detailed, but today’s will be more of an overview, brief and relatively shallow, and presented in a different order. You will likely come away with many unanswered questions, but the book should help with that. And if the book and today’s post combined are still not enough, you can ask a question in the comments below, or on the book question page.
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POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON March 21, 2024
After my post last week about familiar and unfamiliar standing waves — the former famous from musical instruments, the latter almost unknown except to physicists (see Chapter 17 of the book) — I got a number of questions. Quite a few took the form, “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Strassler! Obviously, if you have a standing wave in a box, and you remove the box, it will quickly disintegrate into traveling waves that move in opposite directions! There is no standing wave without a container.”
Well, I’m not joking. These waves are unfamiliar, sure, to the point that they violate what some readers may have learned elsewhere about standing waves. Today I’ll show you animations to prove it.
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POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON March 19, 2024
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A decay of a Higgs boson, as reconstructed by the CMS experiment at the LHC
