The next time someone tries to describe quantum theory as mysterious or magical, imagine how silly it would seem if the same arguments were applied to polarized light.
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Often when talking about gravity and general relativity the “fabric of spacetime” will be mentioned. This fabric is often visualized as a kind of rubbery sheet that can be bent and stretched by the presence of masses. We use this kind of imagery so often that one might imagine that’s actually what spacetime is. But if spacetime is a fabric, it is the same type of fabric used to make the Emperor’s new clothes.
Time in a Bottle
In an earlier post I talked about how certain kinds of dark matter might be detectable by the global positioning system (GPS). Part of the reason for that is due to the fact that GPS satellites have extremely precise clocks in them. So precise that the relativistic effects of gravity and relative motion have a measurable effect on the rate at which their clocks tick. This led some readers to ask just how gravity can affect the flow of time. It all has to due with Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Technicolor Dreams
There’s been some buzz recently about doubts regarding the existence of the Higgs boson. The popular press has picked up on this a bit, leading to claims that it’s similar to the BICEP2 debacle. In this case the comparison is unfounded. There’s been some interesting work, but nothing that merits tracking down Peter Higgs and taking back his Nobel prize.
A Matter of Principle
Imagine taking a bucket of water and spinning it. As you rotate the bucket, the water would fling outward a bit, so that the surface of the water is concave. Compare that to a bucket of water that isn’t spinning, so that the water is flat. If both buckets are perfectly smooth and symmetrical, and the water is perfectly calm, the only difference you would see is that one bucket has concave water and the other has flat. But why are they different?
Sphere of Influence
Suppose you were to flash a light where you are at this moment. The light would speed away from you at about 300,000 kilometers per second, which is known as the speed of light. In general you could point the light in any direction, so flash of light would in general be an expanding sphere of light.
Flyby Night
The most likely explanation for the flyby anomaly is some subtle but mundane effect we just haven’t pinned down. But there is always a chance that it is due to something more exotic. The effect is definitely there, so it is worth exploring each time there is a close flyby.
Neutrino Rain
Yesterday I talked about the weirdness of neutrinos, specifically that there three types of neutrinos (known as flavors), and they can oscillate between different flavors due to the quantum fuzziness of their masses. If you go back and read that post, you’ll find its a pretty bizarre model that seems to assume a great deal just to solve what is known as the solar neutrino problem. So how could we possibly know that such a model is correct?
Mixing It Up
Neutrinos are perhaps the most enigmatic particles in the universe. They were first discovered in the 1950s as a product of radioactive decay, but they are also produced in nuclear fusion reactions. As a result, copious amounts of neutrinos are produced in the Sun through the pp-chain and CNO nuclear fusion processes in the core of our star. This makes the Sun a perfect candidate for doing neutrino astronomy. But when we first starting observing solar neutrinos in the 1960s, revealed mystery known as the solar neutrino problem. The solution to this problem wasn’t proven until the late 1990s, and it demonstrated that neutrinos are far more strange than we had imagined.