r/AskPhysics • • 20h ago

According to quantum theory, two entangled electrons—even if one were at one end of the universe and the other at the opposite end—exhibit certain correlations. However, it is also known that entanglement cannot be used to transmit information faster than the speed of light.

93 Upvotes

Given that these correlations cannot be mere coincidence, and that information cannot travel faster than light, how do these two electrons "know" about each other and maintain their correlation?


r/AskPhysics • • 2h ago

Does expansion of universe follow classical laws of Thermodynamics?

3 Upvotes

I have been studying thermodynamics in my high school and have come to know recently that the Expansion of the universe is an irreversible adiabatic process that its entropy will always increase. But how is that and where is even the energy source that is provided as in temperature Internal energy in general classical thermodynamics processes?


r/AskPhysics • • 21m ago

[Crosspost] AMA with theoretical physicist Philipp Strasberg about the quantum multiverse on r/science

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• Upvotes

r/AskPhysics • • 3h ago

Inverse beta decay (neutrino induced), and its relation to the solar neutrino flux.

1 Upvotes

Hi all,

(EDIT: It unfortunately appears that this paper has since been debunked, as environmental artifacts were not properly accounted for. Thank you to everyone involved in the discussion!)

I came across an interesting paper by P.A. Sturrock, E. Fischbach, et al entitled "The case for a solar influence on certain nuclear decay rates".

As we were all taught, nuclear decay is stated to occur at a fixed (probabilistic) rate. However, this paper and a few others by these same authors find significant (~1%) variation in the measured rate of decay based on the earth-sun distance, and also solar activity, leading to them directly suggesting that neutrinos may influence the rate of nuclear decay. As far as I can tell, these papers seem quite conclusive that decay rates are not absolutely constant, but I had never before heard even a hint of discussion regarding this.

As I understand it, their model suggests that the neutrinos may impart kinetic rotations on the nuclei, and thereby modulate the rate of decay. However, I was wondering why this has never been linked with inverse beta decay (a neutrino being absorbed by a nuclei, and instigating a beta decay). It seems like a fairly straightforward connection, but I couldn't find any work suggesting the concept.

Interestingly, my thought process on this was almost the reverse order of the researchers, whereby I came upon the topic by thinking about if/how solar neutrinos could theoretically impact nuclear decay rates, and hypothesised that you may see a change in decay rates (due to IBD) based on Earths' orbital radius. Then my research came across that paper seemingly affirming the pattern.

Does anyone here have more familiarity with either of these concepts, and could point me towards more discussion/research? This has sent me down a real rabbit-hole, but my physics is a little rusty to dig too much further myself. I would also expect a similar effect to occur around nuclear reactors (massive anti-neutrino sources), but I am finding very sparse and mixed results.

Thanks all :)


r/AskPhysics • • 14h ago

What actually is crystal momentum? What is Berry curvature?

2 Upvotes

I’m enrolled in a research course this term, and my work is on the dynamics of Bloch electron in crystals. It’s mostly semiclassical dynamics, and there’s a lot of work involving Berry curvature.

Marder’s Condensed Matter Physics is one of the assigned books I’ve been given, but because it’s a graduate level book and I don’t have sufficient completed coursework in quantum mechanics, I can’t finish the whole thing myself.

Regardless, I want to get an intuitive understanding of what crystal momentum and Berry curvature are. What is reciprocal space? Is Berry curvature a property of the reciprocal space? What are the closest analogues in classical particle dynamics?


r/AskPhysics • • 18h ago

Reversibility of mass

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4 Upvotes

r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

Some atoms have more than a hundred electrons; how can so many electrons exist around the nucleus without colliding with one another?These atoms form bonds with other atoms and later separate—meaning they exchange electrons by giving and receiving them.

92 Upvotes
During this process, how do electrons move so easily to another atom? Why don't they fall onto the nucleus, and why don't they collide with each other?

r/AskPhysics • • 16h ago

Physics project idea

2 Upvotes

hi, I’m having trouble finding ideas for a high school physics project (it’s a group project) our teacher is very picky and doesn‘t like project topics that would be easier and more efficient for us as students (out of the box ideas if you will)

topics can be anything related to physics but we don’t have a physics lab or any physics equipment so any experiment that involves equipment we the student have to provide it ourselves

topics that we have in our curriculum to give you an idea on what we’re learning:

1/ unit on gravity (basic intro to astrophysics think kepler’s law, cavendish‘s experiment, newton‘s law of universal gravitation, ect)

2/ unit on rotational motion (angular velocity, angular acceleration,torque,ect)

3/ momentum and its conservation (impulse and momentum)

4/ work energy and simple machines

5/ energy and its conservation

6/ thermal energy


r/AskPhysics • • 12h ago

Help with AP Antenna Radiation Pattern chart

0 Upvotes

I am looking at AP placement on my ceiling and trying to determine if it can reach a IoT device in my attic. I am looking at Ubiquiti U7 Pro XGS and found the AP spectrum pattern for this device.

From what I can gather, I should have pretty good coverage I place my wireless plug 9' horizontal and 3' vertical from the AP. The device uses the 2.4GHz band.

https://imgur.com/a/hOrySN4

Anyone good at reading spectrum maps? From what I can gather through google, I should have pretty good coverage if my IoT device is 9' horizontal and 3' vertical from the AP. At 9' out and 3' up, the device sits at a diagonal angle of approx 72 degrees off the center vertical axis. Near the 60° to 75° mark, the color is a solid, vibrant orange/red.

Just trying to confirm I am reading this correctly, as I am not an RF engineer and not really sure what the charts describe.


r/AskPhysics • • 18h ago

What is the arrangement of quarks in the nuclear shell model?

2 Upvotes

I asked this in a scale-visualization post in another subreddit, figured I should ask actual physicists.

Each nucleon is three quarks bound tightly together but the shell model has, well, shells. I can't quite wrap my head around how that works with the very short-distance forces going on in the nucleus.


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

Books for a gifted, physics-obsessed 13-y/o?

62 Upvotes

I always get my friend's kids books for the holidays. Her son is 13, and increasingly fascinated by all things related to physics and cosmology. He's in an accelerated track at school, and reads at a college level, but still has only a middle school math background (I'd hazard a guess that they're somewhere around quadratic equations and the Pythagorean theorem this winter).

Two years ago I got him an illustrated edition of A Brief History of Time + The Universe in a Nutshell, and he reportedly couldn't put it down. Any ideas for a followup that he might find similarly compelling?

EDIT: Wow, I did not anticipate nearly so many responses, and probably can't respond individually to all of them. Looks like I've got a whole bunch of books to check out. Thank you to everyone who responded for all these ideas, and please keep them coming!


r/AskPhysics • • 18h ago

Wrong units?

1 Upvotes

I'm reading 'Red Mars' by Kim Stanley Robinson, and came across the line: "Total column mass about 10^-3 grams per cm^-2." (The actual text is more elegant with properly written exponents)

It looks to me that this unit is wrong, using "per" and also using the negative exponent is doing the same thing. Wouldn't you use one or the other?


r/AskPhysics • • 20h ago

plasma globes

0 Upvotes

does the current in plasma globes prefer your skin over air because skin has less resistance?


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

How does a ship moving 99% the speed of light work in this scenario?

10 Upvotes

I heard that a ship moving 99% the speed of light with a light beam in front of it would see the beam move away at the speed of light, while a stationary observer would see the beam pull away from the ship slower. If this is the case, then what would happen if a ship sent light infront of an behind it? Wouldn't the ship always see the light equadistant from itself while a stationary observer would see the front light move away from the ship slower than the back light? How is this possible?


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

Could somebody explain to me the solution to this problem?

2 Upvotes

The problem dictates:

Two punctual still masses, M₁ = 4,00·10¹²kg and M₂ = 9,00·10¹²kg, are on x₁ = 0 and x₂ = 1000m, respectively. Only the (gravitational) fields are considered.

a) Draw the fields both masses produce on P coordinate x = 500m. Calculate the resulting field, with its direction and orientation (?).

This is translated from Spanish, and the words it uses, "dirección" (direction) and "sentido" (orientation) mean exactly the same in normal Spanish, so I'm already unsure of what different things it is asking.

Beyond drawing, I'm at a loss on what to do. So I decide to check the solution because sometimes I can decipher what is meant to be done from reading it. But I still do not understand what was done this time.

The solution is:

M₁ ⃗g₁ ⃗g₂ M₂

○----------------------<-----P--------------->------------○

x=0 x=1000 m

--------------500m-------------∖------------500m----------

● Q: x = 400 m; distances between 400 m and 600 m

𝑔⃗1 = − 6,67 ⋅ 10^-11 ⋅ 4,00 ⋅ 10^12 / 500^2 = ı⃗ = −1,0672 ⋅ 10^−3ı⃗ N kg−1

𝑔⃗2 = 6,67 ⋅ 10^-11 ⋅ 9,00 ⋅ 10^12 / 500^2 = ı⃗ = 2,4012 ⋅ 10^−3ı⃗ N kg−1

𝑔⃗ (𝑃) = 𝑔⃗1 + 𝑔⃗2 = 1,334 ⋅ 10−3ı⃗ N kg−1

Its modulus is approx. 1,33 ⋅ 10−3 N kg−1, its direction is the one on the X axis, and its orientation is to the right, towards the bigger mass.

My questions:

1) What does the solution mean with "its direction is the one on the X axis"? Wouldn't that be a position?

2) What does the "Q" mean? What's there for?

3) From my understanding, the thought process was to calculate the gravitational fields of both M₁ and M₂ and then just add the results up to get the field of P. Am I correct?


r/AskPhysics • • 18h ago

Power laws that can be found by dimensional analysis?

0 Upvotes

The power output from a wind turbine is proportional to the cube of the wind speed. This can easily be shown using dimensional analysis.

Similarly, the radius of the shock wave from a nuclear explosion is proportional to the 2/5 power of the time since detonation, as shown independently by John Von Neumann and GI Taylor during WWII in classified documents.

What other scaling laws can be found using dimensional analysis


r/AskPhysics • • 22h ago

Título: Interações entre nêutrons e o dineutron hipotético

0 Upvotes

​

Olá a todos! Tenho 14 anos e estou começando a estudar física nuclear por conta própria. Tenho interesse em compreender a física fundamental das interações entre nêutrons.

Entendo que dois nêutrons livres não formam um estado ligado estável nas condições conhecidas, e gostaria de aprender mais sobre esse assunto.

Tenho três perguntas:

  1. Quais são as principais razões físicas pelas quais dois nêutrons livres não formam um estado ligado estável?

  2. Quais modelos matemáticos ou simulações computacionais vocês recomendam para estudar as interações entre nêutrons e o dineutron hipotético?

  3. Quais livros, artigos científicos ou materiais educativos confiáveis vocês recomendam para alguém que está começando a estudar esse tema?

Meu interesse é compreender a física teórica e explorar cálculos e simulações educativas.

Agradeço por qualquer orientação ou recomendação de material de estudo!


r/AskPhysics • • 23h ago

If you jump in a moving train and during that time the train accelerates where do you land?

0 Upvotes

This came up as I was explaining to my 12 yo about the why you land at the same spot when you jump in a train. If somebody can explain this in a way to explain the underlying concepts that will be very helpful.


r/AskPhysics • • 23h ago

How to Perform a Moonwalk with closest to perfect Equilibrium Motion?

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0 Upvotes

r/AskPhysics • • 20h ago

Gravity- how exactly gravity be used to sling shot spacecrafts?

0 Upvotes

Is it energy or force?


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

Rotating reference frame close to the speed of light

0 Upvotes

Hi r/askphysics, question about special relativity:

if you were an observer standing (Say on the outer rim) of a disk that was rotating close to the speed of light, what happens in terms of length contraction? I’m trying to reason that since my velocity is basically only in the azimuthal direction (say in cylindrical coordinates) I think only angles and therefore arc lengths would appear to shrink around the observer, and not radii (So objects in the surroundings would not appear closer). Also since the reference frame is non-inertial I’m sure something weird happens with GR in that case, but I don’t know much about GR.


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

How can charge be a fundamental property of black holes?

7 Upvotes

If we're going by the no hair theorem, black holes have three fundamental properties: mass, angular momentum, and charge. I understand how we can measure mass and angular momentum. My question is, how can we ever measure the charge of a black hole?

Say a charged particle passes beyond the event horizon. From that point on, from the perspective of the particle, all futures point to the singularity. So if the particle is emitting an electric field, and all future points in space end at the singularity, how are we able to measure charge at all?


r/AskPhysics • • 20h ago

Some questions about “acceleration” and perhaps a bit on how it may relate to special relativity

0 Upvotes

There appears to be sort of three or four versions or notions of “acceleration” I can think of, and I want to ask a bit about them.

There is the type of acceleration where something like thrusters are used to increase velocity for one object relative to another object.

There is a notion of (effectively) “acceleration” where if I go forward with constant velocity, measuring time with my clock, away from some planet let’s say and another ship passes under me going towards the planet, and the ship syncs its clock with mine as it passes, effectively “information has accelerated relative to earth”/the information has a change in reference frame.

There is the concept of gravitational assist that is also considered acceleration, where an object can increase/change velocity relative to some other object via a gravitational assist.

(I suppose you could also do the same with magnets and have “magnetic assist” of a magnet, where the magnet wouldn’t feel itself accelerating, or?)

First of all, is it the case that it is only the first version that is considered proper acceleration or are all considered/called proper acceleration?

A thing these scenarios have in common is a change in reference frame. They will age less relative to an object that does not engage in any of this if they start off together and then meet up.

What do these scenarios have in common that leads to a change in reference frame contra objects that do not engage in these scenarios and only “experience” the coordinate acceleration (fourth notion of “acceleration”) relative to objects that engaged in these processes (even though there of course is no universally agreed upon coordinates in space and velocities and distances always have to be defined relative to other objects)? Can that be explained in more detail or is it more accepted as a rule, that:

“If any object/information engages in one of these three scenarios of using something like thrusters, clock syncing or gravity assist, then they have a change in reference frame and objects that do not engage in any of this will not change reference frame (in a universe with no ‘official coordinates’)” ?


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

If the CMB gives a preferred reference frame, how is that different from an absolute frame?

8 Upvotes

I’ve been thinking about special relativity and the idea that there’s no absolute reference frame, meaning we can’t say one object is truly stationary while another is truly moving.
But the Big Bang and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) seem to complicate this.

Imagine two advanced civilizations, one in the Milky Way and another in Andromeda. Both could estimate the age of the universe using the same cosmological model, measure their own velocities relative to the CMB, and compare their results. For example, the Sun moves at roughly 370 km/s relative to the CMB.

I understand that the Big Bang wasn’t an explosion from a single point in space, and that the CMB provides something like a preferred cosmological reference frame. But if we can measure our motion relative to it, doesn’t that suggest there’s at least one physically meaningful frame that isn’t arbitrary?
So what’s the fundamental difference between a cosmological reference frame and an absolute frame of motion?

I’m not suggesting that relativity is wrong. I’m just trying to understand why a frame defined by the universe itself isn’t considered an absolute reference frame.


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

If planetary surfaces behave as a fluid when impacted at super high energy (think impact cratering with water-like ripples rebound central peaks), could all matter be considered a fluid with varying viscosity based upon their energy?

5 Upvotes