Quantum Theory

(may sound silly (and I'm sure I'll be quoted on this)) but is it possible to make an electro magnetic rail gun?

Why, whenever you are outside at night, do all of the lights extend into beams of light perpendicular to your vision? For example, when driving, the cars coming towards you on the other side of the road have lights that create a beam upwards and towards the ground... Or, when looking at a street light which has lights extending in five directions... Thanks

I've had a quick look around and can't find this stuff mentioned anywhere, closest I came to was Quantum Brain Theory but that's different to what I've been thinking about. So I figured I'd run it past you guys... I'll try my best to explain it so bear with me. I wasn't sure which forum to post this to but since it deals with quantum sized objects In the beginning we all thought we were just one thing, we being ourselves, our consciousnesses - the thing that makes each of us ourselves. Then we soon found out we're made from different things like teeth, bones, skin, hair, organs, a brain etc.. We find out our consciousnesses lie inside our brains. Then we find o…

Quantum entanglement is quite a challenging subject, and I would like to see if we can make it any easier to think about when using the Schrödinger cat analogy. For this, we can make abstraction of the atom which decays and triggers a poison to kill the cat. Let's just say that the cat itself is in a quantum state of being dead/alive as long as we don't look inside the box. Once we do, the quantum state collapses and we see the cat as being either dead or alive. For starters, I'll refrain from inserting an analogy to tackle the Heisenberg uncertainty. I'll leave that for another thread. Now, suppose we take 2 boxes with cats and manipulate them in such a way t…

TWF number 208 is out. Baez reports new developments from a Quantum Gravity conference at Perimeter Institute http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week208.html

I am currently creating a theory about the earths inner ideas. I'm not exactly sure where you want me to post this. I can just about guarantee that no one will agree with my theory, but please do debate it, as it will allow me to extend on my theory. Here be she: In general, the Inverse Earth Theory shows that the Earth’s inner core is somewhat like the earths outer core. The reasoning for this is Newton’s Law of Gravity “Each object in the universe attracts each other body”. According to this law, every object in the universe attracts each other. If this is true, then should it not be the same for every atom in the earth? The definition of an atom is, “A unit of matt…

ok light travels and let say that i hit's something and it changes direction to do this it most come to a comeplete stop and then accelrate back to light speed... do you think the properties of it change when this happens when it comes to a complete stop?

is the multiverse shown in the Michael Chrition Book timeline real or made up

Ok, so one day randomness came to mind. Randomness in the aspect of flipping a coin; basically about 1/2 probability of getting tails. But, it is not actually random in the aspect of physics since you could calculate the momentum the coin has, and all the other factors like gravity etc., eventually getting the result of the flip (without seeing the actual result of course). So, I tried to think of a thing that has an actual random factor to it, and the only thing that came to mind is a radioactive decay (like would be the case in the Schrödinger's cat experiment). Any others? I'm just probably silly to forget about all the other nice randomy thingies flying about. :&l…

Does quantum mechanics describe reality, or just what we perceive as reality? For example: Does a particle actually have both an absolute position and momentum? Or do these particle properties only solidify when the particle is interacted with. I read that Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen raised an objection to QM stating that particles possessed definite properties, which is why two widely separated particles with a common origin behave the same. Then I read about Bell and Aspect's data that seemed to put EPR's notion to rest. So far I'm really confused and not sure what to make of it all. Is the current view that particles exist in a probability wave when they'r…

If we use De Broglie's equation for waves: http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/physics/quant/node6.html Does this mean that if humans move at a certain velocity, that they will give off a detectable light?

According to the laws of thermodynamics, the entropy of the universe is constantly increasing. Accordingly, a system will constantly move from order to disorder. However, I reminisced back to the elementary school days when simple experiments regarding magnets were performed. One such observation included emptying iron dust particles onto an overhead projection machine so that the area of projection was covered, then a magnet was introduced into the center of these iron dust particles and they suddenly arranged themselves in the fashion of the two magnetic poles. I was left to wonder if the introduction of the magnet could truly defy the entropy of the system. Just some t…

There have been a number of issues raised in the learning of quantum mechanics that i am unsure of. 1. How can you explain electron spin in terms of waves? 2.How and when do photons interact with 'virtual' electrons in a vacuum? 3.How do photons interact when they are travelling away from each other i.e. at 2c 4.There is a way of describing electrons interacting with each other that means they travel back in time (this is deep QED) can anybody explain it to me? 5. I understand the purpose in QFD, but can somebody explain why is involves bosons, and more deep explaination?

Why does light refract when changing different refractive index mediums? A quantum theory question Just want to hear your side to it

im not really sure what category this should come under but anyway: recently i saw in a newspaper that some scientist had teleported the properties of an atom, they'd teleported things before, but nothing as big as an atom and nothing as complex as an atom either here's a link to a website explaining what they did/found: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3811785.stm it says that this is an important break through because althought they are still a long way off teleporting humans, they could use it to teleport data in computers instantaniously but what i was interested in was how they did it... they used a method called 'quantum entaglement', by w…

Up until recently I believed that photons were charged electrons but as I now understand things.. Photons are those packets of energy emitted by atoms when an electron is thrown from one to another, the atom can't contain the new electrons energy so it throws the energy out, is that correct?? What happens to the electron though?? Surely it can't just disappear, it must also be thrown out or absorbed mustn't it?? And if that's right, another thing I believed was that the photon (charged electron) was passed from one atom to another, like a chain reaction. I assume "real" photons don't travel in this way at all, correct?? All I can find on the web is that pho…

I've been reading the book A Brief History of Time , by Stephen Hawking, in some of his chapters he's mentioned that :all particles are also waves", or something like that. How can something be both a wave and a particle? Particles are packets of energy and matter, and waves arn't in any neat little package, but rather spread out. To me they seem to be very different things.

Well, the subject line was a bit blatant. Basically, I'm wondering why many physics equations are squared, e.g. E=MC2, kg*m/s2=Newton, etc. Maybe it's just coincidence that it happens to solve the equation, but I've got a hunch that maybe there is some common physics factor that requires things to be squared for a common purpose. Does it have anything to do with the inverse square law ( http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/isq.html )? If I'm totally off-track and it's not, then why are things like the afore mentioned squared, i.e. how does it complete the equation for those two examples? Cheers! CoolATIGuy

This is an idea ready for explosive growth, I would estimate. If you google the phrase now you get 4 hits. My guess is that if you google in a couple of months the number of hits will have more than doubled. Let's see if the prediction is right. What suggested to do this was a post by ed84c on the Quantum Gravity thread. Here are the google hits you get Thursday 21 October 2004 when you say, including quotes, "general relativistic quantum physics" ===================== The century of the incomplete revolution: Searching for general ... ... Remarkably, all these diverse approaches have turned out to be related, suggesting an intriguing general picture of general …

Yahoo (via Reuter's) has a nice article up about the Large Hadron Collector at CERN, due to begin operations in 2007. Nothing really earth-shattering in the story, but I just thought I'd pass it along since things are kinda quiet in here. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=1&u=/nm/20041018/sc_nm/science_cern_dc

I'm learning about atomic energy levels and atomic spectra at the moment but there is something I don't quite understand. When a sample of gas at low pressure was bombarded: (1)-by a beam of electrons, what would be the possible energies of the electrons after passing through the gas? (2)-by a beam of electrons, what photon energies would be observed coming from the gas? (3)-by a beam of photons of known energy, what would be the possible energies of photons coming from the gas? I got a lot of questions of these 3 types but the problem is I don't quite understand what the difference is between passing a beam of electrons and a beam of photons. Can someone expl…

I was just thinking about tachyons, yes I know they're only theoretical and said to be used to explain away a hole in a theory but assuming they do exist... Wouldn't they be made from the same fundamental particles (strings or whatever) that everything else is made from?? And if a tachyon is travelling faster than the speed of light and backwards in time doesn't that mean they're travelling to the start of the universe since they can't exist before it started because there'd be nowhere for them to exist. And what could possibly take a collection of fundamentals and create one of these tachyons, wouldn't it take a phenomenal amount of energy to send something o…

http://www.chip-architect.com/news/2004_10_04_The_Electro_Magnetic_coupling_constant.html alpha, approximately 1/137, is maybe the most important pure number in quantum theory of any kind, at least in QED and Severian disagrees and indeed alpha changes at very short distances and high energies but so what? in the ordinary world of atoms, molecules, and even nuclei alpha is ordinary alpha---and it is basic to everything around us. so feynmann, among others, said every physicist worth his salt should have that number tacked up on the wall to remind him to ask why it was what it was. alpha is only known by experimental measurement---basically by measurin…

quantum physisists are working on a theory of everything (unified theory), but are unable to create one so far. but they do have certain parts of this theory completed, does anybody know what those parts are?

I have a question about the atom when it releases radiation. I know when radiation is released it is released in the form of a helium nucleus, an electron or as part of the electromagnetic spectrum. When an atom ejects an alpha or beta particle it loses or gains protons...so my question is what happens to the atom's electrons in the electron shell? I'm guessing that if a beta particle is released and a neutron is changed into a proton that there must be another electron that comes from somewhere...and the opposite for an alpha particle. Does anyone know about the electrons? Every source that I have never mentions the electrons...they just say that protons (and neutrons) a…