There is a lot of speculation about when Bidens Prostate cancer was found. Having had Prostate Cancer myself (9 yr and counting), had radiation treatment, and a Gleason score of 5.5, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that this came on fast. But, maybe within the last 6 months or so.
I was 69 when I had it. My Doc said I could do nothing have maybe 5 yrs. I didn’t call him out, saying I bet he wouldn’t do nothing.
Yesterday on FOX there was a Radiation Doc saying too much testing is done on the over 70’s men. I can not tell you how angry I got. I bet she would not say that to a Woman, about Breast Cancer.
On the video: I taught QM right up until 2020 in both the sophomore Modern Physics course and senior level course, I NEVER started with spin. That’s a sure fire way to confuse students. His use of “qubits” is an attempt to be more relevant, but is ultimately also confusing. He describes QM okay, but not in what I would call an illuminating way.
More interesting: the Liberal Hivemind has a good video this morning; only 8 minutes excerpting Scott Jennings with Bill Maher. They talk about the Trump paradigm shift in foreign policy where the emphasis is on building relationships rather than the neocon nation building. Quite interesting to listen; start at the 1:20m mark.
@physicsguyI taught QM right up until 2020 in both the sophomore Modern Physics course and senior level course, I NEVER started with spin.
I got it in the historical order, which is also kind of confusing I think. The people starting in 1900 started from a very different place from where 21st century undergraduates do; what came naturally to them might not now.
The part that knocked people out of the physics grad program where I was, was the creation-destruction operators introduced for the harmonic oscillator in Cohen-Tannoudji. I’m really not sure about the pedagogy there. It wasn’t so hard to do, but I found it very difficult at the time to understand why we were doing it and why it worked.
After grad school I got a copy of the Griffith’s undergraduate QM book and I found that much more accessible, but YMMV. Everything seems easier by the second or third presentation.
Perhaps physics guy or Mike Plaiss or anyone else can answer this:
How did James Clerk Maxwell know (or find) that the speed of light (“c”) belonged in his equations of electromagnetics??
Also, are the double slit experiments conducted in a vacuum (and does it matter?)?
Also, what kind of device is capable of emitting just one electron at a time ?
Any help on this will be appreciated.
Yea, quantum mechanics is really bizarre.
Just returned from a lengthy trip to France, spent mostly in Normandy but also Paris and the Île-de-France. It was wonderful: people, places, weather, food, overall ambience, all of it wonderful. Especially the people: everyone was very friendly, in Normandy of course but also in Paris. Also wonderful: Didn’t have a single political discussion. not even with my travel companions. Love France, love the French. Already planning my next trip.
P.S. So many slender pretty smiling friendly young women in tight tight tight jeans. How do they get them off???
@JohnTyler:How did James Clerk Maxwell know (or find) that the speed of light (“c”) belonged in his equations of electromagnetics??
As I understand the history, he solved the propagation of an electromagnetic wave and that it depends on two constants: permeability and permittivity. One is found with experiments with magnets and the other from experiments with electric charges, neither of which seem to involve light.
The speed of that wave, as calculated from those constants, matched the known speed of light very closely. So Maxwell identified light as an electromagnetic wave. (It was already thought to be some kind of wave from other experiments.)
Now those constants don’t seem to be affected by the speed of the lab in which they are measured. This was the clue that eventually to special relativity, which (to be unfair to Einstein) could be described as “believe what the Maxwell equations are trying to tell you, that everyone measures the same speed of light”.
I assume the labs operate under the same conditions, what instruments did einstein used to derive it,
I feel like Maxwell is unfairly unknown to the public. Everyone has heard of Einstein and has some vague idea of what he did. Most people have heard of Newton and have some vague idea of what he did. Few have heard of Maxwell. Besides electricity and magnetism, besides thermodynamics, he invented color photography, figured out what the rings of Saturn were made of (“brick-bats”), and summoned a demon that still hangs around physicists causing trouble.
@miguel:I assume the labs operate under the same conditions
Latitude and longitude affect the speed and direction at which labs move.
what instruments did einstein used to derive it
I don’t believe Einstein did any experiments of his own to derive special relativity. You can read for yourself what he did in his own words. He read other people’s papers, did some thinking, did some calculations, and showed that he could solve some outstanding puzzles by making these assumptions.
JohnTyler,
Niketas answered, but I can expand. From standard classical physics the description of any 3d wave is given by the “wave eqn” which looks like
partial space derivatives(function) = 1/v^2(partial time derivative(function)),
where v is the wave velocity. For sound waves the “function” would be the gas pressure, for example.
All well-known standard stuff. If you take 2 of the 4 Maxwell Equations, by taking a derivative you can separate the E field from the Magnetic field and you end up with the exact wave equation above for both the electric and magnetic fields in 2 equations. The great part is that the velocity term turns out to be v = 1/SQRT(epsilon0*mu0), where epsilon and mu are well-known, established electric and magnetic constants of nature. Put their known values into the equation and, voila, you get 3.0×10^8 m/sec. So Maxwell’s equations show that when the electric and magnetic fields are not static, they have to be waves and move at the velocity of light.
QM: Yes, the double slit particle experiments have to be done in a vacuum so the particles travel unimpeded. Many ways to get a single electron. A not so efficient way would be to use a beta emitter radioactive source which decays by emission of a single electron. Other, more technical apparatus exist.
@Irish Otter: it is up to you to figure out how to get tight tight jeans off a young woman!
CICERO:
LOL!
QM isn’t super-hard if you are content to turn the crank and get the answers. What’s hard is that the math is really abstract and not easy to connect to what we can sense or explain in words.
An example somewhat relevant to the double-slit experiment. When you write equations describing what electrons do, you have to include the fact that electrons cannot tell themselves apart and they could be switching places. Even when you send “one electron at a time through a slit”, you don’t know, and neither does the electron, if it’s really “the same” electron every time that goes through the slit, or a different one, as the one you sent toward the slit. When you write an equation describing rolling a bowling ball through a gap in a fence you don’t have to account for that. Why it makes such a huge difference is not easy to explain or understand, but there’s a recipe for writing the equations.
A wise man told me that not understanding QM was ok, because we don’t really understand Newton’s physics either; we’re just used to it. He assured me the same would happen with QM and it eventually did.
it isn’t unreasonable to assume that this came on fast. But, maybe within the last 6 months or so.
I was 69 when I had it.
That’s an important difference. As I understand it, the aggressive, fast-moving prostate cancers are rare in men in their 80s, less rare in men in their 60s. That’s why prostate cancer is not aggressively treated in men of a certain age–it’s likely to be very slow-moving (though 69 seems far too young not to treat it aggressively). So Biden’s story is unusual, and therefore raises a lot of questions, but I suppose anything is possible.
I clicked on your link sdferr assuming it was going to lead to some crackpot and was shocked to see it was about Gerard t’Hooft. That man is brilliant. One form of science discussion I’ve learned to avoid is the panel discussion. Lousy way to learn something as nothing is really pursued the way it should be. The one exception I make is if t’Hooft is on the panel. He brings an incredible clarity of thought to any problem. Thanks for posting.
80% of men over age 80 will have localized, asymptomatic prostate cancer, which will seldom be a clinical problem in their lifetimes. The crux is, in which men. PSA tests in the elderly can lead to unneeded interventions.
However, Biden’s medical care was clearly suboptimal, at age 82. Because he is not just another old fart.
Alkaline phosphatase is a sensitive routine blood test that is likely elevated in Sloe Joe, though not reported, indicating liver or bone problem, and is part of the routine screening blood test chemistry panel done thousands of times each day on both men and women.
I enjoy listening to certain astrophysics communicators. People like Brian Cox, Sean Carroll, Brian Greene (although I’m uncertain if he’s disembarked the String/M Theory train yet), Matt O’Dowd (PBS Spacetime), Anton Petrov, and Sabine Hossenfelder are pretty good at explaining complicated topics in ways that are comprehendible to a glorified meathead like me.
To my admittedly limited understanding about such topics, Quantumn Mechanics has always felt like a bit of a kluge to me. It seems like a mathmatical workaround that is very effective at presenting self consistant answers that are congruent with real world observations without any sort of unification with special relativity and general relativity or explaining things like why neutrinos appear to have mass or anything involving reasonable explanations for things like gravity, dark matter, dark energy and the like. Not to mention anything beyond the Standard Model. I certainly can’t speak to any of it of course other than to say it seems possible that QM, while practically useful as a predicting tool, may be misleading and not “real”, meaning not what’s really going on under the hood.
Well, as the great geneologist said, it’s all relative…
Quantumn Mechanics has always felt like a bit of a kluge to me. It seems like a mathmatical workaround that is very effective at presenting self consistant answers that are congruent with real world observations without any sort of unification with special relativity and general relativity… — Nonapod
I never had much understanding of this, but quantum electrodynamics does integrate special relatively into it’s framework.
Wiki – – In particle physics, quantum electrodynamics (QED) is the relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics.[1][2][3] In essence, it describes how light and matter interact and is the first theory where full agreement between quantum mechanics and special relativity is achieved.[2]
Via today’s RCP, Miranda Devine has a somewhat different take on the Hur tape. She seems to be saying that Biden was sentient enough to know when to lie and be devious.
Scott Adams announced that he has terminal prostate cancer.
Actually, you don’t need QED to bring QM into SR. The Dirac equation does that quite nicely and as a big benefit suddenly shows the existence of spin. A hallmark of a good theory is when something pops out unexpectedly and explains something not previously explained.
IrishOtter, did you stay in Bayeux? Been several times myself, some on Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours. Several yr ago spent 7 days on the beaches. Want to go back, Coffee and Croissants on a cool morning. Escargot, good wine
…G.K. Chesterton once wrote that he rejects both optimism and pessimism, preferring to look at reality itself, even in the darkest of times, with hope and not despair. It is equally important to look at the brightest times with trepidation that something might, alas, be broken underneath the surface and therefore they won’t last.
Those words have stuck with me. A naive optimism is as pointless as the fatalism of a perpetually downcast pessimism that sees every sign of improvement as a delusion.
The times call on all of us to adopt a more Chestertonian attitude toward the world around us, our expectations for the future, and our own role in it. The bias of eschatological certainty can blind in both directions, either by chaining us to dread of a doomed future or by luring us into complacency with visions of an eminently dawning utopia….
[Emphasis in original; Barry M.]
There is some research that suggests the speed of light is not constant
“The quantum vacuum as the origin of the speed of light”, The European Physical Journal D, v67 n58 21Mar 2013
Abstract:
We show that the vacuum permeability ? 0 and permittivity ? 0 may originate from the magnetization and the polarization of continuously appearing and disappearing fermion pairs. We then show that if we simply model the propagation of the photon in vacuum as a series of transient captures within these ephemeral pairs, we can derive a finite photon velocity. Requiring that this velocity is equal to the speed of light constrains our model of vacuum. Within this approach, the propagation of a photon is a statistical process at scales much larger than the Planck scale. Therefore we expect its time of flight to fluctuate.
Speaking of planck one of the winners of the prize was a konrad stark who was a decent physicists but inveterate racists ironically this is the opportunity that led to fermi einstein szilard teller and co collaborating on the manhattan project if not for him circumstances would have been different
I first heard of him in new boom writer volpis in search of klingsor
My association with physics ended in high school. However, a year or two ago, I attended a recorded lecture on QM and String. They made it more or less clear to us ignoramuses. If the observer effect–the target in a quantum experiment knows you’re on to him; is that right? is amazing. The rest was interesting as well.
Toward the end of the String piece, one physicist said, “Maybe it’s real, maybe it’s some convenient numbers.”
Glad that’s not my job.
Feynman’s discussion of the double slit experiment has been mentioned, along with creation/destruction operators. I’ll point out that Dirac uses polarized light in his first chapter to illustrate both superposition and the need for a statistical interpretation. The latter is a point skimmed over in the Feynman discussion. I would say that both Feynman and the video follow the pattern of Dirac’s introduction, but find Dirac more acute. Dirac also introduced the creation/destruction operators and coined the name Quantum Mechanics to include what at the time were called Wave Mechanics and Matrix Mechanics. It comprises an abstraction that is more fundamental than the computational mechanics of those two methods.
One of early mysteries that Dirac struggled with was that in relativistic quantum mechanics the number of particles in a system was not fixed. Hence creation/destruction operators. It is hard to realize at this point how big a change in outlook that was, it is very non-classical.
I have a lot of trouble with Dirac. This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful!. – Albert Einstein.
A nice summary of the Dirac Equation by Edmund Blair Bolles:
On January 2, 1928, Paul Dirac submitted a paper to the Royal Society which, in the words of a Danish historian of science, “marked the end of the pioneering and heroic era of quantum mechanics.” Dirac’s paper managed what Schrödinger had failed to do two years earlier, link special relativity and quantum waves.
When Schrödinger first tried to include Einstein’s relativistic mechanics in his wave equation, he did not know about electron spin. Although the spinning electron still had never been physically observed, its effects had been measured. A spinning electric charge produces a magnetic field. Electrons carry a charge and generate a magnetic field; hence, electrons must be spinning. Using this extra knowledge, Dirac had created a miraculously exact rule for calculating the electrodynamics of the atom.
The Dirac equation (actually a set of four equations compressed into one complex expression) can be used to compute the magnetism of electrons. The answer it gives is precisely the one that experimentalists find in the lab. This discovery was the quantum theory’s equivalent of Einstein’s success at computing Mercury’s orbit.
Classical notions had failed to predict the observed ratio between the electron’s spin rate and its magnetic strength, so when Dirac’s equation calculated perfectly the experimentally observed values, physicists had no choice but to nod respectfully.
Dirac’s equation could also give the correct values in situations where Schrödinger’s equation did work. The Bose-Einstein statistics, too, were folded into the Dirac equation, along with Planck’s original quantum equation and Einstein’s E = h?. Even Einstein’s most famous baby, E = mc2, was built into the Dirac equation. No wonder Dirac boasted that his theory described “most of physics and all of chemistry.”
Although the spinning electron still had never been physically observed
Spoiler alert: it never would be. “Spin” is a metaphor. Electrons don’t literally spin. They have intrinsic angular momentum, true, but don’t have a way to spin like tops.
This is one complaint I have about physics in the last century, the move to give cute names in English to things that in earlier centuries would have been Latin or Greek. I think this just confuses people.
The English names are just metaphors or maybe mnemonics for abstract properties, like the “color” of quarks. At least with Latin or Greek a new word had been constructed that didn’t confuse people by being a commonly-used word.
No wonder Dirac boasted that his theory described “most of physics and all of chemistry.”
Dirac is another one, like Maxwell, who deserves to be as well known with the public as Einstein or Newton.
True. I believe it was Pauli who showed that they could not be classically spinning. My guess as to why “spin” won out over intrinsic angular momentum is that one has nine syllables and the oner just one.
Yeah, “spin” is a shortcut term that can be very misleading…especially to the public and also sophomore physics students. Then add to the confusion with the idea of spin “up” and spin “down”, which again brings out the mental picture of a little ball spinning clockwise or counter clockwise.
Sigh…then as seniors trying to break them away from such to the more abstract, and correct, view of 1/2hbar(1 0), and -1/2hbar(0 1) with the 3 spin matrices.
@Mike Plaiss:“…spin” won out over intrinsic angular momentum is that one has nine syllables and the oner just one.
Simple enough to construct a short Greek or Latin term. Like “rota” or something.
I believe it was Pauli who showed that they could not be classically spinning.
Goutsmit: I think I still have Heisenberg’s letter. In it he writes a formula ……… I did not understand a bit of it. And then he says somewhere: “What have you done with the factor 2?”
One answer to why electrons don’t really spin is that if an electron were spinning its “circumference” would be moving faster than light speed. They’d have to be far bigger than they could possibly be.
“Circumference” in quotes because they don’t seem to have a circumference either. Sometimes it’s easier to think of electrons as a set of numbers: it’s got mass, charge, and spin, and a few other numbers, but it doesn’t have like a volume or a surface or a shape.
“How do they get them off?”
They don’t want to (at least not for now).
Here’s why:
There is a lot of speculation about when Bidens Prostate cancer was found. Having had Prostate Cancer myself (9 yr and counting), had radiation treatment, and a Gleason score of 5.5, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that this came on fast. But, maybe within the last 6 months or so.
I was 69 when I had it. My Doc said I could do nothing have maybe 5 yrs. I didn’t call him out, saying I bet he wouldn’t do nothing.
Yesterday on FOX there was a Radiation Doc saying too much testing is done on the over 70’s men. I can not tell you how angry I got. I bet she would not say that to a Woman, about Breast Cancer.
On the video: I taught QM right up until 2020 in both the sophomore Modern Physics course and senior level course, I NEVER started with spin. That’s a sure fire way to confuse students. His use of “qubits” is an attempt to be more relevant, but is ultimately also confusing. He describes QM okay, but not in what I would call an illuminating way.
More interesting: the Liberal Hivemind has a good video this morning; only 8 minutes excerpting Scott Jennings with Bill Maher. They talk about the Trump paradigm shift in foreign policy where the emphasis is on building relationships rather than the neocon nation building. Quite interesting to listen; start at the 1:20m mark.
https://choiceclips.whatfinger.com/2025/05/19/bill-maher-is-evolving-before-our-very-eyes-liberal-hivemind/
Agree with him entirely that Feynman’s lecture on the double-slit experiment is the best. Here it is.
https://youtu.be/b0EChbwSuuQ?si=9J_fkJ2mR3mcwkUq
@physicsguyI taught QM right up until 2020 in both the sophomore Modern Physics course and senior level course, I NEVER started with spin.
I got it in the historical order, which is also kind of confusing I think. The people starting in 1900 started from a very different place from where 21st century undergraduates do; what came naturally to them might not now.
The part that knocked people out of the physics grad program where I was, was the creation-destruction operators introduced for the harmonic oscillator in Cohen-Tannoudji. I’m really not sure about the pedagogy there. It wasn’t so hard to do, but I found it very difficult at the time to understand why we were doing it and why it worked.
After grad school I got a copy of the Griffith’s undergraduate QM book and I found that much more accessible, but YMMV. Everything seems easier by the second or third presentation.
Sabine Hossenfelder introduces a fellow who disagrees with quantum mechanics: https://youtu.be/2kxoq5UzAEQ
Perhaps physics guy or Mike Plaiss or anyone else can answer this:
How did James Clerk Maxwell know (or find) that the speed of light (“c”) belonged in his equations of electromagnetics??
Also, are the double slit experiments conducted in a vacuum (and does it matter?)?
Also, what kind of device is capable of emitting just one electron at a time ?
Any help on this will be appreciated.
Yea, quantum mechanics is really bizarre.
Just returned from a lengthy trip to France, spent mostly in Normandy but also Paris and the Île-de-France. It was wonderful: people, places, weather, food, overall ambience, all of it wonderful. Especially the people: everyone was very friendly, in Normandy of course but also in Paris. Also wonderful: Didn’t have a single political discussion. not even with my travel companions. Love France, love the French. Already planning my next trip.
P.S. So many slender pretty smiling friendly young women in tight tight tight jeans. How do they get them off???
@JohnTyler:How did James Clerk Maxwell know (or find) that the speed of light (“c”) belonged in his equations of electromagnetics??
As I understand the history, he solved the propagation of an electromagnetic wave and that it depends on two constants: permeability and permittivity. One is found with experiments with magnets and the other from experiments with electric charges, neither of which seem to involve light.
The speed of that wave, as calculated from those constants, matched the known speed of light very closely. So Maxwell identified light as an electromagnetic wave. (It was already thought to be some kind of wave from other experiments.)
Now those constants don’t seem to be affected by the speed of the lab in which they are measured. This was the clue that eventually to special relativity, which (to be unfair to Einstein) could be described as “believe what the Maxwell equations are trying to tell you, that everyone measures the same speed of light”.
I assume the labs operate under the same conditions, what instruments did einstein used to derive it,
I feel like Maxwell is unfairly unknown to the public. Everyone has heard of Einstein and has some vague idea of what he did. Most people have heard of Newton and have some vague idea of what he did. Few have heard of Maxwell. Besides electricity and magnetism, besides thermodynamics, he invented color photography, figured out what the rings of Saturn were made of (“brick-bats”), and summoned a demon that still hangs around physicists causing trouble.
@miguel:I assume the labs operate under the same conditions
Latitude and longitude affect the speed and direction at which labs move.
what instruments did einstein used to derive it
I don’t believe Einstein did any experiments of his own to derive special relativity. You can read for yourself what he did in his own words. He read other people’s papers, did some thinking, did some calculations, and showed that he could solve some outstanding puzzles by making these assumptions.
JohnTyler,
Niketas answered, but I can expand. From standard classical physics the description of any 3d wave is given by the “wave eqn” which looks like
partial space derivatives(function) = 1/v^2(partial time derivative(function)),
where v is the wave velocity. For sound waves the “function” would be the gas pressure, for example.
All well-known standard stuff. If you take 2 of the 4 Maxwell Equations, by taking a derivative you can separate the E field from the Magnetic field and you end up with the exact wave equation above for both the electric and magnetic fields in 2 equations. The great part is that the velocity term turns out to be v = 1/SQRT(epsilon0*mu0), where epsilon and mu are well-known, established electric and magnetic constants of nature. Put their known values into the equation and, voila, you get 3.0×10^8 m/sec. So Maxwell’s equations show that when the electric and magnetic fields are not static, they have to be waves and move at the velocity of light.
QM: Yes, the double slit particle experiments have to be done in a vacuum so the particles travel unimpeded. Many ways to get a single electron. A not so efficient way would be to use a beta emitter radioactive source which decays by emission of a single electron. Other, more technical apparatus exist.
@Irish Otter: it is up to you to figure out how to get tight tight jeans off a young woman!
CICERO:
LOL!
QM isn’t super-hard if you are content to turn the crank and get the answers. What’s hard is that the math is really abstract and not easy to connect to what we can sense or explain in words.
An example somewhat relevant to the double-slit experiment. When you write equations describing what electrons do, you have to include the fact that electrons cannot tell themselves apart and they could be switching places. Even when you send “one electron at a time through a slit”, you don’t know, and neither does the electron, if it’s really “the same” electron every time that goes through the slit, or a different one, as the one you sent toward the slit. When you write an equation describing rolling a bowling ball through a gap in a fence you don’t have to account for that. Why it makes such a huge difference is not easy to explain or understand, but there’s a recipe for writing the equations.
A wise man told me that not understanding QM was ok, because we don’t really understand Newton’s physics either; we’re just used to it. He assured me the same would happen with QM and it eventually did.
it isn’t unreasonable to assume that this came on fast. But, maybe within the last 6 months or so.
I was 69 when I had it.
That’s an important difference. As I understand it, the aggressive, fast-moving prostate cancers are rare in men in their 80s, less rare in men in their 60s. That’s why prostate cancer is not aggressively treated in men of a certain age–it’s likely to be very slow-moving (though 69 seems far too young not to treat it aggressively). So Biden’s story is unusual, and therefore raises a lot of questions, but I suppose anything is possible.
I clicked on your link sdferr assuming it was going to lead to some crackpot and was shocked to see it was about Gerard t’Hooft. That man is brilliant. One form of science discussion I’ve learned to avoid is the panel discussion. Lousy way to learn something as nothing is really pursued the way it should be. The one exception I make is if t’Hooft is on the panel. He brings an incredible clarity of thought to any problem. Thanks for posting.
80% of men over age 80 will have localized, asymptomatic prostate cancer, which will seldom be a clinical problem in their lifetimes. The crux is, in which men. PSA tests in the elderly can lead to unneeded interventions.
However, Biden’s medical care was clearly suboptimal, at age 82. Because he is not just another old fart.
Alkaline phosphatase is a sensitive routine blood test that is likely elevated in Sloe Joe, though not reported, indicating liver or bone problem, and is part of the routine screening blood test chemistry panel done thousands of times each day on both men and women.
I enjoy listening to certain astrophysics communicators. People like Brian Cox, Sean Carroll, Brian Greene (although I’m uncertain if he’s disembarked the String/M Theory train yet), Matt O’Dowd (PBS Spacetime), Anton Petrov, and Sabine Hossenfelder are pretty good at explaining complicated topics in ways that are comprehendible to a glorified meathead like me.
To my admittedly limited understanding about such topics, Quantumn Mechanics has always felt like a bit of a kluge to me. It seems like a mathmatical workaround that is very effective at presenting self consistant answers that are congruent with real world observations without any sort of unification with special relativity and general relativity or explaining things like why neutrinos appear to have mass or anything involving reasonable explanations for things like gravity, dark matter, dark energy and the like. Not to mention anything beyond the Standard Model. I certainly can’t speak to any of it of course other than to say it seems possible that QM, while practically useful as a predicting tool, may be misleading and not “real”, meaning not what’s really going on under the hood.
Well, as the great geneologist said, it’s all relative…
“BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules for Trump’s Reversal of Biden-Era Parole of Illegals”—
https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2025/05/19/supreme-court-rules-for-trumps-reversal-of-biden-era-parole-of-illegals-n4939938
(Looks like the Supremes—or some of ‘em—followed the advice of quite a few of this blog’s superb commentariat pretty quick…)
File under:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGJQPkfwlAc
Quantumn Mechanics has always felt like a bit of a kluge to me. It seems like a mathmatical workaround that is very effective at presenting self consistant answers that are congruent with real world observations without any sort of unification with special relativity and general relativity… — Nonapod
I never had much understanding of this, but quantum electrodynamics does integrate special relatively into it’s framework.
Wiki – –
In particle physics, quantum electrodynamics (QED) is the relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics.[1][2][3] In essence, it describes how light and matter interact and is the first theory where full agreement between quantum mechanics and special relativity is achieved.[2]
Via today’s RCP, Miranda Devine has a somewhat different take on the Hur tape. She seems to be saying that Biden was sentient enough to know when to lie and be devious.
https://x.com/mirandadevine/status/1924130251208008178
Scott Adams announced that he has terminal prostate cancer.
Actually, you don’t need QED to bring QM into SR. The Dirac equation does that quite nicely and as a big benefit suddenly shows the existence of spin. A hallmark of a good theory is when something pops out unexpectedly and explains something not previously explained.
IrishOtter, did you stay in Bayeux? Been several times myself, some on Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours. Several yr ago spent 7 days on the beaches. Want to go back, Coffee and Croissants on a cool morning. Escargot, good wine
Seems like “it’s a small world after all” (TM)….
“House Republicans Press Harvard For Transparency Over Alleged Ties To Chinese Military“—
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/house-republicans-press-harvard-transparency-over-alleged-ties-chinese-military
Hmm. What are the chances that Harvard will try to spin this as a “Free Speech” issue…?
+ Bonus…
So should we be…all Chesterton now?
(Or is it merely Burke redux…?)
“Don’t Take The Black Pill”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dont-take-black-pill
Key grafs:
[Emphasis in original; Barry M.]
There is some research that suggests the speed of light is not constant
“The quantum vacuum as the origin of the speed of light”, The European Physical Journal D, v67 n58 21Mar 2013
Abstract:
We show that the vacuum permeability ? 0 and permittivity ? 0 may originate from the magnetization and the polarization of continuously appearing and disappearing fermion pairs. We then show that if we simply model the propagation of the photon in vacuum as a series of transient captures within these ephemeral pairs, we can derive a finite photon velocity. Requiring that this velocity is equal to the speed of light constrains our model of vacuum. Within this approach, the propagation of a photon is a statistical process at scales much larger than the Planck scale. Therefore we expect its time of flight to fluctuate.
Fun stuff, eh?
Speaking of constants
https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1924618124269388296
Speaking of planck one of the winners of the prize was a konrad stark who was a decent physicists but inveterate racists ironically this is the opportunity that led to fermi einstein szilard teller and co collaborating on the manhattan project if not for him circumstances would have been different
I first heard of him in new boom writer volpis in search of klingsor
A nuclear romance of sorts
Theres a surprise
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2025/05/19/heres-the-smoking-gun-unwra-knew-about-oct-7-in-advance-n4939929
Not in the least
MIguel. Nope.
My association with physics ended in high school. However, a year or two ago, I attended a recorded lecture on QM and String. They made it more or less clear to us ignoramuses. If the observer effect–the target in a quantum experiment knows you’re on to him; is that right? is amazing. The rest was interesting as well.
Toward the end of the String piece, one physicist said, “Maybe it’s real, maybe it’s some convenient numbers.”
Glad that’s not my job.
Feynman’s discussion of the double slit experiment has been mentioned, along with creation/destruction operators. I’ll point out that Dirac uses polarized light in his first chapter to illustrate both superposition and the need for a statistical interpretation. The latter is a point skimmed over in the Feynman discussion. I would say that both Feynman and the video follow the pattern of Dirac’s introduction, but find Dirac more acute. Dirac also introduced the creation/destruction operators and coined the name Quantum Mechanics to include what at the time were called Wave Mechanics and Matrix Mechanics. It comprises an abstraction that is more fundamental than the computational mechanics of those two methods.
One of early mysteries that Dirac struggled with was that in relativistic quantum mechanics the number of particles in a system was not fixed. Hence creation/destruction operators. It is hard to realize at this point how big a change in outlook that was, it is very non-classical.
I have a lot of trouble with Dirac. This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful!. – Albert Einstein.
A nice summary of the Dirac Equation by Edmund Blair Bolles:
Although the spinning electron still had never been physically observed
Spoiler alert: it never would be. “Spin” is a metaphor. Electrons don’t literally spin. They have intrinsic angular momentum, true, but don’t have a way to spin like tops.
This is one complaint I have about physics in the last century, the move to give cute names in English to things that in earlier centuries would have been Latin or Greek. I think this just confuses people.
The English names are just metaphors or maybe mnemonics for abstract properties, like the “color” of quarks. At least with Latin or Greek a new word had been constructed that didn’t confuse people by being a commonly-used word.
No wonder Dirac boasted that his theory described “most of physics and all of chemistry.”
Dirac is another one, like Maxwell, who deserves to be as well known with the public as Einstein or Newton.
True. I believe it was Pauli who showed that they could not be classically spinning. My guess as to why “spin” won out over intrinsic angular momentum is that one has nine syllables and the oner just one.
Yeah, “spin” is a shortcut term that can be very misleading…especially to the public and also sophomore physics students. Then add to the confusion with the idea of spin “up” and spin “down”, which again brings out the mental picture of a little ball spinning clockwise or counter clockwise.
Sigh…then as seniors trying to break them away from such to the more abstract, and correct, view of 1/2hbar(1 0), and -1/2hbar(0 1) with the 3 spin matrices.
@Mike Plaiss:“…spin” won out over intrinsic angular momentum is that one has nine syllables and the oner just one.
Simple enough to construct a short Greek or Latin term. Like “rota” or something.
I believe it was Pauli who showed that they could not be classically spinning.
Goutsmit: I think I still have Heisenberg’s letter. In it he writes a formula ……… I did not understand a bit of it. And then he says somewhere: “What have you done with the factor 2?”
One answer to why electrons don’t really spin is that if an electron were spinning its “circumference” would be moving faster than light speed. They’d have to be far bigger than they could possibly be.
“Circumference” in quotes because they don’t seem to have a circumference either. Sometimes it’s easier to think of electrons as a set of numbers: it’s got mass, charge, and spin, and a few other numbers, but it doesn’t have like a volume or a surface or a shape.
“How do they get them off?”
They don’t want to (at least not for now).
Here’s why:
“80% Of French Women Want The Army Deployed In French Cities To Protect Them”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/80-french-women-want-army-deployed-french-cities-protect-them
“How do they get them off?”
I was thinking along the lines of “use paint remover?”