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344. Thermonuclear fusion. Coulomb barrier and reaction rates
This post is the next in the series devoted to the discussion of our main energy source in the 22 century – thermonuclear fusion Today let us talk a bit about reaction rates. Somehow, it is accustomed that we estimate these rates in terms of the maximal effective cross-section of the reaction. Here are some [...]
343. Followup: BumpTop
Just wanted to let you know that BumpTop finally went public – that is, you don’t need to be invited to the private beta to have fun with you desktop. The version 1.0 can be downloaded for free on the BumpTop website.
342. Thermal equilibrium in special relativity
David Cubero is professor at the Department of Applied Physics of the University of Sevilla. Dmitry. Special relativity, despite being more than a hundred years old, still shows an intriguing capacity to surprise us in very fundamental issues, such as thermal equililbrium. In this post, we will review a recent controversy about the proper velocity [...]
341. Nuclear fusion – energy of the future: video of the day
A nice quantum flapdoodle promo video about thermonuclear fusion by the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics (as usual, physics behind the video is extremely nice while actors are pathetic).
340. Thermonuclear fusion: some basic facts about thermonuclear reactions
When I wrote Ten open problems in physics, the ultimate plan behind the post was that I first list those problems and then discuss every single one of them to some details – just to learn something new and relevant about each of the problems would already be enough fun for me to consider this [...]
339. Twistors: getting more formal
After discussing (or rather musing about) generalities related to twistor formalism, let me now get a bit more formal – I hope it will finally help you to understand what I was talking about in the previous posts As was mentioned before, the twistor space corresponding to 4-dimensional real Minkowski spacetime is a complex projective [...]
338. Before the Big Bang: video of the day
BBC News’ Stephen Sackur interviews Sir Roger Penrose about cyclic universe theory and the problem of initial state. The quality is not terrific, but the interview itself is fun. By the way, do you know why Penrose is uncomfortable with inflationary paradigm? P.S. As Lubos pointed out, this is just a part of the full [...]
337. Twistors and non-linear differential equations. Curved spacetime
Let my continue our micro-discussion of twistors. Last time I explained how using the language of twistors allows to express solutions of the linear differential equations (massless free fields propagating in the flat spacetime) in a different way – not too deep to really call it a result. As it turns out, twistors also help [...]
336. Wehrner von Braun: video of the day
Another very nice song by Tom Lehrer, the guy who worked on random walks apart from being a great song writer. He is alive, 80 years old, and still performs sometimes… By the way, as it turns out, he is quite popular on Amazon.
335. What is twistor
Good Saturday evening, True Geeks! Since everybody currently seems to be a bit crazy about twistors – see for example, the Witten’s paper “Perturbative gauge theory as a string theory in twistor space” and the buzz it started – I decided that the time has come for me to learn what it is and write minireview [...]
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Micro: Can 2 question provide a common solution? Black holes, information loss paradox and Ultra high energy cosmic rays. ...
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James Ph. Kotsybar: SAGITTARIUS A* -- James Ph. Kotsybar Mysteriously cloaked, obscure despite Interior illuminating glare, Long ...
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cad: The presentation can be found in several formats at http://pirsa.org/08110051/...
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Leo: Ok I have a question: if a black hole is supermassive, say 100 billion solar mass, let's suppose Alice fells int...
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superkuh: I am glad you are back! No more disapointing weekly refreshings of that monkey....
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Ariel Amir: Very interesting, thanks. It indeed seems to be very close to what we discuss here. I wonder whether the distributi...
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