Natural Science Forum / Physics / Particle Physics / December 2006

"How Does Light 'Know' How Fast to Travel?"
    One of the basic beliefs of modern physics is that the velocity of
light is the same wherever and whenever it is measured. It is, in the
language of physics, invariant. To illustrate this understanding, let us

I have taken one-year undergraduate courses in non-relativistic QM and
in linear algebra. I also have familiarized myself with the machinery
of functional analysis and calculus on manifolds.
My problem is that when I try to dig into Peskin and Shroeder's or

Hi,guys. I'm a newbie for particle physics.
Recently, I'm puzzle over the problem that why all particles which
mediated elementary interactions are boson, such as photon, gluon. And
does this problem related with statistics or gauge invariance?

"Where Is The Kinetic Energy of a Bullet Stored?"
    When a bullet is fired, an explosive charge imparts kinetic energy to
the bullet. That kinetic energy travels with the bullet and is transferred
to the target when the bullet strikes. The question to be answered is where

i knew was going on a road to destruction when i tried this: you know how
you can derive the explicit forms of pauli matrices by requiering that:
sigma(3) =  1  0
                  0 -1

"A Snapshot of a Photon"
    The photon has been viewed as a somewhat mysterious entity which
sometimes has the properties of a particle and sometimes has the properties
oaf a wave. It would seem interesting to see, therefore, whether we can

"Gravity"
    Like almost everyone else, the writer started by assuming that General
Relativity represented good science and that it was his task to understand
that science. Almost immediately it became obvious that a flaw must exist

the double-slit experiment is typically cited as empirical evidence of the
validity of Schrodinger's wave equation
BUT, the slit experiment, is ONE SIDED, it only proves the particle properties of waves,
NOT the wave properties of particles

The Gyroverse is a "theory of everything," that does what "string
theory" only promises. It combines relativity, cosmology, and quantum
mechanics into a unified physics theory, and among other things,
relates all the forces of nature. This controversial theory challenges

What makes the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar special--why shouldn't ANY
matter emit gravitational waves?  Is there any difference?
"[examples of] systems which emit gravitational waves are binary star
systems, where the two stars in the binary are white dwarfs, neutron

What is difference between spin n isospin?
what is physical meaning of spherical harmonics?
what do u mean by hypercharge? what is difference between charge n
hypercharge?

"Do Virtual Photons Exist?"
    The Aether was original conceived as a means of explaining "forces
acting at a distance" (i.e.- electric, magnetic, gravitation, et al). When
the idea of the classical Aether was abandoned early in the century, there

"Is There a Force of Gravity?"
    In undergraduate physics, the Newtonian concept of an attractive force
between masses that is proportional to the product of the masses divided by
the square of their separation is taught. When one advances to the more

Could someone please give me an explanation for the fact that spin 1/2
Baryons in the octet
cannot consist of three quarks of the same flavor as the Delta++ for
example.

As we probably all know the electron has a mass, charge and spin as
some of its main properties. However at the same time, as far as I have
been informed, the electron is considered to be a point like particle
without a diameter! Does the electron have no size what so ever? If