Natural Science Forum / Physics / Research / February 2006

Also available at http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week226.html
February 23, 2003
This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 226)
John Baez

Does the wave function move in space? In QM it seems to me that it
doesnt.
But the EM wave which through the vector-potential can be thought of as
a wave function of the photon is moving with c. ????

A heavy, lengthy--say 20-30 km long--conductive cable attacjed to an Earth
orbiting object (the Shuttle), tests have shown a considerable electric
charge being generated as the cable speeds through Earth's electromagnetic
field, question is: Would the cable's mass and extension ...

John Baez wrote:

Why is that an accelerated charge radiates in a zero-valued
gravitational field, whereas a charge in free-fall in a non-zero
gravitational field does not? Doesn't this contradict Einstein's
Equivalence Principle? Are we in fact already assured, via measurement,

I was thinking about something and got confused so I thought I will
post it here and hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me can clear
the confusion.
As a thought experiment, suppose, we are accelerating a proton in a

   Regarding my paper
   S. Parrott, "Radiation from a uniformly accelerated charge
       and the equivalence principle",
       Found. Phys. 32 (2002), 407-440,

This may have been discussed earlier.
If so, can someone point me to the thread? Else, any comments?
http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0510010
"Interpreting quantum mechanics(QM) by classical physics seems like an

In today's New York Times Science Times section -- which you can also read
on-line at
   http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/science/21ice.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
in an article about the unknown reasons for the slipperiness of ice occurs

I have a little problem with Cartan's method for the calculation of the
curvature. If I understood right you start by defining your orthonormal
frame 1-forms o^a and then use the vanishing of the torsion (the first
structure equation)

Does anyone, preferably several, theoretical physicists on this forum
believe that a Manhattan type project could produce a viable fusion energy
producer in the next 10 years?

Since there are people here interested in the interpretation of
measurement in quantum mechanics, I have a question to ask about them.
The concept of observer, which is quite absolute/independent in quantum
mechanics setting. Carlo Rovelli has tried to introduce a kind of

Turn on the tap in your kitchen sink and bring the flow of water to a
narrow, yet unbroken streamline. Now put your finger into the
streamline and look closely at the point where your finger touches the
water. You should see standing wave patterns in the water column just

I am confused about the significance of modular invariance in Conformal
Field Theory.  What do statements like "a good conformal theory, has to
be modular invariant", really mean?
I understand that any CFT on the torus has to be modular invariant, to

I'm currently working through Julian Schwinger's "Quantum Mechanics"
book and there's an exercise I cannot solve. Below q and p are
operators with [q,p] = i and q' is a number.
-----