Carl’s new blog, “Ethanol Fuel”

During the past 24 hours, I heard, I swear!, 6 commentators blame biofuels for one of the world’s pains or another. What bothers me about this is that the complaints are, by and large, misguided in one way or another. So I’m starting a blog on the subject, “Ethanol Fuel”, or “Moses Lake”. It’s gotten [...]

RIOFRIO Crushes CMB Anomalies!

Louise Riofrio recently pointed out that the inflation is in a bit of trouble due to the fact that it predicts a different curve than the one seen for the angular correlation of anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). An easily understood review of the CMB is given by The Cosmic Microwave Background for [...]

David Hestenes’ electron model

John R Ramsden, as a comment on Motl’s blog, points us to an article by David Hestenes, Reading the Electron Clock, 0802.3227. There are two good reasons for looking at this paper, and the experiment that inspired it. First, we can use it as an excuse to discuss Hestenes’ electron theory, and what it looks [...]

Lorentz Violation and Feynman’s Checkerboard Model

Lubos Motl brings to our attention a paper by Ted Jacobson and Aron C. Wall on black hole theremodynamics and Lorentz invariance, hep-ph/0804.2720 and claims that theories that violate Lorentz invariance are ruled out because they will also violate the second law of thermodynamics, the law that requires that entropy never decreases. Lubos concludes, “At [...]

What is Intrinsic Quantum Spin?

In a sci.physics.foundations post, Jay Yablon has brought to light an obscure article by Hans C. Ohanian on the nature of the intrinsic spin of quantum objects and kindly loaded it onto the web: What is Spin? Am J. Phys. 54 (6) June 1986. The abstract is:
According to the prevailing belief, the spin of the [...]

Icosahedral Symmetry as a Decorative Knot

The decorative knots to be discussed here are those which are tied with one or more cords that may be repeated through several plies. These sorts of knots can be represented by self-intersecting loops on the plane, set up so that no more than two loops intersect at any single point. One generates a tying [...]

The Quantum Zeno Paradox or Effect

Kea recently brought up the subject of Zeno of Elea and his now long lost book of 40 paradoxes dealing with the continuum. His nominal 2500th birthday should be celebrated relatively soon. Let me paraphrase an example paradox is the following:
If one assumes that space and time are continuous, then an arrow shot from a [...]

A new way to tie an old knot

The tying diagram Ashley gives for ABOK #2217 has a 4-fold axis of symmetry:

Tying a knot according to a diagram like this is quite time consuming. One must redraw the diagram by photocopying to the size needed. And in tying the knot, one pins the rope to the diagram. This is a pain because the [...]

Ashley knots; ABOK #2217 covering knot

For those of you who aren’t familiar with blue collar knots, “ABOK” means “The Ashley Book of Knots,” an ecyclopedic book on knots written in 1944 that has since become the reference for knot identification. I think it was my maternal grandfather that gave me my, somewhat rare, now the worse from love and use, [...]

Quantum Bound States: the Hydrogen Atom

In quantum mechanics, bound states can be put together by choosing a potential energy and solving the a wave equation. The first non toy example that students learn is the hydrogen atom (or any other single electron atom) studied using Schroedginer’s wave equation. Our interest in this blog is more general bound state problems, but [...]

Physical Laws and Heretical Theories

The equations of physics are derived from general theories. The odd situation of the moment is that the equations are quite well supported by experiment. One would logically conclude that the theories are as well supported, but this is not the case. The equations, or laws, themselves are very clear; their support by experiment is [...]

Physics Explains Poltergeist Phenomenon

Today on arXiv, a paper appeared, modestly titled Some conjectures about the mechanism of poltergeist
phenomenon, /abs/0801.0382:
Poltergeist accounts concern at least four kinds of strange spontaneous manifestations, such as burning of materials, failures of electric equipments, rapping noises and movements of objects. A simple analysis of phenomenology of these disturbances shows that they might have a [...]