News from the Planck satellite is almost 14 billion years old. It’s coded in cold photons from the Big Flash, let loose about 380,000 years after the universe began and stretched as space expanded while they winged their way. The photons reaching Planck bear the same message as those seen by COBE and WMAP but […]
Tag Archives: quantum theory
Cold Comfort: Physics Cures the Common Cold
It’s still the sniffle season and there’s still no cure for the common cold. So says the Mayo Clinic; so say many others. They are wrong. Here is the long-sought cure. No kidding. It turns out to be spectacularly unspectacular. It is simple physics. (That’s too bad; if it were complex chemistry it would be […]
Just Don’t Bug Me: Infection Control in a Distant Realm
Just Don’t Bug Me: Infection Control in a Far Country Back to Priština, new capital of a new country, Kosovo. Our hadrons lost an argument about occupying space on a crosswalk. We’re taxi-struck and dazed. Ambulance doors open. Sign says Emergency. Another sign, University Clinical Center of Kosova, is the only other English sight or sound amid […]
Hitting the Streets of Priština
We are in Priština, the new capital of a new country, war-torn Kosovo. Main street is Bill Klinton―not a typo―Boulevard. His statue’s in the square. He’s their hero; he gave the Kosovans Kosovo. Cars crowd sidewalks, people throng the streets, mingling in a complex dance. The dance is guided by blue signs and fading pavement-paint […]
Harry Potter Magic and Levitation Physics
Some weeks back Harry Potter’s magic, having helped him walk through a brick wall, got me onto bosons. A boson’s any kind of particle that has integral spin (like 0 or 1). What’s spin? Well, that’s another story. Suffice to say it is a quantum number used by physicists to tag a quantum state. Fermions […]
More Potter Physics
Thoughts of physics in our world have somehow got us onto Harry Potter. Like Lewis Carroll’s tales of Alice in fantastic Wonderland, J.K. Rowling’ magic world has elements of physics truth. We found shades of quantum physics in a teleportation scene from the first movie. Two minutes later, Harry shoves his baggage cart through a brick […]