Tuesday, April 30, 2019

homework and exercises - What does 1/k represent regarding Newtons Law of Cooling?



What does 1/k represent regarding Newtons Law of Cooling?
I know k represents the cooling constant. I think the inverse of k is the time taken for the liquid to cool from its maximum temperture to surrounding temperature. Any clarification would be most appreciated.



Answer



In Newton's law of cooling, the constant $k$ appears in most solutions schematically as,$^\dagger$


$$T(t)\sim e^{-kt}$$


Clearly, the argument of the exponential must be dimensionless, hence the constant $k$ has dimensions,


$$[k]=\frac{1}{[\mathrm{time}]}$$


The constant $k$ is a measure of the rate of cooling, with the same dimensions as a frequency.




$\dagger$ We have assumed the simplest formulation of Newton's law of cooling, wherein the system of differential equations are linear, with constant coefficients.



mathematics - lolcatz can haz ur infinit cheeseboard


This is a problem on an infinite chessboard with pieces called lolcatz. They can move like queens or knightriders, but have a strange disadvantage...


... you've never heard of knightriders? Well, they're long-range knights. They make an odd number of regular knight moves in the same direction at once. Knightriders can jump over pieces, except those on the intervening squares that it could have landed on. (So, b1-e7 only requires c3 to be vacant, d5 can be occupied.) Like regular knights, knightriders land on a square of opposite colour to their starting square.


There are no knightriders in this puzzle -- just lolcatz, which have rook, bishop, or knightrider moves available. The squares that can be reached by a lolcat in one move are illustrated here.


enter image description here


Other than that, the puzzle involves standard chess pieces with their usual moves: pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, and queens (no kings).



Anyway, as I was saying... lolcatz have a strange disadvantage: if a piece captures a lolcat, or lands where it could be captured by an enemy lolcat in one move, then, the piece gets to make an extra move. Though it has to transmogrify first, naturally...


...how does transmogrification work, you ask? Well, if you've ever seen a transdimensional kitten playing with a hypersphere of cosmic yarn immersed in de Sitter space, then it happens pretty much they way you think it does:



  • If a piece lands where it could be captured by a lolcat moving as a rook (marked red in the picture), then it becomes a bishop.

  • If a piece lands where it could be captured by a lolcat moving as a bishop (marked green in the picture), then it becomes a rook.

  • If a piece lands where it could be captured by a lolcat moving as a knightrider (marked blue in the picture), then, it becomes a pawn if it was moving away from the lolcat, and it becomes a knight (not a knightrider) if it was not moving away from the lolcat.

  • If a piece captures a lolcat, then it becomes a lolcat.

  • If a pawn moves from a square where it could be captured by a lolcat, and moves away from that lolcat, then, the pawn becomes a queen. And, the queen still gets an extra move in this case, but, this extra move must also be away from that lolcat, and onto a square where it could be captured by that lolcat.


If multiple cases apply (due to multiple enemy lolcatz), then the moving player chooses which case applies.



The puzzle is this: There is an initially empty chessboard that is infinite in all directions. First white chooses any square to place a white bishop, then black chooses any (empty) squares to place any (finite) number of black lolcatz. Then white moves first. Win by capturing all enemy pieces. Does white have a winning strategy? Or can black place lolcatz so as to evade white indefinitely, or force a win?


No that's not a mistake: white, with a single bishop, versus as many lolcatz as black wants, in any position black wants.


Still have questions? Here's some fine print which tries to anticipate them:



  1. "Extra move" means that the player may move that same piece again before the other player gets a turn. And if this extra move results in another extra move, the player may move it again, and so on.

  2. The extra move is granted even if the piece transmogrifies to the same type (eg. bishop lands where it would turn into a bishop).

  3. The transmogrification happens after the move that caused it, and before the extra move that it causes. That is, the extra move must be to a square reachable as the new type of piece.

  4. The transmogrification applies to a moving piece, and does not apply when the square the piece is on changes due to a lolcat moving.

  5. "Moving away from the lolcat" means that distance from the lolcat in question, as measured in king moves, is greater after the move than before it.

  6. "Choosing which case applies" means that if there are multiple enemy lolcatz that could reach the square in question (or the player is capturing an enemy lolcat that could also be reached by one or more enemy lolcatz), then the moving player selects one of those (or the one captured), and applies the transmogrification rule as if that were the only lolcat.


  7. The extra move is not obligatory. If the extra move is passed, the transmogrification is passed too. If the extra move is used, the transmogrification must happen first.

  8. Even though the chessboard has no edges, there is still a forward direction for pawns, which is opposite for white and black.

  9. When a piece transmogrifies to a pawn, it does not get an initial two-step move.

  10. There is no 50-move draw rule, white has as many moves as needed.

  11. When you capture a piece with a lolcat, it is usual but not obligatory to say omnomnom.


The fine print covers all the relevant questions that I could think of, but if anything is still unclear please ask!



Answer



Unless I'm mistaken, the result is




Unknown.



Reading through the wall of text, the rules seemed a bit too complicated for it to be "just some random game", so figuring out the magic seemed interesting.


To figure out if the bishop can capture all the lolcats on his first move, we need a "hitbox" for the lolcat; that is, the set of all those squares from which there is an extra move path to capturing the lolcat.


Since a bishop, rook, queen or a lolcat can always reach the same rank as any lolcat, we can start on that rank without loss of generality. We'll also assume that the lolcat is on a white square as in the example picture.


If we end up on a white square, our distance from the lolcat is even, and since we are now a bishop, we can halve the distance by moving to the diagonal, turning into a rook, and moving back to the lolcat's rank.


enter image description here
(Sample moves for getting from distance 4 to distance 2)


If we are on a black square, we must find a knightrider square (in the appropriate direction so that the pawn move is away from the lolcat. This is always possible because of the symmetry of the board: going aroung the lolcat with bishop moves rotates the pawn move direction, but doesn't otherwise affect the position), then transmorgify to a queen, and return to the lolcat's rank diagonally away. Because of how the knightrider squares are spaced, this always exactly triples our distance, and adds one square to it from the pawn move.


enter image description here

(Sample moves for getting from distance 3 to distance 10.)


Notice that these are the only move sequences that change the bishop's distance from the lolcat while still providing extra moves.


All this changes in the near vicinity of the lolcat: if we can get the distance to 1, then we can capture the lolcat:


enter image description here


So to recap: Our horizontal distance is N. If N is even, we can halve it, and if N is odd we go to 3N+1. If we get N to 1, we capture the lolcat, and get to hunt the next one with the same strategy.


So if we could always get from any N to 1, then the bishop would always win on the first turn: every lolcat would then have an infinitely long continuous hitbox. So all we have to know is: can we always get to 1 using this process?



This method of generating the next number is known as the Collatz Sequence. Lothar Collatz of University of Hamburg conjectured in 1937 that the answer is "yes, you'll always reach 1", but to this day, there is no definite answer; the problem is often said to be completely out of reach by the current mathematical methods.



In addition to that, a very strong reason I believe this has to be the intended solution is that




"Lolcatz" happens to be an anagram of "Collatz".



As for the strategy of the lolcatz player:



If the Collatz conjecture surprises us, and there indeed is some number M, from which the process never reaches one, then the lolcatz player can forever evade capture, because there is a hole (by necessity, several actually, but that's not important here) in the hitbox: after the bishop is placed, put a single lolcat exactly M squares left of the bishop. (Count the squares very carefully. If M exists, it will be larger than several quintillion, all numbers smaller than that have already been checked by computer.) The bishop cannot obviously get to any winning square, so after going around in useless circles, the (now multiply transmuted) bishop will probably want to stop at some point.

* If the bishop stopped at a transmutation point, the lolcat can, of course, just capture the piece and win. (It's probably worth mentioning, that the stopped piece can only be a queen if it is stopped on such a transmutation point; the queen's only allowed move is to go to such a spot.)

* If the bishop stopped after making any other move, the lolcat can become a copycat, and make the same move (eg. 42069 squares northwest) that the bishop last made. This is always possible because of the versatility of the lolcat: every regular chess piece's every possible move is available to it. Since this resets their relative position to a "known non-winning" position, the bishop can never catch the lolcat.

* The only exception would be "skipping the extra move after transmuting into a queen", but luckily the rules say that if you pass the extra move, you also have to skip the transmutation, so copying the pawn's move is quite enough to save the lolcat.



entropy - How does this new theory of a possible infinitely old universe not violate the second law of thermodynamics


I read the following article: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html


And followed it back to this journal reference : http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.3093


It appears to be legitimate. I wonder how, in an infinitely old universe, the entropy in the universe is not also infinite considering that entropy always increases.


Edit: entropy is disorder so it increases to infinity rather than decreases to zero.


Edit 2: Thank you for the links to related questions about this article and chats. It appears to me that the likelihood of this theory being correct is quite low.



With regard to my question about entropy in a cyclical universe it appears that solution is to assume that the universe is not exactly the closed system we thought it was.



Answer



Consider the function $e^x$: it is monotonically increasing and yet defined for all negative $x$.


Just because something increases monotonically doesn't mean it must reach infinity (or even its maximum value) in a finite amount of time.


As a side note, please don't refer to entropy as disorder. It's very common but also very wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSgPRj207uE


Monday, April 29, 2019

How much time will it take to move an object whose length is equal to one light year?


Suppose there's a stick whose length is one light year and I push it from one side by one centimeter. How much time would it take for its other side to move by one centimeter and why?



Answer



It depends on the material. When you push one end of the stick, you move the atoms at the very end of the stick. Those atoms push the atoms next to them, those atoms push the next atoms, and so on down the stick. This is a sound wave that travels down the stick, so the time you have to wait for the other end to move is the length of the stick divided by the speed of sound in the material of the stick. If the stick is wooden, the speed of sound is about 4000 m/s (compared with 330 m/s in air). It would take $\frac{9.5\cdot10^{15}\,m}{4000\,m/s} = 2.4\cdot10^{12}$ seconds (74 000 years) for the other end of the stick that is a light-year away to move.


newtonian mechanics - Conservation of spin angular momentum in a close binary system


Consider a simple model of a close stellar binary, of mass $m_1$ and $m_2 < m_1$, moving on circular orbits around the system's barycenter (no eccentricity, to simplify things). Both star's rotation is permanently tidal locked. The total angular momentum relative to the barycenter is conserved : \begin{equation}\tag{1} \vec{L} = \vec{L}_1 + \vec{L}_2 + \vec{S}_1 + \vec{S}_2 = \textrm{constant}, \end{equation} where $\vec{S}_i$ is the spin of a star (i.e. its angular momentum around its own center of mass). These vectors are all aligned. Using Newton's theory of gravitation, we can prove that \begin{equation}\tag{2} L_{\text{orbital}} = || \vec{L}_1 + \vec{L}_2 || = \frac{m_1 \, m_2}{m_1 + m_2} \, \sqrt{G (m_1 + m_2) a}, \end{equation} where $a = r_1 + r_2$ is the distance between both stars. Lets write $M \equiv m_1 + m_2$ to simplify. Also, since the stars are tidal locked ; $\omega_1 = \omega_2 = \omega_{\text{orbital}} \equiv \omega$ : \begin{equation}\tag{3} S_{\text{tot}} = || \vec{S}_1 + \vec{S}_2 || = (I_1 + I_2) \, \omega, \end{equation} where $I_i$ is the inertia moment of a star around its center. If the stars are approximately spherical, then $I_i = \alpha_i \, m_i \, R_i^2$, where $\alpha_i \approx \frac{2}{5}$ (or any number smaller than 1). The orbital angular velocity is \begin{equation}\tag{4} \omega = \sqrt{\frac{GM}{a^3}}. \end{equation}


Now, suppose that the stars are allowed to exchange some matter: $m_1$, $m_2$, $a$, $\omega$, $I_1$ and $I_2$ are now functions of time ($M$ is conserved, though).


If the whole system is isolated, the total angular momentum (1) is conserved.




How can we justify that both $L_{\text{orbital}}$ and $S_{\text{tot}}$ are separately conserved (maybe approximately) ?





mathematics - Prime to Prime: Get all first 25 Prime Numbers using up to 4 Primes



The first 25 Prime Numbers are



2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37,41,43,47,53,59,61,67,71,73,79,83,89,97



Using up to 4 prime numbers and the following mathematical operations, get all the 25 primes.



+ - x / ^ √ !



No other operators (like !!) are allowed.


Other rules




  • You cannot use same Prime Number more than once.

  • You can use only Prime Numbers.

  • Any number that appears as a number in the equation will be counted as one of the primes out of four (e.g. 7^2 means you have used both 7 and 2).

  • You do not have to use all the 4 primes in every equation.

  • You must use the SAME 4 primes in every equation. If you select say 2, 13, 17, 23 then they are the only primes that to appear in every equation to get the 25 primes.


I have 1 solution. There may be more.


No programming please.
NO PARTIAL ANSWERS.




Answer



Using 2,3,7,11:



$2 = 2$


$3 = 3$


$5 = 11 + 3 - 7 -2$


$7 = 7$


$11 = 11$


$13 = 2 + 11$


$17 = 3! + 11$



$19 = 2^3 + 11$


$23 = 3 \cdot 7 + 2$


$29 = \frac{(7-2)!}{3} - 11$


$31 = 3 \cdot 11- 2$


$37 = (11-3!) \cdot 7 + 2$


$41 = 7^2 +3 - 11$


$43 = 2 \cdot 11 + 3 \cdot 7$


$47 = 3 \cdot 11 + 2 \cdot 7$


$53 = 2^ {3!} - 11$


$59 = 3! \cdot 11 - 7$



$61 = (11-2) \cdot 3! + 7$


$67 = 7 \cdot 2^3 + 11$


$71 = 2^{3!} + 7$


$73 = 3! \cdot 11 + 7$


$79 = 7 \cdot 11 + 2$


$83 = 7 \cdot 11 + 3!$


$89 = 7 \cdot 11 + 2 \cdot 3!$


$97 = (2+11) \cdot 7 + 3!$



Sunday, April 28, 2019

electric fields - Kirchoff's rules and inductance


Can Kirchoff's loop rule be applied in a scenario involving an inductor? Kirchoff's loop rule states that the closed loop integral of E dot dl is equal to zero. But, in a situation with an inductor, a changing magnetic flux is involved which means that the electric field is nonconservative and the closed loop integral of E dot dl is not zero. I watched MIT professor Walter Lewin's lectures on inductance and Faraday's law and he emphatically states that Kirchoff's loop rule cannot be used in this situation. Yet, most textbooks (University Physics, Giancoli, Berkeley Physics, etc.) use the loop rule anyways (setting the "voltage drop" across the inductor to be -L*di/dt and setting the sum of all the voltage drops to be zero). Now I am very confused. Any help would be greatly appreciated!




word - A crumbled, jumbled poem


I wrote a beautiful, verbose poem for you all, but Riddler went and scrambled the whole thing up! Can you figure out the order of the lines and put it back together again for me? And while you're at it, can you discover what the poem was about?






Else you'll find them quite well-guarded
A drinker who is called the same
An orphan, cinematically
A pound of text with speech not florid
Swedish metal takes this name
When skip was blue, at birth he wore it
You count on them to win the game
Written rule, with one before it

And bywords of reality
Historic sacred melody
Dolly sang it, we adored it
A young pig's tag, an all-time great
Concrete responsibility
Some adorned and openhearted
A certain group has now departed
History doth these create
A father of the highest fame
Together here we rule your fate

With NASA's help, it all was started
In others magic worlds await





A hint that's not really a hint:



Focus on figuring out what the lines are referencing first. Once you do that, discovering the true order of the lines should be trivial. Also, since I said it in a comment, I'll repeat it here: Each line represents something different. Kind of.



A hint that's really a hint:




There are a couple of lines that should be possibly to figure out without knowing the pattern or the order -- I'd reckon that "A young pig's tag, an all-time great" and "With NASA's help, it all was started" are the two easiest. If you can figure those two out, you should have no problem figuring out the overarching theme and working backwards from there.




Answer



Each line references



one of the first twenty books of the Old Testament. So the solution is to sort the lines in the order the books appear in the bible



With NASA's help, it all was started



GENESIS - This is the origin or start and is also the name of a NASA spacecraft




A certain group has now departed



EXODUS - A mass departure of people



Swedish metal takes this name



LEVITICUS - This was a Swedish Christian metal band



You count on them to win the game




NUMBERS - You count with numbers



Written rule, with one before it



DEUTERONOMY - This is derived from the Greek for 'second law', so there is one rule before it



Dolly sang it, we adored it



JOSHUA - A song by Dolly Parton




Together here we rule your fate



JUDGES - Can rule your fate if you're up in court



A young pig's tag, an all-time great



RUTH - As in Babe Ruth, probably the most famous baseball player of all-time. He shares his name with the pig given the name Babe in the book "The Sheep-Pig" or "Babe, the Gallant Pig" depending on which side of the Atlantic you reside



A father of the highest fame




1 SAMUEL - Samuel Adams was a Founding Father of the United States



A drinker who is called the same



2 SAMUEL - Sam(uel) Adams is also the name of a popular American beer



Some adorned and openhearted



1 KINGS - The kings in a pack of cards can be adorned (of diamonds) or openhearted (of hearts)




Else you'll find them quite well-guarded



2 KINGS - well guarded in a game of chess



History doth these create



1 CHRONICLES - Chronicles of history



In others magic worlds await




2 CHRONICLES - Narnia is the magic land in the Chronicles of Narnia books



A pound of text with speech not florid



EZRA - Ezra Pound was a poet, who favoured short, simple sentences over a more elaborate style



When skip was blue, at birth he wore it



NEHEMIAH - This references Skip James, a blues musician, born Nehemiah Curtis James




An orphan, cinematically



ESTHER - The name of the orphan adopted in the film Orphan



Concrete responsibility



JOB - A responsibility



Historic sacred melody




PSALMS - A psalm is a sacred song



And bywords of reality



PROVERBS - Expressions that summarize, or provide a byword for reality



special relativity - Question on energy mass conversion



I have a question regarding the energy-mass conversion. Well, when a particle starts moving with a speed comparable to that of light, its (relativistic) mass increases that means some matter is created and that too of the same particle...energy being converted to mass is ok but how does energy perceive what atoms it has to form? Say I take a stone to a high speed, then constituents of stone is formed. And if I perform same thing with another substance, its constituents are formed..How? Energy can be converted to mass but a mass of what? Does that mean we can create matter of any desirable substance?




newtonian mechanics - Perfect elastic collision and velocity transfer


So my teacher told me that when you have two identical balls in a perfectly elastic collision, the first ball A will collide with B and afterwards A will stop and B continue. Why is this? Doesn't Newton's 3rd law imply both balls would get an equal force into opposite direction during the collision? And if A was heavier than B, does A continue in the same direction after elastically colliding with B (that's the only logical result I can think of if this is true).



Answer



In any collision, momentum is conserved. This means


\begin{equation} m_1u_1 + m_2u_2 = m_1v_1 + m_2v_2 \end{equation}



For a perfectly elastic collision, kinetic energy is also conserved


\begin{equation} m_1u_1^2 + m_2u_2^2 = m_1v_1^2 + m_2v_2^2 \end{equation}


Solving these equations simultaneously ($v_1$ and $v_2$ are the variables)


\begin{equation} v_1 = \frac{u_1(m_1-m_2) + 2m_2u_2}{m_1+m_2};\\ v_2 = \frac{u_2(m_2-m_1) + 2m_1u_1}{m_1+m_2}; \end{equation}


when $m_1=m_2$, these reduce to \begin{equation} v_1 = u_2;\\ v_2 = u_1; \end{equation}


You can check out what happens for other cases as well ($m_1 >> m_2$ or $u_2 = 0$, etc.)




EDIT: If you look at it from the point of view of forces, you will see the same force act on both objects, in opposite directions. This will cause an acceleration depending on the mass of the object ($F=ma$), but only for the tiny instant that the two are in contact. Now, for example, considering equal masses, the force would decelerate the first object to some velocity, and accelerate the second object to the same velocity (because both have equal masses, and the force acts for an equal amount of time). From the momentum equations, we find that the velocities are swapped.


Important point to remember: Force is not velocity. The same force can produce different accelerations and hence different velocities for different masses.


Saturday, April 27, 2019

thermodynamics - What is precisely the reason that a helium balloon ascends?


A simple question with no clear answer for me: Helium is lighter than air and lighter air rises. That's it!?




  • I) A helium atom is approx. 4 times as light as an an air molecule. With 4 times less mass helium should be less attracted by gravity of the Earth. But its inertia is equally to its gravitational pull. Do masses in vacuum not have the same attraction and speed? Can it be said that for air molecules the atmosphere is a vacuum? So that all together helium should have the same attraction towards Earth as air molecules?




  • II) Because helium atoms are much lighter, perhaps they could have a higher speed than for example $O_2$ or $N_2$? Ok, but those helium atoms are in a balloon so they push at all sides of the balloon equally so the balloon shouldn't move at all?





  • III) When a balloon starts ascending from the ground there is more air (pressure) above it than beneath. So the air pressure above it should push the balloon to the ground?




Perhaps there are more influences, but considering the three effects mentioned, helium balloons shouldn't ascend. But they do! So what is wrong or forgotten?




newtonian mechanics - Inertial forces and centre of mass


Is inertial force always attached to the centre of mass of the object? Why? What rules cause this to happen?


See the example below of the leaned bike in a corner.



enter image description here


The force $m\frac{v^2}{r}$ pointing to the right is the centrifugal force (inertial force - because it's a rotating reference frame, therefore a non-inertial reference frame). It is attached to the centre of gravity of the bike.


I'm thinking that inertial force is attached to the centre of mass because of the fact that it should simply avoid creating a torque on the object. That's intuitive, but there must be a general rule that allows us to conclude that.



Answer



Yes inertial forces are always defined to go through the center of mass. This stems from the definition of linear momentum. For a rigid body linear momentum is the sum of each particle mass and speed which yields the expression:


$$\vec{L} = m \vec{v}_{cm} $$



  1. Linear momentum is the total mass multiplied by the velocity of the center of mass.

  2. The net forces on a body equal to the rate of change of linear momentum. $$\sum \vec{F} = \frac{{\rm d}}{{\rm d}t} \vec{L}$$

  3. Since mass $m$ is a scalar quantity the right hand side is equal to $$\sum \vec{F} = m \frac{{\rm d}}{{\rm d}t} \vec{v}_{cm} = m a_{cm} $$


  4. Inertial forces, are equal to the net forces on a body.


As a consequence the sum of forces on rigid body only affect the motion of the center of mass.


(Relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY3LYQv22qY)


geometry - Points on the boundary of a circle


Does there exist a circle whose boundary contains 6 points whose 15 pairwise distances are distinct integers?




general relativity - What makes the stars that are farther from the nucleus of the galaxy go faster than those in the middle?


It has no sense that stars that have a bigger radius and apparently less angular speed($\omega$) goes faster than the ones near the center.



Answer



The dark matter or the dark energy.


We don't know at all what are they. We just know that they exist, but as I say, we don't have idea.


mathematics - Is $s$ larger than the radius of circumscribed circle?


In the figure, showing a square and an equilateral triangle, is $s$ larger or smaller than the radius of the circumscribed circle?


the circumscribed circle




Answer



The radius is S. Translate the top point down s units: the distance of this new point is s from all three vertices. Therefore the radius is s.


enter image description here


symmetry - Physical difference between gauge symmetries and global symmetries


There are plenty of well-answered questions on Physics SE about the mathematical differences between gauge symmetries and global symmetries, such as this question. However I would like to understand the key differences between the transformations in terms of what they mean physically.



Say we have the Lagrangian for a scalar field interacting with the electromagnetic field,


\begin{equation} L = -\frac{1}{4} F_{\mu\nu} F^{\mu\nu} + (D_{\mu} \phi)^*D_{\mu}\phi - m^2|\phi|^2, \end{equation}


where $D^{\mu} = \partial^{\mu} + ieA^{\mu}$. This is invariant under both a local gauge symmetry $A^{\mu} \rightarrow A^{\mu} + \partial^{\mu} \chi$ with $\phi \rightarrow e^{i\chi(x)} \phi$ and a global symmetry $\phi \rightarrow e^{i\chi} \phi$.


I am aware that by requiring the gauge symmetry we have introduced interaction terms coupling the scalar and vector boson fields, while the global symmetry gives us the conservation of particle number by Noether's theorem.


But now what do the local and global phase shifts mean physically? Or are their physical meanings defined purely by their introduction of field couplings and of particle conservation, respectively?



Answer



The first answer to such a question must always be: A gauge symmetry has no "physical" meaning, it is an artifact of our choice for the coordinates/fields with which we describe the system (cf. Gauge symmetry is not a symmetry?, What is the importance of vector potential not being unique?, "Quantization of gauge systems" by Henneaux and Teitelboim). Any gauge symmetry of the Lagrangian is equivalent to a constraint in the Hamiltonian formalism, i.e. a non-trivial relation among the coordinates and their canonical momenta.


In principle, any gauge symmetry may be eliminated by passing to the reduced phase space that has fewer canonical degrees of freedom. The gauge symmetry has no physical meaning in the sense that be may get rid of it by passing to a (classically) equivalent description of the system. A gauge transformation has no physical meaning because all states related by a gauge transformation are physically the same state. Formally, you have to quotient the gauge symmetry out of your space of states to get the actual space of states.


In contrast, a global symmetry is a "true" symmetry of the system. It does not reduce the degrees of freedom of the system, but "only" corresponds to conserved quantites (either through Noether's theorem in the Lagrangian formulation or through an almost trivial evolution equation in the Hamiltonian formalism). It is physical in the sense that states related by it may be considered "equivalent", but they are not the same.


Interestingly, for scalar QED, the global symmetry gives a rather inconvenient "Noether current" - one that depends on the gauge field (cf. this answer)! So the statement that "Noether's theorem" gives us charge/particle number conservation is not naively true in the scalar case (but it is in the Dirac case). Getting charge conservation from the gauge symmetry is also discussed in Classical EM : clear link between gauge symmetry and charge conservation.



Why then use such a "stupid" description in the first place, you might ask. The answer is that, in practice, getting rid of the superfluous degrees of freedom is more trouble than it's worth. It might break manifest invariance under other symmetries (most notably Lorentz invariance), and there can be obstructions (e.g. Gribov obstructions) to consistently fix a gauge. Quantization of gauge theories is much better understood in the BRST formalism where gauge symmetry is preserved and implemented in the quantum theory than in the Dirac formalism that requires you to be able to actually solve the constraints in the Hamiltonian formalism.


So the key difference between a gauge and a global symmetry is that one is in our theoretical description, while the other is a property of the system. No amount of shenanigans will make a point charge less spherically symmetric (global rotation symmetry). But e.g. the electromagnetic gauge symmetry simply vanishes if we consider electric and magnetic fields instead of the four-potential. However, in that case we lose the ability to write down the covariant Lagrangian formulation of electromagnetism - the current $J^\mu$ must couple to some other four-vector, and that four-vector is simply the potential $A^\mu$.


There is one further crucial aspect of gauge symmetries: Every massless vector boson necessarily is associated to a gauge symmetry (for a proof, see Weinberg's "Quantum Theory of Fields"). There is no other way in a consistent quantum field theory: You want massless vector bosons like photons - you get a gauge symmetry. No matter how "unphysical" this symmetry is - in the covariant framework of quantum field theory we simply have no other choice than to phrase such particle content in terms of a gauge field. This you might see as the true "physical" meaning of gauge symmetries from the viewpoint of quantum field theory. Going one step further, it is the spontaneous breaking of such symmetries that creates massive vector bosons. A theory of vector bosons is almost inevitably a theory of gauge symmetries.


As an aside: In principle, one might try to make any non-anomalous global symmetry into a gauge symmetry (cf. When can a global symmetry be gauged?). The question is whether gauging it produces any new physical states, and whether these states fit to observations.


electromagnetism - How would I go about detecting monopoles?



A question needed for a "solid" sci-fi author: How to detect a strong magnetic monopole? (yes, I know no such thing is to be found on Earth).


Think of basic construction details, principles of operation and necessary components of a device capable of detecting/recognizing a macroscopic object emitting magnetic field of equivalent of order ~0.1-10 Tesla near its surface, but with only one pole, reliably distinguishing it from normal (2-pole) magnets, preferably at a distance.


Preferably a robust method, not involving extremely advanced technology. Detect the presence, possibly distance (or field strength) and direction.


I know of SQUIDs, but these concentrate on extreme sensitivity. I'm thinking of something less sensitive but more robust (like, no need for the monopole to fall through the loop) and still able to recognize a monopole against a magnet.


Also, how would such a macroscopic object behave practically? Such a "one-pole magnet" about the size and strength of a refrigerator magnets - how would it behave around ferromagnetics, normal magnets and so on?



Answer



Consider the motion of a magnetic monopole in a completely symmetric Maxwell system, where $$ \nabla\cdot {\vec B}~=~4\pi\rho_{mag}, $$ and $$ \nabla\times{\vec E}~=~4\pi{\vec J}_{mag}~-~\frac{\partial{\vec B}}{\partial t} $$ The first equation is then a Gauss’ law for magnetic monopole charge, and the second is a magnetic current form of the Maxwell-Faraday equation. For the occurrence of a magnetic monopole flying through space this will act as a transient current. The last term on the right hand side is a displacement monopole current in this case. The left hand side will by Stokes’ law $\int\nabla\times{\vec E}\cdot da~=$ $\int{\vec E}\times d{\vec l}$, produce an electric current in a loop. So the right hand side could be measured by the torque this magnetic field induces on an ordinary magnetic dipole. The right hand side measured in a solenoid. If the left hand side and the last right hand side term do not equal each other in the standard form of the Maxwell equation with ${\vec J}_{mag}~=~0$, this would be a signal for the detection of a magnetic monopole.


conservation laws - Is momentum perfectly conserved at the particle level given the Heisenberg uncertainty principle?


Discussions of conservation of momentum frequently use the metaphor of two billiard balls colliding. My impression is that this is not valid at the quantum scale - an illustration of the particles' trajectories should show the outgoing vectors with some uncertainty. Perhaps the total energy could still be conserved if the two particles were entangled in such a way that the imprecision of one particle's trajectory was balanced by the second particle's trajectory. Even if that was the case, I am not clear that the net vector would be as expected, which would therefore mean the momentum was not conserved.


An alternate way of viewing the problem: at the moment when two particles collide, the position is known very precisely (since they had to hit each other at the same place and time). Since momentum is complementary to position, this means the momentum has maximum uncertainty at that instant. While the momentum in a single collision may be perfectly conserved, perhaps the momentum being conserved is somewhat probabilistic such that over billions of interactions of billions of molecules (as the original force propagates) the original net momentum is not conserved.


I tried to look for answers to this question and here are some relevant ones. They seem to conclude that uncertainty does apply to single particles.


Does the Heisenberg uncertainty principle apply to the free particle?


Uncertainty principle: for an individual particle?


My question is prompted in part by a "tongue in cheek" video which shows a propeller in a closed box appearing to cause movement. The box is flimsy and the experiment is not meant to be definitive but made me wonder.




Friday, April 26, 2019

electromagnetism - How can we prove charge invariance under Lorentz Transformation?


We have gravitational force between two massive particles and we have electromagnetic force between two charged particles. When special relativity suggests that mass is not an invariant quantity why we have electric charge as an invariant quantity ?



Answer



Let $j=(\rho,\boldsymbol j)$ be the current density of a system. This four numbers are, by hypothesis, a vector. This means that the charge density $\rho$ transforms just like $t$ does, i.e., it gets "dilated" when changing from reference frame to reference frame: $$ \rho'\to\gamma \rho \tag{1} $$


Charge is, by definition, the volume integral of the charge density: $$ Q\equiv \int\mathrm d\boldsymbol x\ \rho \tag{2} $$


In a different frame of reference the charge is $$ Q'=\int\mathrm d\boldsymbol x'\ \rho'=\int\mathrm d\boldsymbol x'\ \gamma \rho \tag{3} $$ where I used $(1)$.



Next, we need to know what $\mathrm d\boldsymbol x'$ is. The trick to evaluate this is to note that the product $\mathrm dt\;\mathrm d\boldsymbol x$ is invariant (in SR). This means that we can write $\mathrm dt'\;\mathrm d\boldsymbol x'=\mathrm dt\;\mathrm d\boldsymbol x$; solving for $\mathrm d\boldsymbol x'$ we get


$$ \mathrm d\boldsymbol x'=\frac{\mathrm dt}{\mathrm dt'}\mathrm d\boldsymbol x=\frac{1}{\gamma}\mathrm d\boldsymbol x \tag{4} $$


If we plug this into $(3)$, we find $$ Q'=\int\mathrm d\boldsymbol x'\ \gamma \rho=\int\mathrm d\boldsymbol x\ \rho=Q \tag{5} $$ that is, $Q=Q'$.


Thursday, April 25, 2019

newtonian mechanics - Why do we only feel the centrifugal force?


After spending some time researching about the centrifugal force, I now understand that it is needed in a non-inertial reference frame for Newton's Laws to hold true. However, I don't understand why we only feel the centrifugal force when moving in a circular path. For example, if you imagine yourself being spun around in a circle, then in your frame of reference you would feel yourself being pushed outwards. But since in your frame of reference you are stationary, the outwards force must be balanced by an inward pull (for you to remain stationary). So why would you only feel the outwards force but not the inwards force?




Answer



Suppose you have your feet pointing outwards and your head pointing towards the centre of rotation:


Centripetal force


Now ask your self what direction the force you feel is pointing. Well, the force is pushing upwards on your feet, so the force points from your feet towards your head. In other words the force you feel is pointing inwards not outwards i.e. it is the centripetal force.


quantum field theory - Time-ordering and Dyson series




  1. In Dyson series we use a time-ordered exponential by arguing that Hamiltonians at two different instants of time do not commute. Why is that so?





  2. Can anyone explain with an example why should the same Hamiltonians at two different times not commute?






Wednesday, April 24, 2019

condensed matter - The non-renormalizable $phi^6-$theory as an effective field theory


Let the non-renormalizable $\phi^6$ theory behaves as a low-energy, effective field theory, and works perfectly well below a finite energy (or momentum) scale $\Lambda$ for a system.


In this theory, all the loop diagrams will be finite if the loop momenta are carefully integrated up to $\Lambda$. This implies that there will be no divergences in scattering amplitudes at any order.




  1. Does this theory still require renormalization? If yes, why?





  2. If yes, then instead of saying $\phi^6$ to be a non-renormalizable theory, shouldn't we say that (i) it is renormalizable at low energy but (ii) non-renormalizable at high energies?





Answer



There's a bit of confusion here.


Whenever you work with a QFT you have to able to define it first. It is not enough to just write down diverging integrals and assert that they correspond to transition amplitudes. This doesn't make sense.


So I assume that what you mean is: define a theory with an explicit momentum-scale cutoff $\Lambda$ such that all the integrals are finite. Consider $\Lambda$ just as physical as other constants like mass $m$ and the coupling constant $\lambda$.


There's a whole bunch of issues with this definition. Like, for example,



  • It isn't clear how to consistently impose momentum constraints on the loop integrals, as we can pass to different loop momenta integration variables for which different constraints have to apply. Note that you don't care about this subtlety when $\Lambda \gg p$.


  • The theory with a momentum cut-off isn't Lorentz invariant. It simply isn't. You can, however, neglect this Lorentz violations when $\Lambda \gg p$.


The list can go on, but I think I've made my point already. But say that we somehow found relatively satisfactory answers to all of the questions above. What now?


1. Does this theory still require renormalization? If yes, why?


Yes, it does! Renormalization isn't about getting rid of infinities, and it isn't about getting rid of the unphysical $\Lambda$ (though it achieves both of these goals in the mean time). It is about making sense of the results that your theory gives.


Like, for example, you would want to give a particle interpretation to your theory, with an $S$-matrix corresponding to particle scattering. What do you require to give your theory a particle interpretation? One of the requirements is that the 2-point function has a pole when $p^2 = M^2$ with residue 1. This follows directly from normalization of states, and it allows you to talk about interacting particles of mass $M$ which your theory is supposed to describe.


If you calculate this 2-point function to some loop order you will find that both the location and the value of the pole are not $m$ and $1$ as you would've expect naively, but depend on $\Lambda$. But what's it mean? It means that your particles are of mass $M = M(m, \lambda, \Lambda)$ and are generated by a Fock-space operator associated to the physical observable $Z(m, \lambda, \Lambda) \cdot \phi$, not just the field operator $\phi$.


Again, renormalization is about reinterpreting predictions in terms of interacting particles.


2. If yes, then instead of saying $\boldsymbol{\phi^6}$ to be a non-renormalizable theory, shouldn't we say that (i) it is renormalizable at low energy but (ii) non-renormalizable at high energies?


What happens is: the higher-valency correlation functions become highly dependent on $\Lambda$ even in the $\Lambda \gg p$ regime. Physically, your theory becomes pathologically sensible to short-scale fluctuations.



With renormalizable theories we can say that $\Lambda$ is very large and corresponds to the boundary of the domain of applicability of our theory. But the exact details of this boundary aren't relevant for the long-range physics: we can just adopt the limiting value for the higher-valency correlations.


In case of $\phi^6$ in $4d$ though, this is not the case. Instead, we have the following nonrenormalizable behaviour:


The long-range properties of your theory depend explicitly on the details of the cut-off procedure. It can be the value of $\Lambda$, the way you resolve the cutoff ambiguity in the loop momenta integration variables, masses of the Pauli-Villars regularizer fields, etc. The key fact is that - your results depend on something for which you can't really say how it works and if it is physical or not. That's what is bad about nonrenormalizability.


With nonrenormalizable theories you can tweak the theory to give whatever predictions you want by simply changing the cut-off mechanism a bit. Not a lot of predictive power there.


UPDATE: allright, I admit that it is not 100% true. I was trying to make a point in the context of HEP, but once you let go of your ambitions to describe arbitrary high-energy processes, you can actually do something useful with nonrenormalizable theories as well.


For instance, you can fix the perturbation theory order $k$ prior to renormalization, and then simply determine the values of counterterms from experiments. With renormalizable theories this could be done once, i.e. using a fixed finite number of counterterms independent of the perturbation theory order. But nonrenormalizable theories require more and more tweaking and adjustment with increasing order.


Of course one can claim that this is fine, since perturbation expansion is only an assymptoitic series and thus even renormalizable theories can't be solved with an a-priori arbitrary precision using perturbation theory. And it is probably true.


There's another property of nonrenormalizable theories which has to do with Wilsonian renormalization group flow. Effective couplings used in perturbation theory blow up in the ultraviolet regime thus rendering the whole concept of perturbation theory meaningless. Thus we end up with phase transitions in the high-energy regime which we can't describe with perturbation theory.


It is also worth mentioning that such phase transitions aren't specific to nonrenormalizable theories. As a useful example, QED (Quantum Electrodynamics), though renormalizable, has an ultraviolet phase transition (the Landau Pole problem). Renormalizable theories without these phase transition are called asymptotically free.


And asymptotic freedom, together with renormalizability, is enough to ascertain that a HEP theory can be used to make sensible predictions up to whatever energy is associated with the boundary of its domain of validity. This is because the further into the UV you go, the less becomes the coupling, making the asymptotic expansion a better approximation for an even further order in perturbation theory (remember how the closer the coupling is to zero – the more orders of perturbation theory we can trust without worrying about asymptotic expansion blowing up?).



wordplay - Turn Lead into GOLD


Can you turn the word LEAD into GOLD in five steps or less? You can change or replace one letter at a time only. The newly formed word must be a legit word in a recognized dictionary. Of course you cannot add or subtract letters, so all new words must have 4 letters. I am sure there are several solutions here.



Answer



Three steps/Four words:




LEAD -> LOAD -> GOAD -> GOLD



lagrangian formalism - Why are Hamiltonian Mechanics well-defined?



I have encountered a problem while re-reading the formalism of Hamiltonian mechanics, and it lies in a very simple remark.


Indeed, if I am not mistaken, when we want to do mechanics using the Hamiltonian instead of the Lagrangian, we perform a Legendre tranformation on the Lagrangian to get the Hamiltonian. This, in the case of a 1 dimensional problem, is written as follows: $$ H(p,q) = p\dot{q}-L(q,\dot{q}).$$ Notice that this transformation is such that $H=H(p,q)$, where $p = \frac{\partial L}{\partial \dot{q}}$. By variation of $H$, we can indeed verify it as function of $p$ and $q$, so that they are now considered the new independent variables of the problem.


So far so good. However, there is a problem, and it lies in the fact that for this construction to hold, we need the Lagrangian not to change convexity. Let me write what I know about the Legendre transformation, in a somewhat formal way:


Given a function $f: x\rightarrow f(x)$, we define the function $p: x\rightarrow p(x)$ by the relation $\frac{df}{dx} = p$. Supposing $\frac{df}{dx}$ is invertible, we can define the inverse of $p(x)$, which we call $g : p\rightarrow g(p)$. Then, the legendre transformation of $f$ is $f^* : p\rightarrow f^*(p)$ such that $\frac{df^*}{dp}=g(p)$. We can write, in a more familiar way, $g(p) = x(p)$ since it is the inverse of $p(x)$.


Anyway, we can prove with those assumption that $f^* = pg(p)-f(g(p))$ which is $f^* = px-f(x)$ written in the "familiar" way. All that is just to point out that, for all this construction to work, and hence for the existence of $f^*$, we need the condition that $f(x)$ be of constant convexity, otherwise $\frac{df}{dx}$ is not invertible and we cannot even define $g(p)$.


However, when we consider a general Lagrangian, I don't think that this is always the case. Taking simply $L = \dot{q}^3$ makes the Lagrangian not of constant convexity. And yet, we always use the Hamiltonian, without ever checking this convexity constraint. Why can we do this? Is it because we are interested in the local behavior of our Lagrangian? But even then, what would we do at an inflexion point?


Or is it because a general "physical" Lagrangian will always satisfy the condition of constant convexity?




mathematics - Ernie and the Pirates of the Caribbean


A few weeks ago, I dropped in to see Ernie to ask if he was willing to look after the cat while I was on holiday in the Caribbean. “No problem.” he replied then showed me an old leather-covered book, “But here’s an interesting coincidence. I was cleaning out the attic at Aunt Bismarkia’s place yesterday, and I found a diary written by my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle Earnest. He met up with pirates and made the family fortune in the Caribbean.”, and began to read from the tattered old book as follows:



*Jan 13th 1769 uncharted in t’ Caribbean sea : Shipwreck’d & cast up on this desolat shore. But I have found sweet water, fruit &c. ‘tho the wild creaturs are fereful. & also I have made a shelter from the tempest.


Jan 23rd Sqare Isle : I have map’d the island & drawn a chart o’ it. It is 10 leagues exact on a side. Naming it Square Isle due to it’s particul’r shape & built a fine signal pyre betwixt beach and forest in hopes its smoke & flame &c. will bring rescuers.


enter image description here


Feb 1st Sqare Isle: In the reef to th’ north there are many oysters. To th’ most-part every shell hides a pearl of great beutie and size – I have hidd’n all but the largest 1 of them for fear of pyrates. The largest I wear on a string ‘bout my neck in the fashion of a savage.


Feb 14th Sqare Isle: A sail – I must hasten to light the signal fire...


3 year later after I find this diarie again: As the ship stopp’d I spied a black flag upon the main-mast – it was crew’d by pyrates. They took my pearl and my map (but showed no interest in my diary, pen &c.). & dragg’d me to the Cap’ns cabin, bound at wrist, where there were 3 pyrates most sanguinolent of aspect and each identical to the others.


“Are you 3”, I asked, “the infamous Dread Pyrate Triplets?” “We are they” – spoke 1 – “and more dread than even the legends claim. Shew us where you have hidden your other pearls or we will torture you most ‘orribly!” – and one pyrate shew’d me a cruel dagger.


“Do not harm me”, I implored, “I shall draw a cross on the chart forthwith”. But they held back my hand. “Draw not a mark, nor speak the location for our crew are scoundrels all. If perchance they spied the map or overhear they might avail theyselves of the treasure a’fore us. Then we would torture you most ‘orribly!”


“Do not harm me”, I implored again, “for I can whisper the location in your ear – each in turn”. But they stayed me to my chair. “Seal your lips. For each of us has no trust for his brothers & if the 1st to hear could avail themself of the treasure a’fore the others he would perchance take all. And the 2nd and 3rd would torture you most ‘orribly”.


“Do not harm me” I cried, “but answer these questions 3.



Show me 1st where the ship is harb’r’d” And they drew a rude cross on the chart signifying the anchorage.


“And you all are navigateurs?” I asked. And they replied “Navigateurs most skilled, but the crew have not this skill”.


*“Then tell me true – you are alike in visage and physiognomy, but is there any difference measurable betwixt you?“ * And the first replied “I swims at 12 leagues to the hour, but am only ½ as fast in jungle and ¼ as fast on swamp land.” And the second replied “Whereas I wades at 14 leagues in the hour on swamp land but am only ½ as fast in water and ¼ as fast in jungle”. And the third replied “And I sneaks through jungle at 19 leagues in the hour but am only ½ as fast in water and ¼ as fast on swamp land”.


“If that all be true”, said I “then the treasure is yours to share.


For it is sunken 3 fathoms down with great cunning some leagues to the ENE of here, but if each and every one o’ you departs from this very point at the same turn o’ the hour-glass, & each and every one o’ you takes his own best & fastest course using only the means given to your body by God, then each and every one o’ you will arrive at the treasure together – & not a pace will separate the 3 of you & not a heart-beat will pass between the first & the last to arrive”. But I warn’d them not of the great sharks & poisn snakes & sentipiedes & other divers creaturs that lurk’d in the sea, swamp, and jungle.


And the Dread Brothers arose as 1 & left in great haste. And I heard 3 splashes as 1, as the Dread Brothers threw themselves in the water to begin swimming to their goal – as each fear’d the others might get to the treasure 1st and take it all. In their awful haste they left the dagger and the 1 pearl on the table so I cut my bonds hencewith and took up my pearl & hid below decks in the bilges where the crew could not spy me. But less than 1 hour pass’d and there was a suddenlike cry and commotion & the sound of great guns and the ship gave a shaking & rending &c. most awful. I was in fear of my life & left my noisome hiding place and reach’d the fore-deck to spy the a 2-decker flying the Kings flag alongside with guns blazing, & the pyrate crew tore down their flag in surrender & the guns were silenced tho’ the pyrate ship was mortal damaged & did sink thereafter. The crew was clapp’t in irons but of the 3 Dread Brothers who had not returned from their mission nothing was found of them ever – mayhaps they were consum’d by the wild beasts a’fore reaching the treasure or whilst maroon’d. Perchance, I knew the Cap’n of HMS Blenheim from my time in Portsmouth so I was free’d. I ask’d time to recover my treasure but the Cap’n said we must sail as there was a g’t storm on the horizon – but I w’d be reward’d by the Crown as t’was my signal pyre that allowed capture of the pyrate band. And his word was good & I was rewarded 200 sovereign by HM Governor in Freeport and 100 more by Viscount Cranborne for my 1 last pearl. Thus I made my fortune.


“Even more of a coincidence”, I replied in excitement. “The resort is on a place called Square Island, just a couple of hundred km off the coast of Jamaica. Do you think it could be the same place – and could the pearls still be hidden there?” “(G^8)Uncle Earnest never provided a latitude or longitude so I guess we can never tell”, Ernie replied. “But while you are on holiday, you could always have a look and see”. And he passed me Earnest's original hand-drawn chart.


To be honest, Ernie doesn’t think there is much chance – he isn’t even sure he really believes the old tale – so he didn’t want to “humour me” working out if there is sufficient information in the diary to locate the pearls. So here is the deal – if anyone can confirm where to look, and I do find Earnest's cache – I promise to let you in on an equal share of the profits with Ernie and me!



Answer



In order to solve this problem, I used a combination of a flood-fill algorithm and Dijkstra's algorithm.



I set up a large grid of cells over the map. Each cell remembers its current distance and its "last source." The initial cell (the location of the ship) starts with zero distance, and source equal to itself. All other cells are uninitialized.


The algorithm keeps track of a list of cells with a priority queue. Each iteration it examines the cell in the queue with the smallest distance. It checks to see if the previously visited cell's source is both in the same region as the current cell, and has "line-of-sight" to the current cell (i.e. the straight-line path between current cell and previous source cell does not pass through any other regions). If is the case, the current cell's source is set to the previous source, otherwise the current cell's source is set to the previously visited cell.


The distance of the current cell is then calculated as the distance of the cell's source, plus the Euclidean distance from the source to the current cell divided by the pirate's speed over the current terrain. If this distance is less than the current cell's distance, the current cell's distance and source are updated and all its neighbors are added to the priority queue.


Running this algorithm with the three pirate's speeds (as given by Joe Z.) results in the following three distance contour plots:


enter image description here


enter image description here


enter image description here


If I take the maximum difference between distances at each point, I then obtain the following:


enter image description here


There are three different candidate points, if we ignore the ship itself. One is located on the west shore of the island. The second is in the water to the east of the island. Finally, there is one in the water to the northeast of the island.



Now because the algorithm I used keeps track of the "source" cell for each distance calculation, we can show the paths that each pirate used to arrive at each point (the paths are red, green, and blue for the first, second, and third pirate, respectively):


enter image description here


I assume, due to the line from the diary:



[the pearl] is hidden with great cunning some leagues to the East of here



That the actual location is the one off the east shore of the island. Knowing roughly the shortest paths for each pirate, the solution becomes a tedious optimization problem in a few variables. Solving the system of equations yields the orange point in the above diagram, which is located:



4.068527 leagues east and 5.250636 leagues north of the south-east corner of the island.




Alternatively, if you want to search the north-east point as well, it's located:



3.507273 leagues east and 2.329233 leagues north of the north-east corner of the island.



Finally, the (two!) candidate points on the west shore are located:



0.503264 leagues inland, 2.267151 leagues north and south of the ship.



Bonus


Here is an animation of the "circles of accessibility" mentioned in Joe Z.'s answer:



enter image description here


Tuesday, April 23, 2019

special relativity - When are events frame independent and why?


Why is it that if an event happens, and a clock at the same location that the event happened at says that its a certain time when the event happens, observers in EVERY reference frame agree on the time on that clock when the event happened?


I understand special relativity as encompassing all the un-intuitive results that arise from the observed fact that the speed of light is constant in all inertial reference frames.


So, seeing as there are so many un-intuitive results that emerge, I'd kind of like an explanation to my question different from "its intuitive that it would be so...". I know it is, since if we were to ask the person that experienced the event at the clock, and we disagreed with them...well, that would be quite strange.


But is there a way to explain this also arising from the constant speed of light...or perhaps from some fact about our universe which I'm missing?


Thanks!




Example:


Say that Bob is in the back of a train of length $L_P$ riding past Alice, and there's a clock at the front of the train, and at the back of the train.


When the back of the train (Bob) passes Alice, both of their clocks say zero, and Alice sees the clock at the front of the train say $-\frac{vL_P}{c^2}$.



The way I interpret this is that events happening at the front of the train in in Bob's conception of "NOW" still have $\frac{vL_P}{c^2}$ seconds until they happen for Alice...that's also why she sees the front of the train closer to herself than the back of the train sees the front of the train to itself - she is literally seeing a past version of the front of the train, which wouldn't have traveled as far.


However, say that when the front of the train reads $2$ according to Bob, a bird crashes into that clock. Why is it that Bob and Alice would both have to agree that the front of the train read $2$ when the bird crashed into it, even if from the point in time at which Bob passed Alice, Alice had to wait longer for the bird to crash into it than Bob did?



Answer




Why is it that if an event happens , and a clock at the same location that the event happened at says that its a certain time when the event happens, observers in EVERY reference frame agree that the clock said that time when the event happened?



That clock records the event by making a record:



  • punches a hole in paper with the hands

  • takes a photograph of the hands


  • makes a digital copy of the reading


Any observer can then read that record and see what it says. It’ll always be the same: everybody will see “21:23:45 Jan 6 2020” on the photograph.


It might take a while to see it if the observer is far away. An observers own clock might have made a different record because it saw a different time. But nobody will disagree what a particular clock said for a particular event.


Reading list and book recommendation on Conformal Field Theory



I have a background in QFT, GR and differential geometry at the level of a master student in theoretical physics. I would like to touch the area of CFT. I know the textbook of Philippe Di Francesco. It may be too big for the beginner like me. Are there some good introductory lectures or textbooks adapted to the needs of beginners?



Answer



I would recommend the book Introduction to Conformal Field theory by Blumenhagen and Plauschinn. It is quite sort and can serve as a perfect introduction to CFT. It covers the basics of CFT in the first 3 chapters and then in the remaining 3 it goes on to introduce the CFT concepts that will appear most frequently in String theory.


I believe the content of the book was chosen with the beginning string theory phd student in mind, even though the phrase "string theory" rarely appears in the book. The style of writing is accessible to someone who is just beginning to learn about the subject and as far as I remember almost every statement in the book comes with a proof, which is quite refreshing for a physics oriented book.


The book is not complete in any sense and as you delve into the subject you will have to supplement it with other textbooks, like the Di Francesco, but it personally helped me learn the basics and not be completely lost in the CFT jargon during the beginning steps and I recommend it as an introductory book.


general relativity - Can hyperbolic space be bounded?


There are many visualisations of hyperbolic geometry using Poincaré disks.




  1. What are their purpose?





  2. Can hyperbolic space be bounded?




  3. Can we endow the disk with the structure described by the FLRW metric?




  4. Does it have constant curvature?




  5. Could our universe be bounded, but yet still infinite like this?






Answer




What are their purpose?



The "purposes" of Hyperbolic geometries are many and varied in mathematics, but one stands out far beyond all others, at least historically as the purpose. Hyperbolic geometries were constructed to prove that the Euclid parallel postulate (see "Parallel Postulate" Wiki page) was logically independent of Euclid's other axioms of geometry. Before János Bolyai and Nikolai Lobachevsky discovered concrete examples of geometries that fulfilled all the other Euclid postulates, but not the parallel postulate in the 1820s, there were many notable supposed (but later shown to be flawed) "proofs" of the parallel postulate from Euclid's others (these are discussed on the Wiki page). But the concrete demonstration of a geometry fulfilling the other axioms but wherein the parallel postulate did not hold decisively showed that it could not be derived from the others alone: otherwise it would be in logical contradiction with the exhibited concrete models (see "Model Theory" Wiki page) that Bolyai and Lobachevsky discovered.


Another, probably the main, modern purpose (outside the study of hyperbolic geometry for its own sake) is as a local approximation to the geometry of a general manifold in a neighbourhood where the curvature can be taken as approximately constant and negative. It is "one step up" from the Euclidean / Minkowskian (signatured flat) local approximation to a manifold given by the tangent space. If you like, hyperbolic geometry (and henceforth I mean constant curvature hyperbolic geometry by these words) is like taking Taylor approximation to a suface to second order (in a region of negative curvature) where the tangent space is the first order Taylor approximation. In two dimensions, for example, hyperbolic geometry is a good approximation to the geometry on a surface in the neighbourhood of a saddle point.



Can hyperbolic space be bounded?




Truly constant curvature hyperbolic space cannot be compact in the topology that makes it hyperbolic: take the Poincaré disk model and witness that for any distance $d_0$, no matter how big, there are always points $u,\,v$ for which global minimum distance between them is greater. Take $u$ to be the centre of the Poincaré disk and $v$ to be the point given by $y=z=0$ and $x = \sqrt{\frac{\cosh(d_0+\epsilon)-1}{\cosh(d_0+\epsilon)+1}}$, where $\epsilon>0$ for example. However, manifolds which are locally hyperbolic can certainly be compact: intuitively this is obvious if you blow a balloon up and poke two fingers into its surface to give it two concave dimples. The saddle region in between the dimples is locally hyperbolic, but the global manifold is diffeomorphic to the compact 2-sphere.


However, you seem to be thinking something slightly different from my paragraph above, i.e. that the Poincaré disk is homeomorphic to a bounded but open i.e noncompact subspace of Euclidean space: let's hold this thought until I answer your last question.



Can we endow the disk with the structure described by the FLRW metric?



Yes you can. The Poincaré disk models constant negative curvature hyperbolic space, so one can think of the FLRW metric as a kind of dilation of the Poincaré disk by a function of the FLRW scale factor $a(t)$. See my calculations at the end of my answer to see this more clearly.



Could our universe be bounded, but yet still infinite like this?




As in Doetoe's answer, a nonlinear transformation maps an FLRW constant negative curvature onto a "finite" set - finite in the ambient Euclidean space. But the Minkowskian distance is what a being belonging to and living in this universe would measure. It is the only "physical" distance function in this universe, and such a universe always contains points arbitrarily distant from one another. So if you think of such a structure as bounded, then the answer is "yes", but this is a wholly artificial construction and has nothing to do with physics. You can always find a nonlinear transformation to map infinite regions to open, bounded ones. It is like mapping all time - the unbounded real line $\mathbb{R}$ to a finite interval by the transformation $\tau:\mathbb{R}\to(-1,\,1);\,\tau(x) = \tanh(x)$.


It may be helpful to you to understand that the Poincaré disk is the bijective ("information preserving" or "invertible") and isometric ("length and angle preserving") Stereographic Projection (see the "Relation to the hyperboloid model" section on the Poincaré disk Wiki page)) of the hyperboloid, an unbounded geometric object.





To see how the Poincaré disk fits in FLRW Metricwith the Reduced-circumference polar coordinates for the FLRW metric, we begin with:


$$\mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Sigma}^2 = \frac{\mathrm{d}r^2}{1-k r^2} + r^2 \mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Omega}^2, \quad \text{where } \mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Omega}^2 = \mathrm{d}\theta^2 + \sin^2 \theta \, \mathrm{d}\phi^2\tag{1}$$


as on the Wiki page. Exactly as for the Schwarzschild metric, here $r = const$ parameterises the hypersphere centred on the origin such that the length of a geodesic around the hypersphere is $2\,\pi\,r$. $r$ does not correspond to the length of a geodesic joining a point on the hypersphere and the origin, aside from when the curvature $k$ is nought.


In terms of the ambient Euclidean co-ordinates $(x,\,y,\,z)$ for points on the Poincaré disk, we have:


$$\mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Sigma}_P^2 = 4\,\frac{\mathrm{d}\,x^2+\mathrm{d}\,y^2+\mathrm{d}\,z^2}{(1-R^2)^2}\tag{2}$$


where $R=x^2+y^2+z^2$; take careful heed of the difference between little $r$ and big $R$. $R$ is the polar radial co-ordinate in the ambient Euclidean space and $\mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Sigma}_P^2$ is the line element on the Poincaré disk. Therefore, the length of a great circle on the Poincaré disk is:



$$C(R)=\int_0^{2\,\pi}\, 2\,\frac{R}{1-R^2}\,\mathrm{d}\,\theta = 4\,\pi\,\frac{R}{1-R^2} = 2\,\pi\,r\tag{3}$$


the last step following from the definition of the reduced circumference radius, and so:


$$r = \frac{2\,R}{1-R^2}\tag{4}$$


and so:


$$\mathrm{d}r^2 = \frac{4\,(1+R^2)^2}{(1-R^2)^4}\,\mathrm{d}R^2\tag{5}$$


On substituting (4) and (5) into (1), but now (i) letting $\phi$ stand for the azimuthal co-ordinate on the plane wherein the tangent vector along which we measure the line element lies (i.e. without loss of generality we think of our tangent vector lying in the appropriate equatorial plane) and (ii) setting the constant curvature to be $k=-1$ we find:


$$\begin{array}{lcl}\mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Sigma}^2 &=& \frac{\frac{4\,(1+R^2)^2}{(1-R^2)^4}}{1-k\,\left(\frac{2\,R}{1-R^2}\right)^2}\,\mathrm{d}R^2 + \frac{4\,R^2}{(1-R^2)^2}\,\mathrm{d}\Omega^2\\&=&\frac{4}{(1-R^2)^2}\left(\mathrm{d}R^2+R^2\,\mathrm{d}\,\phi^2\right)\\&=&4\frac{\mathrm{d}\,x^2+\mathrm{d}\,y^2+\mathrm{d}\,z^2}{(1-R^2)^2}\\&=&\mathrm{d}\mathbf{\Sigma}_P^2\end{array}\tag{6}$$


i.e. is equal to the line element measured on the Poincaré disk.


special relativity - Results of two equivalent scenarios in SR


This is not a homework question. It may appear as noob to most of you but SR is not my area of expertise and hence it seems very complex to me.




Question: Consider that there are two in-line pin hole separated by some distance. Both the pinholes at rest w.r.t to each other. There is a light source that moves relative to the pinholes. The relative movement is normal to line joining the pinholes.



Case 1: I consider that pinholes is the rest frame and light source as moving. In this configuration when the light source and one of the pinholes are overlapping, a pulse of light can pass through the first pinhole and strike the other pinhole, passing it too.


Case 2: Now I consider pinholes to be moving and light source to be rest frame. From the rest frame of light source, I see that a pulse of light passes through the first pinhole during the overlap. This light pulse will travel to other pinhole but will not be able to pass the second pinhole because the pinhole has already moved. (For this to happen, I will assume suitable relative velocity and separation between the pinholes so that the second pinhole has moved enough to avoid avoid the light ray)


So, you see that although these two are equivalent scenarios, their result is not same. Now I believe that I might be wrong because the relative motion and light are normal to each other and hence it does not qualify to be equivalent scenarios and so their results are not bound to be same. Is my thinking correct? Or is there any other explanation or am I missing something important here?



Answer



It is important to consider whether the source emits dispersed light or directed ray.


These examples can be considered either as the Transverse Doppler Effect or the or longitudinal Relativistic Doppler Effect (to be exact - a mix of longitudinal and transverse components).


The first example is the Transverse Doppler effect.


If the source emits diffused light, photon will pass through both holes in both cases. It's not a problem, and the photon will be red shifted after passing through second pinhole. Please note that if a photon approached observer at right angle it was released at oblique angle in source's frame.



If the source is laser pointer, the laser pointer has to be tilted backward to direction of motion. The angle depends on relative velocity of the source and can be calculated employing relativistic aberration formula. Otherwise a photon will not go through the both pinholes. Neither in first nor in the second example. For example, if a laser pointer is directed at right angle to direction of it's motion, photon will not go through the holes. But, if laser pointer is tilted backward, the photon will pass through the both pinholes and it will be red shifted.


You can imagine a tube that connects pinholes.


Very simple animation in youtube. Maybe it helps to visualize.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnphFr2Iai4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-AAC4pemDI


Is there any evidence that subatomic particles are affected by gravity?


If so what experiment has been done to show this?



Answer



Yes. For the phrasing of this question, the neutron qualifies.


Neutrons have been slowed and collected, which are diverted from nuclear reactors via beamports. The methods for doing this are quite complicated, but in the final state, they are confined within a box where the "walls" present a nuclear barrier to the neutrons. The neutrons have a wavelength longer than the spacing between atoms in the wall, thus, they bounce off. An interesting fact about the design is that the containment area doesn't need a "top" because the neutrons are at such a low energy that thermal movement isn't enough for them to leap out. This phenomenon, alone, is a physical demonstration of gravitational affects on subatomic particles.



So thorough is our understanding and testing of these particles in gravity, that quantized levels of height have been observed for ultra-cold neutrons.


Monday, April 22, 2019

quantum mechanics - Quantitative contribution of kinetic and potential energies to the binding energy of the $sigma$ orbital in $text{H}_2$ or $text{H}_2^+$


When a hydrogen molecule forms, 4.52 eV of energy is released, while for $\text{H}_2^+$ the binding energy is 2.77 eV. Such a binding energy is the difference of energies that have four terms in them: (1) the kinetic energy of the electron(s), (2) the potential energy of the electron(s) interacting with the nuclei, (3) the electron-electron interaction, and (4) the proton-proton interaction.


Explanations of $\sigma$ bonding in freshman chemistry texts tend to focus on #2. However, if we want to explain the difference in energy between bonding and anti-bonding orbitals, then it seems plausible that there should be a large difference in kinetic energy, #1. This is because the KE of the bonding orbital is low compared to that of the antibonding orbital because the bonding orbital basically a particle in a long box with wavelength in the long direction equal to twice the length of the box. In the antibonding case, this component of the wave-vector should be basically doubled.


All four of these energy terms can be represented by quantum-mechanical observables, and they can therefore be defined numerically, and calculated for a given set of trial wavefunctions. How much of the truth is captured by explanations that only mention #2?




general relativity - Symmetrical twin paradox in a closed universe


Take the following gedankenexperiment in which two astronauts meet each other again and again in a perfectly symmetrical setting - a hyperspherical (3-manifold) universe in which the 3 dimensions are curved into the 4. dimension so that they can travel without acceleration in straight opposite directions and yet meet each other time after time.


On the one hand this situation is perfectly symmetrical - even in terms of homotopy and winding number. On the other hand the Lorentz invariance should break down according to GRT, so that one frame is preferred - but which one?


So the question is: Who will be older? And why?


And even if there is one prefered inertial frame - the frame of the other astronaut should be identical with respect to all relevant parameters so that both get older at the same rate. Which again seems to be a violation of SRT in which the other twin seems to be getting older faster/slower...


How should one find out what the preferred frame is when everything is symmetrical - even in terms of GRT?



And if we are back to a situation with a preferred frame: what is the difference to the classical Galilean transform? Don't we get all the problems back that seemed to be solved by RT - e.g. the speed limit of light, because if there was a preferred frame you should be allowed to classically add velocities and therefore also get speeds bigger than c ?!? (I know SRT is only a local theory but I don't understand why the global preferred frame should not 'override' the local one).


Could anyone please enlighten me (please in a not too technical way because otherwise I wouldn't understand!)


EDIT
Because there are still things that are unclear to me I posted a follow-up question: Here



Answer



Your question is addressed in the following paper:



The twin paradox in compact spaces
Authors: John D. Barrow, Janna Levin
Phys. Rev. A 63 no. 4, (2001) 044104

arXiv:gr-qc/0101014


Abstract: Twins travelling at constant relative velocity will each see the other's time dilate leading to the apparent paradox that each twin believes the other ages more slowly. In a finite space, the twins can both be on inertial, periodic orbits so that they have the opportunity to compare their ages when their paths cross. As we show, they will agree on their respective ages and avoid the paradox. The resolution relies on the selection of a preferred frame singled out by the topology of the space.



geometry - Tiling rectangles with Heptomino plus rectangle #4


Inspired by Polyomino T hexomino and rectangle packing into rectangle


See also series Tiling rectangles with F pentomino plus rectangles and Tiling rectangles with Hexomino plus rectangle #1


Previous puzzle in this series Tiling rectangles with Heptomino plus rectangle #3


Next puzzle in this series Tiling rectangles with Heptomino plus rectangle #6



The goal is to tile rectangles as small as possible with the given heptomino, in this case number 4 of the 108 heptominoes. We allow the addition of copies of a rectangle. For each rectangle $a\times b$, find the smallest area larger rectangle that copies of $a\times b$ plus at least one of the given heptomino will tile.


Example with the $1\times 1$ you can tile a $2\times 6$ as follows:


1x1_2x6


Now we don't need to consider $1\times 1$ further as we have found the smallest rectangle tilable with copies of the heptomino plus copies of $1\times 1$.


I found 31 more but lots of them can be found by 'expansion rules' or pattern variations. I considered component rectangles of width 1 through 11 and length to 32 but my search was far from complete.


List of known sizes:



  • Width 1: Lengths 1 to 15, 18, 22

  • Width 2: Lengths 2 to 9, 11, 15, 21

  • Width 3: Lengths 4, 5, 7


  • Width 4: Length 5


Most of these could be tiled by hand using logic rather than trial and error.




quantum mechanics - Why do neutron stars with more mass have smaller volume?


I know about Heisenberg uncertainty which makes more localized neutrons have a wider range of undefined momentum, and Pauli exclusion principle which prohibit neutrons from getting too close or "occupying the same quantum state" so as to say. But they only explain how neutron stars don't increase in volume while increasing in mass, yet it doesn't (at least from my understanding) explain how it gets smaller. I understand this degeneracy pressure only accounts for part of the opposing forces inside the neutron stars, with the others being a variety of stuff including strong force repulsion. I also know there are equations for calculating this, but I want to know if there's a more intuitive way of understanding how this phenomenon is created by these rules and forces or if there is a good explanation as to how the equations was formed and what they meant



Answer




Try this argument.


To be in hydrostatic equilibrium, the pressure gradient inside a star must equal (minus) the density multiplied by the gravitational field $$ \frac{dP}{dr} = - \rho g$$


If we take the average pressure gradient to be $-P_c/R$, where $R$ is the stellar radius and $P_c$ is the central pressure, then this will roughly be equal to average density multiplied by the average gravitational field. So in proportionality terms $$ \frac{P_c}{R} \sim \frac{M}{R^3}\frac{M}{R^2}\, ,$$ where $M$ is the stellar mass and thus $$ P_c \sim M^2 R^{-4} \tag*{(1)}$$


The relationship between mass and radius will depend on what provides the pressure.


If it is perfect gas pressure (in a non-degenerate star), then $P_c \propto \rho T \sim MT/R^3$. But in a main sequence star, the core temperature is roughly fixed, because hydrogen burning has a strong temperature dependence and hardly changes as the mass changes. Thus we have from eqn (1): $$ P_c \sim MR^{-3} \propto M^2 R^{-4}$$ $$ \rightarrow \ \ \ \ R \propto M $$


Now consider (non-relativistic) degeneracy pressure. This scales as $\rho^{5/3}$ and is independent of temperature. Thus $P_c \propto M^{5/3} R^{-5}$. Putting this into eqn (1): $$P_c \sim M^{5/3} R^{-5} \propto M^2 R^{-4}$$ $$ \rightarrow \ \ \ \ R \propto M^{-1/3} $$


Note that real neutron stars are not governed by the ideal equation of state for degenerate neutrons. Neutrons in fact are strongly intercting particles when compressed to separations of $\sim 10^{-15}$ m. The interaction is repulsive and leads to a "hardening" of the equation of state, such that $P_c \sim \rho^2 \propto M^2 R^{-6}$. If we put this into equation (1) we find that there is only one value of $R$ that will satisfy the equation. i.e. That the radius does not depend on mass. If you look at many examples of theoretical mass-radius relations for neutron stars you will see that there usually is a range of masses for which the radius is nearly constant.


classical mechanics - Moment of a force about a given axis (Torque) - Scalar or vectorial?

I am studying Statics and saw that: The moment of a force about a given axis (or Torque) is defined by the equation: $M_X = (\vec r \times \...