Physics Commons^™

Physics 4900, David Maughan

Physics Capstone Projects

More than a century has passed since Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity. The theory has been tested many times experimentally, primarily in the relatively weak gravitational fields of the solar system [1,2]. More recently the first experimental results from the strong gravitational fields of two black holes have been measured in the form of gravitational waves, which are another prediction of general relativity. The 2017 Nobel prize in physics was awarded to Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, and Barry Barish for their role in the detection of gravitational waves. This year we have seen the first image of …

Thermodynamic Properties Of Black Holes, Geoffrey Schulthess

Physics Capstone Projects

Black Holes are some of the most mysterious objects in the known universe. In 1975, Stephen Hawking stated that Black Holes can behave as thermodynamical objects with a finite mass, spin, angular velocity, temperature, and entropy. This has been one of the most fascinating yet perplexing breakthroughs in our understanding of these strongly gravitating objects. In this context, the purpose of this research was to use Wolfram Mathematica to create a program that would calculate the thermodynamic properties of a black hole, given a certain metric.

Structure Of Matter, 7, David Peak

Structure of Matter

More about the matter with mass

To repeat, the basic premise of QED is that the physical world doesn’t care about the phase of the electron wavefunction; calculations and observations strongly support that idea. The basic premise of QCD is that the physical world doesn’t care about the color of the quark wavefunction; calculations and observations strongly support that idea. The basic premise of QFD is that the physical world doesn’t care about the flavor (isospin) of the quark or lepton wavefunctions. But that’s not true! For example, a “free” d quark can certainly emit a (virtual) W particle and …