Recent content by Iamu

I was thinking that a test particle directly between the singularities, at any distance the singularities happen to be apart, would not accelerate relative to the whole system's center of mass. I'm not quite getting this. If their event horizons combine before the singularities touch, then...

This makes sense. I realize my question was a little confused. Thank you for the clear answer. So we can't have forking geodesics. But then, I'm wondering how the singularities combine. I don't think the event horizons can ever overlap before the singularities touch, because the event horizon...

So I'd assume that the singularities and their horizons touch at the same instant, as the holes fall into each other, then? I'm guessing this, because otherwise, the horizons intersect, first, and then light can potentially be behind both horizons at once.

I'm going to have trouble stating this question exactly in the language of GR, but I'm going to try my best. We have a manifold with two identical black holes falling into each other from a large distance with no angular momentum, both spin and around their collective center of mass. A ray of...

That makes sense. I forgot about the off-diagonal terms in the stress-energy tensor. Thanks for the help.

I have a question that's been bothering me for a couple of days, and none of my professors have been able to answer it. Two observers, Alice and Bob, are initially at rest relative to each other. Bob begins a constant acceleration. I want to be specific; let's say his acceleration is g and...

Thank you for your replies. I think I understand what you're saying about how inaccuracies in predicting the weather are the result of our inability measure, and that the inability to measure more precisely is a technical problem not of quantum origin. And further, I think I understand...

Please excuse my persistance, but I re-checked my calculations and I think I was off. Now I'm finding that the uncertainty in each particle's temperature is about .3K. It seems too high to me, but I've run through the calculation a couple of times, now, and I'm pretty certain of it. At 15...

I've always been curious about the boundary between the quantum and classical regimes, and I've often wondered if the weather is not just a chaotic system, but if it had a degree of true randomness, if it is significantly influenced by quantum events. So I tried to calculate the approximate...

I've been thinking about the many-worlds interpretation and how one might test it experimentally. I'm wondering if it might be possible to observe interference between macroscopic systems in different "worlds". We start with an isolated quantum system in superposition, and we let it interact...

Wikipedia says that the Casimir effect is attractive, and that the equation for calculating the force per unit area between two electrically neutral plates is: F/A=-(d/da)(<E>/A) "a" is the distance between the plates. So if the plates are moved closer together, the change in energy over...

How sensitive are neurons and chemical receptors like olfactory receptors to the chemicals that stimulate them? Can a single molecule stimulate a nerve? How many photons does it take to stimulate a rod or a cone in the eye? I ask because I'm curious as to whether or not human thought and...

The wikipedia article on Bose-Einstein condensates mentions that helium-4 is, or can be, a boson. It says that a condensate is made by putting many bosons, such as helium-4, into the lowest energy state. How can an atom be a boson? I figured that an atom, composed of fermions, would have to...

Excuse me... I think I've heard the term "virtual particles" being used a different way, to describe particles that can be sustained by a vacuum of a particular volume. Take two reflective plates x distance apart, and another two metal plates x/2 apart, and the vacuum energy between the...

I don't want to hijack this thread of yours, too... but like I said in your other thread, the problem here lies in thinking of the electron as something like a billiard ball with inertia. The electron will never naturally come to absolute rest through collisions. It would be natural for a...