Recent content by jnorman

Thanks bander- okay so it is a process which doesn't necessarily require heavy atoms. However, if this process can occur with matter particles decaying to yield a new pair of electrons, it seems that it would similarly occur with antimatter particles decaying to yield a new pair of...

I am a simple layman, but I hope one of you wizards can help me understand something here. I just read the new article in Wired magazine on the problem of the missing antimatter, a topic I have read about before in several popular books on physics and cosmology, and I have a basic understanding...

Khashishi - thanks so much for your kind responses. Weirdo - omg, like I wasn't already confused enough...

Thanks for the link - a very interesting article, though not for the faint of heart :-) However, it did raise another question - if virtual photons can transfer momentum, why do we need "real" photons? I.e., what is the difference between a real photon and a virtual photon? And, of course...

I understand that in the standard model, photons are the carriers of the EM force. Does that apply to a normal bar magnet? I.e., when you sprinkle iron filings near a bar magnet and the filings align along the field lines, does that mean that photons are being exchanged between the magnet and...

I am probably missing something, but it seems to me that the only way gravitational waves could be generated would be if the center of gravity of a massive body or system began oscillating somehow. The detection of such waves was recently reported and were supposedly generated by a pair of black...

I am trying to understand the Higgs field. I understand that mass and charge are measurable characteristics of particles. I have read that the concept of the Higgs field was to explain how particles have mass. The Higgs field supposedly "imparts" mass to particles which would not have mass if...

gentlemen - thanks for your responses - the wiki article on natural units was quite helpful.

I always try to assume that pretty much anything I think of has been thought of before, so I am relatively sure that this is also not a new question. we base our current measurement systems on arbitrary lengths such as the meter or foot, etc. there are certain applications where we use...

I admit I am pretty much completely baffled by the concept of an additional particle being required to "give" other particles mass, but I would like to ask a simple question. given the extremely large amount of energy required to generate a higgs boson, how can such a particle come into play...

perhaps you could elucidate how an accretion disc could be responsible for such enormous output of EM radiation?

inre: "photons themselves cause gravitational curvature" i do not think this is true. a photon has no location, and does not cause curvature of spacetime.

hmmm - doesn't the "fact" that higgs bosons have been "discovered" now, which disconnects mass as an instrinsic aspect of matter, mean that there is some particle nature of gravity, or some connection between the action of the higgs boson and the gravitational field, or some other ridiculously...

since energy absorbed by a BH is no longer available to the universe, why is that not a violation of the principle of conservation of energy?

zapper - OP question was legit. the standard model is a field model, not a particle model, and pretty much supports the concept that all "particles" are simply manifestations of the associated field. this is born out by the fact that no fundamental particles dispaly any spatial extension, ie...