Recent content by lmoh

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm going to look to purchasing these books soon. I've noticed that all of the recommendations deal with mathematics, which makes sense since it is math-heavy. But are there any physics based books that you guys recommend I look at as well?

Hi. I am currently thinking about going back to school in a year or so in order to get a physics undergrad and I was wondering what I should study in order to best prepare myself. I haven't been in school for a while, and my last experience with maths was in high school (which I hardly have any...

Thanks again guys. Just an additional question. I've been following a thread earlier on this forum that discusses gravity as a force instead of as the curvature of spacetime. There are apparently models of GR, such as teleparallel gravity and GTG that are described in a flat spacetime. Since...

Thanks for the replies guys. So the general idea is that the curvature of space makes the comparison of inertial frames difficult, due to the fact that the space between two observers is "bumpy", is that right? Since the concept of inertial frames applies only under local conditions, would it...

Under SR, we can talk about inertial frames that apply globally. However apparently, under GR, this concept only applies locally, because it breaks down on larger scales. Can anyone provide an explanation as to why this is? Is this due to the fact that space-time is warped in GR?

Actually, I was just looking for the paper mentioned on the website, and I think I have found it on arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9811019. If you want to know the date, it was made in 1998. Here is a bit from the abstract: I will try reading those papers, but as I said, I don't have...

I recently found an interesting read on the mysteries of quantum mechanics, here : Don't know about you, but I am personally confused by this result. How can a photon travel faster than itself? If it can travel faster than itself, than what does that mean for the universal speed limit? My...

That usually the justification for atomism, but that type of argument isn't really convincing IMO. Sure, given our limited minds, we cannot conceive of dimensions or processes without viewing them as something discrete, but that doesn't mean that the world we live in necessarily has to be the...

Okay, there seems to be a lot of confusion over what I said. Phinds, when I used the term "infinite", I meant unbounded, like Marcus said. My whole point was that, since I cannot see a limit to the space between two objects, then there shouldn't be a limit to how fast they are moving away from...

Okay Marcus, after reading your edited post, I think I see what you mean. So the rate of expansion is proportional to the distance. I guess that makes sense on the bigger scheme of things, but with regards to my original question, does this mean that there is no limit to expansion, putting aside...

I'm not entirely sure what you are saying here. By percentage growth rate, are you referring to the current universe as a whole? And when you mention that this rate is going down, are you suggesting that the expansion is not accelerating?

I've known for a while that the universe is expanding, and that objects within the universe are moving farther and farther away from each other. But one thing that fascinates me is the rate of this expansion, which is said to be faster than light (but that doesn't violate relativity). What's...

Heh, I guess there's no room for the philosophically minded scientist (though I guess that sounds like an oxymoron). I'm okay and understand the decision, but wouldn't it be better if we just kept the "philosophy forum" as a read only archive rather than merging it with the "general discussion"...

One of the main postulates of relativity is that the speed of light is always constant. However, light does not always travel at c, it only travels at that speed in a vacuum (supposedly). When it is in a medium such as water or air, it moves at a noticably slower rate, where even other objects...

Randomness is indeed a valid explanation, just as possible as any other explanation of phenomena. The main problem is just going about proving it. Since that is impossible, the only way to prove indeterminism is to provide evidence for the impossibility of alternative, causality. At best...