Recent content by Matthew Smith

There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a "Big Bang" about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. The Big Bang should not be...

Gluons are the exchange particles for the color force between quarks, analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force between two charged particles. The gluon can be considered to be the fundamental exchange particle underlying the strong interaction between protons and...

First, it is impossible for fermion fields to have a large constant non-zero average value in nature. This is related to the difference between fermions and bosons; bosons can be non-zero on average, but fermions really can’t. So we can forget about electrons (and their cousins the muons and the...

Water hammer manifests itself as pressure fluctuations in piping systems, as rotational speed variations (overspeed, reverse rotation) in hydraulic machinery or as water level oscillations in surge tanks. The velocity profiles in rapid transients are significantly different from the "steady"...

As the electron displays an intrinsic angular momentum, you might expect a magnetic moment which follows the form of that for an electron orbit. The Z-component of magnetic moment associated with the electron spin would then be expected to be, but, the measured value turns out to be actually...