Recent content by Zarathustra0

In the GWS electroweak model, there are two fundamental charges: weak hypercharge and the third component of weak isospin (henceforth referred to as hypercharge and isospin respectively). The gauge boson of hypercharge is the B0, and those of isospin are the W+, W0, and W-. The B0 and W0 mix...

Thanks--in that case, would the force between antiquarks also be repulsive and that between a quark and an antiquark attractive?

OK, here's a question that's unusual in that it regards a particle state that's pretty much taken to be nonexistent. Nonetheless, my curiosity is piqued. I've read from multiple sources that if the singlet gluon existed, it would couple with equal strength to all baryons because they are also...

I think that view is supported by the article as well. I guess to be honest about it, I had always looked at a career in academia as something absurdly difficult to get into but still something I wanted to try (with a backup plan or, to be accurate, a likely to be invoked fallback) because of...

Looks like I'd better work on my programming skills--thanks for the help!

Distinguishing between a sap and a person who spends six years earning a degree that only leads to serf-level work seems like quibbling to me. I'm using more pejorative language to describe it than you are, but frankly I don't see any concrete distinction.

OK, point taken--to paraphrase what I'm hearing, a Ph.D. in physics is without use unless you want to go into industry or finance because anyone who pursues a postdoctoral position is a sap with no job prospects. I'll take your collective word for this. What then are some (potentially)...

I didn't say I'm willing to be treated like dirt. It's my understanding that the pay associated with a postdoctoral position is poor. What I'm saying is that I am willing to go through a period in my life when I'm not earning nearly as much as I would by applying my skills elsewhere. This is...

I'm aware of the dismal nature of the Ph.D. job market (especially in this field), and I'm by all means willing to not work in academia if I simply can't support myself by doing so, but I'm also willing to work as a postdoc for a long time if necessary. Basically what I'm saying is that I'm...

I took the link within that article to http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~poppitz/Jobs94-08.pdf" , and I'm surprised there are even as many string-theory hires as there are. Anyway, what I glean from these statistics are that on average a new Ph.D. in particle theory will have to be a postdoc at a...

Geezer, I think you may be misunderstanding Vanadium 50's post. Assuming I'm taking his words correctly, he's saying that in order to someday attain a permanent (i.e. tenure-track) position in specifically theoretical physics, one will have to be one of the ten most desirable applicants to such...

I'm an American undergrad in physics and math between my junior and senior years, and I'm planning on applying to a physics Ph.D. program in the coming year. Frankly I'm not a great-looking applicant. My GPA is a 3.465 (at a top-twenty university at least) although most of my poorer grades...

Is there any generally accepted or even speculative a priori reason why the orbital-angular-momentum quantum number is allowed to take on only integer values but the spin-angular-momentum quantum number may have half-integer values, or is this just empirical?

This I understand, but what I'm wondering is what these superpositions mean in terms of actual interactions. An individual quark or antiquark has a definite color (correct?), so if they annihilate to a gluon, which of the eight gluons do they make? Since the color and anticolor of a gluon are...

Since the actual mass-eigenstate gluons are not the simple red-antired, red-antigreen, etc. but rather linear combinations thereof, is color charge still absolutely conserved? It seems that if we (perhaps naïvely) treat a gluon as simply fluctuating from one of the color-anticolor combinations...