Talk Like A Physicist

Lorenz attractor

A trajectory of Lorenz’s equations, rendered as a metal wire to show direction and 3D structure.

3D Mandelbrot fractal animation - Julia set

Here is a 2D julia set

And the 3-D Julia set animation.

Every time I see it, I feel perplexed as to the complexity and the beauty of it.

Random act of science teaching - you weigh less on the way down in the an elevator

Random act of science teaching. These scales were mounted inside commercial and residential elevators allowing riders to test this fact.

Explanation was available as a leaflet in the the elevator.

Everyday physics, tested by everyday person, using everyday objects.

Dynamic Magnetic Field as animated images –> Magnetic Movie

Magnetic fields are invisible, at least usually. But Scientists from NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratory have made them visible as “animated photographs,” using sound-controlled CGI and 3D compositing. It makes the fields dance in an absolutely gorgeous movie called Magnetic Movie.

This is the best depiction of solar wind that I have seen.

This is just a visualization of the fields that were present in the space at the time of the filming.

The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic, ever-changing geometries. All action takes place around NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratory, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries. Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers’ produced by fleeting electrons. Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?

Source

Gamma Ray Sky View

The reason we “see” specific frequencies of light, or alternatively, our brains have acquired the capability to interpret the signals coming to the eyes in a certain narrow band of electromagnetic waves, is because of two things (i) particular properties of the spectra arriving from the Sun, and (ii) the specific photo synthesis process that became dominant and gave the green color to our food.

In an alternate world, depending on its own star, and its own food chain, one can imagine an alien being acquiring a capability to “see” in a different frequency band.

Sometimes I tell my eight year daughter science fiction stories based on “real science”, and we have a recurring character called Gammon, and he comes from a planet where the inhabitants are lead based and their food supply is radioactive metal and they “see” in hard X-ray/soft gamma ray spectrum.

If they were to look up in the sky, this is what they would see:

night sky in gamma ray spectrum; not too different from how the sky looks in the visible spectrum.

In case you are wondering as to how the earth will look in the gamma ray spectrum, wonder no more.

The pixelated planet above is actually our own planet Earth seen in gamma rays.

The Earth’s gamma-ray glow is indeed very faint, and this image was constructed by combining data from seven years of exposure during the life of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, operating in Earth orbit from 1991 to 2000. Brightest near the edge and faint near the center, the picture indicates that the gamma rays are coming from high in Earth’s atmosphere. The gamma rays are produced as the atmosphere interacts with high energy cosmic rays from space, blocking the harmful radiation from reaching the surface.

Source

Gorgeous picture of a (solid state) Tesla coil discharge

Click for a better view.

Shifting temporary equilibrium : burning candles at both end

the candle is perfectly balanced in the center and each end is lit at different times, the the wax melts on each end of the candle, and when it drips off of one end, that end becomes less in weight than the other, causing an imbalance of weight and making it tilt, when this happens, the same thing happens on the other end of the candle, creating a seesaw effect.

source

I Will Derive : All physics students should learn this

First I was afraid
I was petrified
Kept on thinking “I can’t do this”
With x on each side

I tried to think, control my nerve,
…

when I had given up all hope, I said

NO,…..

I”LL DERIVE

Derive from first principles!

If you can’t do it, you don’t know your subject.

From mindofmathew at YouTube or at MindofMathew.com

Amazing views - Download Microsoft’s worldwide telescope software

Microsoft has released its highly anticipated and exceptionally beautiful Worldwide Telescope software to explore the heavens. I have been waiting to get my hands on it since March!

I’ll let other hard core star gazers view it in details, I am just going to sit back and let my fingers do the walking at the speed of few light years per click!

Download from here.

Stable Superheavy element Ubb with Z=122 and A=292 found in nature - Unbibium

Looks like we got a package from the island of nuclear stability!

I am surprised by this claim of finding super-duper-heavy element with Z=122 or Z=124. The last I heard was that the element Z=118 didn’t exist in nature, but was manufactured, and it had a very short life. The new element with Z=122 or Z=124 is apparently stable and is found in nature!

It’s like you go past the island of stability and find a mountain of solidity.

It sort of makes intuitive sense. When there are so many nuclei, and then when you have neutron deficit on top of it, it is likely that the nucleus would not be a sphere but of some other deformed shape; which in turn would make the shell take on a deformed shape. So, itt may be a highly deformed, long lived isometric state of Z=122, because the ground state of an element with Z=122 is expected to decay within microseconds.

The temporary name of the element will presumably be Unbibbium (Ubb) or Unbiquadium (Ubq).

Evidence for a long-lived superheavy nucleus with atomic mass number A=292 and atomic number Z=~122 in natural Th
Authors: A. Marinov, I. Rodushkin, D. Kolb, A. Pape, Y. Kashiv, R. Brandt, R.V. Gentry, H.W. Miller

Evidence of superheavy element -

Breathtaking images of colliding galaxies from Hubble

Here are a few of my favorite ones:

highly symmetric spiral galaxy seen nearly face-on and partially backlit by a background galaxy. The foreground spiral galaxy has a number of dust lanes between its arms.

This Hubble image displays a beautiful pair of interacting spiral galaxies with swirling arms. The smaller of the two, dubbed LEDA 62867 and positioned to the left of the frame, seems to be safe for now, but will probably be swallowed by the larger spiral galaxy, NGC 6786 (to the right) eventually. There is already some disturbance visible in both components.

This is a remarkable collision between two spiral galaxies, NGC 6050 and IC 1179, and is part of the Hercules Galaxy Cluster. The two spiral galaxies are linked by their swirling arms.

Arp 256 is a stunning system of two spiral galaxies in an early stage of merging. The Hubble image displays two galaxies with strongly disrupted shapes and an astonishing number of blue knots of star formation that look like exploding fireworks.

The galaxy to the left has two extended ribbon-like tails of gas, dust and stars. The system is a luminous infrared system radiating more than a hundred billion times the luminosity of our Sun.

Two clear signatures of the gravitational tug of war between the galaxies are the bridge of material that connects them and the disruption of their main bodies. The galaxy on the right has a long, bluish arm while its companion has a shorter, redder arm.

This interacting pair is in the constellation of Indus, the Indian, some 550 million light-years away from Earth. The dust lanes between the two galaxy centers show the extent of the distortion to the originally flat disks that have been pulled into three-dimensional shapes.

Source

All time best Math video ever. Moebius transformation visualized in higher dimension

Video produced by Douglas Arnold and Jonathan Rogness.

The video demonstrates the transformations in two dimensions but then backs away and adds a third-placing a sphere above the plane and shining light through it. As the sphere moves and rotates above the plane, suddenly all the transformations become linked, in a way that conveys visually in minutes what would otherwise take “pages of algebraic manipulations.

This video has been viewed more than a million times on YouTube, so it is not new, but every time I see it, I am fascinated. Going to higher dimensions and visualizing moebius transformation is just a bonus.

Download the full high resolution wide screen narrated video in QuickTime format (130mb), if you have a fast connection.

Physicist’s Periodic Table

Physicist Timmothy Stowe’s periodic table places elements in discrete levels. It is plotted in three dimensions, with the three axes representing the principal quantam number, n the orbital quantam number, l and the orbital magnetic quantam number, m(sub)l

This is one of my favorite elemental video about the periodic table, mainly because instead of just reciting the names of the elements, it gives an example of where they appear or shows a sample of the element itself.

There is also a higher quality version of this video at YouTube.

The video is by Tom Lehrer, it especially appropriate to post it today because he is celebrating his 80th birthday today! Happy birthday Tom!

If you want to hear his sing about the derivatives and how to calculate it, please click here. The song is called there is delta for every epsilon.