Title.

I was reading a few days ago about how neuroscience has been shifting towards a more "probabilistic" interpretation of human behavior, due to stochastic elements in the brain, and in decision-making. I was commenting this with a friend of mine who is a physics PhD and he told me that he considered "indeterminism" to be plausible in such systems. This led me to ask if he thought that the universe was fully deterministic and he said that he didn't and that most of his peers agreed.

I came here to the AskPhysics subreddit and I learned that most physicists don't really care much about the QM interpretations, so I wondered if that meant that you assume a probabilistic behavior of the universe.

Sorry if my question is misguided, I couldn't find an answer in other posts.

If there was, would it just be a standstill object in space & time? Theoretically, is a vacuum unaffected by gravity?

TYIA

Is the zero point energy of quantum fields influenced by a fluctuation in the field causing virtual particles to emit photons or are the actual waves of the field themselves exerting pressure on the plates?

I'm pondering a lot about the implications, I don't want to bias the answers so I add no more, please write whatever comes as relevant. I do not agree with what I've heard Sean Carroll say (IIRC) that there are no consequences for our decisions and everyday life. TIA

Hey everyone,

I’m just a regular space enthusiast who’s always thinking about how the universe works. I had a thought in the shower today and wanted to share it with you all. I’m not a scientist, just someone who’s super curious about space and loves discussing these ideas with others.

Theory:

Traditionally, spacetime is seen as a passive entity that bends and stretches under the influence of mass, as per Einstein’s general relativity. But what if spacetime is more like a living, breathing entity that actively manages energy? Instead of just curving around objects and absorbing energy, spacetime could actively redistribute energy throughout the universe to maintain some form of cosmic balance. Imagine it as spacetime constantly adjusting itself to ensure no region becomes overly energetic or too “cold.” This could explain the phenomenon of gravitational waves—when black holes radiate energy, spacetime doesn’t just absorb it, it might redirect or distribute it elsewhere, leading to observable effects across the cosmos.

The growth or decay of a black hole may depend not just on the matter it pulls in, but also on how its energy is managed by spacetime. In addition to accreting matter, black holes radiate energy in the form of Hawking radiation, gravitational waves, and other processes. What if spacetime interacts with this energy flow, helping to redistribute it across the universe, and in doing so, decides the fate of the black hole? For example, a black hole that pulls in matter but radiates too much energy might find its energy redistributed in such a way that it eventually fades. Alternatively, a black hole that absorbs more matter and radiates less might receive more energy from spacetime, allowing it to keep growing.

This feedback loop could form a new way of looking at black hole behavior: not just a battle between matter intake and radiation, but a dynamic relationship with spacetime itself, where the black hole’s energy output might directly influence its growth and survival.

What if spacetime doesn’t just passively absorb the energy emitted by black holes or other cosmic phenomena? Instead, it acts like an energy conduit or “cosmic circulatory system,” redistributing energy throughout the universe in real-time. This idea goes beyond gravitational waves as a mere signal of cosmic events. Perhaps these waves are part of spacetime’s energy regulation system—spacetime itself might have localized energy reservoirs, and when a black hole radiates energy, spacetime could “store” some of that energy in these regions, or even use the energy to influence nearby objects, such as stars, galaxies, or even dark matter.

This would make spacetime a far more interactive player than previously thought, with the power to regulate and control energy distribution across vast scales, leading to a more interconnected and dynamic universe.

I wonder if the process of energy redistribution by spacetime creates feedback loops. For example, as spacetime “reconfigures” itself to maintain equilibrium, it could subtly affect the gravitational fields of nearby objects. The way gravitational waves ripple through spacetime might not just be a signal of distant events; these waves could actually be part of spacetime’s way of adjusting energy across the cosmos, creating a dynamic interaction between matter and spacetime itself.

This feedback might even go beyond gravity, influencing the formation and evolution of galaxies, stars, or other cosmic structures in ways we haven’t fully understood yet. Perhaps the energy from black holes doesn’t just disappear into the void—it actively shapes the universe, creating ripples of influence that extend to the farthest corners of space.

Here are some ways we might test this theory:

1.	Gravitational wave observatories like LIGO and Virgo could potentially detect anomalies in the energy signatures of black hole mergers. If spacetime is actively redistributing energy, it might subtly alter the way gravitational waves behave, either in their frequency, amplitude, or duration.

2.	The CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) might show traces of spacetime’s energy regulation from the early universe. If spacetime had an active role in redistributing energy during the formation of the cosmos, we might see this in tiny, yet significant, fluctuations that hint at spacetime’s role in shaping the early universe.
3.	Observing galaxy clusters could reveal how spacetime’s redistribution of energy influences the motion and behavior of galaxies. If spacetime helps to regulate cosmic energy, this might be visible in the movements of galaxies, their gravitational interactions, and the way they group together in clusters.
4.	If spacetime is actively redistributing energy, this could provide new insights into the mysterious behavior of dark matter. Could dark matter be part of spacetime’s way of managing energy, or could it be influenced by spacetime’s feedback loop? This might open new possibilities for studying dark matter through its interactions with spacetime.

I've just started reading Purcell's "Electricity and Magnetism", and he brings in a quote from Joseph Priestly about his 18th century experiment where there is no electrical influence within a hollow charged container.

"May we not infer from this experiment that the attraction of electricity is subject to the same laws with that of gravitation and is therefore according to the square of the distances: since it is easily demonstrated that were the earth in the form of a shell, a body in the inside of it would not be attracted to one side more than the other."

Am I reading this wrong? If electronic attraction follows Coulomb's law, and there is an inverse square distance dependence, why would he say "may we not infer"? Doesn't this statement imply that attraction of electricity does NOT follow the same inverse square law?

I'm looking to find out the minimum possible arcseconds that a spacecraft could see visually. I've come across Dawe's limit but I'm looking for what the smallest could be seen, not just seeing the separation between two light sources. Is Dawe's limit really the final word on if something can be seen or its too small to be seen? Is there something else I could consider to find the 'smallest' arcseconds that's detectable?

To test, I decided the spacecraft would have half-meter (500mm) telescopes on all sides and a magnitude limitation of +23. I decided that if a target object was smaller in arcseconds than Dawe's Limit for the telescope, then I excluded it from the visual scan results. I also do calculations for apparent magnitude in case it would be too dim. What I find is that the Dawe's Limit is always what eliminates the objects because anything large enough to beat the limit has never been too dim.

As an example, for spotting other spacecraft in the sim, the observer can effectively spot spacecraft of the size of Serenety (Firefly show, about 0.08km), up to ~145,000km with the 500mm telescope. This was based on this math:

Dawe's limit in arcseconds for 500mm telescope: a = 115.8 / 500 = 0.2316

Observed arcseconds (diameter) of a target at 140,000 km with radius 0.08 (Serenity size):

2.0 * asin(0.08 / 140000) * 180.0 / PI * 3600 = ~0.2357

Is that math fine?

This means to me that its visible. The same calculation with 150,000 results in: ~0.2200. If I say anything smaller than Dawe's limit cannot be seen, then this would be hidden.

What else should I be considering or is Dawe's limit the dividing line between seen and not seen due to size?

-Crispin Bivans

Hi guys!

I firmly believe that:

1- the law of physics do not have to be local. (ie locality can be broken and laws of physics don't have to fulfill these conditions)

2-Space and time are discrete.

3-Modern mathematics is flawed because of its unjustified and abusive use of infinities. Strict finitism is the way to go for mathematics and the law of physics built upon it.

4-Space is finite.

5-Bohm understanding of quantum mechanics is the way to go.

6-Time does not exist in and of itself. Only change. And from change emerges the concept of time.

7-The fields in QFT are a useful mathematical construct allowing us to make sound prediction but they don't have real objective physical reality. Rather the fundamental building blocks of matter are particles.

8-Causality can be broken.

And I think that's it!

How far are my personal stances from mainstream modern physics? Would I be considered a clown/weirdo in academic circles?

I would love for someone to give my score here:

https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

I have searched for this but I might not be familiar with proper nomenclature causing a lack of useful responses. I am betting it is not as easy toward gamma or maybe both ends of the spectrum. It has to be pretty intense to do radial velocity astronomy I would think. I have been doing amateur astronomy since 1980s.

I was listening to Brian Cox on the Joe Rogan podcast, and he mentioned that the Big Bang wasn’t actually the beginning of the universe but just a period of extremely high temperature in its life.

So, if that’s not the case, what’s the current understanding of the universe’s origin and its timeline?

Are we talking about a cyclic model? Taking into consideration that the universe is cooling.

So my ""understanding"" is that the energy that runs our friend the magnet comes from virtual particles? Or the energy comes from the field itself? Now that I try to type it out I realize I don't know how it works. So how does it work?

Pretty cool to think that virtual particles having a macroscopic impact, but I guess that is true of everything.

Hi, is it worth it for a HS student to take AP Physics when in college, they will have to take Calc based Physics for their future major in US? (Not for me)

Thanks!

Hello, I wanted to see if I could get some consensus on determining the correct length value to determine torque on a steering wheel's center bolt (circled blue).

Would you agree the correct length to determine applied torque uses the red line?

The green line contacts the steering wheel but the torque is being applied to the center bolt (blue circle).

https://i.postimg.cc/BbrvbKj6/torque-wheel.jpg

Thanks for the input!

If two particles are entangled, they share a common wave function. If the particles are separated in space and then one of them is measured, the common wave function collapses. How would this be represented on a Minkowski diagram? Would the measurement appear as two separate events at different points in space? If so, then those events could be simultaneous to one observer but not to another. So how can we say that the wave function collapses "instantaneously" for both particles?

How could earth reform into one giant/ connected continent like Pangea within a short amount of time (few years) given some natural disaster or interference ?

Recently I heard thunder that lasted several seconds, instead of being a loud, fast sound like usual. This got me thinking, why does thunder have different durations? I intuitively think that, as the lightning lasts a very short time, the sound we hear would also last a short time. How can a sound outlast its emitter?

Can a white hole really exist?

There are the bosons that mediate the weak force:

• W+ has positive charge

• Z0 has no charge

• W- has negative charge

Why isn't the Z0 called W0 (to fit in) ?

So I recently watched a YouTube video about Klein's bottle, it was the first time I came to know about it, the bottle is actually 4D, I didn't understand what 4D is, and the guy in the video explains 4D like this: he starts from a 1D creature trying to understand 2D, he shows the animation of a one dimensional creature moving in a line, it can only perceive 1D, it can't see 2D or above, but it can se the lines of a plane one at a 'time' if the plane is moving vertical to the horizontal line, like this he also explains the 2D creature trying to understand 3D .

I was also expecting a similar explanation for 4D, but the guy didn't explain it, instead showed the animated video of Klein's bottle in 3D from different angles.

I didn't understand what 4D is, so I searched google, read many reddit threads, i found similar explanations with a creature, and some people tells 1D is a line and 2D is a plane, 3D is a cube/Sphere and 4D is 3D stacked together.

I didn't understand any of those, i later came to a conclusion that humans can't understand or visualize spatial dimensions other than 3D.

There are mistakes in the analogies of the youtuber and many who explains it with creatures and those who explains it with geometry.

Why explanation with creature and geometry is possibly wrong: The problem is that no 'matter' in this universe can exist in any dimension other than 3D, the explanation with creature is insufficient because of this reason, the creature we saw there is actually 3D, we can't imagine such a creature either, logically such a creature can't exist in reality. We thought we understood it because other two dimensions were very small, this creates an illusion than line is 1D and plane is 2D, in reality, every plane and line we can see/imagine/exist are 3D, other dimensions are very small there.

I searched a lot about this in google and YouTube but could not find any similar ideas or articles

I'm making this post to know if I'm the only one who think this way or, maybe I'm the one who is wrong and you guys please clarify it better. (Sorry for my English :), hope you guys will understand this, i tried to edit it with chatgpt, but it made it worse -it looks like its written by a bot)

Is there a place to share papers if you're an outsider where someone would actually look at them and consider? So far I've not found it and I have a couple of papers that I've not found anyone else propose and would like to know if they are decent approaches. One is a paper based on some geometric concepts that ties into cosmology a little and the other is a novel way of deriving Bohr's radius that, as far as I can tell, no one has considered before.

I have found a place where I can pay for consulting with a physicist and that's where I'm going to go next but I would like a few sets of eyes on my papers before I hand over a couple hundred dollars for an hour discuss to hear one person's opinion--which I will totally do, I'd just really like to get someone to sort of say 'yeah, that's ok, you should share that with someone' or 'don't waste your money'. Either way I'd be happy with the outcome.

I'd like to pose two thought experiments about superposition, and would like your opinions:

An observer opens the box containing Schrodinger's cat, and sees the cat lying on it's side apparently not moving. The observer thinks the cat is dead but it is only sleeping. The observer has information, but wrong information. Has the superposition collapsed?

The observer that opens the box is watched by the watcher. The watcher cannot see into the box, but sees the observer open it and look inside. Has the superposition collapsed? The watcher assumes it has but has no information on the outcome. And what if, unbeknown to the watcher, the observer is blind? The watcher knows the superposition has collapsed, yet it has not. Can we have cascading superpositions?

ok imagine a solid cylinder inside a beaker. the cross sectional area of cylinder is A.

F(lower surface) - F(upper surface) =mg

(PA)low - (PA)up = rho(solid)Ah*g

P(low) - P(up) = rho(solid)hg

delta P = h rho g where rho is that of solid

explain how im wrong someone please ive been breaking my head for past 1 hr

My guess at this is knowing (or think I know) that Bluetooth is basically high frequency micro waves and the circuit in the massage gun emits its own electromagnetic waves which when close enough can interfere with each other causing the electromagnetic waves which receive by the earphone from the phone to be different and unrecognisable.

If a ball is kept on a bucket full of water and it is floating so will there be a normal force between the ball and water ?? In short I wanna ask if there is normal reaction b/w liquids or liquid and solid when in contact?

Hello! Last time i've went to a physics class was in high school, so excuse me if i'm using the wrong words to ask my question lol. If i'm not wrong, there's an equivalence between mass and energy, so in a hypothetic world where we could control that "transformation" could we just negate the blast of - let’s say - a nuclear bomb the moment it explodes? If so, would that be even safe? Like, how heavy and dense would that mass be? Could it perhaps accidentally create a blackhole? (Again, those concepts are extremely abstracts to me, sorry if it sounds very dumb 💀💀)

Maybe the black hole it almo

I now know plane polarised light can be the superimposition of clockwise and counterclockwise circularly polarised light. But now my question is that the superimposed light which has went throught the polarising film now is able to seperate back into circularly polarised light and interact with the sugar molecules and produce a rainbow of colours? How does it return to being circularly polarised light after passing through the filter?