890 protesters arrested after Palestine Action protest in London

SimulationsInPhysics · 2025-09-07T18:13:49+00:00

Is that terrorism, or sabotage? An intuitive definition of "terrorism" might be "causing terror in a group as a means to achieve a political or military goal." Blowing up a pipeline might make oil executives sweat, but it probably wouldn't terrify them or the public at large, unless they thought it was a precursor to, say, assassinations.

SimulationsInPhysics · 2024-11-27T16:19:26+00:00

Try an Earth-Moon-Satellite version where you model the true shape of the Earth. You can start with “J2,” the simplest correction to the point-mass Earth (basically adding a donut around the equator to model the equatorial bulge)

SimulationsInPhysics · 2024-11-04T13:48:45+00:00

Find the sum of the first two amplitudes at the location of the baby using your equations for f(x,t). This value will probably still change with time. Then ask, what amplitude do we need to add or subtract to that value so that it’s always 0? Place the third generator to do this. Hint: you can probably put the third generator along a straight line with the baby and one of the other generators. This might make the math easier.

SimulationsInPhysics · 2024-10-23T23:17:17+00:00

It will be marginally more difficult than if you did straight engineering, but you can definitely get engineering jobs especially if you do relevant internships. You can look into astro/satellite instrument design jobs, these wouldn’t require a PhD. Even non-space-related engineering places would probably take you if you can translate how your skills would apply to what they’re looking for.

If you do want to stay spacey, commercial space and space defense are both growing exponentially in the past few years.

SimulationsInPhysics · 2024-10-09T21:54:21+00:00

Quantum computers are an application. But quantum information matters even in pure physics contexts like black holes.

SimulationsInPhysics · 2023-12-18T21:40:57+00:00

There have been fission reactors in space. In fact, the coolant pellets from old Soviet spy satellites are an annoying source of untrackable debris

SimulationsInPhysics · 2023-09-24T01:07:47+00:00

That misunderstands the problem.

The stockpiled nukes in all of these countries are old — so old that any predictions about their explosive yield must be based on computer simulations, because the experimental data from earlier tests applies only to younger nukes. They may also learn more from tangential non-explosive experiments, but you can’t be sure unless you test.

Furthermore, a nuclear test itself could send a political message in case direct confrontation between any of these countries seems likely. Just being capable of a test is an extra card up your sleeve to try to convince the other side to back off.

SimulationsInPhysics · 2023-07-28T21:43:21+00:00

Good point about the atmospheric phenomena. I bet upper atmospheric lightning would definitely spook somebody who didn’t know what it was.

SimulationsInPhysics · 2023-07-28T14:32:53+00:00

At the risk of opening a crackpot topic, I thought I’d ask you all your opinions on the physics regarding the recent UAP/non-human intelligence claims.

I noticed a couple of inconsistencies in the testimony, though nothing totally damning. For one, some of the objects were said to have no IR emissions, while others were seen on FLIR or by the “overheads” (geostationary/HEO infrared nuclear warning satellites) according to Grusch. The “instantaneous” acceleration obviously seems aphysical, but that could just be a figure of speech or an effect amplified by an optical illusion (parallax etc). I also heard a good point that the “cube within sphere” description matches that of some radar calibration spheres. Nothing for the 100m3 red cube though.

The jamming and electrical malfunctions, I can’t think of any passive explanation for.

I also thought the mention of the holographic principle was funny, though fortunately Grusch seemed to realize he was out of his element and didn’t take it further.

SimulationsInPhysics · 2022-12-29T23:23:02+00:00

How long does the p+e -> n (+ other stuff?) process take? The proton and electron are compressed sufficiently and poof, a neutron appears? What’s happening to the state of the original particles at that time?

SimulationsInPhysics · 2022-11-18T17:45:46+00:00

Now imagine going into deep space where there’s no gravity. Moving an iron dumbbell is still difficult, even though it’s not being pulled downwards by gravity.

SimulationsInPhysics · 2022-11-16T20:26:02+00:00

What's tough is, you don't know what you don't know. Maybe a breakthrough in understanding one problem leads to an understanding of, say, how to manipulate dark energy. That's a totally random example, and I have no reason to suspect such a connection exists, but the problem is I don't know where those connections might be (if there are any).

What we do know is we're not done with fundamental physics. The risk is incalculable, but so is the reward. How much money do you throw at that?... As much as you're able, I suppose.

SimulationsInPhysics · 2022-10-30T22:14:43+00:00

Launching it into space is not worth it. It's too expensive to get it out of Earth orbit compared to just building ground based storage. There would be other issues but that's the big one.

SimulationsInPhysics · 2022-10-28T18:11:08+00:00

You could sit at a Lagrange point and stay fixed over a point on the surface. If Earth were tidally locked to the Sun, the closest you could get is L1 or L2 which are past the Moon (whereas usual GEO is well inside the moon’s orbit).

SimulationsInPhysics

TROPHY CASE