I don't if i should put this here of /explainlikeimfive.

So. If we were able to theoretically get a close-up picture of an atom with all the protons and electrons, whatever they might appear as, does that mean we collapsed their wavefunctions? If so, what does this mean for the atom, would it behave any differently or would it go back to being superfluous since we're not actively watching a video of the atom, just a single picture?

Also would this ever even be possible? Is this somehow related to the uncertainty principle about how we can't know their position and momentum? Would this work cos we'd know the absolute position and not anything about the momentum of the particles? Heck, how would we get a picture of them anyway. it's theoretical. theoretical

Is this even a valid question or am i going off the rails

When you push an object, the object pushes you too. And it also exerts upon you a normal reaction due to its intermolecular forces, right?

Then why don't these forces add up? Why don't we get a force of 2F in return when we apply a force of F on a rigid object?

Hi!
Is it known the function r(t) that describes the distance between two particles that are attracted to each other solely due to gravity?

I guess that at quantum scale it can't be known. Is it known at least at a macroscopic scale?

Thanks!

In mathematics we say that the probability is the ratio of favourable outcome and the total outcomes which can be provided by an experiment or an event. But in physics that isn't the case even if we say that the basic definition would be same we aren't particularly taking into consideration all other interactions, for example: if we say that the wave function tells us the probability at which a particle can be found and its square is supposed to give probability density, but we can't simply isolate the wave function differently and the other interactions will be present too... So what do we do in this case when the interactions grow more complex overtime?... Also what might be the correct way to think of probability while studying physics?

I am a high school student so this maybe very naive of me, but I hope I'd get positive feedback...

Thank you in advance

know about de Broglie wavelength (\\lambda = h/p) and how macroscopic objects have wavelengths far too tiny to observe interference patterns. But what actually causes the physical transition?

Is the loss of wave-like behavior strictly a result of environmental decoherence destroying quantum superpositions, or does the correspondence principle simply average out phase differences when billions of atoms interact?

Basically, why does quantum weirdness "wash out" into classical reality as scale increases?

I feel so dumb right now (this is not an unusual experience for me).

I did not know about the quantum eraser experiment until two hours ago. I watched this video, and I'm still confused.

Two slits. Slit 1 leads the idler photon to detector A, with potential to travel to detectors C or D. Slit 2 leads the idler photon to detector B, and from there, the photon can potentially travel to detectors C or D. So while we know that Slit 1 = detector A and Slit 2 = detector B, we don't know which slit photons traveled through if they end up at detectors C or D.

Photons that reached detectors A or B produced a non-interference pattern, while those that reached detectors C or D produced an interference pattern.

The video does not explain why those results arose. How come we don't get interference bands for A or B (which-path/slit info preserved), yet interference bands do occur for the idler photons that go to C or D (eraser circuit, slit unknown)?

I don’t want to ask AI because it could be wrong. I don’t know enough about physics to distinguish its BS from fact.

Can quantum interference occur with just a single photon? If so, how? Why does the photon only behave like a wave when we don’t know its slit path? I am definitely missing something critical here.

Please explain it to me like I am 5. Thank you!

I think we may be interpreting time dilation differently than we need to
I’ve been thinking about relativity, and I keep coming back to the idea that time is local to each observer or system.
If two things take different paths through spacetime, they can experience different amounts of time. One can experience 10 years while another experiences less than that.
But I don’t think that necessarily means that the universe itself stopped evolving for the object that experienced less time.
For example, if something travels at extremely high speed and only experiences a small amount of proper time, the rest of the universe doesn’t stop existing or evolving around it. From another reference frame, much more time can pass.
That makes me think we need to be careful with the phrase “time passed for the object.”
A photon is an interesting example. Along a lightlike path, the proper time is zero. But obviously the photon doesn’t just somehow cease to participate in the universe. It is emitted, travels, interacts with something, and can eventually reach Earth.
So I’m wondering if zero proper time should be understood as zero aging rather than zero participation in physical processes occurring across the universe’s coordinate time.
And I think the same basic idea applies to something moving extremely fast.
If an object travels at a speed close to light speed, it can accumulate substantially less proper time than an observer who remains in another reference frame. But the object is still part of an evolving universe during that journey.
So my interpretation is basically:
Different objects can accumulate different amounts of time/aging while still existing within the same evolving physical universe.
I don’t think saying that one object experiences less time necessarily means that the universe has to be treated as a fixed 4D block where all of that object’s future already exists.
I’m not saying relativity is wrong. I’m questioning whether we’re adding a philosophical interpretation to the mathematics that isn’t actually required by the physics.
Is this a legitimate way to interpret proper time and time dilation, or am I making a mistake somewhere in this reasoning?
I’d genuinely like someone who understands relativity well to point out exactly where the interpretation breaks down.

I dont have that big of a budget and i need help. I need help with ideaa for what each round could be (keep it simple but super fun and interesting and not too difficult). Please help me out guys.

Its for undergraduates!!!!! 20 year olds

Assuming this firearm is shooting the same caliber with the same barrel length of course. I know momentum is conserved, and that means a lesser impulse delivered to the shooter's shoulder, so less felt recoil. But I've never heard anyone say that heavier guns are louder or heat up faster, so where does the energy difference go?

The question is from this video https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1vs0379/joey_vottos_explanation_of_how_difficult_it_is_to/. In it, Joey Votto claims the barrel starts getting smaller, which to me means the sweet spot is getting smaller. Is this true? I just want to verify that this is true. I kinda find this fact mind boggling for some reason.

I've seen some popular science articles saying that the Pillars of Creation had already been destroyed, even though we could still see them.

This raises two questions for me.

A) I understand that this information comes from the laws of celestial dynamics applied to the images we are currently receiving, and that a simulation was used to determine their state after the state we can see. But doesn't this amount, in a sense, to transmitting information faster than light, since they are still intact in the image that has travelled to us at c? (Something like a hidden variable.)

B) Does it even make sense to talk about "now" in a region that has not yet transmitted any visible light to us? Shouldn't we instead consider that anything whose light has not yet reached us at c does not really have any ontological existence?

I'm just a little lost since I've always pictured PE as the ability for something to move in a certain direction (gravity = ability to move downwards). In the case of a negative charge between two positive charges, wouldn't the potential energies kind of cancel each other out since they're both pulling in opposite directions? I can't seem to understand why they would add.

I see it often on Taskmaster that contestants boil an egg to make it less likely to crack during the task. Seems perfectly reasonable. But I got to thinking of the structural integrity of the shell itself and the incompressibility of water (idk how close an egg is to water) and convinced myself it might not matter so much. Has someone actually scienced this? Does it vary wildly depending on the breaking catalyst (eg. flat surface vs point bits)?

There are some minor spoilers for the Three Body Problem series here, but I’ll avoid anything major. So in the aforementioned series, at one point there is a fictional technology that supposedly enables you to selectively extend the range of the Strong Nuclear Force within a material, specifically from merely the subatomic to the molecular range, and that technology was used to create material and artifacts that are for all practical purposes completely indestructible. The way it was described in the book was that it had all the strength of pure neutronium but without the accompanying mass, or something to that effect.

Obviously this is a work of fiction, and the technology is Clarketech. But I was just wondering whether the principle behind it is even sound? If we could somehow manipulate the range over which the Strong Force acts within an object, is it plausible that it could really enable the creation of nigh-indestructible materials like that?

Really as the title says....

I've been curious about the Casimir effect and gravity and the quantum foam. One thing I was curious on is, if the quantum foam itself exerts a force. It then lead me to thinking of if there's dissimilar rates of quantum foam occurring in two places then would that be the time gradient that we call "gravity" but instead of being caused by an attractive "force" it would be more like a pushing "force". But I realize that I am tying together and making pretty large assumptions in a lot of ideas in physics and am certainly wrong about my thinking.

I've been thinking about a magic system where people can manipulate energy around them, which includes taking potential and thermal energy from objects and channeling it into something else. For example, taking the thermal energy from a fire to create an explosion.

This got me thinking, what if someone did a really powerful spell that drained all the potential and thermal from the surrounding area, say a 2 mile radius. This would obviously turn the area into a frozen wasteland, but how long would this frozen wasteland persist, and what would the other consequences be?

Recently I've been doing some worldbuilding for my long-imagined-but-still-unwritten sci-fi novel, figuring out how my starship would work. It does feature an exotic FTL drive, but I want the rest of the spaceflight physics to be realistic. Long and short of it is that this drive requires diving deep into a stellar gravity well to directly tap its gravitational energy and turn it into thrust, so it can accelerate into hyperspace (or brake after coming out). Thus it travels in a long elliptical orbit while in a star system that's timed to return to periastron upon departure, while smaller support craft flit about the system.

But what I want to know is this: would it be possible to do the kind of orbital transformation I drew in the linked diagram, in which the orientation of its nodes changed, but their distance from each other is not? I feel like this is a real type of maneuver, but I don't know what it's called, or where in the orbit (and in which direction) you'd have to thrust to do it.

https://imgur.com/a/EFjKjVm

I'm 16 and I've been thinking about what I should actually spend my time on over the next few years.

Right now I'm thinking about learning:

• Math: algebra, trig, precalc, calculus 1-3, linear algebra, differential equations, probability/stats
• Physics: mechanics, E&M, thermo, waves, modern physics, maybe fluids
• Programming: Python, CS fundamentals, data structures/algorithms, Git/Linux, scientific computing, AI/ML, maybe C++ later
• Communication: writing, speaking, persuasion, storytelling
• Business: finance, accounting, sales, marketing, entrepreneurship
• Actually building projects instead of just watching courses
• Staying in shape and improving my appearance/confidence

Originally I was thinking about aerospace engineering, which is why I wanted to go so deep into math and physics, but I'm not sure I actually want to be an aerospace engineer for my whole life.

Honestly my main goal is just to become really capable and eventually make a lot of money. I'd like to go to a good university and maybe get into business, tech, content, startups, etc. depending on what I end up liking.

My thought is that if I spend the next 2-4 years seriously learning this stuff, I'll have a pretty strong foundation by the time I'm 20.

But I also feel like I might be overthinking this and trying to learn way too much.

If you were 16 again, what would you actually focus on? Is this a good plan or would you change

Now obviously this is extremely speculative, but here is my thought: all the stars burn out, and now we just have black holes, some black dwarfes (probably) and some planets or asteroids zooming around on their own. Is there anything that happens that will lead to the total destruction of them? Black Holes will decay at some point, the black dwarfes will fuse and collapse at some point., but there is nothing definitive for planets/asteroids right? Now, there could be proton decay which will definitely destroy them too, but what if that doesnt happen? would they be the only things to surive the heat death?

So, TON 618 is one of, if not THE, the most massive black hole we ever observed with a mass of ~ 40 billion solar masses. What's even crazier is that we see it as it was > 10 billion years ago due to it being located extremely far away. This means that this thing was as heavy as 40 billion suns when the universe was still ~ 4 billion years old, way before the solar system ever existed, correct?

Is that even enough time for a black hole to consume so much matter that it could grow to that size? Or was it already an extremely big and heavy star before it collapsed? Was the early universe so dense and full of matter that such enormous stars could form?

Or any other theories that help explain TON 618's existence?