Browsing Archive: June, 2014

Quantum Fortunetelling?

Posted by on Friday, June 27, 2014,
Last week I was inspired by a poorly presented popular physics lecture to review a couple of concepts in modern physics which people tend to think are impossible, but are not. Most laws of physics have loopholes in them - nothing can travel faster than light unless it carries no information or causes spacetime itself to move, time travel seems paradoxical but there are quantum mechanical solutions, energy must be conserved unless the laws of physics themselves can evolve over time, etc.

Conti...
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Self-Consistent Time Travel

Posted by on Thursday, June 19, 2014,
As I wrote in yesterday's article, I was recently disappointed in a public lecture given by a supposed college physics instructor in which he spoke of ideas which are impossible according to the laws of physics. However speaking as a trained theorist who does keep up to date with the latest research, I must say that his list of impossibilities only served to show how little he himself knew of modern physics. As such I have written a series of articles explaining loopholes in the laws of physi...
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Relativistic Loopholes

Posted by on Wednesday, June 18, 2014,
A few days ago some friends and I were watching a lecture on modern physics, presented by a college physics instructor and intended to educate the general public on what is possible and impossible according to the laws of nature. I won't embarrass the speaker by naming him, but I will say that most of what he said was wrong. As a theoretical physicist, it quickly became clear to me that he did not have a solid understanding of the topics he was trying to present. As such, I was inspired to wr...
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Is Lepton Universality Broken?

Posted by on Tuesday, June 3, 2014, In : Particle Physics 
There is interesting news from Switzerland as the LHCb experiment team has announced evidence of a violation of lepton universality, which would be the first experimental evidence of a difference in the interactions of different leptons.

Let me begin with a quick review of leptons and their properties. At the start of the twentieth century, it was discovered that electricity was carried by sub-atomic particles known as electrons. In the following decades, it was proven that these electrons are...
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The Rare Test Paradox

Posted by on Tuesday, June 3, 2014, In : Mathematics 

Due to the positive comments I have received from my last two articles on mathematical and statistical paradoxes, I have written another one. However where the first two were interesting mathematical puzzles with minimal real world applications, this one is nastier because many people have suffered from its results. It is commonly known as the Rare Test Paradox

Suppose that you have an excellent medical test for some rare disease. Just for the sake of argument, suppose that this test is so ac...


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About Me


Dr. Chris Bird I am a theoretical physicist & mathematician, with training in electronics, programming, robotics, and a number of other related fields.

   

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