r/AskPhysics • • 1h ago

Is there such thing as solid quark?

• Upvotes

So I understand that solid neutron objects like neutron stars can exist after a star collapses to a neutron star.

The material would have no natural charge and is not separated into atoms, just dense neutrons and be extremely dense.

Could such a material be manufactured in a lab setting (other than in a star collapse)?

I don’t think it any sample has ever been able produced or anything this is a theoretical substance.

So I also understand that a neutron is made of three quarks and its neutral charge comes from having one up quark with a charge of 2/3 and two down quarks with charge -1/3.

So I was wondering before reaching a black hole’s density level does “solid quark” ever happen?


r/AskPhysics • • 19h ago

A theory from a seven-year old.

55 Upvotes

My granddaughter sends a video:

"My theory is that between atoms the temperature is absolute zero."

Her grandmother and I have no idea what to make of this.


r/AskPhysics • • 1h ago

Homologous leptobaryogenesis?

• Upvotes

It is most commonly proposed that leptogenesis occurred first, and that heavier baryons were generated only later during baryogenesis. Wouldn't it be more natural for these processes to have taken place concurrently, right from the very beginning? And could this perhaps provide a mechanism for how matter survived annihilation? Has such a hypothesis been studied?


r/AskPhysics • • 3m ago

What type of scientific finding or experiment would be accepted as support for the idea of a Multiverse or other theories on the nature of reality?

• Upvotes

I understand that it's an interpretation and potentially crossing the line of philosophy, however as someone who always found the concept interesting, I questioned if some day we may ever find a breakthrough that may tell us if these ideas the nature of the universe is ever plausible in scientific study, considering how many new ideas and mechanism we found in the nature of spacetime.

Would there any potential way for us to find potential evidence on the idea the Multiverse is real or how our reality work? I asked some people I know involved in quantum studies, and while many claim a lot of the views found commercially are exaggeration, there are many in the field who takes those ideas seriously and said the things we find always add more questions with many while accepting as lack of proof proof, at least consider some of there findings at least potential reason to think of ideas like the Multiverse or other concepts as possibly true.

So if we ever were to truly decide to investigate these concepts as if there real or not, what type of experiments would we need to conduct and what findings would we need? I'm not expecting interdimensional wormholes, but it does seem at least some of the studies in quantum has led to wild yet valid theories on the nature of the world.


r/AskPhysics • • 4h ago

Does the floquet exponent of a state in a periodic potential have physical meaning?

2 Upvotes

I’m taking a class in solid state physics and am a bit confused on what k actually means in the equation psi(x+R)=exp(ik•R)psi(x). I see how it’s related to energy (like in the Kronig-Penney model) but obviously it’s not a nice bijective correspondence—instead its a pretty nasty transcendental relation that shows one value of k can correspond to many energy levels.

While the relation between k and physical energies is obviously important, it doesn’t really seem like it has clear physical significance—it’s not clear what exactly it means. Obviously by definition it gives the phase shift between other unit cells but it’s not as clear as saying E=h_bar2 k2 /(2m). Should k just be thought of as parameter or is there an actual physical meaning we can assign to it?


r/AskPhysics • • 7h ago

If I want to study about the science and physics. How should I start learning properly?

3 Upvotes

Yeah. I've interested in the physics,science, and technology.
I'm not graduate or study formally in the school or university.(self taught)


r/AskPhysics • • 8m ago

Would Godzilla Work as a Effective WMD?

• Upvotes

I come from having just watching a trailer for Godzilla Minus Zero. The trailer shows a compilation of clips before a narration that describes the damage Godzilla has inflicted, namely human casualties. I was wondering if somehow hypothetically a government were to decide to utilize and release a Godzilla sized, uncontrollably destructive creature like that upon the world, how effective would it actually be as a weapon? I got thinking about this based on the size of the earth, the size and speed of Godzilla, and his destructive capability. I imagine it would be an underwhelming and time consuming endeavor to rely on something like that.


r/AskPhysics • • 10h ago

why does a particle not speed up in a uniform magnetic field?

3 Upvotes

If the force is always perpendicular to the velocity, then shouldn't speed increase? There's nothing acting against the velocity direction


r/AskPhysics • • 10h ago

why is my bathroom tile reflection polarizing?

2 Upvotes

can’t seem to add a photo but my phone screen appears rainbow in the reflection of my bathroom wall. see here

it looks just like the view of a phone screen through polarized sunglasses. my hand/etc reflects normally

does this mean the wall material is…. refractive? dielectric? why?

eli5, I’ve never seen a wall do this before and I don’t understand optics


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

If we made a sphere out of one-way-mirror material, so that light can get in but gets reflected from the Inside and we would aim a laser at this ball - would the light be trapped inside?

54 Upvotes

r/AskPhysics • • 5h ago

Can I get a light?

Thumbnail
0 Upvotes

r/AskPhysics • • 2h ago

Can an irreversible process ever truly return to its original state?

0 Upvotes

I’ve been developing an idea I call the “Tree Principle.”
The basic thought is simple:
A tree cannot become the seed from which it grew.
Not because we lack the technology to make it happen, but because the tree represents a later physical state in a process that has already occurred.
We can produce another seed.
We can recreate the environment.
We can even create something that looks almost identical to the original.
But that doesn’t mean the original tree has become its former self.
I’m wondering whether this analogy tells us anything useful about time.
If reality is constantly undergoing physical change, could “going back in time” actually mean reversing an enormous chain of changes rather than simply moving backward along some dimension?
And if so, would that make traditional time travel fundamentally different from what we usually imagine?
I’d be interested in criticism of the analogy, especially from people who know more about physics or philosophy than I do.


r/AskPhysics • • 12h ago

Do anybody of you guys know a channel or a Web that is going to help to learn physics?

1 Upvotes

I recently started searching about the fundamentals of physics since my dream is becoming an instrument scientist. Can you help guys?


r/AskPhysics • • 17h ago

Confused about exam practice question

2 Upvotes

My mechanics professor provided us practice questions to study for our midterm. I’m confused about this one:

Your friend is on her way cross-country skiing and has to do 3000 J of work by pushing against the ground with her skis. In addition, friction does -800 J of work on her. With all her gear her mass is 60 kg. Her initial speed was 5 m/s and her final speed is 3 m/s.

a) Calculate the change in kinetic energy of the skier.

Since net work is just change in kinetic energy, this should be really simple. What I don’t understand is the skier doing 3000J of work by pushing against the ground with her skis - wouldn’t that be perpendicular to the displacement? How is it doing work?


r/AskPhysics • • 14h ago

Making physics more tangible as a student

1 Upvotes

I've recently begun studying physics and intend to become an engineer at some point. However I have found myself feeling quite lost when it comes to forces, newton and such. Friction and gravitation makes sense but I find it very difficult to make sense of Newton. Is there a way to make this measurement more tangible? When someone tells me about like a kg, a meter or something alike I get a very clear picture of what that entails but I can't imagine what a newton, 10 newtons or 100 newtons mean.

Thankful for any advice


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

If i shine a laser at a star, and then move the laser to an adjacent star, does the laser technically travel the distance between them

108 Upvotes

I know this is probably a stupid question but i’m a 6thform physics student and we just did circular motion and i was curious if it was to do with the angle instead


r/AskPhysics • • 22h ago

It’s 2pm on October 17 and the sun is at 27 degrees. The sun is also at 27 degrees at 6pm on 21st June, so why does the light feel so different?

3 Upvotes

Searching online I just find articles about differences in sunlight between winter and summer and they only talk about sun angle. I’m sure there must be more to it, perhaps the changed vegetation or air temperature makes a difference?


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

Can someone explain the physics of the 'flying' car?

145 Upvotes

Ok, so I am watching this Tesla flying car video and i have two questions:

  1. As the car leaves the ramp upsidedown, it does not begin to fall. It drives off the ramp and remains level, upside down, while the car is no longer 'sucking'.

  2. As the car flips, and starts to land, you can see the underside of the car, and it is all just flat/metal. Would we not see a giant fan underneath in order to generate that kind of suction?

Something about this feels like it doesnt make sense.


r/AskPhysics • • 18h ago

Question about thermodynamics

0 Upvotes

I had a theory that the reason an internal combustion engine has to be so inefficient is this. The piston can only extract work from the fraction of the gas’s internal energy stored in linear momentum perpendicular to the piston’s surface.

So as the piston is extracting work from that particular “reservoir,” the only way to extract more work would be if the molecules spontaneously ordered themselves so that, all of a sudden, more of their energy is channeled into that “reservoir.” I.E. to get perfect efficiency, all the molecules would have to spontaneously assume linear motion directly at the piston surface.

And that’s just too improbable, so we never observe it occurring.

I am told this is wrong, because internal energy is re-equilibrated between modes (such as linear momentum) rapidly enough that spontaneous generation of order is not required to do a next increment of useful work.

But the only alternative explanations I’m getting are just, “well, the engine cycle has to produce an entropy increase, so it has to reject heat.” Okay, I get that, that’s a statement of the second law.

But if my original theory is incorrect, what is actually happening at the statistical, molecular level that requires the power stroke of the piston to reject a certain amount of heat each cycle?


r/AskPhysics • • 19h ago

Does anyone know why the shadow of the bin looks like it's moving towards my shadow, when I move my shadow towards the shadow of the bin?

1 Upvotes

Quite odd, I hope the question isn't too dumb lol. Video :)


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

Would it be possible to use water as protection against radiation on a hypothethical manned mars mission?

19 Upvotes

I know water helps protect against radiation, but we can't have a space station flooded with water... or can we? Would it be possible, or rather, viable to have a layer of water inside a spaceship's hull? In a hypothethical mars mission, all water would be reused for the duration of the mission, but instead of keeping it on a giant gallon all the time, what if we spread it around the hull of the spaceship? Of course, it wouldn't be exposed to the vaccuum of space, but rather inside the hull. If so, how big would this layer need to be to give significant protection against radiation?


r/AskPhysics • • 11h ago

Why do some scientist claim the world doesn't seem to run in classical determinism physics?

0 Upvotes

When I mean classical determinism system, I mean Newtonian laws of physics, where action A leads to only action B, etc, and we can know what will happen if we know every relevant factor. However reading around, a lot of paper have been published that seems to challenge this type of system, or even redefine it to claiming microscopic effects don't necessarily follow Newtonian law as seemingly predicted in the early 1900s.

The question is why does it seem that way, particularly in quantum studies and is right to say there are strong findings to believe that?


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

Constructing Lissajous Figures using Reference Circles

1 Upvotes

Im used to questions with pi/4,pi/2 but havent done any with pi/3 or pi/6 so should we be dividing the circle into 6 and 12 parts or? So could anyone help with this question.

Two vibrations at right angles to one another are described by the equations

x = 10 cos(5πt)

y = 10 cos(10πt + π/3)

Construct the Lissajous figure of the combined motion.

Plz help as i have my exams coming soon and the professors wont help.


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

Physics project

4 Upvotes

(16M) I want to do a physics project.i want to do it on something new .I want to be a scientist in the future and I want some stuff to put on my cv


r/AskPhysics • • 1d ago

Can we estimate the number of star collapses necessary to produce the volume of elements found on Earth?

17 Upvotes