How many planets?
- Thread starter Captain Kirk
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Are you sure this isn't a passing fad? Quantum mechanics is very hard. Just go and read a pop science book then you can impress people with facts at dinner parties.
Nah been into physics and stuff for a few years. one of my Friends went to St Andrews university ( about 10 miles from my area) and studied physics. and the discussions we have had regaurding dark matter and such like seam to be realy intresting to me
Read Q.E.D by Richard P. Feynman, also read Schrodinger's Kittens by John Gribbin.
Soldato
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Lol I remember that awful 1970 Sci fi film, where everything was in mirror on the other planet.
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If you want to do anything useful with QM you will need to learn a LOT of applied mathematics. Start with linear algebra, and then go on to learn about basic solutions to Schrodingers equation (energy eigenvalues etc). There is plenty of material out there - most large universities have at least some of their lecture notes on the web.
...if you just want to qualitatively understand the principles of QM, then yeah - QED by Feynmann is probably a good starting point.
I would point out though, that QM deals with the smallest length- and time- scales. If you're more interested in astronomical phenomena, dark matter, mavity etc, then you want to look into relativity. General relativity is the full theory of mavity (spacetime curvature etc), but special relativity is a special case of GR which is less mathematically demanding and easier to get to grips with (it deals with the nature of light).
QM and GR are mutually exclusive theories, even though each one has been shown to be extremely accurate in its applicable areas. The search for a common "theory of everything" to link the two has been the main focus of theoretical physics for the past 50 years or so. Good progress has been made through 'string theory' so have a read about that as well if you want something to blow your mind
I thought it was a 'pipe line under the ocean'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_Line_Under_The_Ocean
yes... but that isn't what he asked...
Soldato
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If you were to count all the dwarf planets in the solar system then 12
Check out The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, anything by Michio Kaku, and of course, A Brief History of TIme by Stephen Hawking
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Pluto was reclassified (as we've already discussed) because we kept finding more objects that we would have to include as planets, so rather than accepting all these new rocks, they rethought the definition of a planet.
Pluto was demoted because it's less than half the size of mercury and smaller than our moon. Its orbit is very eccentric (oval) and crosses over neptune's path (ie it's not the most dominate thing in it's orbit. And as already said, there are many things it's own size and bigger that we don't consider planets.
Plus it's just a big piece of ice according to stephen fry.
I do Physics at Durham, it's pretty interesting, only finished my first year so I don't know loads but I know a little but of QM
Pluto was demoted because it's less than half the size of mercury and smaller than our moon. Its orbit is very eccentric (oval) and crosses over neptune's path (ie it's not the most dominate thing in it's orbit. And as already said, there are many things it's own size and bigger that we don't consider planets.
Plus it's just a big piece of ice according to stephen fry.
I do Physics at Durham, it's pretty interesting, only finished my first year so I don't know loads but I know a little but of QM
Soldato
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with yoghurt.