Understanding physics

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#1
When physics is presented to the public it is typically presented in a misleading or outright false way.

Good physics youtube channels are:

https://www.youtube.com/user/viascience

https://www.youtube.com/user/peppermint78

https://www.youtube.com/user/whatdamath

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g

Planck's constant
h = 6.62607004*10^(-34)*m²*kg/s
ħ = h/(2π)

Imaginary numbers
i² = -1
e^(iθ) = cos(θ) + i sin(θ)

Operators
∇² is sometimes written as Δ

1588190062757.png


What you see here is partial derivatives with respect to x, y and z
 

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#2
Quantum mechanics
According to the Schrödinger equation all elementary 'particles' are in fact waves following a wave equation



from the schrödinger equation we get the following in the case of hydrogen:

This is of course a simplification, the dirac equation is more accurate.
 

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#3
Quantum Field theory
Instead of thinking directly in terms of particles we work with quantum fields where particles are excitation of these fields. This tells us that the vacuum isn't empty.



 

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General Relativity
If we throw ball upwards and plot the height over time we see that it follows a curved path, this is due to curvature of spacetime.
1588161008177.png

In vacuum when no force acts upon an object it will follow a parabola relative to the centre of the earth with respect with time.

Note that what you see above itself isn't actually curvature, it's just a spacetime diagram. The actual curvature is something else.

Most of the spacetime curvature that actually affects us is relative to time, if you go at the speed of light your path will be mostly straight.

There are questionable claims made in the following video but it's still a decent introduction:


The big bang was probably not a white hole and we dont need general relativity to resolve the twin paradox, you can just do an ordinary lorentz transform to get the right answer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iJZ_QGMLD0
 

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#6
Special Relativity
For the special case of flat spacetime we get
1588284988494.png
1588285289521.png


Length contraction: L(moving) = L(stationary) / γ

Let's say you have a 1000 meter long ruler (when you are stationary relative to the ruler).

The equation above tells us that if we instead move along the ruler at 60% of the speed of light the following things will be true

Your reference frame: the ruler is now 1000(1-0.6²)^(1/2)m=800m long relative to your reference frame and it is moving towards you.

If you measure how long it takes with a clock you will thus measure it to take 800/(0.6c) = 4448ns until the entire ruler has passed you.

But an observer stationary relative to the ruler will instead see the ruler as being 1000m long and will see your clock move 20% slower and thus only meaure 4448ms while his clock say 5559ns
 

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#7
Light cones & causality
In flat spacetime the future light cone is simply a sphere growing 299792458 m/s


Events in the past light cone can causally affect you while actions you take now can affect what happens in the future.
 

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#9
The big rip
If dark energy grows (per cm³) with the size of our universe then we will eventually reach a singularity where the size of our universe go to infinity in finite time. The force pulling everything apart would become stronger and stronger.

0. Galaxy clusters would disintegrate
1. Galaxies would fall apart
2. Planets would be be pushed away from their stars and each other.
3. Your planet itself would fall apart.
4. Molecules and atoms would be torn apart or unknown physics would come into play.

https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0302506

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCofnejCZGU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t00pfJnEt48

So survive a little longer you would need a capsule or a space-suit that traps air for you to breath, of course eventually the force would be so strong your capsule/suit would be pulled apart but by then you might already be dead since the force acts on your body itself. Your body would be torn into pieces and these pieces would later be torn into even smaller pieces, this would continue until atoms themselves are destroyed, nothing would survive. It's unclear what if anything would follow.

Evidence in favor of the big rip

Current measurements strongly indicate that dark energy is getting stronger which does support the big rip theory.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.01183.pdf

https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.10625
https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.07355
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.02978.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoAkFq-KIrk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9N9S4loyu8

Resolving the Boltzmann brain issue
If our universe would just keep expanding forever you would be infinite times more likely to be a Boltzmann brain.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/0802.0233

This is resolved by having our universe be destroyed completely or having it be cyclic.

Big rip cyclic cosmology

One possibility is that the big rip will give birth to a new universe that may have different physics than our current universe, our current understanding of physics isn't good enough to know what would actually happen.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.12684

https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.06456

This could resolve the apparent fine-tuning problem.

researchgate.net/profile/Kevin_Ludwick/publication/236215355_Cyclic_Cosmology_from_the_Little_Rip/links/57d94c4408ae0c0081efab58/Cyclic-Cosmology-from-the-Little-Rip.pdf

https://medium.com/starts-with-a-ba...big-rip-lead-to-another-big-bang-566a4fbb0f25

Of course it's unclear how much stronger the phantom energy would get before unknown physics come into play that alter the trajectory, it might not actually be a "big rip" in the strictest definition (space-time itself being torn apart).

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.15060.pdf

How to properly disprove/falsify the big rip 'theory'
We would need to find a more fundamental theory that is clearly the correct one and from that we will see what will actually happen. I have looked at various attempts at a more fundamental theory of physics but none of these look particularly promising to me so i do not think we have much to go on here.
 
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