this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 5 months ago (6 children)

That's nothing, quarks have a fucking flavor

[–] [email protected] 39 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Black licorice quarks are the worse

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Better than that artificial "puke" flavor!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

Not like from those ancient and malfunctioning replicators. Now where the hell is Rom...?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

Of course. The word is borrowed from a German dairy product.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Oh yeah?!! Well so do neutrinos! Electron, Muon, Tau!
And it has nothing to do with quarks and chromodynamics! Up, Down, Top, Bottom, Strange and Charmed!

Here's a grand idea: make everything as confusing as possible, with repeating or similar terminology for different things! Superstrings and Cosmic Strings!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

More vanillin quarks!

[–] [email protected] 96 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Come on this is not complicated. To imagine electron spin, think of a ball that is rotating. The election is the ball, except it's not really a ball, and it's not rotating either.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

Honestly physics is super simple when you realize nothing makes sense.

And I'm being completely serious. Once you actually truly realize, that the universe is just a total fuckin mess that basically runs on the strongest luck engine there is, it all starts to make perfect sense.

Once you understand the chaos, the order begins to form.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Physics is just us categorizing the relationships between different observed phenomena. "Explanations" are fun, and many can be true at certain scales, but getting deeper into any specific phenomenon is just a rabbit hole that leads to more and more "we don't know why it does that, it just does and it works in our models."

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Exactly my point!

You can't get caught up in the why, because at our current understanding, there is no why.

There only is.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Magnetism was my introduction to giving up the "need to know why".

Why does one pole attract another? It just does.

It just does.

Move on.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

oh man if I ever met a magnet in a dark alley

👊🤬👊

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, I see how my post could have read. I was agreeing with you. I just wanted to add on because I think it's so cool that the only thing we've ever really been able to do with all our scientific progress and applied science is establish that when we see one thing happening we can be pretty sure that it usually leads to this other thing and we don't really know why.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

I didn't take it as contradictory at all!

I was simply acknowledging that you understood my point and put a footnote period to the thought.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

being a fantasy novel nerd i like to think of physics as simply being our magic system.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Do you have some fantasy novel recommendations? I'd also like to read some but don't know what I should read.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Jackal among snakes
Beware of chicken
Downtown Druid
He who fights with monsters
12 miles below (arguably more scifi but eh)
Primal wizardry
Delve
The great core's paradox
Here be dragons: book 1 of the Emergence series
Apocalypse redux
Dear spellbook

There are (or were) all on royalroad though some have been stubbed and are now only available on stuff like kindle iirc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Wow! Wonderful. I'm gonna dig into some of these soon!

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Up and down in what direction, electron?!?

Up and down on what direction?!?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Actually a good point, tho. And also a good thought: If there is no special direction, what would be up? And that's where quantum mechanics gets even weirder: It's either up or down in the direction you measure.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It's either up or down whatever the direction.

If you measure 100%up-0%down then you rotate your frame of reference by 90°, you automatically get 50%up-50%down... (iirc)

It's weirdly teasing us like that!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Just in case it wasn't clear you can't measure anything other than "100%" up or down spin. The quantum state of it being 50/50 is described by 1/sqrt{2} times the up and down vector, when you measure it you have a probability of getting either result calculated by the square of the absolute (||psi||^2) that way you avoid getting a complex probability.

btw I was too scared to try in case it doesn't but can I use LaTeX in Lemmy comments? $\psi$ Edit: No LaTeX doesn't seem to work and btw I didn't study this so it might be taught differently at uni. This was explained to me in/for the context of quantum computing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

True! Thanks for the clarification, it's been a while since i played with the maths of quantum physics!

After you measure a spin as 100% up, the state will be close to that for a while, si the next measurement has higher chance of being up, with this probability slowly decreasing with time.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

At least in the Stern-Gerlach experiment it's relative to the magnetic field.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Yeah, quantum mechanics lingo: measurement = interaction

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago (9 children)

There might only be one, ever.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Mom says it's my turn with the single universal electron!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Look. Time Traveling Ellie’s going to make sure everybody gets their fair share of charge. As long as we make sure she doesn’t get in her own way it’s all good.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I asked for an electron for Christmas and Grandma got me an electron NEUTRINO 🙄🙄🙄

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

These gifts are getting out of hand. How did she keep it under wraps in the first place?

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

They did the double slit experience with whole molecules comprised of 2000 atoms and it worked.

Matter waves also exist and are very cool

[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Superposition

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

All of them.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

If nobody is observing me, I behave totally differently as well.

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