What if hypothetical physics

In that respect, I consider fundamental physics a basic part of human culture. Now we can wait curiously to find out what unforeseen spin-offs that discoveries such as the Higgs boson or gravitational waves might lead to in the long-term future. But we can also look forward to the new insights into the building-blocks of nature that they will bring us and the new questions they will raise.

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Alexander Lenz , Durham University. Quantum leap Around years ago, quantum mechanics was a purely theoretical topic, only developed to understand certain properties of atoms.

No one, not even Einstein, would have imagined quantum mechanics without the experimental data that led us to this unexpected notion of reality. Einstein, A. The views expressed are those of the author s and are not necessarily those of Scientific American. He also chairs the advisory board for the Breakthrough Starshot project. Credit: Nick Higgins. Already a subscriber? Sign in.

Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Discover World-Changing Science. I am sure that anyone can do this, if one is gifted with a certain amount of intelligence, interest and determination.

Now, here begins the serious stuff. More than rudimentary intelligence is assumed to be present, because ordinary students can master this material only when assisted by patient teachers.

It is necessary to do exercises. Some of the texts come with exercises. Do them, or better, invent your own exercises. Try to outsmart the authors, but please refrain from mailing to me your alternative theories until you have studied the entire lot; if you do this well you will discover that many of these authors were not so stupid after all.

Theoretical Physics is like a sky scraper. It has solid foundations in elementary mathematics and notions of classical preth century physics. In those days, the solid foundations were laid of the knowledge that we enjoy now. The first few floors of our skyscraper consist of advanced mathematical formalisms that turn the Classical Physics theories into beauties of their own.

They are needed if you want to go higher than that. So, next come many of the other subjects listed below. Finally, if you are mad enough that you want to solve those tremendously perplexing problems of reconciling gravitational physics with the quantum world, you end up studying general relativity, superstring theory, M-theory, Calabi-Yau compactification and so on.

There are other peaks such as Bose-Einstein condensation, fractional Hall effect, and more. Also we both use physics concepts and even try to explain some of the physics. However, there are a couple of big differences. I like to point out errors. In one part of the book Randall answers the question: could you ride your bike so fast in the winter that the compression of the air would warm you up? Since air resistance is proportional to velocity squared, this would require an increase in power by a factor of This is wrong.

Here is a picture. In this case, you could say that the work done to ride the bike is from the frictional force. Suppose the bike moves a distance s. Since this frictional force must be equal to the air resistance for constant velocity , the work done in this case would be:.

But what about the power?