Related papers: The heavy spring at work
It is shown that the most important effects of special and general theory of relativity can be understood in a simple and straightforward way. The system of units in which the speed of light $c$ is the unit of velocity allows to cast all…
The main topic of this article is a discussion about the best way to show students that the proportionality of mass and weight, strictly true for point-like particles, is an excellent approximation for objects of "normal" size. The usual…
The Standard Model (SM) ascribes the observed mass of elementary particles to an effective interaction between basis states defined without mass terms and a scalar potential associated with the Higgs boson. In the relativistic field theory…
The simplest quantum composite body, a hydrogen atom, is considered in the presence of a weak external gravitational field. We define an operator for the passive gravitational mass of the atom in the post-Newtonian approximation of the…
A statistical model is proposed which ascribes the Z^0 mass to the screening properties of the neutrino Fermi sea (neutrino vacuum). Concerning the fermion masses, some puzzling features of the Higgs mechanism are examined. Arguments are…
Newtonian mechanics posited mass as a primary quality of matter, incapable of further elucidation. We now see Newtonian mass as an emergent property. Most of the mass of standard matter, by far, arises dynamically, from back-reaction of the…
One of the great mysteries of contemporary science is dark matter, an exotic substance of unknown nature that, in theory, makes up about 27\% of the total mass-energy density of the universe, and which does not appear to emit, absorb, or…
We explore the landscape of technical naturalness for nonrelativistic systems, finding surprises which challenge and enrich our relativistic intuition already in the simplest case of a single scalar field. While the immediate applications…
There are some misnomers and misconceptions about what is heat and what is work; the recognition of heat and work is even more difficult when it comes to categorize energy as heat or work. Since both heat and work are energy the…
The Standard Model Higgs suffers from the hierarchy problem, typically implying new states within the reach of the LHC. If the Higgs is very heavy (~500 GeV) the states that cutoff the quadratic divergence may be beyond the reach of the…
The oldest enigma in fundamental particle physics is: Where do the observed masses of elementary particles come from? Inspired by observation of the empirical particle mass spectrum we propose that the masses of elementary particles arise…
Complex macroscopic behaviour can arise in many-body systems with only very simple elements as a consequence of the combination of competition and inhomogeneity. This paper attempts to illustrate how statistical physics has driven this…
The observed value of the Higgs mass indicates an instability of the Higgs scalar at large energy scales, and hence also at large field values. In the context of early universe cosmology, this is often considered to lead to problems. Here…
We study the energy loss of a heavy quark propagating through the matter produced in the collision of two sheets of energy [1]. Even though this matter is initially far-from-equilibrium we find that, when written in terms of the energy…
Dense suspensions of fine particles are significant in numerous biological, industrial, and natural phenomena. They also provide an ideal tool to develop statistical mechanics description for out-of-equilibrium systems. Predicting the bulk…
I analyze the meaning of mass in Newtonian mechanics. First, I explain the notion of primitive ontology, which was originally introduced in the philosophy of quantum mechanics. Then I examine the two common interpretations of mass: mass as…
One of the central questions in theoretical particle physics, since already several decades, has been that of "masses and mixings of the quarks. With the entry of neutrino oscillations into the field, the issue of lepton masses has added a…
We present a simple example in which the importance of the inertial effects of stress is evident. The system is an insulating solid narrow disc whose faces are uniformly charged with charges of equal magnitude and opposite signs. The motion…
We analyse a decoherence effect, caused by the gravitational interaction between a massive body and the electromagnetic field. Assuming a quantum version of the light bending interaction, we show that it leads to decoherence of the mass if…
We make an estimation of the mass of the universe by considering the behavior of a very special test particle when described both by using the Newtonian mechanics as well through a scalar field theory of the Yukawa kind. Naturally, Hubble's…