Ask a theoretical physicist turned teacher, lecturer and author

[Alex K]

A big dick and being irresistible to the ladies doesn't hurt either.

Not everyone can be Feynman...

[brewer]

Have I ever inflicted this one on you before:

OK, if matter and antimatter are mixed you get energy, and rather a lot of it.

Now imagine a hypothetical form of 'matter' that when mixed with regular matter yields nothing, that is, no energy, and both forms of matter cancel out and there is nothing left if the masses are equal.

Now imagine another form of matter that when mixed with antimatter yields nothing.


OK, now mix the first form of hypothetical matter with the second form of hypothetical matter.


What do you get ?

An unnecessary headache.

[vorlon13]

Have I ever inflicted this one on you before:

OK, if matter and antimatter are mixed you get energy, and rather a lot of it.

Now imagine a hypothetical form of 'matter' that when mixed with regular matter yields nothing, that is, no energy, and both forms of matter cancel out and there is nothing left if the masses are equal.

Now imagine another form of matter that when mixed with antimatter yields nothing.


OK, now mix the first form of hypothetical matter with the second form of hypothetical matter.


What do you get ?

An unnecessary headache.

Oh, come on !!

Is negative energy as analogous to energy as a theoretical form of matter is to matter ??

isn't that a clue to the making a recipe for the theoretical form of matter ??

[Kernel Sohcahtoa]

In addition to those basic requirements, curiosity to see and come up with exciting questions, a creative mind to find solutions and, last but not least, an excellent ability to think strategically about which topics are both interesting and within your capabilities to attack.

Regarding the part in bold, suppose, a theoretical physicist comes across some topic that is interesting but is not within his or her capabilities to attack (out of one's purview), as it would really require the added insight of a truly gifted and masterful pure mathematician or perhaps some other person who specializes in a particular branch of science (medicine, biology, chemistry, etc.) or perhaps a language specialist or some other seemingly unrelated specialist. How important is teamwork in making new discoveries in theoretical physics?

[Alex K]

In addition to those basic requirements, curiosity to see and come up with exciting questions, a creative mind to find solutions and, last but not least, an excellent ability to think strategically about which topics are both interesting and within your capabilities to attack.

Regarding the part in bold, suppose, a theoretical physicist comes across some topic that is interesting but is not within his or her capabilities to attack (out of one's purview), as it would really require the added insight of a truly gifted and masterful pure mathematician or perhaps some other person who specializes in a particular branch of science (medicine, biology, chemistry, etc.) or perhaps a language specialist or some other seemingly unrelated specialist.

In reality that person would likely be someone with a so slightly different specialization or experience in the same sub-field, that a non-expert wouldn't notice the difference. For instance, I wrote a paper on parameterizing the interactions of the Higgs boson in a particular way, and getting all the nuances of one particular theoretical technique we used would have taken prohibitively long for us to learn from scratch just for that project. So we brought someone into the project who had specialized in that particular way of writing down the interactions of the Higgs boson, and knew all the technical tricks and pitfalls that are difficult to see as someone just reading the literature.

How important is teamwork in making new discoveries in theoretical physics?

Most of the time, very important. The maverick theorist working alone is the exception I would say.

[Alex K]

Have I ever inflicted this one on you before:

OK, if matter and antimatter are mixed you get energy, and rather a lot of it.

Now imagine a hypothetical form of 'matter' that when mixed with regular matter yields nothing, that is, no energy, and both forms of matter cancel out and there is nothing left if the masses are equal.

Now imagine another form of matter that when mixed with antimatter yields nothing.


OK, now mix the first form of hypothetical matter with the second form of hypothetical matter.


What do you get ?

If we keep the principle of conservation of energy, your mirror matter would carry negative energy in order to cancel the positive energy of matter to nothing. Antimatter also carries positive energy, so mirror-Antimatter also carries negative energy. So if you bring mirrormatter and mirrorantimatter together, you would get negative energy out. Either your theory contains negative energy photons which could be emitted in this annihilation process,

mirror particle + mirror antiparticle -> 2 mirror photons

OR to set off the annihilation of mirrormatter and mirrorantimatter we need additional ordinary photons of matching energy to again enable an annihilation process

mirror particle+mirror antiparticle+2 ordinary photons -> nothing

by absorbing the negative energy.