Author Archives: John F. Lindner

Quantum field theory predicts that the temperature of empty space should depend on the observer’s motion, increasing proportionally with acceleration. Here I attempt an accessible introduction to this striking effect, related to Hawking radiation… Continue reading →

One hundred years ago today, the Physical Review published Wooster graduate Arthur Compton‘s famous article on the scattering of light and electrons, which earned him a Physics Nobel Prize four years later. By relativistically conserving spacetim… Continue reading →

After half a century confined to low-Earth orbit, humans once again intend to leave Earth and voyage to Moon, currently planned for late next year. The reality of this exciting adventure crystallized earlier this month when NASA announced the diverse &… Continue reading →

This academic year has been thrilling: first nuclear fusion breakeven, now an ein Stein! Last week, a preprint at arxiv.org by David Smith et al. announced an “ein Stein”, or one stone, a shape that forces a non periodic tiling … Cont… Continue reading →

The forces between two electric charges in arbitrary motion are complicated by velocity, acceleration, and time-delay effects. The forces need not even lie along the line joining the two charges! Suppose a source charge [latex]q^\prime[/latex] is at po… Continue reading →

Since the mid 1960s, all space walks or extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) have involved just one or two astronauts — except once. In May 1992, on the STS-49 mission, the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour was attempting to rescue a stranded comm… Continue reading →

On 1852 October 23, Francis Guthrie noticed that he needed only 4 colors to color the counties of England so no two bordering counties shared the same color. This works for any map, but only in 1976, and with the aid of … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Long before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, and while still a Wooster undergraduate, Arthur Compton realized a third way to demonstrate Earth’s spin (after pendulums and gyroscopes). Compton reported his results in a manuscript submitted to th… Continue reading →

Photograph the sky at the same time each day for a year and Sun will appear to execute a figure-8 path called an analemma, which is often inscribed on Earth globes and can be used as an almanac, as by … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Overcoming decades of enormous physics and engineering challenges, amidst persistent pessimism, skepticism, and criticism, the National Ignition Facility has achieved an historic target energy gain of [latex]Q > 1[/latex], which is a major mileston… Continue reading →