usenet weirdness

David Griffiths' footnotes are a source for David Griffiths, not for Niels Bohr.

Serious source?

This one is just plain wrong,

Jan

IMHO brainstorming is much overrated. It may be useful in 'creative' environments, when for example inventing a new ad campaign to sell yet another useless product to the suckers.

In a serious environment, in engineering or science, there is litle room or need for it.

High level professionals already know their stuff, and the likelyhood of instantly coming up with something that nobody has thought up yet is small.

And anyway, given the highly competitive environment, it would be quite unwise to blurt out half-baked 'brilliant' ideas rather than work them out first for yourself, (and claim them)

Jan

Maxwell's equations are fully relativistic,

Jan

I advise you against it.

Serious source?

Jan

Certainly, and not just in electronics. But not all of the 3700 authors of their papers are at the same level...

Jan

Wave-particle duality is madness.

Single photons sure behave like particles, especially the energetic ones.

A gamma sure acts like a particle. It's harder to think about a 1 MHz radio wave as a photon, since we are a lot smaller.

At optical wavelengths, the current from a good photodetector has measurable shot noise from the photons. I wonder if there is some microwave frequency where the electrical signal would have equivalent photon shot noise, or whether thermal and Johnson noises bury the effect.

Physics is fun, if you don't have to do it for a living.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

I'm sometimes curious about physics and things. I post to s.e.d. but somehow some unfriendly physics types got involved.

I just design electronics for amusement. For odd some reason, people sometimes pay me too.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

john larkin snipped-for-privacy@glen--canyon.com wrote or quoted:

Wave-like interference can be observed in the famous double-slit experiment. Now, what happens when we reduce the intensity of the incoming light to one single photon? We get one single spot on the detector screen! So, does this mean "no wave behavior"? Well, when we repeat this with many single photons, one after the other, in the end, we get the same interference pattern on that screen created by all those dots!

In 1986, a rigorously controlled experiment was designed by Grangier, G. Roger, and A. Aspect, [Europhys Lett. 1(4), p. 173, 1986] that guaranteed a single-photon beam. The explanation of the experimental results implied the interference of the wave function of a single-photon with itself. This was disputed in 2018 by Parra, but good quantum textbooks like [1] take this for granted.

Yes, /that/ Schumacher who coined "qubit"!

No.

No, Einstein's idea of mass is exactly the same as Newton's. Einstein just explains its origin whereas Newton simply postulates it.

That does not mean that its mass is non-zero. As I indicated, its momentum is given by p⃗ = ℏ k⃗ where ℏ = ℎ/(2π) is the reduced Planck constant, and k⃗ is the wave vector.

Photons are *relativistic* *quantum* objects; they are *incompatible* with Newtonian mechanics.

Correct.

Nonsense.

You have no clue (what a "particle" is in particle physics).

Educate yourself:

The Science Asylum: What Are Particles? Do They ACTUALLY Exist?!

Not to you. You need to read more widely.

They didn't flatter you as energetically as you hoped, and you resent that a lot.

You aren't the only person to have used that phrase.

Small, but not negligible. The aim is more to get people to look at problems from variety of different points of view than it is to generate some paradigm-shifting insight (though finding a sufficiently different point of view can sometimes do that).

Brainstorming is designed to get around that inhibition. No idea is castigated as half-baked - it's valued as potential stepping stone to a different point of view.

Most engineers are reluctant to stay confused. They dislike uncertainty, so lock down on a conventional, clumsy circuit or architecture asap and then grunt it out.

It's better to explore possibilities for a while, see if there is a better idea somewhere out there.

Then switch gears to careful, disciplined design, to get it right the first time.

Not many people can do both.

The last name of s.e.d. is design.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Promises, promises.

And what's that supposed to mean?

Am Freitag000013, 13.02.2026 um 16:23 schrieb john larkin:

Sure, but the USA has also some reputation for confiscating unwanted inventions.

There had been several instances, where patents got locked away, because they would threaten 'national security'.

There were interesting inventions, which could eventually had advanced mankind, but were allegedly threatening some interests.

E.g. there was Stan Meyers' 'Watercar', Tesla's 'Wardencliff Tower' or Wilhelm Reich's 'Cloudbuster', the 'cure for cancer' by Royal Raimund Reife or magnetic levitation in Coral Castle.

I personally had the idea, that 'cold fusion' actually worked and was possibly the real cause of the implosion of the twintowers on 9/11.

So, yes, inventions are allowed in the USA, but are actually a risky thing, because all of the above got in trouble.

...

TH

Sure. But I have not fully understood this fact, because Planck was definitely able to see the errors in that paper.

This would lead to assume some sort of 'social engineering', which forced Planck accept, what his disliked.

We can actually see this in many photo's of Einstein, when he participated any conference or meeting:

Einstein sat in most cases right in the center and in the first line.

e.g. this one:

But Einstein wasn't a good physicist at all.

So, what forces allowed Einstein to smuggle himself in the best place on many pictures???

It must be kind of hidden power, which Einstein had, that had nothing at all to do with physics.

Sure, but 'peer reviewed crap'.

...

TH

Edison discovered the 'Edison effect' but Fleming invented the diode which used it. De Forest put three electrodes in an evacuated envelope but he thought it was an improvement on the diode detector, the invention of the amplifying triode was made several years later by various experimenters, mainly in Germany.

Le 14/02/2026 à 11:09, Thomas Heger a écrit :

EINSTEIN'S MAJOR QUANTUM PHYSICS PAPERS AFTER 1905

(voluntarily excluding the famous annus mirabilis papers)

Quantum theory of radiation - birth of the laser

Key ideas:

spontaneous emission

stimulated emission

absorption probabilities

Einstein introduces the A and B coefficients.

Consequences:

microscopic derivation of Planck law

theoretical foundation of the laser

first probabilistic law of quantum transitions

This is the moment quantum physics becomes a theory of probabilities.

Radiation fluctuations - wave particle duality

Result: Energy fluctuations contain two parts: wave term + particle term

Conclusion: Light is both wave and particle.

This influenced de Broglie directly.

Blackbody energy fluctuations

Einstein shows: variance(E) = wave contribution + photon contribution

First statistical proof classical electromagnetism is incomplete.

Specific heat of solids

Prediction: Heat capacity decreases at low temperature.

First quantum model of matter: atoms behave as quantized oscillators.

Beginning of solid state physics.

Early zero point energy idea

Observation: Oscillators keep energy even at T = 0

(proto zero point energy concept)

Photon momentum

Einstein derives: p = h / lambda

Radiation carries momentum.

Important step toward acceptance of photons as real particles.

Bose Einstein statistics

Einstein extends Bose counting to atoms.

New statistics for indistinguishable particles.

Prediction: macroscopic ground state occupation

Now called Bose Einstein Condensate (observed 1995).

Matter waves

Einstein deduces matter wavelength: lambda = h / p

Inspires de Broglie -> Schrödinger equation.

Quantum ideal gas continuation

Macroscopic quantum state appears.

First prediction of collective quantum matter.

Matter fluctuation symmetry

Atoms also show wave + particle fluctuations.

Symmetry: radiation <-> matter

Conceptual precursor of quantum field theory.

EPR paradox

"Can Quantum Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?"

Shows quantum correlations without local causes.

Birth of: entanglement Bell inequalities quantum information theory

Ensemble interpretation

Wavefunction describes statistical ensembles, not individual particles.

Still an active interpretation today.

Summary:

Einstein introduced:

stimulated emission

wave particle duality (statistical proof)

photon momentum

quantum statistics

Bose Einstein condensation

matter waves inspiration

quantum nonlocality paradox

Planck opened the door Einstein built half the house Later quantum mechanics completed the structure