Books Quote by Henning Genz

““For all we know, the universe as a whole does not rotate. Now, the reader might ask, with respect to what should the universe be rotating at all? With respect to some system that has no centrifugal force, it would appear. To the best of our knowledge, there is no such force in a system that does not perform a rotational motion with respect to what we call the firmament-the visible universe in its entirety. This either may be due to amazing coincidence or it may mean that the universe itself determines what, in the laws of nature, makes up the meaning of rotation. This is the way Mach's principle would have it. But does this make sense? If I sit on a stool that turns, I can use Newton's formulae to calculate my rotational velocity with respect to the universe. If that velocity turns out to be zero, the formula tells me there is no centrifugal force, and in fact I will not notice any. So far so good for Mach's principle.””

Henning Genz

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“Recall our discussion of the pendulum. Its position at a given instant does not fix its subsequent behavior. Suppose a photograph shows the pendulum hanging straight down. This may mean either of two things: The pendulum is at rest, or it is in the process of oscillating through its lowest point. In the first case, it will remain in the…

Henning Genz

“Just as with sound waves, light waves emitted by a moving source show the Doppler effect. What we observe instead of the sound pitch is the color of the light: Red light has a lower frequency than blue light. If the light source is moving toward the observer, the light appears bluer; as it moves away, it will appear red.…

Henning Genz

“The interpretation of apparent long-distance action by means of continuously propagating effects was vigorously asserted by Isaac Newton. In his wake, the interpretation of all forces or propagation of information over long distances in terms of hidden short-distance effects with finite velocity of propagation is one of the most challenging tasks of fundamental research in physics. We know that oscillations…

Henning Genz

“The quantity that physicists call the specific heat of a substance is defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of…

Henning Genz

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“To gain any intuitive understanding of the breakdown of this ultimate symmetry through vacuum effects at the critical 10^-44 seconds after the Big Bang, we will have to resort to examples in the space of our experience. Starting at that critical instant, gravity assumes a part of its own, distinct from the other three forces; these remain unified up to…

Henning Genz

“To illustrate this relation, think of a game of table tennis. As the ball hits the table, it will bounce up and down. When we restrain the upward bounce by holding the paddle parallel to the table at a small height, the ball will bounce up and down at a faster rate between paddle and table. If the paddle, the…

Henning Genz

“Before the particles that we observe today materialized, all matter in the early universe must have gone through this stage of a quark-gluon soup,…

Henning Genz

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“In physics terms, the reason for symmetry breaking is the instability of the symmetric state.”

Henning Genz

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“What really transcends our understanding is the mechanism that permits these oscillations of abstract field quantities to carry energy. We know this is true; our relevant equations say so, and the solar energy collectors prove it. A photoelectric cell registers at this instant an energy that left the Sun, in the form of light, some eight minutes ago. Travelling across…

Henning Genz

“Chaotic or disordered distributions are symmetrical on the average. An observer cannot conclude anything about his location from looking around him. An example is the chaotic disposition of sand grains at the beach, or of flecks of light on a television screen when the station closes down. In the chaotic distribution, no location or direction is preferred. Only when there…

Henning Genz

“The hotter a substance, the faster and the less ordered its molecular motion, and the larger the momentum with which molecules collide. Above 0 degrees Celsius, the water molecules collide so frequently and so violently that no structure can appear or be sustained. Should there be somewhere in the water a small piece of ice, it's molecules will be rent…

Henning Genz

“This elementary process is symbolically illustrated in figure 59c: A photon becomes an electron-positron pair; inversely, an electron and a positron can combine into a photon (or as we said above, annihilate into a photon). But for the process to take place, we need a fourth particle as a catalyst. In the cloud chamber picture in figure 12, the catalyst…

Henning Genz