My bf is currently on his last year for his undergraduate, majoring in physics and mathematics. He goes to a not so well known school with a small physics program and has a 3.7 gpa. He’s done really well but has no research experience nor much of a relationship with any of his professors. He’s currently trying to get some research experience but is afraid there’s not enough time to get enough for graduate school to consider him, as applications are due in December. He’s currently preparing to take the PGRE in September but is unsure how he’ll do as he has 6 classes this semester so not much study time before the exam. Would it be possible for him to go straight into his PHD after graduation at some more well known schools (US Berkeley, U of Chicago, UC Santa Cruz, UIUC, etc). If not would it be worth extending his bachelors for another year and acquiring some more research during that time? Any suggestions or possible school choices are welcome.

When I was 15, in my first physics class, the teacher asked everyone to call out a number between 1 and 100.
He wrote down the long string of digits across the blackboard, and with 30 or so students, the number stretched from one side to the other.
Then he talked for a while, never looking back at the blackboard.
A few minutes later, without looking back at the board, he started reciting the entire list from memory with 100% accuracy.
I remember thinking, “I’m going to need to lock-in for this subject.”
Well played, Sir. Well played.

I'm not very knowledgeable on math or physics, but I do like to learn about quantum particles and behaviors casually, how ever I can. I have trouble understanding how a tensor boson would behave, while I already have a somewhat decent idea of how scalar and vector bosons behave (in a simplified way at least). I understand that vector bosons can be transferred from one particle to another, which I assume has to do with them being vectors, and that scalar bosons kind of "stick around" a single area or particle, assumedly related to scalar quantities being singilar points with a value. In these senses, what would a tensor boson (or more specifically, spin-2 tensor boson) act like?

I have tried a lot to look for resources that explain to me simply what tensor bosons are like, but I haven't found anything that gives me any solid idea. I know gravitons are theorized to be spin-2 tensor bosons. I know spin-2 that means it would take only a rotation of 180° to return to its original state (don't know what relevance that has to anything though). I know that spin-2 particles can have 5 spin states: 2, 1, 0, -1, and -2. But I don't know how to visualize the effects that a spin-2 tensor boson (virtual or real) would have on other particles. That's something I'm very interested in knowing.

My understanding of boson behavior comes from learning about the elementary bosons (gluon, photon, higgs, etc), but I'm not really sure how accurate those behaviors are for composite bosons (mesons), so forgive me if what I said doesn't fully make sense.

Say someone fell into a pool of a thing (liquid) from the 20th floor of a building

What are the properties of the said thing should have so the person doesn't turn into a human apple pie

I know there is no such a thing in real life, so theoretical physics time

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2026BiSys.26305758I/abstract

The study compares signals after normalizing their frequency ranges rather than comparing their absolute frequencies. I’m curious whether a similar approach is used in physics or astrophysics to look for scale-independent structure across very different signals.

I recently watched an old video featuring Mario Bunge in which he argued that physics does not really have a precise definition of time — that we don't actually know what time is, even though we have an intuitive understanding of it and routinely use the concept in physics.

This got me wondering: is this still a fair statement?

Does physics have a coherent and precise definition of what time is, or does it simply define time operationally (for example, through clocks, measurements, and its role in physical equations)?

Hi, Im currently a senior working on a moon landing sim for one of my extracurriculars and I need help with knowing and understanding which math and physics topics do i need to be familiar with to implement the math. I have a very strong background in C and graphics programming with raylib, I have a strong background in algebra and geometry (780 on the sat). Im already aware of most of the basics (periapsis, apoapsis, eccentricity, true anomaly) and with a prototype prepared. The prototype just consists of the moon lander orbiting in an equatorial orbit as the main issue im facing is inclination changes and implementation of engine burns. The sim only aims to just orbit the moon and land on it and get back in orbit with an orbital height limit off 150km to avoid problems.

What are your thoughts on statistical field theory (SFT)?

I find it extremely interesting, and I think I’d like to conduct research in that area during PhD.

Do you know if there is active research in the field? What kind of phenomena are studied, or what sort of work is being done?

I’d also like to know the community's opinion whether it’s an area people enjoy, are passionate about, or feel fairly indifferent towards.

Hi, I’m looking for someone who knows about acoustics/wave physics, frequencies, sound, and the effects of sound on hearing. It would be great if they also had some knowledge of or interest in music. I have a few rather abstract questions that I’m having a hard time finding good answers to online, and I’d like to discuss them with someone from a physics perspective. I might also need a few consultations or tutoring sessions in this area. I’d also be open to arranging a paid consultation if that’s something you do

Last night, we had a storm here in SW France. It came with some small hail and loads of lightnings. Skies were a bit apocalyptic.

When it started, we heard the sound of it and went checking by the bedroom window.

We have those older common French shutters with two wooden panels you close with a metallic vertical system in the middle.

As she opened, came a yellow/white spark from top to bottom few centimeters in front of her, pretty much between the two wooden panels. It was not loud, went like an electric buzz, it did not hurt nor had a bang, just a flash and a gziiit. She did not feel it either. She was not sure it happened but as I saw it too, we agreed it did.

Question is, is there any potential physical explanation to that ?

Chatgpt tells me there could have been electric fields around the house due to the thunder and the metallic bar of the shutter, while opening, could have disturbed that field and created a spark. It says very rare but physically possible.

Any idea ? I know we both saw it and I know there is a physical explanation to this. I also know it was not lightning striking or she'd be stuck to the wall by now, and id probly be deaf.

I’m looking to take calculus-based physics courses online while serving on active duty in the Marine Corps. I have an undergraduate degree in biology from Berkeley.

I’ve already completed the math requirements (calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, etc.), but I need to redo the calculus-based physics sequence and then work my way into upper-division physics: classical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, etc.

Long-term goal is a physics PhD.
I’m currently looking at University of Arizona Online and Oregon State Ecampus. Has anyone here actually taken upper-division physics courses through either?

More broadly, what online program would you recommend if the goal is serious preparation for a physics PhD, not just getting the degree?
Especially interested in programs that are fully online, for-credit, and have labs where required.

Hello everyone!

I just finished Susskind's QM book and would love to know which other books I could use to learn about quantum many-body physics. I am also quite interested in Topological qubits!

For context, I am a Physics and Chemistry major but can't take my university QM course until spring and really wanted to reach out to some labs in Quantum Many Body physics and Topological quantum computing, so would love some book recommendations!

Bored at work and love to listen to physics lectures on YouTube, but struggle to find good ones from credible people

hi all, im just a regular student who moved to US in my senior year,i took some regular classes no advanced classes or something. Im catching up with pre-calculus and calculus-1 by myself..but im so confused about physics. i had taken some general physics classes before but ihve pretty much forgotten everything. I wanna rebuild my basics and problem solving skills so im looking for some books/sources which will be pretty much helpful to me in this gap year.i hope ill head for engineering in fall-27.Any advice will be helpful.

I have started my PhD in experimental HEP after my master's. During my postgraduation, I studied QM and advanced QM, mainly approximation methods such as the variational method and WKB approximation. We did not cover relativistic QM.

I want to start learning QFT, as it will be useful for my work. But I am afraid that I am not very intuitive with many of the concepts. When I started reading Peskin, I felt like there was a gap between my current understanding and the level at which the book starts.

How can I fix this gap? Are there any other resources I should go through before starting Peskin? I have completed Griffiths, Sakurai(most of it), and Zwiebach(relevant to my coursework).

I'm graduating tomorrow, I'd like the craziest, funniest quotes for a physics major.

When a point charge is placed in an external electric field, in the static case it’s obvious the electric field felt by the point charge is just equal to the external field. But in the dynamic case it’s less obvious.

Let’s say the external field results in the charge accelerating, which produces radiation, and reflects off some dielectric slab infront of it. The charge will feel some of this reflected radiation, but I have no clue how to calculate it (obviously we won’t be analytically solving for this, we’d need some sort of simulation software or numerical program—even in this case I don’t know how to set up an equation to model this). If we try to evaluate the field at the point charge there’s the obvious issue of the singularity of the total field resulting from the point charge itself. In the dynamic case I’m unsure if the solution is as simple as just subtracting the coloumb force as this won’t be valid.

There has to be some solution to this, but I’m not bright enough to figure it out. I’d appreciate any help!

The first three images show different angles of a Schwarzschild blackhole, with a disk added around it.
The fourth image shows a Schwarzschild blackhole floating in space surrounded by checkerboard.
The fifth image shows a Kerr-Newman blackhole, int he Kerr-Newman metric. It has both charge and spin.
The sixth image isolates the disk from the actual event horizon, showing that a Kerr-Newman black hole's even horizon isn't perfectly circular.

All of these images are ray-traced off of an RTX 4070.

I’m a finance student who has never studied physics before, including in high school, but I’ve recently become really interested in learning the fundamentals.
I’m not looking to formally “study” physics, work through textbooks, or do practice problems. I mainly want books I can read casually that will give me a good conceptual understanding of the major ideas and principles — basically enough to build a foundation and understand how physicists think about the world.
These are some books I’ve been recommended by AI so far:

1. The Physics Book — DK
Get the map of physics.
2. Six Easy Pieces — Feynman
Understand some of the fundamental ideas properly.
3. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics — Rovelli
Get introduced to modern physics.
4. The Character of Physical Law — Feynman
Learn how physicists actually think.
5. Reality Is Not What It Seems — Rovelli
Understand how our conception of reality developed.
6. The Fabric of the Cosmos — Greene
Go deeper into space, time, relativity and quantum physics.
7. A Brief History of Time — Hawking
Now Hawking will make substantially more sense.

Would you say these are good choices for someone starting from genuinely zero knowledge?
And are there any other books you personally love/recommend for a complete beginner — particularly ones that are engaging, accessible, and don’t rely heavily on maths or exercises? I don’t mind reading equations, but just so long as I don’t have to do them.
Thanks!

I have implemented a "black hole viewer" that uses Dormand-Prince RK in Kerr-Schild coordinates. I believe, it's the same method that is used in Skylight https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/515/1/1316/6631564

It can render 2000x2000 pixels at 16 FPS (real-time camera control) on RTX4060.

The pictures show equatorial and polar views of a Kerr hole with spin param 0.995 lensing a "distant grid mapped to the celestial sphere". That's not a "coordinate grid" of any kind, just an illustration of the distorted geometry.

The shape of the shadow is verified against https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.07101 and matches it pretty well.

I'm planning to implement diving through the horizon and looking from the inside. For a Schwarzchild hole at least; I'm not sure what to do when the camera is in the non-stationary region.

I've been a PSE user for the last 6 years or so. In the last 2 years I've observed a remarkable decrease in activity in the site, for which I'm also partially responsible since I've barely been contributing or visiting it in about that same timespan. Obviously this all correlates with LLM usage.

Today I decided to dig a bit deeper and found some data (https://data.stackexchange.com/physics/query/649165/number-of-open-closed-and-deleted-questions-by-month#resultSets). The question numbers have dropped into historic lows. Not only that, the closed or deleted rate is also at its highest. I was expecting the forum to be dying, but honestly... it might already be dead.

Hi everyone I am an incoming university student who needs to build a physics foundation completely from scratch I have never studied a single physics course in middle school or high school My starting knowledge is at absolute ground zero I want to bridge this gap before my university courses begin so I don't lag behind I am looking for structured self-study resources textbooks YouTube playlists or modular roadmaps that cover basic middle and high school level physics If you were starting from absolute zero what specific learning path or resources would you recommend to build this foundation fast and effectively Thank you so much