Browsing School of Physics Colloquia Series by Title

Now showing items 99-103 of 103

    • Walter Kohn and the Creation of Density Functional Theory 

      Zangwill, Andrew (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-09-22)
      The theoretical physicist Walter Kohn was awarded one-half the 1998 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his mid-1960's creation of an approach to the many-particle problem in quantum mechanics called density functional theory ...

    • Was Mars Ever Habitable? 

      Wray, James (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-04-15)
      NASA has followed the water on Mars, and has now progressed further to asking: is or was this environment ever actually habitable by life as we know it? All such life has some common physical and chemical requirements, ...

    • What Happened Before the Big Bang? 

      Bojowald, Martin (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-04-08)
      The standard model of cosmology suggests that the universe started with a phase of very high density, described by general relativity as a singularity. Quantum gravity attempts to resolve the singularity by a more fundamental, ...

    • What Sets the Maximum Spin Rate of Neutron Stars? 

      Wasserman, Ira (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-10-19)
      Neutron stars are observed to rotate as fast as 716 Hz. Astrophysicists believe that they are spun-up by accretion of matter and angular momentum in binary star systems. However, the “r-mode'' instability of rotating neutron ...

    • Why Meissner Was Wrong (or a Classical Explanation of Flux Expulsion from Superconductors) 

      Essén, Hanno (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-03-16)
      The discovery by Meissner and Ochsenfeld in 1933 that the magnetic field inside a conductor is expelled when it is cooled down to become superconducting was considered very surprising at the time. Meissner wrote that this ...