April 7, 2025
Quantum Ellipsoids
Posted by John Baez
With the stock market crash and the big protests across the US, I’m finally feeling a trace of optimism that Trump’s stranglehold on the nation will weaken. Just a trace.
I still need to self-medicate to keep from sinking into depression — where ‘self-medicate’, in my case, means studying fun math and physics I don’t need to know. I’ve been learning about the interactions between number theory and group theory. But I haven’t been doing enough physics! I’m better at that, and it’s more visceral: more of a bodily experience, imagining things wiggling around.
So, I’ve been belatedly trying to lessen my terrible ignorance of nuclear physics. Nuclear physics is a fascinating application of quantum theory, but it’s less practical than chemistry and less sexy than particle physics, so I somehow skipped over it.
I’m finding it worth looking at! Right away it’s getting me to think about quantum ellipsoids.