Physics

106 problems

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Lightning initiation

How does fast electrical breakdown become a lightning leader in natural thunderstorm fields?

Low-cloud climate feedback

How will low clouds change under sustained warming, and how will that change affect Earth’s energy balance?

Pulsar radio emission

A pulsar’s rotating beam is familiar. The plasma process that makes its exceptionally bright radio waves is less certain.

Age of Saturn’s rings

Saturn’s icy rings look relatively clean. Does that reveal when they formed, or how they lose and retain pollution?

Venus’s ultraviolet absorber

An unidentified absorber darkens Venus’s clouds in near-ultraviolet light. Which chemicals produce it and keep it present?

Ganymede’s dynamo

Ganymede generates its own magnetic field. What keeps the conducting material inside it moving?

Pulsar glitches

Some pulsars suddenly spin faster. What triggers the rapid transfer of rotational motion that produces a large glitch?

Turbulence intermittency

Turbulent motion concentrates into rare, intense bursts. Can the fluid equations predict how those bursts scale?

EMC effect

Quark distributions change when protons and neutrons are bound in nuclei. What physical mechanism causes those changes?

Proton spin

A proton’s total spin is known. How is it shared among quark spin, gluon spin and their orbital motion?