Physics

Some questions arrive late at night and in bad shape. This one came out roughly as: if the universe began at all, why did it begin with anything left to happen? It sounds like the kind of thing one says after the second glass, and I was ready to drop it. Then I found that physicists ask a sharper version of it in print, and that the sharper version is still open. …

Max Planck, often referred to as the father of quantum mechanics, made groundbreaking contributions to physics in the early 20th century. In 1900, he introduced the concept of quantized energy levels while studying blackbody radiation, leading to the formulation of Planck’s constant (\(\hbar\)). This constant became a cornerstone of quantum mechanics, laying the foundation for the study of the smallest scales of nature and influencing our understanding of fundamental constants like the speed of light, Planck length, and Planck time. …