Named Physical Phenomena & Theoretical Constructs

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Abstractions that name a specific physical phenomenon or theoretical construct, mostly in relativity, optics, and quantum physics — black holes and cosmic censorship, gravitational memory effects, zero-point energy, and conical refraction — each tied to a particular named model, equation, or hypothesis.

16 abstractions in this family — domain-specific abstractions that sit near one another in structural-signature space (k-means over structural-signature embeddings). Each is shown with its short description.

• Absolute horizon — In general relativity, an absolute horizon is a boundary in spacetime, defined with respect to the external universe, inside which events cannot affect an external observer.
• Angular momentum problem — The angular momentum problem is a problem in astrophysics identified by Leon Mestel in 1965.
• Black Hole — A relativistic spacetime region whose event horizon prevents any future-directed signal or material trajectory inside it from reaching the exterior universe.
• Conical refraction — Conical refraction is an optical phenomenon in which a ray of light, passing through a biaxial crystal along certain directions, is refracted into a hollow cone of light.
• Cosmic Wind — Cosmic wind is a powerful cosmic stream of charged particles that can push interstellar dust clouds of low density into intergalactic space.
• Gnomonic Projection — A center-of-sphere mapping of an open hemisphere to a tangent plane that turns visible great-circle arcs into straight lines.
• Gravitational memory effect — Gravitational memory effects, also known as gravitational-wave memory effects, are predicted persistent changes in the relative position of pairs of masses in space due to the passing of a gravitational wave (GW).
• Illumination problem — Illumination problems are a class of mathematical problems that study the illumination of rooms with mirrored walls by point light sources.
• Iris hypothesis — The iris hypothesis proposes that warming tropical sea-surface temperatures reduce high-level cloud cover, increasing outgoing infrared radiation and producing a negative climate feedback.
• Multiple antisymmetry — In crystallography and materials science multiple antisymmetry is the concept of a substance possessing two or more different types of antisymmetry simultaneously.
• NOON State — In quantum optics, a NOON state or N00N state is a quantum-mechanical many-body entangled state.
• Sakuma–Hattori equation — In physics, the Sakuma–Hattori equation is a mathematical model for predicting the amount of thermal radiation, radiometric flux or radiometric power emitted from a perfect blackbody or received by a thermal radiation detector.
• Steady-state model — In the steady-state model, the density of matter in the expanding universe remains unchanged due to a continuous creation of matter, thus adhering to the perfect cosmological principle, a principle that says that the observable universe is always the same at any time and any place.
• Stress–energy–momentum pseudotensor — In the theory of general relativity, a stress–energy–momentum pseudotensor, such as the Landau–Lifshitz pseudotensor, is an extension of the non-gravitational stress–energy tensor that incorporates the energy–momentum of gravity.
• Violating cosmic censorship — The weak and the strong cosmic censorship hypotheses are two mathematical conjectures about the structure of gravitational singularities in the context of general relativity.
• Zero-point energy — Zero-point energy (ZPE) is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical system may have.