Installing gfortran on macOS Sonoma

Yesterday, I was helping a physics graduate student install gfortran on his MacBook running on Sonoma. The installation of gfortran is easy. One can use homebrew (I recommend it) to install gfortran. If you don’t have homebrew already installed on your computer, you can follow the installation instruction here. Once homebrew is installed, all you have to do is to open an Apple terminal and run the command:

brew install gcc

Note that gfortran is included in gcc. You can also install gfortran using MacPorts. If you don’t have MacPorts installed, it’s good to have one and you can follow the instruction here. Once MacPorts is installed, in an Apple terminal, run the command:

sudo port gcc12 +gfortran && sudo port select --set gcc mp-gcc12

When the student was testing it by attempting to compile a simple fortran program, there was an error:

ld: library not found for -lSystem
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

This happened when the system library is not in the search paths of gcc. To fix this issue, first open the file

sudo nano /private/etc/zprofile

and add the following two lines at the end:

if [ -z "${LIBRARY_PATH}" ]; then
    export LIBRARY_PATH="/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/lib"
else
    export LIBRARY_PATH="$LIBRARY_PATH:/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/lib"
fi

and save the file by pressing ctrl+x and close the terminal. Open a new Apple terminal and test it again. It will work flawlessly this time unless there is another issue.

Sources:

  1. Installing gfortran via macports on Mac OS high sierra

  2. GFortran compiler error on Mac OS Big Sur

Posted in gfortran, macOS | Leave a comment

Installing Maxima on Old Mac

I am still using an old MacBook with OS X 10.10 (Yosemite). I can no longer install Maxima using MacPorts there. Luckily I stumbled upon a Maxima installation instruction at The MaximaList. It worked out nicely and I was able to install Maxima-5.43.0 on my old MacBook, so I can now use Maxima there again. It appears that I can only use the graphical interface wXMaxima, not the one that I can run in the command shell. I am not complaining though.

If you are using an old MacBook like me and want to use Maxima, go at it.

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Mythbusting Tachyons

There appear to be some misunderstandings concerning superluminal motions or tachyons (here we mean them by generic hypothetical superluminal particles) in physics literature including textbooks. For example, a claim that superluminal motions violate special relativity, that tachyons have an imaginary rest mass, that tachyons would satisfy the usual energy-momentum relation, or that tachyons would violate causality. These purported misunderstandings are mainly due to applying incorrect Lorentz transformation (the usual one we see in textbooks that is actually meant for subluminal motions).

In my recent paper, I introduced the Lorentz transformation for superluminal motions and used it to clarify such misunderstandings. In the final section of the paper, I offered an intriguing possibility that tachyons may not actually be superluminal even if we observe them as superluminal. This assumes a hypothesis that there is another twin brother of our universe which has a different signature than that of our universe. I also wrote about this in the preceding blog article here.

I initially submitted the paper to American Journal of Physics and it was immediately rejected by an associate editor. According to her, the reason for rejection is that I am challenging well-established theory in my paper, so it is not appropriate for AJP. Huh? Anyone who reads the paper would see that I am not challenging the theory of relativity, rather I am embracing the theory of relativity by providing correct interpretations of superluminal motions. I have submitted the paper elsewhere and I hope they are more open-minded. It’s been about three weeks and my paper has not been rejected yet:).

Posted in Special Relativity | Leave a comment

Are Tachyons Really Faster-Than-Light?

I will be more than happy to be corrected if I am wrong, but, as far as I am aware, there is no confirmed FTL (Faster-Than-Light) phenomenon. In the past, there were some reported FTL phenomena with the speed of quasars and neutrinos. It turns out the alleged FTL speed of quasars was due to an optical illusion and FTL neutrino anomaly was caused by a faulty equipment set-up. If an FTL phenomenon exists, it would violate special relativity unless it is a detection of tachyons whose initial speed already exceeds the speed of light. This may sound strange and self-contradictory but even if we detect tachyons, they may actually not FTL particles contrary to our observations. Here, I would like to offer how such a possibility may occur.

Let us start with our universe with the Minkowski metric $ds^2=-dt^2+dx^2+dy^2+dz^2$. For the sake of simplicity, we assume here that $c=1$. The Minkowski plane can be identified with split-complex plane via the map: $(t,x)\mapsto t+xj$, where $j^2=1$. In fact, the identification is an isometry: If $\zeta=t+xj$, then $-t^2+x^2=-\zeta\bar\zeta$. The map $\zeta=t+xj\mapsto j\zeta=x+tj$ gives rise to the reflection of $\zeta$ about the light ray $t=x$.

Applying this reflection on the Minkowski metric results in a different universe with new metric $ds^2=dt^2-dx^2+dy^2+dz^2$. Figure 1 shows the light cone of our universe (in blue) and that of its counterpart (in red).

Figure 1: The Light Cone of Our Universe (in Blue) and That of Its Counterpart Universe (in Red) with z-Coordinate Suppressed

As you can see in Figure 1, spacelike vectors in our universe fall into the timelike region of the other universe. This means that what we observe as a superluminal motion in our universe could be a subluminal motion in the other universe. To see that more clearly, let us consider a rotation (Lorentz boost) in the Minkowski plane of the other universe. The new rotated coordinates $(x’,t’)$ are given in terms of the original coordinates $(x,t)$ by
\begin{align*}
x’&=\cosh\phi x-\sinh\phi t\\
t’&=-\sinh\phi x+\cosh\phi t
\end{align*}
From the second equation, we see that $x’$-axis ($t’=0$) is moving at a constant speed $$v=\frac{t}{x}=\frac{\sinh\phi}{\cosh\phi}=\tanh\phi$$ In their universe, the theory of special relativity must hold as well. This means that $v=\tanh\phi<1$. This motion in the other universe would, however, be observed as a superluminal motion in our universe because in our universe the speed of $x’$-axis is $$v=\frac{x}{t}=\frac{\cosh\phi}{\sinh\phi}=\coth\phi>1$$

There is more to this other universe. I have been considering quantum mechanics based on split-complex numbers instead of complex numbers. In this model of quantum mechanics, antiparticles are described by the reflection of wave functions that describe particles about the light ray $t=x$ in the Minkowski plane. (In conventional quantum mechanics, antiparticles do not show up at non-relativistic level.) These reflected wave functions have negative probabilities which deem unphysical. However, if one assumes the existence of the other universe, their probabilities turn out to be positive in that universe. It would be logical to assume that in the beginning, the same amount of particles and antiparticles were created. But there aren’t as many antiparticles as particles in the universe. This is called Baryon Asymmetry. In light of the quantum mechanics model based on split-complex numbers, here is a possible scenario. The Big Bang created not just one, but two twin universes, one with signature $(-+++)$ which is made mostly of matter and the other with signature $(+-++)$ which is mostly made of antimatter. These two universes are separated by their respective light cones. In other words, the light cone of each universe is its boundary. Unless one travels faster than the speed of light, he cannot cross over to the other universe. Of course, we know that the theory of special relativity prohibits this. And even if he somehow succeeds crossing over to the other side, he is doomed to perish to energy as soon as he crosses over.

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The First Image of a Supermassive Black Hole at the Heart of Milky Way Galaxy

The first image of a supermassive black hole was obtained back in 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope (ETH) Collaboration. The supermassive black hole, called M87*, is located at the center of  a distant galaxy Messier 87. It is about 53 million light-years away from Earth.

Supermassive Black Hole (M87*) at the Center of Messier 87

There was a press release on Thursday 5/12/2022 that the ETH obtained the first image of the supermassive black hole (Sagittarius A*) at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.

Supermassive Black Hole (Sgr A*) at the Center of Milky Way Galaxy

Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* in short) is a bright and compact astronomical radio source at the center of Milky Way galaxy. It has long been suspected that Sgr A* is a supermassive black hole after scientists have determined its mass using stars orbiting around Sgr A*. It is 4 million times heavier than our Sun (the solar mass is about $2\times 10^{30}$ kg). The above image is an overwhelming visual evidence that  Sgr A* is indeed a black hole. A black hole is really black. Its gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape from it. Because of that we cannot see a black hole with our naked eyes. The material (gases) forms an accretion disk just outside of a black hole’s event horizon and it is hot enough that it emits X-rays. By detecting this X-ray emission, we can indirectly see a black hole. The above picture shows a dark central region (event horizon) surrounded by a bright ring.  This is really an amazing scene. The bright ring-like structure is something called a photon sphere. It is light being bent by powerful gravity of the supermassive black hole as predicted by Einstein’s general relativity. Although Sgr A* is much closer to Earth (about 27,000 light-years away from Earth) than M87*,  getting an image of Sgr A* is much more difficult. The gas around both M87* and Sgr A* are orbiting nearly as fast as light. But while the gas around M87* takes days to weeks to complete an orbit,  it takes just minutes for the gas around Sgr A* to complete an orbit. This means the brightness and pattern of the gas around Sgr A* is  changing considerably more rapidly than those of the gas around M87*. The following video clip is quite informative and has an easy to understand account on how the image of the supermassive black hole was obtained by the ETH.

Intriguingly, a galaxy can have more than one supermassive black hole. This is because galaxies undergo collisions and mergers with other galaxies. Back in 2002, two merging supermassive black holes in the galaxy NGC 6240 were discovered from Chandra X-ray data.

Two merging supermassive black holes in NGC 6240.

The following image contains new X-ray data from Chandra (shown in red, orange, and yellow) that has been combined with an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope originally released in 2008.

Two merging supermassive black holes in NGC 6240.

The two black holes are mere 3,000 light years apart from each other and scientists think that the merger began about 30 million years ago and will conclude some tens or hundreds of millions of years in the future.

Posted in Astronomy, Astrophysics, General Relativity | Leave a comment