Prime numbers and physics
Feb. 24th, 2012 02:56 pmI do not recommend this video. It's got too much gosh wow and too little information. Also too much "math is a cool thing that's alien to almost everyone"-- even a little of that is too much.
However, it's really remarkable that the throwing a ball bearing at a crystal sphere produces vibrations with a distribution similar to the distribution of primes. There. You didn't have to listen to five minutes of blather to find that out.
In fact, it was so remarkable that I checked to see whether this is a hoax, but it isn't.
I'm inclined to think that finding the Riemann sequence in traffic patterns is mere data mining, but what could be going on with the physics? And does it have to be a crystal ball and a ball bearing, or will other shapes and materials do the trick?
My tentative theory is that evenly divisible frequencies cancel out, leaving the primes behind. Two smart people have told me this sounds plausible, but I don't know enough to check on whether this theory makes sense.
First link thanks to