edgepedia

Physical world and mathematics

42,772 articles

Cornelis Jacobus Gorter

Cornelis Jacobus Gorter (1907–1980) was a Dutch experimental physicist who first demonstrated paramagnetic relaxation, co-developed the two-fluid model of superconductivity, and narrowly missed discovering nuclear magnetic resonance.

Cornelis Simon Meijer

Cornelis Simon Meijer (1904–1974) was a Dutch mathematician at the University of Groningen who introduced the Meijer G-function in 1936, a Mellin–Barnes integral generalizing hypergeometric functions.

Cornelius Lanczos

Cornelius Lanczos, born Kornél Löwy, was a Hungarian mathematician and physicist, Einstein's assistant in 1928–29, whose 1950 minimized iteration paper became the Lanczos algorithm, a top-ten algorithm of the century.

Cornell Electron Storage Ring

The Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) is a 768-meter electron-positron collider buried beneath Cornell University, which fed the CLEO particle physics experiment from 1979 to 2008.

Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source

The Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, known as CHESS, is a high-energy X-ray synchrotron user facility at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, opened in 1980.

Corner reflector

A corner reflector, also known as a corner cube, is a retroreflector with three perpendicular surfaces that returns any incoming light beam directly back toward its source.

Cornish–Fisher expansion

The Cornish–Fisher expansion is an asymptotic expansion approximating the quantiles of a near-normal distribution from standard normal quantiles, introduced by E. A. Cornish and Ronald A. Fisher in 1937.

Cornu spiral

The Cornu spiral, also called the Euler spiral or clothoid, is a plane curve plotted from the Fresnel integrals that serves as a graphical aid for evaluating Fresnel diffraction patterns.

Corona

The corona is the outermost, million-degree layer of a star's atmosphere; the Sun's corona is visible during total solar eclipses and feeds the solar wind.

Corona Australis

Corona Australis, also known as Corona Austrina, is a small, faint southern constellation, one of the ancient forty-eight, best known for its nearby star-forming molecular cloud.

Corona Australis Cloud

The Corona Australis Cloud is a nearby molecular cloud and star-forming region in the southern constellation Corona Australis, about 430 light-years away and one of the closest to the solar system.

Corona Borealis

Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown (CrB), is a small northern constellation between Boötes and Hercules whose stars form a crown-like arc, first cataloged by Ptolemy.

Corona discharge

A corona discharge, or corona effect, is a luminous glow around a sharp conductor tip caused by gas ionization below breakdown, used in precipitators and ozone generation.

Coronagraphic imaging

Coronagraphic imaging is an astronomical technique that suppresses a star's light with a coronagraph so much fainter nearby objects, such as exoplanets and debris disks, can be imaged directly.

Coronagraphy

Coronagraphy is an optical technique that blocks a bright object's light so faint material near it, such as the Sun's corona or exoplanets, can be imaged; Bernard Lyot built the first coronagraph in 1931.

Coronal gas

Coronal gas, also called the hot ionized medium (HIM), is the hottest phase of the interstellar medium: tenuous, fully ionized gas at about 10^6 K, heated by supernova explosions.

Coronal heating problem

The coronal heating problem is the unsolved question of why the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, reaches 1–2 million kelvin while the surface below is only about 6000 K.

Coronal hole

A coronal hole is a dark, cooler, less dense region of the Sun's corona with open magnetic field lines, the source of the fast solar wind.

Coronal loop

A coronal loop is an arch-shaped structure of hot plasma in the Sun's corona following closed magnetic field lines, best seen in X-ray and ultraviolet telescopes.

Coronal mass ejection

A coronal mass ejection (CME), also called a coronal transient, is a large eruption of magnetized plasma from the Sun's corona that drives the strongest geomagnetic storms at Earth.

Coronal rain

Coronal rain is cool, dense plasma condensing in the Sun's corona that falls along magnetic loops, formed by thermal instability and used to probe coronal heating.

Coronal seismology

Coronal seismology is a technique in solar physics that determines coronal properties such as magnetic field strength and density by comparing observed MHD waves with theoretical models.

Coronene

Coronene, also known as superbenzene, is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (C₂₄H₁₂) with seven peri-fused benzene rings, used as a laboratory model for graphene and interstellar PAHs.

Coropuna

Coropuna (Nevado Coropuna), Peru's highest volcano at 6,377 m in the Cordillera Ampato near Arequipa, is an ice-capped complex of stratovolcano cones and domes with the largest tropical icefield, active seismicity, and Inca sacred status.

Corpuscular theory of light

The corpuscular theory of light is the theory, most fully developed by Isaac Newton in his Opticks of 1704, that light consists of tiny particles emitted by a source.

Corrado Gini

Corrado Gini (1884–1965) was an Italian statistician, demographer, and sociologist who introduced the Gini coefficient, founded the journal Metron, and led Italy's Central Institute of Statistics.

Corrado Segre

Corrado Segre (1863–1924) was an Italian mathematician who, from the chair of higher geometry at the University of Turin, built and led the Italian school of algebraic geometry.

Corrective and preventive action

Corrective and preventive action (CAPA) is a quality management process that finds and fixes product and quality problems and prevents recurrence, required under FDA and ISO rules.

Correlation

Correlation, also called statistical association, is any statistical relationship between two random variables, most commonly Pearson's coefficient, introduced by Francis Galton in 1888 and formulated by Karl Pearson in 1895.

Correlation clustering

Correlation clustering is a graph clustering method that partitions vertices using pairwise similarity labels, introduced by Bansal, Blum, and Chawla in 2004 and used in machine learning.