Greatest Era in Human History – George Orwell vs. Michio Kaku
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May 17, 2018
Rating: 5
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May 17, 2018
Rating: 5
Watch Stephen Hawking Casually Explain What Existed Before The Big Bang
Around 13.7 billion years ago, our universe sprang into existence, but what was around before the Big Bang?
In a new episode of Star Talk, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking sat down with host Neil deGrasse Tyson to talk about what exactly pre- dated the beginning of our universe.
Hawking's answer put simply? Nothing.
But just because an answer can be summed up in one word, does not mean it's uncomplicated. Lucky for us, Hawking is one of the best science communicators in the world.
In his interview with Tyson, Hawking used the shape of the Earth as an analogy for the curved shape of the space-time continuum.
"According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, space and time come together for a space-time continuum…which is not flat but curved by the matter and energy in it," said Hawking.
To explain further, Hawking used the Euclidean approach to quantum gravity. In the Euclidean approach, ordinary real time is replaced by imaginary time, which behaves like a fourth dimension.
"In the Euclidean approach, the history of the universe in imaginary time is a four-dimensional curved surface like the surface of the Earth, but with two more dimensions," said Hawking.
So wait - six dimensions in total? What exactly does that mean?
Hawking said he believes the universe has no boundaries. In other words, the Euclidean space-time continuum is a closed surface without end, kind of like the surface of the Earth.
"One can regard ordinary and real time as beginning at the South Pole, which is a smooth point of space-time where the normal laws of physics hold," said Hawking.
"There is nothing south of the South Pole, so there was nothing around before the Big Bang."
Just like there is nothing south of a southernmost point, time can't exist before the Big Bang. Instead, time and space expand and spread outward from this singular point in time, like the degrees of latitude on planet Earth.
Mind = blown.
Via ScienceAlert.
Watch Stephen Hawking Casually Explain What Existed Before The Big Bang
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March 14, 2018
Rating: 5
Reviewed by 0x000216
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March 14, 2018
Rating: 5
Renowned Scientist Stephen Hawking Dies At Age 76
One of the greatest minds of our time, physicist and author Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76, according to news reports from the United Kingdom. "We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today," Hawking's family said in a statement released on Wednesday morning.
"He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years. His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humour inspired people across the world.
"He once said: 'It would not be much of a universe if it wasn't home to the people you love.' We will miss him for ever."
Hawking, whose brilliant career in theoretical physics and cosmology spanned six decades, remained an active science communicator until his last days. Just earlier this month he mused about existence before the Big Bang with Neil deGrasse Tyson on his popular Star Talk show.
In 1963, at the age of 21 he was diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset motor neurone disease or ALS, and doctors gave him the grim prognosis of just a few more years of life. Instead, Hawking lived another 55 years, making stellar contributions to science for more than half a century.
As a graduate student of cosmology at the University of Cambridge, Hawking wrote his PhD thesis on the "properties of an expanding Universe", mathematically demonstrating that the Big Bang theory was physically possible.
This was the very first step towards the singularity theorems he developed with mathematician Sir Roger Penrose starting in 1970, using the mathematics of black holes to prove that a universe which is ruled by the general theory of relativity must have begun as a singularity.
In the 1970s, Hawking turned his brilliant mind to bringing quantum mechanics into the mix, proposing that radiation can actually escape from a black hole thanks to laws from the quantum realm.
This suggestion stirred up a massive debate in cosmology, as it didn't gel with our understanding of how time moves in our Universe. And, true to form, Hawking never gave up on the problem himself, publishing a new paper on his black hole paradox just two years ago.
But his most famous work remains the popular cosmology book A Brief History of Time, first published in 1988 with an introduction by Carl Sagan.
Tributes to the professor have also been streaming in on social media:
Genius is so fine and rare. Goodbye Professor Hawking. You inspired and taught us all. pic.twitter.com/9Drdnv2eEe— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) March 14, 2018
“It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love” - Dr. Stephen Hawking 😢😢😢 pic.twitter.com/TK53EqP1Xp— April (@April_54f) March 14, 2018
“It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.” RIP Stephen Hawking pic.twitter.com/5f49ucp2Of— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) March 14, 2018
“One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away”— Julia Wilde (@Julia_SCI) March 14, 2018
-Stephen Hawking
Sad to hear about the passing of one of our greatest minds, #StephenHawking. He will be missed. pic.twitter.com/WDHKU0ulc8— Nick Walden Poublon (@NWPinPDX) March 14, 2018
Goodbye, Professor Hawking. The world will miss you.
Renowned Scientist Stephen Hawking Dies At Age 76
![Renowned Scientist Stephen Hawking Dies At Age 76]()
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March 13, 2018
Rating: 5
First Ever 'Wormhole' Created And It Could Make Things INVISIBLE
SCIENTISTS are claiming to have created the first-ever "wormhole" - boosting hopes a portal that can transport matter light years across space could one day become reality. A wormhole is a theoretical space portal first identified by Albert Einstein that "can transfer matter through to another dimension." (Image Caption: The wormhole is no longer just science fiction)
It is currently not even proven they actually exist, but a group of physicists have now claimed to have crafted a 'wormhole' that invisibly moves a magnetic field so it "appears to arrive out of nowhere".
Jordi Prat-Camps, a doctoral candidate in physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain and co-author of a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports, said: "This device can transmit the magnetic field from one point in space to another point, through a path that is magnetically invisible. From a magnetic point of view, this device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was transferred through an extra special dimension."
In 1935, Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen discovered that the German-born physicist's famous theory of relativity "allowed for the existence of bridges that could link two different points in space-time."
The Einstein-Rosen bridges, or wormholes, could theoretically allow something to travel instantly between great distances. Although the new magnetic wormhole is not quite a space-time wormhole, as suggested by Einstein's theory, it is a realization of a futuristic "invisibility cloak" first suggested as being possible in the journal Physical Review Letters in 2007. The type of magnetic wormhole suggested in 2007 would hide electromagnetic waves from view from the outside.
At the time it was concluded that to make it work would require materials that were extremely impractical to work with. However, new research has found that materials necessary to make a magnetic wormhole already exist and are easy to obtain. The team found superconductors, which can carry high current levels (charged particles), release magnetic field lines from within, thereby distorting them. From a magnetic point of view, this device acts like a wormhole, as if the magnetic field was transferred through an extra special dimension.
Jordi Prat-Camps, a doctoral candidate in physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. This enabled a magnetic field to act differently to its surrounding environment - and thereby the first step in hiding the magnetic field's usual disturbance.
The scientists made an object of three layers - two concentric spheres and an interior spiral-cylinder - which transmitted a magnetic field from one end to the other when placed in a liquid-nitrogen bath, as high-temperature superconductors require the low temperatures of the liquid chemical to work.
The two outer layers then concealed the magnetic field's existence, making it "invisible" while in transit. Normally, the presence of the magnetic field should be detectable from all points around it.
Artist impression showing the magnetic wormhole created
Mr Prat-Camps said: "From a magnetic point of view, you have the magnetic field from the magnet disappearing at one end of the wormhole and appearing again at the other end of the wormhole."
The discovery could aid MRI scanning.
Mr Prat-Camps said if a device could funnel a magnetic field from one spot to the other, it would be possible to take pictures of the body with the strong magnet placed far away, freeing people from the claustrophobic environment of an MRI machine.
He said: "If you want to apply this to medical techniques or medical equipment, for sure you will be interested in directing toward any given direction. A spherical shape is not the most practical geometry."
First Ever 'Wormhole' Created And It Could Make Things INVISIBLE
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March 12, 2018
Rating: 5
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March 12, 2018
Rating: 5
World's First 100% Electric Cargo Ship Has Been Launched........ To Haul Coal
China has launched the first all-electric cargo ship. According to China Daily, the 230 foot long vessel is equipped with a 2,400 kWh lithium-ion battery that stores enough electrical energy to transport 2200 tons of cargo a distance of 50 miles on a single charge at a top speed of about 8 miles per hour.
Time to recharge the battery is given as 2 hours, which is approximately the time needed to unload the ship at its destination.
“As the ship is fully electric powered, it poses no threats to the environment. The technology will soon be likely … used in passenger or engineering ships,” said Huang Jialin, chairman and general manager of Hangzhou Modern Ship Design & Research Co, which designed the electric cargo vessel. The battery for the ship is comprised of 1,000 individual lithium-ion packs. Adding enough power to carry more cargo is simply a matter of adding more battery packs.
CSSC stands for China State Shipbuilding Corporation. The new ship has two primary benefits. First, it will emit no carbon emissions while underway. Cargo vessels tend to be some of the biggest carbon pollution sources in the entire transportation sector. Second, it will lower the cost of transportation for bulk cargoes because the price of electricity is lower than the price of diesel fuel
Here’s the bad news: The all-electric cargo ship will be used primarily to transport coal to generating stations along the Pearl River.
So, imagine this — the world now has a ship that can claim to be zero emissions even though it is powered by electricity generated by burning coal, one of the dirtiest of fossil fuels in terms of carbon emissions, and is used to transport coal more cheaply.
“This kind of ship takes into consideration the harmony between humans and nature and can protect water quality and marine life, and should be copied by other ships sailing on local rivers,” says Chinese environmentalist Wang Yongchen. That much is correct. The same technology that makes the new electric collier possible can also be used to power ferries, container ships, or other vessels used for short haul coastal shipping.
The Chinese should be applauded for advancing the idea of electric propulsion for ships, but using clean power to lower the cost of shipping coal to electric generating plants illustrates how far the world has to go before a zero-emissions world becomes a realistic possibility.
World's First 100% Electric Cargo Ship Has Been Launched........ To
Haul Coal
![World's First 100% Electric Cargo Ship Has Been Launched........ To
Haul Coal]()
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March 10, 2018
Rating: 5
Gravity Could Be Produced by Bizarre Quantum 'Flashes'
Since the mid-twentieth century, two theories of physics have offered powerful yet incompatible models of the physical universe. General relativity brings space and time together into the (then) portmanteau space-time, the curvature of which is gravity. It works really well on large scales, such as interplanetary or interstellar space.
But zoom into the subatomic, and things get weird. The mere act of observing interactions changes the behavior of what is (presumably) totally independent of observation. In those situations, we need quantum theory to help us make sense of it all.
Though scientists have made some remarkable attempts to bring these estranged theories together, viz., string theory, the math behind the theories remains incompatible.
However, new research from Antoine Tilloy of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, suggests that gravity might be an attribute of random fluctuations on the quantum level, which would supplant gravity as the more fundamental theory and put us on the path to a unified theory of the physical universe.
In quantum theory, a particle's state is described by its wave function. This function allows theorists to predict the probability that a particle will be in this or that place.
However, before the act of verification is made via measurement, no one knows for sure where the particle will be, or if it even exists. In scientific terms, the act of observation "collapses" the wave function.
Here's the thing about quantum mechanics: it doesn't define what a measurement is. Who - or what - is an observer? A conscious human?
Bracketing all explanations to observed phenomena, we're stuck with paradoxes like Schrödinger's cat, which invites us to consider the equal possibilities that a previously boxed cat is, as far as we know, simultaneously dead and alive in the box, and will remain as such until we lift the lid.
One attempt to solve the paradox is the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber (GRW) model from the late eighties. It incorporates random "flashes" that can cause the wave functions in quantum systems to spontaneously collapse.
This purports to leave the outcome unbesmirched by meddling human observation.
Tilloy meddled with this model to extend quantum theory to encompass gravity. When a flash collapses a wave function, and the particle reaches its final position, a gravitational field pops into existence at that precise moment in space-time.
On a large enough scale, quantum systems have many particles going through innumerable flashes.
If gravity comes from quantum processes, but nevertheless behaves in a classical (or Newtonian) way, what we have is a "semiclassical" theory.
However, Klaus Hornberger of the University of Duisberg-Essen in Germany cautions the scientific world that other problems must be tackled before Tilloy's semiclassical solution can warrant serious consideration as a unifying theory of fundamental forces underlying all modern physical laws.
It fits Newton's theory of gravity, but Tilloy's yet to work out the math to show that the quantum theory also describes gravity under Einstein's theory of general relativity.
With the greatest explanatory power, physics is one of the most exciting scientific disciplines. But the key to unified theories in physics is patience.
As with Schrödinger's cat, the will-to-know alone cannot fill in the gaps of what we simply don't yet know.
This article was originally published by Futurism. Read the original article.
Gravity Could Be Produced by Bizarre Quantum 'Flashes'
![Gravity Could Be Produced by Bizarre Quantum 'Flashes']()
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March 09, 2018
Rating: 5
Questions No One Knows Answers To!
We all have questions and some question are just, answer-less. Also some answer doesn’t need any kind of questions. Like what would it feel-like to be a dog or a fish? Was the Big Band just an accident? Is there a God? Is there a grand plan for the whole universe? If you have any of these questions watch the video explained by TED Curator Chris Anderson explore two major questions.
Questions No One Knows Answers To!
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March 08, 2018
Rating: 5
Reviewed by 0x000216
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March 08, 2018
Rating: 5
Why Is Everything In The Universe Is Continuously Spinning?
Everything in the universe is continuously spinning. Nucleus, Electrons, Planets, Stars, Galaxies everything appears to be in an endless motion. Some spin at less velocities and some at velocities close to the speed of light. However why is everything spinning? Why aren't we wandering in some particular direction? In this Boundless universe is our destiny is to just spin? The Video below explains it all!
Why Is Everything In The Universe Is Continuously Spinning?
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March 08, 2018
Rating: 5
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March 08, 2018
Rating: 5
Harvard Scientists Made a Material That Creates Completely New States of Light
Harvard researchers have succeeded in creating a new material that causes light to act in entirely new ways. This discovery can help researchers learn more about the properties of light, but also may have some practical applications.
Light is ubiquitous and vital, but also incredibly strange – and it’s possible we’ll never exhaust the opportunities to learn more about it.
Case in point: researchers at Harvard have developed a material that can generate and maintain completely new and more complex states of light.
The tool uses polarisation to generate structures such as swirling vortices, spirals, and corkscrews that not only help explore light’s properties, but also have potential practical applications, such as high-powered imaging.
Discoveries about light are still being made. It was only in 2015 that scientists took the first-ever photograph of light behaving as both a particle and a wave.
And it hasn’t even been that long – just 1992, 25 years ago – since light was discovered to have orbital angular momentum.
This is angular momentum based on the shape of its wavefront, rather than its orientation. The new tool – a type of metasurface – uses this along with second type of angular momentum called spin angular momentum (also known as circular polarisation).
“Think about orbital angular momentum and circular polarisation like the motion of a planet,” writes Harvard’s Leah Burrows in a statement.
“Circular polarisation is the direction in which a planet rotates on its axis while orbital momentum describes how the planet orbits the sun.”
It’s previously been established that a single beam of light can exhibit both types of angular momentum, and that connecting them and using polarisation to control the OAM can result in beams with new and complex shapes, such as the aforementioned corkscrew.
According to the researchers, until now there was a significant limit on this. Only certain polarisations could connect to certain OAMs.
This is where the new tool comes in – it allows any polarisation to be converted to any OAM, which means it can create spirals and corkscrews and vortices of any size.
“This is a completely new optical component,” said co-first researcher Antonio Ambrosio, Principal Scientist at Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems.
“Some metasurfaces are iterations or more efficient, more compact versions of existing optical devices but, this arbitrary spin-to-orbital conversion cannot be done with any other optical device.
“There is nothing in nature as well that can do this and produce these states of light.”
(Capasso Lab/Harvard SEAS)
Orbital angular momentum already has several proposed uses, such as high-speed data transfer, and encoded communications. Researchers have even figured out how to transmit the OAM of individual photons using entanglement.
Other previously proposed applications include the manipulation of microscopic objects, and imaging systems.
This is where Harvard’s device could prove practical. The metasurface could be used to shape optical tweezers to manipulate objects as small as atoms and molecules. Changing the polarisation could change the direction of the applied force.
It could also be used for high-powered imaging, because the black hole down the centre of the vortex can be used to take images of features smaller than the diffraction limit, the researchers said.
“There is interest in these beams in quantum optics and quantum information,” explained co-first researcher Noah Rubin.
“On the more applied side, these beams could find application in free-space optical communication, especially in scattering environments where this is usually difficult.
“Moreover, it has been recently shown that similar elements can be incorporated into lasers, directly producing these novel states of light. This may lead to unforeseen applications.”
Harvard has legally protected all IP related to the project and is currently seeking commercialisation opportunities. The research itself has been published in the journal Science.
Via Futurism.
Harvard Scientists Made a Material That Creates Completely New States
of Light
![Harvard Scientists Made a Material That Creates Completely New States
of Light]()
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March 08, 2018
Rating: 5
Physicists Say Consciousness Should Be Considered A State Of Matter
Scientists don’t really talk much about consciousness. You cannot see it or touch it. Even though several researcher tried it, you can’t quantify it. And if you can’t measure, it simply means you’re going to have a tough time explaining it. But all we know is that it exists. And not just exists but it is the most fundamental aspects of what actually makes us human. In order to fill some holes in our understanding of universe and matter itself, researchers introduced dark matter and energy and now it’s possible to think of consciousness as a new state of matter.This particular theory was initially put forward in 2014 by cosmologist and theoretical physicist Max Tegmark from MIT, who suggested that there’s a unique state of matter, in which atoms are organized to process information and give increase to subjectivity, and eventually, consciousness. They name this proposed state of matter as Perceptronium.
As Tegmark explains in his pre-print paper:
Generations of physicists and chemists have studied what happens when you group together vast numbers of atoms, finding that their collective behaviour depends on the pattern in which they are arranged: the key difference between a solid, a liquid, and a gas lies not in the types of atoms, but in their arrangement. In this paper, I conjecture that consciousness can be understood as yet another state of matter. Just as there are many types of liquids, there are many types of consciousness. However, this should not preclude us from identifying, quantifying, modelling, and ultimately understanding the characteristic properties that all liquid forms of matter (or all conscious forms of matter) share.
Here, Tegmark isn’t signifying that there are physical masses of perceptronium residing somewhere in your brain and flowing through your veins to inform a sense of self-awareness. He is trying to say that consciousness can be understood as a mathematical arrangement - the outcome of a specific set of mathematical conditions.
Just as there are certain conditions under which various states of matter - such as steam, water, and ice - can arise, so too can various forms of consciousness, he argues.
Figuring out what it takes to produce these various states of consciousness according to observable and measurable conditions could help us get a grip on what it actually is, and what that means for a human, a monkey, a flea, or a supercomputer.
The idea was inspired by the work of neuroscientist Giulio Tononi from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who proposed in 2008 that if you wanted to prove that something had consciousness, you had to demonstrate two specific traits.
According to his integrated information theory (IIT), the first of these traits is that a conscious being must be capable of storing, processing, and recalling large amounts of information.
"And second," explains the arXiv.org blog, "this information must be integrated in a unified whole, so that it is impossible to divide into independent parts."
This means that consciousness has to be taken as a whole, and cannot be broken down into separate components. A conscious being or system has to not only be able to store and process information, but it must do so in a way that forms a complete, indivisible whole, Tononi argued.
If it occurred to you that a supercomputer could potentially have these traits, that’s sort of what Tononi was getting at.
As George Johnson writes for The New York Times, Tononi’s hypothesis predicted - with a whole lot of maths - that "devices as simple as a thermostat or a photoelectric diode might have glimmers of consciousness - a subjective self".
In Tononi’s calculations, those "glimmers of consciousness" do not necessarily equal a conscious system, and he even came up with a unit, called phi or Φ, which he said could be used to measure how conscious a particular entity is.
Six years later, Tegmark proposed that there are two types of matter that could be considered according to the integrated information theory.
The first is 'computronium', which meets the requirements of the first trait of being able to store, process, and recall large amounts of information. And the second is 'perceptronium', which does all of the above, but in a way that forms the indivisible whole Tononi described.
In his 2014 paper, Tegmark explores what he identifies as the five basic principles that could be used to distinguish conscious matter from other physical systems such as solids, liquids, and gases - "the information, integration, independence, dynamics, and utility principles".
He then spends 30 pages or so trying to explain how his new way of thinking about consciousness could explain the unique human perspective on the Universe.
As the arXiv.org blog explains, "When we look at a glass of iced water, we perceive the liquid and the solid ice cubes as independent things even though they are intimately linked as part of the same system. How does this happen? Out of all possible outcomes, why do we perceive this solution?"
It's an incomplete thought, because Tegmark doesn't have a solution. And as you might have guessed, it's not something that his peers have been eager to take up and run with. But you can read his thoughts as they stand in his paper published in the journal Chaos, Solitons & Fractals.
That's the problem with something like consciousness - if you can't measure your attempts to measure it, how can you be sure you've measured it at all?
¯_(ツ)_/¯
More recently, scientists have attempted to explain how human consciousness could be transferred into an artificial body - seriously, there's a start-up that wants to do this - and one group of Swiss physicists have suggested consciousness occurs in 'time slices' that are hundreds of milliseconds apart.
As Matthew Davidson, who studies the neuroscience of consciousness at Monash University in Australia, explains over at The Conversation, we still don't know much about what consciousness actually is, but it's looking more and more likely that it's something we need to consider outside the realm of humans.
"If consciousness is indeed an emergent feature of a highly integrated network, as IIT suggests, then probably all complex systems - certainly all creatures with brains - have some minimal form of consciousness," he says."By extension, if consciousness is defined by the amount of integrated information in a system, then we may also need to move away from any form of human exceptionalism that says consciousness is exclusive to us."
Here's Tegmark's TED talk on consciousness as a mathematical pattern:
Physicists Say Consciousness Should Be Considered A State Of Matter
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March 07, 2018
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March 07, 2018
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Scientists Now Able to Measure Electrons on the Attosecond Scale
Using a new laser technology, physicists have been able to produce “attosecond” light pulses with high-intensity and high-energy photons.
This detection is the first time scientists have observed such interactions of photons in an attosecond pulse.
The Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (LAP) is a joint research institution between the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU Munich).
Like other research centers focusing their research on the study of the microscopic motions of particles, LAP aims to acquire the capability to observe and control light-matter interactions.
LAP scientists work to develop new optical tools, particularly lasers, that can emit very short light pulses in the range of attoseconds.
What’s an Attosecond?
In the atomic world, time measurements such as seconds are just too long of a period to use as a measurement. The movement of electrons around the nucleus of an atom is so fast that it makes a second seem like a year.
The time associated with the movement of electrons is of the order of the attosecond, 10-18 seconds, or one billionth of a billionth of a second.
To put that into perspective, the distance between one second and an attosecond is the same as one second is to 31 billion years.
To us, this may seem like a negligible measurement of time. In the atomic world, however, it’s long enough for many phenomena to occur.
Although light is the fastest entity in the universe, it still takes time to cross any distance, even at the microscopic level.
Even at the speed of light, it takes a photon of light emitted by the Sun about 8 minutes to reach Earth. On the atomic scale, it would cross the distance of two hydrogen atoms linked together in one attosecond.
Attosecond Pulse Technology Gets a Boost
To investigate microscopic phenomena as fleeting as the motion of electrons, it is necessary to use ultra-short pulses of light at scales of time as short as the attosecond.
Since the early 2000s, research into attosecond science has been centered on producing ultra-bright and ultra-short light pulses to observe the motion of electrons.
Now, LAP scientists, using a new laser technology, have succeeded in producing attosecond light bursts that are both ultra-intense and ultra-short.
For the first time, physicists were able to observe the interaction of attosecond pulses with several high intensity and high energy electrons from an inner atomic shell.
“Experiments in which it is possible to have inner shell electrons interacting with two XUV attosecond pulses are often referred to as the Holy Grail of attosecond physics.” Said Dr. Boris Bergues, lead author of the study. “With two XUV pulses, we would be able to ‘film’ the electron motion in the inner atomic shells without perturbing their dynamics.”
With this breakthrough from LAP, scientists will now have a laser technique that enables them to study the behavior and dynamics of electrons in their orbital shells in real-time, something that was inaccessible until now.
Light is made thanks to the motion of electrons, which is also behind the nervous flows and ion movement that controls the electrical activity in the body.
Understanding how electrons move deep inside the atom could help not only in developing more efficient electronics but also advance the treatment of some diseases.
Scientists Now Able to Measure Electrons on the Attosecond Scale
![Scientists Now Able to Measure Electrons on the Attosecond Scale]()
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March 06, 2018
Rating: 5
Metasurface That Could Turn Light Upside Down Created by Researchers
Typically, optical waves exhibit circular wavefronts when they propagate away from a source point. In general, they act in the same manner as when ripples are formed when you drop an object into water.
However, there are specific structures, referred to as metasurfaces, that could turn light upside down as it propagates along them.
Scientists call these unusual wavefronts hyperbolic surface polaritons.
In a studypublished in the journal Science, the CIC nanoGUNE researchers from Spain said that their scientific achievement could have practical application in studies aimed at controlling and monitoring lights.
“Metasurfaces with strongly anisotropic optical properties can support deep subwavelength-scale confined electromagnetic waves (polaritons), which promise opportunities for controlling light in photonic and optoelectronic applications,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
The metasurface created by the Spanish researchers is based on 2D boron nitride (BN). They firmly believe that this new type of surface could be used to develop miniature chemical sensors or may be applied in managing heat for nanoscale optoelectronic devices.
Illustration of waves propagating along a standard surface (Left) and a metasurface (Right) | CIC nanoGUNE via Phys.org | Phys.org
For years, scientists had theoretically predicted that a metasurface could turn light upside down when it propagates along it.
“On such surfaces, called hyperbolic metasurfaces, the waves emitted from a point source propagate only in certain directions, and with open (concave) wavefronts,” Javier Alfaro, a Ph.D. student at nanoGune and co-author of the paper, was quoted as saying.
According to Alfaro, the hyperbolic surface polaritons have wavelengths that are much “smaller than that of light in free space or standard waveguides,” and they only propagate in specific directions.
However, creating a metasurface where the surface polaritons could propagate is no easy feat as it requires extremely precise structuring on the nanometer scale.
To accomplish this, Alfaro and his colleagues used a graphene-like 2D material called boron nitride. Apparently, boron nitride can manipulate infrared light on a microscopic scale.
“We developed a mid-infrared hyperbolic metasurface by nanostructuring a thin layer of hexagonal boron nitride that supports deep subwavelength-scale phonon polaritons that propagate with in-plane hyperbolic dispersion,” Alfaro explained in their study.
The researchers also reportedly used electron beam lithography and etching of thin flakes of high-quality boron nitride from Kansas State University to create the metasurface.
“After several optimization steps, we achieved the required precision and obtained grating structures with gap sizes as small as 25 nm,” Irene Dolado, another Ph.D. student at nanoGUNE, explained.
“The same fabrication methods can also be applied to other materials, which could pave the way to realize artificial metasurface structures with custom-made optical properties,” Saül Vélez, a former postdoctoral researcher at nanoGUNE, added.
After fabricating the metasurface, the researchers used a “state-of-the-art infrared nanoimaging technique” to see how the light waves would propagate along the material.
They placed an infrared gold nanorod on the metasurface. The nanorod acted like a stone dropped into water and concentrated incident infrared light into a tiny spot.
This, in turn, launched the waves that propagate along the metasurface. Using a scattering-type scanning near-field microscope or s-SNOM, the researchers then imaged the wavefronts.
“It was amazing to see the images. They indeed showed the concave curvature of the wavefronts that were propagating away from the gold nanorod, exactly as predicted by theory,” Rainer Hillenbrand, lead researcher of the study, said.
The study suggests that in the future, nanostructured 2D materials could become unique platforms for hyperbolic metasurface devices and circuits.
Furthermore, it demonstrates how near-field microscopy could be used to reveal rare optical phenomena in “anisotropic materials and for verifying new metasurface design principles.”
Metasurface That Could Turn Light Upside Down Created by Researchers
![Metasurface That Could Turn Light Upside Down Created by Researchers]()
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March 06, 2018
Rating: 5
Quantum Theory Bends The Limits of Physics, Showing Two-Way Signaling May Be Possible
Quantum physics just beat classical physics again.
A single quantum particle can send a two-way signal, scientists have discovered - something that's impossible in classical physics. That means a particle can essentially send messages to itself thanks to the whacky state of uncertainty known as superposition.
Superposition states that one particle can occupy two positions at once, and that's how the two-way communication happens.
A single photon, or particle of light, can be used to get a message to two people in the same time it would normally take the signal to get to just one.
Further down the line, not only could quantum communication prove to be much more secure than the systems we have today, it could also be significantly faster, according to the researchers behind the new study.
"If we want to transmit messages between different locations, it seems obvious that whatever object stores and carries this information, has to appear at all of these locations," says one of the team, Flavio Del Santo from the University of Vienna in Austria.
"However, if we put the physical carrier into a quantum superposition of those locations, it has an amazing power to collect, store, and carry the information from distinct locations simultaneously."
To put it another way, it's like being able to visit and pass on a message to two of your friends at once, say the researchers, rather than visiting one friend and then the other.
Del Santo and his colleague Borivoje Dakić from the Austrian Academy of Sciences have published a paper based on their theoretical calculations, and have since followed it up with an experiment that shows the idea in action.
To understand how it works though, a little dip into the complex world of quantum mechanics is required.
(Del Santo et al)
"Consider the simplest scenario, where two players, Alice and Bob, want to exchange a simple bit of information, i.e. either 0 or 1," Dakić explained to Lisa Zyga at Phys.org.
"They encode their respective bits or messages at the same time, directly into the superposition state of a quantum particle. Once the information is encoded, the partners send their parts of quantum particle towards each other."
What's then needed is some kind of smart device and mechanism between our two players, which can route the parts of the particle depending on its contents.
"For example, if the particle ends up with Alice, she would know that Bob's bit was just opposite from her bit, and vice versa," says Dakić.
Alice and Bob have therefore sent and received a message in the same time as it would take a message to pass from one to the other under a classical physics system.
(Lorenzo Nocchi)
To get some experimental evidence for their idea, Del Santo and Dakić set up a single photon in a state of superposition, with mirrors and other optical devices between two stations representing Alice and Bob.
Having encoded the photon with a 0 or 1 at each station, it was then sent to the opposite station – as the photon interacted with itself along the way, either amplifying or dampening its signal, it determined which station received the photon.
A write-up of that experiment has yet to be peer-reviewed but is available to read on the pre-print server arXiv.org. It's another example of the way quantum mechanics can change the way we think about the Universe around us.
"Sometimes you overlook a cool idea, and then it's just literally right in front of your nose," University of Vienna physicist Philip Walther, who was involved in the follow-up experiment, told Emily Conover at Science News.
The theoretical part of the research has already been published in Physical Review Letters.
Quantum Theory Bends The Limits of Physics, Showing Two-Way Signaling
May Be Possible
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May Be Possible]()
Reviewed by 0x000216
on
March 03, 2018
Rating: 5
There is Life After Death According to Quantum Physics
“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me.” Wrote Einstein in a condolence letter upon the death of his close friend, Michele Besso, in 1955. “That signifies nothing. For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
Einstein died merely a month after he wrote the letter and, apparently, he was right, as new scientific theories suggest that death, just like life, is but an illusion.
Quantum physics laws tells us that “life” is not made of matter but of vibrations that escape time and space.
Biocentrism, the Theory of Everything (?)
What happens when we die? Where does the human conscience come from? Does the brain perceive or create (then perceive) what we call reality? If consciousness doesn’t originate from the brain, then the presence of physical envelopes isn’t crucial for it to exist.
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.” Said Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning physicist, “We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Biocentrism builds on that and goes on to suggest that consciousness creates the universe or reality, that time and space are mere illusions, manifestations in our minds, and that reality is determined by the observer.
Biocentrism and Relativity predict the same phenomena, but biocentrism, according to its fans, is superior because it does not need to imagine an extra dimension or new mathematics to be formulated.
Biocentrism claims that life is immortal and that it’s at the center of existence, reality, and the cosmos. By adding life and consciousness to the equation, biocentrism is believed by its adepts to be the theory of everything.
Life & Death According to Robert Lanza
Robert Lanza is a highly qualified scientist and a priori a very serious person. He’s specialized in stem cells, cloning, and regenerative medicine research. Lanza has a distinguished career with articles devoted to him in prestigious publications.
In 2014, he made the Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2015, Prospect Magazine selected him as one of the “World’s Thinkers 2015”.
In 2009, Lanza published his book “BIOCENTRISM: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe” in which he places biology above other sciences and calls for a switch from physics to biology to understand “everything”.
Dr. Lanza says that he thinks he is succeeding in the unification that Einstein would have failed to achieve, claiming that Einstein only considered reality from the physical side, without giving much thought to biology.
Lanza claims that quantum physics has proved the existence of life after death, that energy is immortal, and so is life.
For Lanza, we believe in death because we have been taught that we are dying, however, biocentrism says the universe exists only because the individual is aware of it.
Life and biology create this reality, and the universe itself does not create life. The concepts of time and space, according to Lanza, are simply tools of our imagination.
Last year, Lanza, along with astronomer Bob Berman, revisited his controversial theory in a new book, Beyond Biocentrism.
There is Life After Death According to Quantum Physics
Reviewed by 0x000216
on
March 03, 2018
Rating: 5
Reviewed by 0x000216
on
March 03, 2018
Rating: 5
Yes, The Multiverse Is Real, But It Won’t Fix Physics
“We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.” Niels Bohr spoke these words to Wolfgang Pauli about the latter’s theory of elementary particles, but it could just as easily apply to many of today’s most controversial modern physics ideas.
One that’s gotten a lot of attention recently is that of a Multiverse. In short, it’s the idea that our Universe, and all that’s contained within it, is just one small region of a larger existence that includes many similar, and possibly many different, Universes like our own. On the one hand, if our current theories of physics are true, the Multiverse absolutely must exist. But on the other hand, as Sabine Hossenfelder rightly points out, it’s unlikely to teach us anything useful.
The observable Universe might be 46 billion light years in all directions from our point of view, but there’s certainly more, unobservable Universe, perhaps even an infinite amount, just like ours beyond that. Image credit: Frédéric MICHEL and Andrew Z. Colvin, annotated by E. Siegel.
Why must the Multiverse exist? Quite simply: there must be more Universe than the part that is observable to us. If you look just at the portion of the Universe we can see, you can measure its spatial curvature, and find that it’s incredibly close to flat. No regions repeat; no locations connect or loop back on one another; no large-curvature regions show themselves on a scale approaching that of the Universe we can observe.
If the Universe were a hypersphere, the four-dimensional analogue of a sphere, it must have a radius of curvature hundreds of times the size of what we can observe. There must be more Universe out there than what we can access.
Inflation causes space to expand exponentially, which can very quickly result in any pre-existing curved space appearing flat. If the Universe is curved, it has a radius of curvature hundreds of times larger than what we can observe. Image credit: E. Siegel (L); Ned Wright’s cosmology tutorial (R).
But this isn’t just a conclusion from observations; it’s the same conclusion that we’d draw from our leading theory of the Universe’s origin: cosmological inflation. Prior to the hot Big Bang, the fabric of the Universe was expanding at an exponential rate, where every 10–35seconds or so, it would double in scale in all dimensions. Inflation went on for at least as long as 10–33 seconds or so, but could have lasted far longer: seconds, years, millennia, trillions of years or an arbitrarily long length of time.
When inflation ends, the Universe we’re left with is stretched flat, the same temperature everywhere, and far, far vaster than anything we can ever hope to observe. Considering the finite nature of all we can see, inflation is the natural way to create a Multiverse of possibilities.
When inflation ends, the Universe we’re left with is stretched flat, the same temperature everywhere, and far, far vaster than anything we can ever hope to observe. Considering the finite nature of all we can see, inflation is the natural way to create a Multiverse of possibilities.
Inflation set up the hot Big Bang and gave rise to the observable Universe we have access to, but we can only measure the last tiny fraction of a second of inflation’s impact on our Universe. Image credit: Bock et al. (2006, astro-ph/0604101); modifications by E. Siegel.
Without a solid knowledge of how inflation began, or if it ever had a beginning, we cannot know how much “Multiverse” there is out there beyond our actual Universe. But based on the properties of inflation that imprint themselves on the Universe we inhabit, we can draw a few conclusions about it. In particular:
- · The lack of spatial curvature,
- · The adiabatic nature and spectrum of fluctuations imprinted on the cosmic microwave background,
- · The magnitude of imperfections that gave rise to the large-scale structure we see,
- · The constraints on the gravitational waves inflation could have created,
- · And the super-horizon fluctuations that we observe (on scales larger than the visible Universe),
all give us some important constraints on the type of inflation that occurred, and teach us two very important lessons, if the implications of these verified and validated theories are correct, about our Multiverse.
Read more here.
Yes, The Multiverse Is Real, But It Won’t Fix Physics
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Reviewed by 0x000216
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March 02, 2018
Rating: 5
Multiverse: Astronomers may have Found the First Evidence of Parallel Universes
Last year seems as if we have already fallen into a parallel universe but Trump and Brexit are nothing matched to the alternate universes many astronomers are considering.
Cosmologists call it the multiverse. It’s a space or cosmos in which there are multiple universes. And by multiple, I mean countless number. These infinite realms sit side by side in advanced dimensions that our minds are unqualified of perceiving directly.
Yet gradually astronomers seem to be using the multiverse to enlighten mystifying observations.
It sounds crazy but the most recent piece of proof that could favor a multiverse comes from the United Kingdom’s Royal Astronomical Society. They published a research on the so-called ‘cold spot’. This is a mostly cool area of space seen in the radiation formed by the formation of the Universe more than Thirteen billion years ago.
The ‘cold spot’ was first seen by NASA’s WMAP satellite in 2004, and then confirmed by European Space Agency’s Planck mission in 2013. It is extremely puzzling. Most cosmologists believe that it is extremely doubtful to have been formed by the birth of the universe as it is mathematically tough for the foremost theory – which is known as inflation – to explain.
This most recent study claims to exclude a last-ditch prosaic detail:
That the cold spot is an optical deception produced by the absence of dominant galaxies.
The spiral galaxy M101 is pictured in this undated handout photo from NASA's
That the cold spot is an optical deception produced by the absence of dominant galaxies.
One of the study’s scientist, Professor Tom Shanks of Durham University (DU), told the RAS, “We can’t completely say that the Spot is caused by a doubtful fluctuation explained by the standard theory of the Big Bang (BB). But if that is not the accurate answer, then there are more interesting explanations. Possibly the most exciting of these is that the ‘Cold Spot’ (CS) was produced by an impact between our universe and another bubble universe. If further, more detailed, study … shows this to be the situation then the Cold Spot might be considered as the first proof for the multiverse.”
Strong stuff. But the insincerity is that if there is a multiverse, researchers will have to admit that the ultimate goal of physics (to describe why our universe is the way it is) could be forever out of reach from mankind.
If there exist a multiverse, however, that search could be doomed to disappointment.
Just as there are an infinite number of similar yet faintly different universes, like the one in which you have written this article not me, there will also be countless number in which the simple laws of physics are different.
So, every imaginable combination of physics is tried out through the multiverse. Certainly then, by nothing more than blind luck, at least one will have the circumstances we see everywhere us today. It’s just a big old calamity, and that barely seems very satisfying.
One of the most spoken enemies of the multiverse theory is, ironically, one of its new architects.
Paul Steinhardt, Princeton University, help out developing inflation, the theory of the foundation and origin of our universe. It’s the one that fights to explain the Cold Spot’, whereas also giving rise to the multiverse because as maths says once a universe begins to form it activates more to be born ad infinitum.
Paul Steinhardt, Princeton University, help out developing inflation, the theory of the foundation and origin of our universe. It’s the one that fights to explain the Cold Spot’, whereas also giving rise to the multiverse because as maths says once a universe begins to form it activates more to be born ad infinitum.
But, Steinhardt turned against his own concept.
In 2014, he said to Scientific American magazine, “Our visible universe would be just one chance out of endless spectrum of results. So, we haven’t explained any pieces of the universe by introducing inflation theory after all. We have just lifted the problem of the unique big bang model, how can we enlighten our simple universe when there is approximately infinite range of possibilities that could occur from the big bang?, to the inflationary idea (how can we explain our humble universe when there is approximately countless variety of possibilities that could occur in a multiverse?).”
Put it this way, a multiverse doesn’t appear attractive. It would cut to the very heart of physical science purpose. Nature also doesn’t care about this. Perhaps the cosmos actually is this way and we just have to admit it. Surely, there are many who are prepared to defend the multiverse as an effective direction for thought.
Encouragingly, if we do exist in a multiverse, we can be certain that somewhere out there is a different version of you and me that have also figured all this out (and won a Nobel Prize for the struggle).
Multiverse: Astronomers may have Found the First Evidence of Parallel
Universes
![Multiverse: Astronomers may have Found the First Evidence of Parallel
Universes]()
Reviewed by 0x000216
on
February 28, 2018
Rating: 5
If Atoms Are Mostly Empty Space, Why Do Objects Look And Feel Solid?
Chemist John Dalton proposed the theory that all matter and objects are made up of particles called atoms, and this is still accepted by the scientific community, almost two centuries later. Each of these atoms is each made up of an incredibly small nucleus and even smaller electrons, which move around at quite a distance from the center.
If you imagine a table that is a billion times larger, its atoms would be the size of melons. But even so, the nucleus at the center would still be far too small to see and so would the electrons as they dance around it. So why don’t our fingers just pass through atoms, and why doesn’t light get through the gaps?
To explain why we must look at the electrons. Unfortunately, much of what we are taught at school is simplified – electrons do not orbit the center of an atom like planets around the sun, like you may have been taught. Instead, think of electrons like a swarm of bees or birds, where the individual motions are too fast to track, but you still see the shape of the overall swarm.
In fact, electrons dance – there is no better word for it. But it’s not random dancing – it’s more like ballroom dancing, where they move in set patterns, following steps laid down by a mathematical equation named after Erwin Schrödinger.
These patterns can vary – some are slow and gentle, like a waltz whereas some are fast and energetic, like a Charleston. Each electron keeps to the same pattern, but once in a while it may change to another, as long as no other electron is doing that pattern already. No two electrons in an atom can do the same step: this rule is called the Exclusion Principle.
Electrons are like a swarm of birds. John Holmes/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Although electrons never tire, moving up to a faster step does take energy. And when an electron moves down to a slower pattern it loses energy which it gives out. So when energy in the form of light falls on an electron, it can absorb some energy and move up to a higher, faster “dance” pattern. A light beam won’t get far through our table, since the electrons in all the atoms are eager to grab some energy from the light.
After a very short while they lose this gained energy, perhaps as light again. Changes in the patterns of absorbed and reflected light give reflections and colours - so we see the table as solid.
So why does a table also feel solid? Many websites will tell you that this is due to the repulsion – that two negatively charged things must repel each other. But this is wrong, and shows you should never trust some things on the internet. It feels solid because of the dancing electrons.
If you touch the table, then the electrons from atoms in your fingers become close to the electrons in the table’s atoms. As the electrons in one atom get close enough to the nucleus of the other, the patterns of their dances change. This is because, an electron in a low energy level around one nucleus can’t do the same around the other – that slot’s already taken by one of its own electrons. The newcomer must step into an unoccupied, more energetic role. That energy has to be supplied, not by light this time but by the force from your probing finger.
The table resistance is strong. Shutterstock
So pushing just two atoms close to each other takes energy, as all their electrons need to go into unoccupied high-energy states. Trying to push all the table-atoms and finger-atoms together demands an awful lot of energy – more than your muscles can supply. You feel that, as resistance to your finger, which is why and how the table feels solid to your touch.
Roger Barlow, Research Professor and Director of the International Institute for Accelerator Applications, University of Huddersfield.
If Atoms Are Mostly Empty Space, Why Do Objects Look And Feel Solid?
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Reviewed by 0x000216
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February 28, 2018
Rating: 5
Scientists Are Exploring a Link Between Our Minds and the Quantum World
COULD QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS EXIST?
Despite all the research we’ve done, we still know relatively little about how the human brain works, and we know even less about the mystery of “consciousness.” Scientists disagree about whether consciousness exists at all outside the illusions of our own collective imagination. Some believe it exists independently although we’ve yet to understand its origins have brought quantum physics into the discussion.
This is probably in part because of the way that the “observer effect” challenged one of science’s most basic tenets: that there is an objective, observable reality that exists whether we’re looking at it or not. The revelation that observing and measuring quantum effects changes their behavior is troubling, but it also suggests to many people that consciousness itself is part of quantum theory. Moreover, as humans creating AI that, for all its achievements still can’t master some of the things that come so easily to our own minds (at least not yet), we are bound to see a blurry reflection of ourselves in quantum computers, which promise to achieve so much more than ordinary computers ever could.
However, it was the British physicist Roger Penrose who pointed out that, observer effect aside, quantum mechanics may be involved in consciousness. More specifically, he thought it might be possible that quantum events cause molecular structures in the brain to alter their state and trigger neurons in different ways; that literal quantum effects within the brain exist.
For all we can accomplish with the human brain, it has its foibles, and perhaps suspecting the existence of quantum consciousness is one of them. We possess superior intellects because of our high-level pattern processing abilities, but it is also a well-proven fact that the human brain is prone to see meaningful patterns where none exist; in the midst of meaningless noise. And while the study of quantum physics is certainly not meaningless noise, it’s possible that our minds — which are meaning making machines — are wrong to see themselves in quantum effects. Does it really make sense to think that our lack of understanding of both consciousness and quantum mechanics points to a larger connection?
OUR PARTICIPATORY UNIVERSE
There is more to this question than the raw interest of philosophy: if there is in fact a connection between quantum mechanics and human consciousness, any major breakthrough in our understanding of either could help us understand both. For example, advances in quantum computing could enable us to master brain augmentation and uploading consciousness, opening the door to a form of immortality. Improved understanding of the superposition property could teach us how to conquer multiple mutually-exclusive ideas at once.
Or, perhaps we’ve been approaching this in the wrong way. As we look at quantum mechanics, we ask ourselves whether we disturb the effects by measuring, or whether it is the act of noticing the measurement impacting our consciousness that causes the disturbance. Is it possible that knowing how to think in the right way—achieving a quantum consciousness—will allow us to perceive quantum mechanics properly for the first time? We’ve always been part of Wheeler’s participatory universe in some sense, lending our interpretation to what reality is as we record our own history.
For now, most of the scientific community regards quantum effects in the brain skeptically—an appropriate response at this point. Fueling the fast retreat from any quantum consciousness theories in the scientific community is the New Age quantum consciousness trend and the cottage industry arising from it with plenty of avid bloggers writing about things like telepathy, the afterlife, and telekinesis, and crafters selling art and other products.
Whether or not consciousness influences quantum mechanics, and whether or not we eventually require quantum theory to fully comprehend how the brain works, for now we can enjoy the useful discomfort the association provides. Quantum theory has forced us out of our collective comfort zone as we consider new ways of thinking, and found ourselves living inside our own theories.
Scientists Are Exploring a Link Between Our Minds and the Quantum World
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Reviewed by 0x000216
on
February 27, 2018
Rating: 5