Recently published research pushes the boundaries of key concepts in quantum mechanics. Studies from two different teams used tiny drums to show that quantum entanglement, an effect generally linked to subatomic particles, can also be applied to much larger macroscopic systems. One of the teams also claims to have found a way to evade the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

One question that the scientists were hoping to answer pertained to whether larger systems can exhibit quantum entanglement in the same way as microscopic ones. Quantum mechanics proposes that two objects can become "entangled," whereby the properties of one object, such as position or velocity, can become connected to those of the other.

An experiment performed at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, led by physicist Shlomi Kotler and his colleagues, showed that a pair of vibrating aluminum membranes, each about 10 micrometers long, can be made to vibrate in sync, in such a way that they can be described to be quantum entangled. Kotler's team amplified the signal from their devices to "see" the entanglement much more clearly. Measuring their position and velocities returned the same numbers, indicating that they were indeed entangled.

Tiny aluminium membranes used by Kotler's team.Credit: Florent Lecoq and Shlomi Kotler/NIST

Another experiment with quantum drums each one-fifth the width of a human hair by a team led by Prof. Mika Sillanp at Aalto University in Finland, attempted to find what happens in the area between quantum and non-quantum behavior. Like the other researchers, they also achieved quantum entanglement for larger objects, but they also made a fascinating inquiry into getting around the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

The team's theoretical model was developed by Dr. Matt Woolley of the University of New South Wales. Photons in the microwave frequency were employed to create a synchronized vibrating pattern as well as to gauge the positions of the drums. The scientists managed to make the drums vibrate in opposite phases to each other, achieving "collective quantum motion."

The study's lead author, Dr. Laure Mercier de Lepinay, said: "In this situation, the quantum uncertainty of the drums' motion is canceled if the two drums are treated as one quantum-mechanical entity."

This effect allowed the team to measure both the positions and the momentum of the virtual drumheads at the same time. "One of the drums responds to all the forces of the other drum in the opposing way, kind of with a negative mass," Sillanp explained.

Theoretically, this should not be possible under the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, one of the most well-known tenets of quantum mechanics. Proposed in the 1920s by Werner Heisenberg, the principle generally says that when dealing with the quantum world, where particles also act like waves, there's an inherent uncertainty in measuring both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time. The more precisely you measure one variable, the more uncertainty in the measurement of the other. In other words, it is not possible to simultaneously pinpoint the exact values of the particle's position and momentum.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle Explained. Credit: Veritasium / Youtube.com

Big Think contributor astrophysicist Adam Frank, known for the 13.8 podcast, called this "a really fascinating paper as it shows that it's possible to make larger entangled systems which behave like a single quantum object. But because we're looking at a single quantum object, the measurement doesn't really seem to me to be 'getting around' the uncertainty principle, as we know that in entangled systems an observation of one part constrains the behavior of other parts."

Ethan Siegel, also an astrophysicist, commented, "The main achievement of this latest work is that they have created a macroscopic system where two components are successfully quantum mechanically entangled across large length scales and with large masses. But there is no fundamental evasion of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle here; each individual component is exactly as uncertain as the rules of quantum physics predicts. While it's important to explore the relationship between quantum entanglement and the different components of the systems, including what happens when you treat both components together as a single system, nothing that's been demonstrated in this research negates Heisenberg's most important contribution to physics."

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Physicists push limits of Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - Big Think

Its an exciting time in particle physics. The results of a new experiment out of Fermilab in Illinois involving a subatomic particle wobbling weirdly could lead to new ways of understanding our universe.

To understand why physicists are so excited, consider the ambitious task theyve set for themselves: decoding the fundamental building blocks of everything in the universe. For decades, theyve been trying to do that by building a big, overarching theory known as the standard model.

The standard model is like a glossary, describing all the building blocks of the universe that weve found so far: subatomic particles like electrons, neutrinos, and quarks that make up everything around us, and three of the four fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak, and strong) that hold things together.

But, as Jessica Esquivel, a particle physicist at Fermilab, tells Vox, scientists suspect this model is incomplete.

One of the big reasons why we know its incomplete is because of gravity. We know it exists because apples fall from trees and Im not floating off my seat, Esquivel says. But they havent yet found a fundamental particle that conveys gravitys force, so its not in the standard model.

Esquivel says the model also doesnt explain two of the biggest mysteries in the universe: dark matter, an elusive substance that holds galaxies together, and dark energy, an even more poorly understood force that is accelerating the universes expansion. And since the overwhelming majority of the universe might be made up of dark matter and dark energy, thats a pretty big oversight.

The problem is, the standard model works really well on its own. It describes the matter and energy were most familiar with, and how it all works together, superbly. Yet, as physicists have tried to expand the model to account for gravity, dark matter, and dark energy, theyve always come up short.

Thats why Esquivel and the many other particle physicists weve spoken to are so excited about the results of a new experiment at Fermilab. It involves muons subatomic particles that are like electrons heavier, less stable cousins. This experiment might, finally, have confirmed a crack in the standard model for particle physicists to explore. Its possible that crack could lead them to find new, fundamental building blocks of nature.

Esquivel worked on the experiment, so we asked her to walk us through it for the Unexplainable podcast. What follows is a transcript of that conversation, edited for clarity and length.

What was this muon experiment?

So at Fermilab, we can create particle beams of muons a very, very intense beam. You can imagine it like a laser beam of particles. And we shoot them into detectors. And then by taking a super, super close measurement of those muons, we can use that as kind of a probe into physics beyond our standard model.

So how, exactly, does this muon experiment point to a hole in the model, or to a new particle to fill that gap?

So the muon g-2 experiment is actually taking a very precise measurement of this thing that we call the precession frequency. And what that means is that we shoot a whole bunch of muons into a very, very precise magnetic field and we watch them dance.

They dance?

Yeah! When muons go into a magnetic field, they precess, or they spin like a spinning top.

One of the really weird quantum-y, sci-fi things that happens is that when you are in a vacuum or an empty space, it actually isnt empty. Its filled with this roiling, bubbling sea of virtual particles that just pop in and out of existence whenever they want, spontaneously. So when we shoot muons into this vacuum, there are not just muons going around our magnet. These virtual particles are popping in and out and changing how the muon wobbles.

Wait, sorry ... what exactly are these virtual particles popping in and out?

So, virtual particles, I ... see them as like ghosts of actual particles. We have photons that kind of pop in and out and theyre just kind of like there, but not really there. I think a really good depiction of this, the weirdness of quantum mechanics, is Ant-Man. Theres this scene where he shrinks down to the quantum realm, and he gets stuck and everything is kind of like wibbly-wobbling and somethings there, but its really not there.

Thats kind of like what virtual particles are. Its just hints of particles that were used to seeing. But theyre not actually there. They just pop in and out and mess with things.

So quantum mechanics says that there are virtual particles, sort of like ghosts of particles we already know about in our standard model, popping in and out of existence. And theyre bumping into muons and making them wobble?

Yes. But again, theoretical physicists know this, and theyve come up with a really good theory of how the muon will change with regards to which particles are popping in and out. So we know specifically how every single one of these particles interacts with each other and within the magnetic field, and they build their theories based on what we already know what is in the standard model.

Got it. So even though there are these virtual ghost particles popping in and out, as long as theyre versions of particles we know, then physicists can predict exactly how the muons are going to wobble. So were the predictions off?

So what we just unveiled is that precise measurement doesnt align with the theoretical predictions of how the muons are supposed to wobble in a magnetic field. It wobbled differently.

And the idea is that you have no idea whats making it do that extra wobble, so it might be something that hasnt been discovered yet? Something outside the standard model?

Yeah, exactly. Its not considered new physics yet because we as physicists give ourselves a very high bar to reach before we say something is potentially new physics. And thats 5 sigma [a measure of the probability that this finding wasnt a statistical error or a random accident.] And right now, were at 4.2 sigma. But its pretty exciting.

So if it clears that bar, would this break the standard model? Because Ive seen that framing in a bunch of headlines.

No, I dont think I would say the standard model is broken. I mean, weve known for a long time that its missing stuff. So its not that whats there doesnt work as its supposed to work.

Its just that were adding more stuff to the standard model, potentially. Just like back in the day when scientists were adding more elements to the periodic table ... even back then, they had spots where they knew an element should go, but they hadnt been able to see it yet. Thats essentially where were at now. We know we have the standard model, but were missing things. So we have holes that were trying to fill.

How exciting does all of this feel?

I think its like a career-defining moment. Its a once-in-a-lifetime. Were chasing new physics and were so close, we can taste it.

What Im studying isnt in any textbook that Ive read or peeked through before, and the fact that the work that Im doing could potentially be in textbooks in the future ... that people can be learning about the dark matter particle that g-2 had a role in finding ... it gives me chills just thinking about it!

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A wobbling muon could unlock mysteries of the universe - Vox.com

The centerpiece of the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab is a 50-foot-diameter superconducting magnetic storage ring, which sits in its detector hall amidst electronics racks, the muon beamline and other equipment. Credit: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab

In 2001 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, a facility used for research in nuclear and high-energy physics, scientists experimenting with a subatomic particle called a muon encountered something unexpected.

To explain the fundamental physical forces at work in the universe and to predict the results of high-energy particle experiments like those conducted at Brookhaven, Fermilab in Illinois, and at CERNs Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, physicists rely on the decades-old theory called the Standard Model, which should explain the precise behavior of muons when they are fired through an intense magnetic field created in a superconducting magnetic storage ring. When the muon in the Brookhaven experiment reacted in a way that differed from their predictions, researchers realized they were on the brink of a discovery that could change sciences understanding of how the universe works.

Earlier this month, after a decades-long effort that involved building more powerful sensors and improving researchers capacity to process 120 terabytes of data (the equivalent of 16 million digital photographs every week), a team of scientists at Fermilab announced the first results of an experiment called Muon g-2 that suggests the Brookhaven find was no fluke and that science is on the brink of an unprecedented discovery.

UVA physics professor Dinko Poani has been involved in the Muon g-2 experiment for the better part of two decades, and UVA Today spoke with him to learn more about what it means.

Q. What are the findings of the Brookhaven and Fermilab Muon g-2 experiments, and why are they important?

A. So, in the Brookhaven experiment, they did several measurements with positiveand negative muons an unstable, more massive cousin of the electron under different circumstances, and whenthey averaged their measurements,they quantified a magnetic anomaly that is characteristic of the muon more precisely than ever before. According torelativistic quantum mechanics, the strength of the muons magnetic moment (a property it shares with a compass needle or a bar magnet) should be two in appropriate dimensionless units, the same as for an electron. The Standard Model states, however, that its not two, its a little bit bigger, and that difference is the magnetic anomaly. The anomaly reflects the coupling of the muon to pretty much all other particles that exist in nature. How is this possible?

The answer is that space itself is not empty; what we think of as a vacuum contains the possibility of the creation of elementary particles, given enough energy. In fact, these potential particles are impatient and are virtually excited, sparking in space for unimaginably short moments in time. And as fleeting as it is, this sparking is sensed by a muon, and it subtly affects the muons properties. Thus, the muon magnetic anomaly provides a sensitive probe of the subatomic contents of the vacuum.

To the enormous frustration of all the practicing physicists of my generation and younger, the Standard Model has been maddeningly impervious to challenges. We know there are things that must exist outside of it because it cannot describe everything that we know about the universe and its evolution. For example, it does not explain the prevalence of matter over antimatter in the universe, and it doesnt say anything about dark matter or many other things, so we know its incomplete. And weve tried very hard to understand what these things might be, but we havent found anything concrete yet.

So, with this experiment, were challenging the Standard Model with increasing levels of precision. If the Standard Model is correct, we should observe an effect that is completely consistent with the model because it includes all the possible particles that are thought to be present in nature, but if we see a different value for this magnetic anomaly, it signifies that theres actually something else. And thats what were looking for: this something else.

This experiment tells us that were on the verge of a discovery.

Q. What part have you been able to play in the experiment?

A. I became a member of this collaboration when we had just started planning for the follow-up to the Brookhaven experiment around 2005, just a couple of years after the Brookhaven experiment finished, and we were looking at the possibility of doing a more precise measurements at Brookhaven. Eventually that idea was abandoned, as it turned out that we could do a much better job at Fermilab, which had better beams, more intense muons and better conditions for experiment.

So, we proposed that around 2010, and it was approved and funded by U.S. and international funding agencies. An important part was funded by a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation grant that was awarded to a consortium of four universities, and UVA was one of them. We were developing a portion of the instrumentation for the detection of positrons that emerge in decays of positive muons. We finished that work, and it was successful, so my group switched focus to the precise measurements of the magnetic field in the storage ring at Fermilab, a critical part of quantifying the muon magnetic anomaly. My UVA faculty colleague Stefan Baessler has also been working on this problem, and several UVA students and postdocs have been active on the project over the years.

Q. Fermilab has announced that these are just the first results of the experiment. What still needs to happen before well know what this discovery means?

A. It depends on how the results of our analysis of the yet-unanalyzed run segments turn out. The analysis of the first run took about three years. The run was completed in 2018, but I think now that we weve ironed out some of the issues in the analysis, it might go a bit faster. So, in about two years it would not be unreasonable to have the next result, which would be quite a bit more precise because it combines runs two and three. Then there will be another run, and we will probably finish taking data in another two years or so. The precise end of measurements is still somewhat uncertain, but I would say that about five years from now, maybe sooner, we should have a very clear picture.

Q. What kind of impact could these experiments have on our everyday lives?

A. One way is in pushing specific technologies to the extreme in solving different aspects of measurement to get the level of precision we need. The impact would likely come in fields like physics, industry and medicine. There will be technical spinoffs, or at least improvements in techniques, but which specific ones will come out of this, its difficult to predict. Usually, we push companies to make products that we need that they wouldnt otherwise make, and then a new field opens up for them in terms of applications for those products, and thats what often happens. The World Wide Web was invented, for example, because researchers like us needed to be able to exchange information in an efficient way across great distances, around the world, really, and thats how we have, well, web browsers, Zoom, Amazon and all these types of things today.

The other way we benefit is by educating young scientists some of whom will continue in the scientific and academic careers like myself but others will go on to different fields of endeavor in society. They will bring with them an expertise in very high-level techniques of measurement and analysis that arent normally found in many fields.

And then, finally, another outcome is intellectual betterment. One outcome of this work will be to help us better understand the universe we live in.

Q. Could we see more discoveries like this in the near future?

A. Yes, there is a whole class of experiments besides this one that look at highly precise tests of the Standard Model in a number of ways. Im always reminded of the old adage that if you lose your keys in the street late at night, you are first going to look for them under the street lamp, and thats what were doing. So everywhere theres a streetlight, were looking. This is one of those places and there are several others, well, I would say dozens of others, if you also include searches that are going on for subatomic particles like axions, dark matter candidates, exotic processes like double beta decay, and those kinds of things. One of these days, new things will be found.

We know that the Standard Model is incomplete. Its not wrong, insofar as it goes, but there are things outside of it that it does not incorporate, and we will find them.

Continued here:

Are We on the Brink of a New Age of Scientific Discovery? - SciTechDaily

In 1964, physicistsArno Penzias and Robert Wilson were working at Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey, setting up ultra-sensitive microwave receivers for radio astronomy observations.

No matter what the two did, they couldn't rid the receivers of background radio noise that, puzzlingly, seemed to be coming from all directions at once. Penzias contacted Princeton University physicist Robert Dicke who suggested that the radio noise might be cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), which is primordial microwave radiation that fills the universe.

And that is the story of the discovery of CMB. Simple and elegant.

For their discovery, Penzias and Wilsonreceived the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics, and for good reason. Theirwork ushered us into a new age of cosmology, allowing scientists to study and understand our universe as never before.

Yet, this discovery also led to one of the most surprising findings in recent history: Unique features in the CMB could be the first direct evidence we've ever had of the multiverse of an infinity of worlds and alien peoples that exist beyond the known universe.

However, to properly understand this extraordinary claim, it's necessary to first take a journey back to the beginning of space and time.

According to the broadly accepted theory for the origin of our universe, for the first several hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, our universe was filled with a ferociously hot plasma comprised of nuclei, electrons, and photons, which scattered light.

By around 380,000 years of age, the continued expansion of our universe caused it to cool to below 3000 degrees K, which allowedelectrons to combine with nuclei to form neutral atoms, and the absorption of free electrons allowed light to illuminate the dark.

Evidence of this, in the form of radiation from the cosmic microwave background (the previously mentioned CMB), is what was detected by Penzias and Wilson, and it helped establish the Big Bang theory of cosmology.

Over the eons, continued expansion cooled our universe to a temperature of just around 2.7 K, but that temperature isn't uniform. Differences in temperature arise from the fact that matter is not uniformly distributed throughout the universe. This is thought to be caused by tiny quantum density fluctuations that occurred right after the Big Bang.

One spot, in particular, seen from the Southern Hemisphere in the constellation Eridanus, is particularly cold, around 0.00015 degrees colder than its surroundings. Dubbed the "Cold Spot", scientists originally thought it was a "supervoid," an area that contains far fewer galaxies than normal.

Then, in 2017, researchers at the UK's Durham University Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy published research they say suggests that the Cold Spot isn't a supervoid after all.

Instead? It may be evidence of alien universes.

Durham Professor Tom Shanks proposed what he described as a "more exotic" explanation for the Cold Spot. In his work, Shanks argued that the Cold Spot was "caused by a collision between our universe and another bubble universe...The Cold Spot might be taken as the first evidence for the multiverse - and billions of other universes may exist like our own."

Previously, physicists including Anthony Aguirre, Matt Johnson, and Matt Kleban had pointed out that a collision between our bubble universe and another bubble in the multiverse would, in fact, produce an imprint on the cosmic background radiation. Additionally, they noted that it would appear as a round spot having either a higher or a lower level of radiation intensity.

Shanks' proposal seems to fit the bill, but could this feature really be evidence of an infinite multitude of universes that exist beyond our own?

Today, there are three main contenders that explain how the multiverse may function: the Copenhagen Interpretation, the "many worlds" or "branches of the wave function" interpretation, and the "parallel branes" of string theory.

We're going to leave string theory for another day and focus on the other two explanations.

The total of all possible states in which an object can exist is called an object's coherent superposition,and it is made up of what's known as the object's "wave function".

Quantum mechanics necessitate a smooth, fully deterministic wave function a mathematical expression that conveys information about a particle in the form of numerous possibilities for its location and characteristics. It also requires something that realizes one of those possibilities and eliminates all the others.

Opinions differ about how that happens, but in the most common theory, known as the Copenhagen Interpretation, this occurs through observation of the wave function or by the wave function encountering some part of the "classical" world.This causes the probability, or wave function, to "collapse", and forces the particle into one state.

The Copenhagen Interpretation was worked out in the 1920s by physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, who argued that a particle does not have a material existence until it is subjected to measurement (observation).

The Copenhagen Interpretation was essentially a fudge and, for many, an unsatisfactory one at that.

In 1935, Austrian-Irish physicist Erwin Schrdinger articulated the problem with Copenhagen Interpretation with his famous thought experiment known as Schrdinger's Cat.

In this theoretical experiment, a cat is placed in a sealed box along with a bit of radioactive material and a Geiger counter. If the Geiger counter detects the decay of the radioactive material, it triggers the release of a poison gas which kills the cat.

While the box is sealed, the cat is in a superposition of being both alive and dead at the same time. It is only when the box is opened that the cat is forced into one state or another.Schrdinger pointed out that this was ridiculous, and that quantum superposition could not work with large objects such as cats, because it is impossible for an organism to be simultaneously alive and dead. Thus, he reasoned thatthe Copenhagen Interpretation must be inherently flawed.

A number of alternatives to the Copenhagen Interpretation were proposed. For example, the hidden variables approach championed by Albert Einstein and David Bohm, among others, suggests that the wave function be treated as a temporary fix until physicists eventually find something better. Late in his life, Heisenberg proposed that the problem is with our notion of reality itself. He suggested that the wave function represents an intermediate level of reality.

The most straightforward approach may be that ofthe "many worlds" interpretation" (MWI) which was first posited in 1957 by a graduate student at Princeton University namedHugh Everett.Everett was studying physics under John Archibald Wheeler, who had envisioned the fabric of the universe as being a churning, sub-atomic realm of quantum fluctuations, which he called "quantum foam".

In his dissertation, entitled The Theory of the Universal Wave Function, Everett contended that the universal wave function is real and doesn't collapse, as in the Copenhagen Interpretation. In that case, then every possible outcome of a quantum measurement is realized in some "world" or universe, and by that logic, there must be a very large, or infinite, number of universes.

Everett's many worlds interpretation of quantum physics received little support from the wider physics community, and Everett spent his entire working life outside of academia. So strongly did Everett believe in his theory that he ate whatever he wanted, smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, drank to excess, and refused to exercise. In July 1982, Hugh Everett died suddenly of a heart attack aged 51.

Per his instructions, Everett was cremated and his ashes thrown into the garbage. In 1996, Everett's daughter, Elizabeth, killed herself, and her suicide note stated that she too wanted her ashes to be thrown into the garbage so that she might "end up in the correct parallel universe to meet up w[ith] Daddy."

Everett's son, Mark Oliver Everett went on to form the rock group "The Eels" whose music is often filled with themes of family, death, and lost love.

Famed British physicist Stephen Hawking died on March 14, 2018, after spending decades confined to a wheelchair and dependent upon a speech synthesizer due to suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Hawking's final research paper, published just 10 days before he died, was written along with Thomas Hertog, a professor of theoretical physics at KU Leuven University in Belgium, and it concerned the multiverse.

In the paper entitled, "A Smooth Exit from Eternal Inflation?" Hawking and Hertog proposed that the rapid expansion of space-time after the Big Bang may have happened repeatedly, creating a multitude of universes.

This was an expansion of Inflation Theory, the currently-held theory that the Big Bang was not really the beginning.Inflation Theory suggests that, before the Big Bang, the Universe was filled with energy that was part of space itself, and that energy caused space to expand at an exponential rate. It is that energy that gave rise to Big Bang.

However, because inflation, like everything else, is quantum in nature, it must haveended at different times in different locations, while the space between the locations continued to inflate. This, in turn, means that there would be regions of space where inflation ends anda Big Bang begins, but these regions can never encounter one another, as they're separated by regions of inflating space.

In an interview, Hawking explained his concerns with Inflation Theory, saying, 'The usual theory of eternal inflation predicts that globally our universe is like an infinite fractal, with a mosaic of different pocket universes, separated by an inflating ocean. The local laws of physics and chemistry can differ from one pocket universe to another, which together would form a multiverse. But I have never been a fan of the multiverse. If the scale of different universes in the multiverse is large or infinite the theory cant be tested."

Instead, the pair predict that the universe, at least onthe largest scales, is actually smooth and finite. Their theory uses the concept of holography, which describes how physical reality in certain 3D spaces can be mathematically reduced to 2D projections on a surface. By using this concept, they were able to reduce eternal inflation to a timeless state, defined on a spatial surface at the beginning of time itself.

Hertog and Hawking then used their new theory to predict that the universe which emerges from eternal inflation is actually finite and much simpler than the infinite fractal structure predicted by the existing theory of eternal inflation.

Hawking explained that, We are not down to a single, unique universe, but our findings imply a significant reduction of the multiverse, to a much smaller range of possible universes."

This makes the theory not only more predictive but also testable.

And, if Hawking and Hertog, Everett and Laura Mersini-Houghton, Tegmark and Greene, and a multitude of other physicistsare right, then somewhere, in another universe at the exact moment that you're reading this article, Hawking is walking and talking animatedly about physics. Let's hope.

Disclaimer: This article has been updated. A previous version incorrectly said "Walter" instead of Werner Heisenberg.

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The First-Ever Evidence of the Multiverse - Interesting Engineering

Choosing a college major is a big decision. Students must select to study something that challenges and interests them while balancing the hard realities of the job market and outlook of career paths. A good salary coming out of college is key to a secure middle class future, and with increasing student loan debts, choosing a major that yields bigger salaries out the gate becomes ever more desirable.

To show just how valuable these college majors can be, Stacker used data from a 2020 PayScale report to rank the top 100 college majors that alumni make the most money from in their respective professional careers. The rankings, released in 2021, are based on the highest average mid-career salary. Information is provided about the jobs a major in that area might be hired for, which skills theyll attain while in school, and what the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects their prospects are of finding a job upon graduation with a bachelors degree.

Stackers list of top 100 college majors that earn the most money is diverse, beginning with Japanese studies and ending with petroleum engineering. In between, computational and applied mathematics, aeronautics, building science, and mechatronics top the ranks of college majors that earn the most money early to mid-career. Within the list, engineer-related college majors dominate, with petroleum engineering majors making the most mid-career pay at $182,000.

Keep reading to find out if your major made the list of college majors that earn the most money.

You may also like: 100 Highest Paying Jobs In America

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College majors that earn the most money | Personal Finance | stltoday.com - Suburban Journals