Category Archives: Quantum Physics
Despite the Hype, There’s No Proof of a Parallel Universe Now. Powered by – Now. Powered by Northrop Grumman.
If alternate universes actually exist, perhaps the writers and editors in those parallel worlds take great pains to avoid confusion in their articles about scientific discoveries.
Confusion is what happened in our world when several news outlets reported a startling finding from NASA-funded cosmic experiments in Antarctica. A parallel universe had been found, those stories reported, and it looked as if time was running backward there.
Its unclear if in this other reality backward meant that we (presuming it was, in fact, another version of us) started life in old age and got younger, just as Brad Pitt did in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. But any further discussion about time moving in the other direction, or about the alternate universe itself, proved to be anti-climactic because the stories about this discovery were a bit sensationalized. There is no other universe. For now, at least, were relegated to living in our known reality here on good ol Earth.
Accusing the news outlets of negligence would be too harsh of a judgement. Their collective error appears to be nothing more than a rush to post stories with clickbait headlines.
NASA scientists detect parallel universe next to ours where time runs backward, declared a headline in a British tabloid. These stories went on to recount how the scientists in Antarctica had detected another universe where the laws of physics ran counter to ours. They got this idea from an April 2020 New Scientist article.
That article reported a scientific finding in Antarctica and indeed mentioned an alternate universe, but it wasnt technically claiming that the scientists had found one. The article instead teased much as a child stretches the truth just a bit but doesnt lie the possibility of a separate universe.
We may have spotted a parallel universe going backwards in time, the New Scientist headline read. And the subhead advanced the possibility: Strange particles observed by an experiment in Antarctica could be evidence of an alternative reality where everything is upside down.
The New Scientist article is behind a paywall, so journalists from other outlets seemingly read just enough to believe NASA was onto something real. It didnt help that the last sentence of the story, before the paywall starts, offered one more tease: It is perhaps the most mind-melting idea ever to have emerged from the Antarctic ice but it might just be true
If only those behind the follow-up stories had full access to New Scientist stories. As University of Hawaii at Mnoa experimental particle physicist Peter Gorham, who is the lead investigator on the Antarctica project, told ScienceAlert, It seems that for this tabloid science story, some speculative theoretical physics which might have had distant roots in plausibility was amplified for sensational reasons.
What really happened in Antarctica? Well, a team of researchers whose work is partially funded by NASA are listening to the cosmos and finding high-energy particles known as neutrinos.
As CNET aptly describes, neutrinos pass through most solid objects without detection, as many as 100 trillion of them passing through the human body every second. They dont interact with matter, but if they happen to collide with an atom, neutrinos create a shower of detectable particles, enabling scientists to trace their origin in the universe.
To listen to the cosmos and track neutrinos in Antarctica, the scientists are using an array of radio antennas attached to a helium balloon that flies 37,000 meters above the ice. Throughout its years-long project, the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) has detected neutrinos from a strange angle strange as in they arrive through the Earths interior, rather than coming from space.
The unusual ANITA events have been known and discussed since 2016, Ron Ekers, an honorary fellow at CSIRO, Australias national science agency, told CNET. After four years there has been no satisfactory explanation of the anomalous events seen by ANITA so this is very frustrating.
With no clear explanation for the origin of the neutrinos, confusion and conflation led to the recent round of stories pointing to a parallel universe. CNN recently reported that the guilty media outlets were conflating the theories of Gorham and his team with the ideas of physicists outside of the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna project. Those on the outside have speculated about alternate universes. Of course, New Scientist is also on the hook for its misleading presentation outside of the paywall.
It would seem that more than a paywall separates us from alternate universes, that is, if they even exist. As Forbes noted, the idea of parallel universes was first conceived through the study of quantum physics, but they are hard to prove. Still, its fun to think about the possibilities. The many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics holds that all the outcomes that can possibly occur actually happen, but only one outcome unfolds in each universe. That means if more than one universe exists, William Shakespeare left us a treasure of written words, but in another universe he was a baker of bread.
Another way of examining the possibilities of alternate universes is through the infinite multiverse theory, which arises from inflation that happened after the Big Bang. For cosmologists, the multiverse theory describes the sum total of all possible universes, while for us common folk it has come to mean any universe that we might encounter other than our own.
A Tufts University physics professor stretched out the multiverse theory by offering that a replica of a person is on a replica of Earth somewhere else. A Stanford Magazine article from 2007 had even more fun by positing that we are the same in another universe but speaking different languages, while in another universe we have different careers because we followed different passions. If thats true, maybe journalists in another realm were a bit more careful in reporting about neutrinos in Antarctica.
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New Quantum Toolbox Helps Extend Theory Behind Electron-Light Interactions – AZoQuantum
Written by AZoQuantumSep 1 2020
Electron microscopes offer the maximum possible spatial resolution of less than one-millionth of 1 mm, thus enabling the study of the characteristics of materials at the atomic level. This allows the demonstration of the realm of quantum mechanics.
Specifically, the fundamentals of quantum physics can be investigated by studying the interactions between photons and electrons. When the electrons are excited using laser light, for instance, their mass, velocity, or energy tends to change.
A new toolbox, invented by Professor Nahid Talebi from the Institute for Experimental and Applied Physics at Kiel University, could now be used to extend the theoretical explanation for electron-light interactions with the maximum possible accuracy.
Professor Talebi combined Schrdinger and Maxwell equations in a time-dependent loop to completely simulate the interactions from first principles. For the first time, the simulation enables ultra-fast processes to be accurately described in theory and to map them in real-time without the need for applying adiabatic approximation.
She presented the study results recently Physical Review Letters, a renowned journal. In the long run, her findings could help optimize the microscopy technique as she is investigating in her ERC Starting Grant project NanoBeam, which is financially supported by the European Research Council.
The ultrafast electron microscopy is a combination of laser technology and electron microscopy. By using ultrafast electron pulses, researchers can investigate the dynamics of the sample at femtosecond temporal resolutions.
Moreover, this enables arriving at conclusions about the samples properties. With the further advancement of spectroscopy technology, it is now feasible to study not just the electronic and atomic structure of the samples but also their photonic excitations, like plasmon polaritons.
However, it is time-intensive to simulate such electron-light-interactions, which can be performed only with high-performance computers.
Therefore, adiabatic approximations and one-dimensional electron models are often used, meaning that electron recoil and amplitude modulations have been neglected.
Nahid Talebi, Professor of Nanooptics, Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, Kiel University
Talebi is an expert in simulations. This is the first time that her new simulation demonstrates the process of the electron-light interactions as a real-time film, depicting the complex interactions to the maximum possible accuracy.
Schrdinger and Maxwell equations have been combined in a time-dependent loop in Talebis toolbox to completely simulate the interactions from first principles. Thus, she has established the new field of electron-light interactions far from adiabatic approximations.
Using this combination, she could simulate what happens when an electron advances toward a gold nanostructure that had already been excited with a laser. The simulation demonstrates how the energy, momentum, and typically the shape of the electrons wave packet change for each moment of the interaction.
Thus, Talebi was able to capture the entire dynamics of the interaction caused by both single-photon and two-photon processes. Single-photon processes are crucial, for instance, to model electron energy-gain and energy-loss channels. By contrast, two-photon processes help to model the laser-induced elastic channels, for example, diffraction phenomenon.
Specifically, in Talebis simulation, a distinct diffraction pattern originating from strong interactions between electrons and photons based on the Kapitza-Dirac effect could be observed. Such a diffraction pattern could find potential applications in time-resolved holography, to interpret the charge-carrier dynamics of molecular and solid-state systems.
Our toolbox can be used to benchmark the many approximations in theoretical developments, including eikonal approximations, neglecting the recoil, and neglecting two-photon processes. Although we already have made a great step towards electron-light interactions beyond adiabatic approximations, there is still room for further developments.
Nahid Talebi, Professor of Nanooptics, Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, Kiel University
Along with her colleagues, she intends to incorporate a three-dimensional Maxwell-Dirac simulation domain to be able to model spin and relativistic interactions. In addition, she desired to gain better insights into the role of exchange and correlations in electron-electron interactions.
Talebis other goal is to apply the understanding gained from the theoretical modeling to develop innovative methodologies for coherent shaping and control of the sample excitations with the help of electron beams.
By using her NanoBeam project, she plans to create an innovative spectral interferometry technique that can retrieve and control a scanning electron microscopes spectral phase to overcome the difficulties in achieving both nanometers spatial and attosecond time resolution. The project is financially supported by an ERC grant of around 1.5 million euros from the European Research Council.
Talebi, N. (2020) Strong Interaction of Slow Electrons with Near-Field Light Visited from First Principles. Physical Review Letters. doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.080401.
Source: https://www.uni-kiel.de/en/
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New Quantum Toolbox Helps Extend Theory Behind Electron-Light Interactions - AZoQuantum
Two Pune Research Institutes Are Building Indias First Optical Atomic Clocks – The Wire
Pune/Bengaluru: Two Pune-based premier research institutes, the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), have joined hands to build Indias first two optical atomic clocks.
The institutes will build one clock each, with help from the Government of India. If the project is successful, India will join a small global club of countries with the ability to build these ultra-precise timekeeping devices.
According to the scientists involved, the clocks will only skip one second in more than 13.8 billion years, which is the approximate age of our universe.
Since the middle of the 20th century till now, there have been tremendous efforts in the field of atomic clocks, making time the most accurately measured physical quantity, the authors of a paperpublished in 2014wrote.
Optical atomic clocks themselves have a few well-known applications. Foremost of course is accurate timekeeping which in turn has multiple applications of its own, according to Subhadeep De, an associate professor and expert in optical physics at IUCAA and one of the members of the project.
For example, GPS satellites use radar signals to determine the position of an object on the ground. However, there is a time lag both due to time taken for the signals to move between the ground and the satellites and because the satellites are in motion relative to the object while they move through Earths gravitational field, incurring really tiny but significant time delays arising from the theories of relativity.
The worlds prevailing frequency standard for measuring time is derived from caesium atomic clocks. Here, caesium atoms are imparted energy by different means in different designs and forced to jump from one energy level to a slightly higher one, called the atoms hyperfine ground states. Shortly after, the atom drops back to its previous state by emitting microwave radiation at 9,192,631,770 Hz.
Hz here is hertz, the SI unit of frequency, defined as per second. So when a detector measures 9,192,631,770 waves from crest to trough of this microwave emission, coming from the caesium atoms, one second will have passed.
According to theMechatronics Handbook(2002), all timekeeping machines have three parts: an energy source, a resonator and a counter. In a household wall clock, the energy source is a AA or AAA battery; the resonator, in this case the clocks gears, is the system that moves in a periodic manner; and the counter is the display. The energy and resonator are together called an oscillator.
In atomic clocks, the oscillator is, say, a laser imparting energy to a caesium atom ticking between the two hyperfine ground states. The radiation the atom releases is the resonator. The detector is the counter.
The clocks being built by IUCAA and IISER have the same underlying principle but use more advanced technologies. Indeed,opticalatomic clocks are considered to be the next step in the evolution of atomic clocks and are likely to replace caesium atomic clocks as the worlds time standard in future. A glimpse of the underlying engineering shows us why.
First, confining the atoms or ions is very difficult. To keep the clock precise, its operators need to ensure the atoms dont combine to form molecules, bump into each other and/or dont react with the containers walls. So instead of confining them in material containers, the IUCAA and IISER teams are using optical and electromagnetic traps.
Specifically, neutral atoms are confined in an optically created storage basket known as an optical lattice, which is created by interfering two counter-propagating laser beams, Umakant Rapol, an associate professor at IISER, said. The ions are confined by oscillating electric fields.
Second, once the particles have been confined, they will be laser-cooled to nearly absolute zero (the coldest temperature possible, 0 K or -273.15 C). In their simplest form, laser-cooling techniques force atoms to lose their kinetic energy and come very nearly to a still. Since the temperature of a macroscopic body is nothing but the collective kinetic energy of its atoms, a container of nearly-still atoms is bound to feel very cold. And once more of the atoms kinetic energy has been removed, their quantum physical effects become more noticeable, allowing the clock to be more precise.
The choice of atoms to use in the clock is dictated bywhether they can be cooledto a few microkelvin above absolute zero using laser-cooling, and if their switching between the two energy states is immune to stray magnetic fields, electric fields, the temperature of the background, etc., Rapol said.
Ytterbium and strontium atoms check both these boxes. IUCAA will be building a ytterbium-ion clock. In this clock, a single ytterbium ion will be used to produce the resonating radiation. Using multiple ions gives rise to an effect called a Coulomb shift, which interferes with the clock design. IISER will be building a strontium-atom clock.
A view of the strontium-based optical atomic clock being developed at IISER Pune. Photo: Umakant Rapol/IISER Pune
When a caesium atom swings between the two hyperfine ground states, it emits a specific amount of energy as microwave radiation. When the ytterbium and strontium atoms swing between two of their energy states, they emit energy as optical radiation. Both these elements have highly stable optical emissions at wavelengths of 467 nm and 698.4 nm corresponding to 642,121,496,772,645 Hz and 429,228,066,418,009 Hz for ytterbium-ion and strontium atom, respectively.
These high frequencies two orders of magnitude higher than the microwave radiation in caesium clocks is the source of the clocks ability to miss less than one second in 13.8 billion years.
(The makers of an optical strontium clockreported in 2014that their device wouldnt miss one second in 15 billion years!)
Also read:Experimenting with Cold, Magnetic Materials in Indore
However, taking advantage of this stable emission means accurately detecting the high-frequency optical radiation. That is, if researchers need to build optical atomic clocks, they also need to be able to build and operate state-of-the-art frequency measurement systems. These devices in the form of frequency combs constitute the third feature of the IUCAA and IISER clocks.
A frequency comb is an advanced laser whose output radiation lies in multiple, evenly-spaced frequencies. This output can be used to convert high-frequency optical signals into more easily countable lower-frequency microwave signals like in the diagram shown below (source).
The principal challenge before India is to build all these devices from scratch. Rapol said the teams plan to develop most of the required technologies in Pune. They require expertise in the fields of optics, instrumentation, electronics, ultra-high vacuums, and mechanical and software engineering, among others.
National collaborations such as [us] working together with our next-door neighbour IISER will be beneficial, De said. Rapol mirrored this opinion: We are going to share expertise with IUCAA and are already working [together] to create an ion trap.
Rapol also said one clock is half-ready: We have laser-cooled the strontium atoms and are ready to load these atoms into one-dimensional chains, to increase the signal-to-noise ratio, and will have the optical clock soon, he said. They are also waiting to fit in the frequency comb.
He estimated that once the funds and equipment have been procured, it should take two years or less to build the clock at IISER. The IUCAA clock is expected to be ready in four or five years.
Once both clocks are operational, they will be linked together.
Grander applications
There are multiple open problems in physics at the moment. Four of the more prominent ones include the search for new physics, the reconciliation of quantum mechanics and relativity, an explanation for what happened to the universes antimatter, and the nature of dark matter.
De noted that various experiments designed to help answer these questions and others besides require researchers to be able to measure time in different contexts with increasingly higher precision and accuracy.
Rapol also expressed excitement about measuring changes in the values of fundamental constants. Constants are called so because their values dont change but the values of some constants could be changing too slightly for existing clocks to notice.
For example, the fine-structure constant is a number that determines the strength with which a charged particle, like an electron or a ytterbium ion, couples with an electromagnetic field. If this number increases or decreases with time, there could be implications for the whole universe everywhere charged particles interact with each other.
According to De, the ytterbium ion is more sensitive to the fine structure constant than strontium atoms. So if the constants value changes with time, the ytterbium clocks transition frequency will vary at a much faster rate relative to that of the strontium clock. This [difference] will eventually allow us to measure time variation of the fundamental constant, if there is any at all.
For a different example, physicists who study particles called neutrinos sometimes need to beam these particles from a source to a detector hundreds of kilometres away, through the atmosphere (these particles are entirely harmless). In 2011, physicists in Italy found that some neutrinos that had been beamed from a facility near Geneva and detected at their instrument, called OPERA, had travelled faster than light. The claim became a major source of controversy because faster-than-light travel violates the special theory of relativity.
The problemwas found a few months later: the OPERA master clock had glitched, and measured the neutrinos time of arrival wrong by just 75nanoseconds.
Other applications of atomic clocks include GPS systems, gravity-aided navigation,astronomyand geology.
Also read:Listen | Tick-tock, Tick-tock, Say Hello To the Doomsday Clock
More immediate concerns
Nirmala Sitharaman presents the Union Budget 2020-21 in the Lok Sabha, in New Delhi, Saturday, Feb. 1, 2020. Photo: PTI
The clocks also bring deeper opportunities for Indias scientists and engineers.
In 2017, the Department of Science and Technology had mooted its Quantum-Enabled Science & Technology programme. Its aim, the principal scientific adviser hadtoldThe Printin 2019, was to ramp up research and development activities related to quantum computing. In the 2020 Union budget, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the Centre would investRs 8,000 crorein the next five years under a new national mission for quantum technologies.
So as such, there are both interest and funds available at the moment to develop concepts and technologies to address a variety of applications. At present, we are using conventional technologies in our daily life for commercial and navigational purposes, De said. The world is moving towards the quantum computers, quantum communication systems and quantum internet.
In this regard, we can import the clock, but [operating it] will need highly skilled professionals. On the other hand, being able to build optical atomic clocks could help us become self-sustained and develop skilled human resources in the process, De noted.
And of course, theres the pride. A few years ago, a team at the National Physical Laboratory of India, New Delhi, led byPoonam Arorabuilt Indias first atomic clock with caesium atoms (the authors of the 2014 paper quoted earlier). This clock is Indias current frequency standard the machine that defines how time is measured in the country. The researchers acknowledge in their paper that they expect optical frequency standards will replace the [caesium fountain clock] as primary frequency standards in the next few years.
De, Rapol and their colleagues and students at IUCAA and IISER are now attempting to bring India to this next threshold.
Japan is the only country in the Asia-Pacific to have built [optical atomic clocks], and China is working hard among other nations like Australia, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore and Russia, according to De.
Himanshu N. is a freelance journalist. Vasudevan Mukunth is editor,The Wire Science.
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Two Pune Research Institutes Are Building Indias First Optical Atomic Clocks - The Wire
Intel ups the ante on quantum computing research – IT-Online
Intel is one of the US quantum technology companies included in Q-Next, one of five national quantum research centres established by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the US Department of Energy (DOE).
Q-Next, National Quantum Information Science Research Centre, is led by Argonne National Laboratory and brings together researchers from national laboratories, universities and technology companies.
Advancing quantum practicality will be a team sport across the ecosystem, and our partnership with Argonne National Laboratory on Q-Next will enable us to bring our unique areas of expertise to this cross-industry effort to drive meaningful progress in the field, says James Clarke, director of quantum hardware at Intel.
At Intel, we are taking a broad view of quantum research that spans hardware and software with a singular focus on getting quantum out of labs and into the real world, where it can solve real problems.
Quantum computing has the potential to tackle problems beyond the capabilities of conventional systems today by leveraging a phenomenon of quantum physics that exponentially expands computational power.
This could dramatically speed complex problem-solving in a variety of fields such as pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and materials science, accelerating what today could take years to complete in only a matter of minutes.
To speed the discovery and development in this promising emerging field of computing, the DOE and the OSTP have created five new quantum information science research centers across the country, with Q-Next being one of them.
The Q-Next facility will create two national foundries for quantum materials and devices, and leverage the strength of private-public partnership to focus on the advancements of three core quantum technologies:
* Quantum networks: Development of communications networks and interconnects for the transmission of quantum information across long distances, including quantum repeaters that enable the establishment of unhackable networks for information transfer.
* Quantum-enabled sensing: Development of sensor technologies that can leverage the exponential power of quantum computing to achieve unprecedented sensitivities for data capture, which would have transformational applications in physics, materials and life sciences.
* Quantum test beds: Ongoing research utilising quantum test environments, including both quantum simulators and future full-stack universal quantum computers, with applications in quantum simulations, cryptanalysis and logistics optimisation.
We are excited to have Intels expertise and partnership, along with numerous technology leaders, as part of the new Q-Next centre. Intel will help us to drive discoveries and technical progress in quantum computing that will advance both known and yet-to-be discovered quantum-enabled applications, says David Awschalom, Q-Next director, senior scientist at Argonne, Liew Family professor of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange.
Intels research efforts in quantum span the entire quantum system or full-stack from qubit devices to the hardware and software required to control these devices, to quantum algorithms that will harness the power of quantum technologies.
All of these elements are essential to advancing quantum practicality, the point at which quantum computing moves out of research labs and into real-world practical applications.
The company aims to develop a large-scale quantum computing system, which will require thousands of quantum bits, or qubits, working reliably together with limited error and information loss. It is focused on overcoming the key bottlenecks preventing researchers from moving beyond todays few qubit systems, including qubit operation at slightly higher temperatures, and elegant control systems and interconnects to facilitate the design of quantum systems at scale.
Earlier this year, Intel demonstrated progress in hot qubit performance, leveraging its silicon spin qubit research, and continues to advance its research on customised cryogenic control chips for quantum systems like Horse Ridge.
Featured picture: The inside of a quantum computing refrigerator in Intels Quantum Computing Lab in Hillsboro, Oregon. (Credit: Walden Kirsch/Intel Corporation)
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Intel ups the ante on quantum computing research - IT-Online
Armenian President on how Bach and quantum physics inspire him in the fight against Covid-19 – Public Radio of Armenia
In an article published by The Financial Times Armenian President Armen Sarkissian tells how Bach and quantum physics inspire him in the fight against Covid-19.
the President says that while other people need tea or coffee to start their day, for him its Bach.
For many years, Johann Sebastian has been part of my morning routine; his music gives me a charge of energy and positive emotions that stay with me through the day. Just a few minutesis all it takes; theres a precision and beauty to Bachs compositions that appeals, the President says.
Referring to quantum politics, he says it is simply a new way to understand how politics has changed from the days when technology and connections were not so ingrained in the world.
According to him, the pandemic is accelerating the transformation of the classical world of the 20th century and before where organised forms of connectivity mattered into a quantum world where change is faster and more unpredictable, and can be more random.
The individual particle or, in this case, person is immensely powerful now via the world wide web. The digital revolution was facilitating this transition before coronavirus appeared. To fight pandemics, manage financial crises and other risks, we need to change not only our lifestyle but our perspective, President Sarkissian says.
He believes that if we start thinking about this world as a quantum world, we will find the logic behind events and be able to predict them with some degree of probability.
The challenge we face is not about the virus. Yes, its tragic. But well be making a mistake if we see the virus as a one-off event that will never happen again. In its most basic form, the virus presents a dilemma for all countries its the economy versus human lives. Yes, economic life must go on but personal responsibility and common sense ought to prevail, he continues.
Armenia isnt a wealthy country and our people need to work to support their families, but we also have to stay vigilant because the epidemic hasnt reached its peak here yet. Unfortunately, relative to our population the virus has hit harder than in many countries, the President notes.
How is Armenia doing? Well, in one word, fine; in two words, not fine. The lockdown has been hard on everyone but you will not feel it looking at people on the streets. The attitude is, Iwould say, nonchalant. Coronavirus? Ive seen worse than that thats the attitude of some, unfortunately. For me, the worst part is that we are getting used to it, we live with it, almost neglect it. I know that is wrong, as I tell different audiences every day, Armen Sarkissian states.
Presidetn Sarkissian and his younger son Hayk are writing a book called am AQuantum World, which expands on the concept of quantum politics to understand how the dynamics of human progress and global risk have changed in a highly connected world with so much uncertainty
Yes, there is tragedy around us, yet there has never been a better time to reform education, optimize the food chain and embrace climate change incentives. Our aim is to offer a new framework for readers for their respective fields to challenge us and their thinking, the President says.
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As for each physicists, there is a new quantum paradox, there is a casting of doubt on the pillar of reality… – The Queens County Citizen
A tree falls in a forest, and no just one is there to listen to it. You will under no circumstances uncover it producing a seem. On the place, a person arrives to listen to the sound. You certainly know a sound will be manufactured. You are in fact of a erroneous opinion then. On the contrary, there is a paradox in quantum mechanics.
As you may have appear across Einsteins concept of relativity, you could be really conscious of how it throws widespread-sense ideas on physical actuality. Provided the differentiation among Quantum mechanics and widespread sense. You need to have to know that when another person observes an event occurring, it genuinely happened. And it is attainable to make no cost choices as well as random choices.
Our option in one put is immediately influencing a distant event. As of intuitive thoughts, they are extensively thought by physicists. Those speaking of the analysis, the publication is now manufactured in Mother nature Physics. And quantum physics alone breaks into some level. And the strongest consequence has occur out of a extended collection of discoveries.
For the operating of Quantum physics, it is incredibly effectively to explain the conduct of very small objects. For very small objects, we imply atoms or particles. Our quantum theory however does not give responses to thoughts these as where is this particle ideal now?.For the principle is, the probability for where by the particle will be located will be noticed.
The founders of this principle consist of Neils Bohr theorem. You need to however know we absence info because physical properties like position dont truly exist right up until they are calculated. You must know this is the motive why particular homes of particles are not able to be beautifully measured. In the context of the entangled state, there is a consideration of the pair of distant particles in a point out.
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Physicists may have found a way to create traversable wormholes – ZME Science
Credit: Pixabay.
The universal speed limit, which we commonly call the speed of light, is fundamental to the way the universe works. But human imagination knows no real limits. In science fiction, you often hear about wormholes, which are objects that enable faster-than-light travel by instantaneously transferring passengers from one point in spacetime to another.
Although the General Theory of Relativity and the Standard Model of Physics can theoretically support the existence of wormholes within their frameworks, they forbid traversable wormholes.
But physicists at Princeton flexed some serious mathematical muscles and found a loophole. By exploiting quirks of quantum mechanics within a five-dimensional universe, the researchers claim that it may be possible to create a wormhole large enough for humans and their spacecraft to travel through it and instantly emerge somewhere else at the other side of the universe. Alas, such a thing likely cannot exist in nature and an artificial traversable wormhole would be impossible to create with todays technology.
A wormhole or a Lorentzian wormhole is a sort of theoretical tunnel through space-time, often used as the preferred mode of interstellar travel in movies like Star Trek. The opening is a shortcut through intervening space to another location in the Universe. That seems to be in stark contrast to a black hole which is less of a tunnel and more of a meat grinder. However, some physicists claim that there are many characteristics which both black holes and wormholes share.
The existence of wormholes was first proposed by Karl Schwarzchild, whose solutions to Einsteins field equations form the basis for the inference of black holes. Sometimes, blackholes or blackhole binary systems may form connections between different points in spacetime.
The problem is that these wormholes collapse almost immediately, which would block matter from crossing from one end to the other. All hope isnt lost yet, though.
Juan Maldacena, the Carl P. Feinberg Professor of theoretical physics from the Institute of Advanced Study and Alexey Milekhin, a graduate student of astrophysics at Princeton University, wrote a new paper in which they discuss the conditions that may allow the existence of traversable wormholes.
In their paper, the two physicists outline some very exotic circumstances that may allow wormholes stable enough for humans to cross through. This includes the existence of negative energy, for instance.
In the theory of general relativity, we usually assume that the energy is greater than zero, at all times and everywhere in the universe. This has a very important consequence for gravity: Energy is linked to mass via the formula E=mc. So negative energy would consequently also imply negative mass. Positive masses attract each other, but with a negative mass, gravity could suddenly become a repulsive force.
Quantum theory, however, allows negative energy. According to quantum physics, it is possible to borrow energy from a vacuum at a certain location, like money from a bank. In their paper, the authors mention the Casimir Effect, in which quantum fields may produce negative energy while propagating along a closed circle.
However, this effect is typically small because it is quantum. In our previous paper, we realized that this effect can become considerable for black holes with large magnetic charge. The new idea was to use special properties of charged massless fermions (particles like the electron but with zero mass). For a magnetically charged black hole these travel along the magnetic field lines (In a way similar to how the charged particles of the solar wind create the auroras near the polar regions of the Earth), Maldacena and Milekhin explained to Universe Today.
These sort of wormholes would be allowed by the Standard Model of particle physics. However, they would be so tiny, not even a strand of human hair would have room to pass through. Whats more, they would only exist over equally tiny distances.
In order to support wormholes large and stable enough for humans to use, the physicists had to think outside the Standard Model box. The pair of researchers turned to the Randall-Sundrum II model, also known as the 5-dimensional warped geometry theory, which describes the universe in terms of five-dimensions.
This five-dimensional model of spacetime can enable scientists to describe physics that would normally be undetectable, allowing negative energy to exist.
The produced wormholes would look like medium-sized, charged black holes. They would be large enough for a spacecraft to travel through, however, the pilot would have to navigate very powerful tidal forces.
If the pilot could somehow navigate through this chaos, entering the wormhole would instantly propel the crew to another point in spacetime but the instant factor is only true from the perspective of the traveler. From the perspective of an outside observer, the travel would take as much time as light would take to travel from point A to point B, which is consistent with the Theory of General Relativity.
However, it would be next to impossible for this to work. Such wormholes do not exist in nature and artificially creating them would involve engineering negative mass.
In other words, its unlikely that wormholes will ever become a practical means of traveling through space. Nevertheless, its always fascinating to hear about concepts once solely thought to be of the realm of fiction that may actually be plausible.
The paper was published in the pre-print server arXiv.
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Physicists may have found a way to create traversable wormholes - ZME Science
Bill and Ted ‘Face the Music’ in their latest movie, as we all have to eventually – NBC News
Bill and Ted of Excellent Adventure fame captured an era and an age in movies paying homage to the teenage slackerdom that defined a generation, which is why its somewhat jarring to see the franchise get a sequel some 30 years later but also so illuminating.
Despite what many fans might think, they're not stoner dudes in disguise. Nor are they full-on Valley or surfer-boy types.
Bill and Ted Face the Music, out Friday, does just as its title promises, exploring the life of characters that seemed too of-their-time to make a modern day resurgence but are actually all the more compelling for fully embracing their older selves as witnesses to what life, and history, gives us as it continues to unfold, ready for it or not.
In the third installment, Bill and Ted are no longer the happy-go-lucky kids they once were. (That role is reserved for their peppy daughters.) Indeed, the far-fetched time-travel plots of the films only reinforce the realities of true life.
The metalheads have grown up adrift in a world where their music hasn't been embraced despite the prophecy in earlier movies that it would be. Since there are plenty of real-life Gen Xers with bands or other pursuits that never made it and are still trying to figure out what to do, the goofiness of Bill and Ted speaks to the way in which many of the people who grew up watching them have themselves refused to grow up. The movies sense of instability is easy to relate to particularly as middle-age people today have found even stable professions shaken by the economic roller coaster of the last 20 years, culminating in the pandemic crisis.
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But theres a flip side to the midlife malaise and joint couples therapy that Bill and Ted are stuck in, which also reveals a hidden truth for much of Gen X: They dont get the credit they deserve. Bill and Ted are slacker dudes hovering around 50 who have managed, despite their own cluelessness, to embark on successful time travel adventures and even cheat Death himself before he became one of their band members.
True, they generally succeed in life through dumb luck and a serendipitous confluence of events, but they're smarter than theyre perceived to be and often surprise us. Despite what many fans might think, they're not stoner dudes in disguise. Nor are they full-on Valley or surfer-boy types. Writers Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson confirmed this long ago, and Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves said they landed the roles because they didn't play them as stoners or airheads.
They're actually really sweet guys who are nice to everyone they encounter no matter how tweaked or crazy they are. (Except their evil alternate selves, whom they battle in the second film.) They are endearing characters because they are not malicious or angry. (OK, they get a bit testy in this one, but theyre 30 years older, dude.) Their amiability is a big reason why many fans will likely indulge in this sequel. And their approach to life could be what we need right now.
The major directive of the new installment, after all, is that Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Winter) and Ted Theodore Logan (Reeves) are the leaders of the band Wyld Stallyns, which includes their wives, Joanna and Elizabeth (Jayma Mays and Erinn Hayes), and have it in their hands to craft the epic song that brings about world peace and creates universal harmony. That was and is a very 80s notion. We could use some of that high-minded optimism in these dark times.
A quick recap on how they got to this point. In Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), an emissary from the future, Rufus (portrayed by the late George Carlin), taught the two SoCal buddies how to travel through time so that they could collect personages of historical significance to ace their high school history report, graduate and move on to their loftier musical goals.
In Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (1991), maniacal, mechanical clones from the future come to kill them and undo the predicted future success of their band. But with the help of Death (William Sadler) and a brilliant, heavenly alien named Station, they strike back at their alter egos. (With clever cinematic tributes to auteurs ranging from Ingmar Bergman to Tim Burton, Bogus is superior.)
In Face the Music, Rufus' daughter Kelly (Kristen Schaal) comes from the future to warn them that they have only 77 minutes to finally write that epic song that will unite everyone and everything, or the fabric of space and time as we know it will come undone. Most unfortunate.
To save everything in time, Bill and Ted flash forward into different points in the future to find where their future selves wrote the great song of universal harmony, if they can. (Time travel uses up real time minutes, so the race is on.) This time, their music-scholar daughters Theodora "Thea" Preston (Samara Weaving) and Wilhelmina "Billie" Logan (Brigette Lundy-Paine) journey separately back through the aeons to assemble the ultimate band including everyone from a Stone Age drummer to Jimi Hendrix for their most honorable dads.
Despite a slow-going first act, the movie and humor pick up once the time-travel segments kick in. (Post-credits tip: Stick around.) The cameo by grunge rocker Dave Grohl is fun, and who knew rapper Kid Cudi was so well versed in quantum physics? Further, modern digital effects show the future, the disrupted present and Hell in most outstanding fashion.
Underneath the silliness of it all, the Bill and Ted movies have always had a positive message about uniting people through the power of music.
Underneath the silliness of it all, the Bill and Ted movies have always had a positive message about uniting people through the power of music. It's been said that the films have a deluded sense of optimism, but at a time when Mike Judges prescient sci-fi comedy Idiocracy from 2006 in which our future country has literally become governed by idiots has become tragically realistic, we could use a dose of bodacious and nonheinous fun to help us lighten up a bit before things really do get cray-cray in the real world in 2020.
Face the Music isn't a classic for the ages, but it has its funny moments. Bill and Ted have never been about providing all the answers anyway. They're just here to show us the way, dudes.
Bryan Reesman is a New York-based reporter, author of the book Bon Jovi: The Story and host of the podcast Side Jams.
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Bill and Ted 'Face the Music' in their latest movie, as we all have to eventually - NBC News
How to use Steams new chat filters to block profanity and slurs – The Next Web
Welcome toTNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff.
Today Steam revealed a new system called Text & Chat Filtering, which essentially allows you to customize what you see and dont see in private spaces. You can choose which words you see and dont see, even otherwise innocuous words that may be offensive or triggering to you. Well show you how.
Valve announced the new feature today via Steam Labs, its experimental space. Essentially, Steam bans profanity and slurs in public spaces, such as its forums, but is choosing not to do so for private spaces such as chat. This is to empower users to choose what they see from others, specifically marginalized groups [trying to] reclaim language for themselves.
But lets assume youre not trying to reclaim anything and would prefer Steam filter profanity privately as well. Heres how you do that.
At the moment, the feature is in beta, so youll need to join the experiment in Steam Labs. However, all signs indicate this is likely to come to Steam generally. To find it, go to your Account page, then go to Preferences. Scroll down, and under Community Content Preferences, youll find something that says Steam Labs Experiment 011: Text Filtering. Click Join the experiment. Note that you can leave the experiment any time you choose.
Youll immediately see several new options in this section. The first is whether you want to filter out profanity or slurs. You can chose to allow profanity but not slurs, or to obscure them with symbols if you choose. You can also choose not to do this for your Steam friends, as presumably some words will carry a different weight if they come from someone you know.
Next youll see the more granular controls over what language is filters. You can add words to filter individually, or you can upload a list of words. Ditto the other option: you can add words or upload a list of words thatll never be filtered. You can also download lists of both words. Speaking as someone who uses profanity as a way of communicating with family (we all swear like sailors), theres some profanity that doesnt bother me and some that does. So these options allow you more control over what youll see and not see.
And thats it! Now youll be able to control what you see in Steam chat more fully. Good luck!
Read next: I just got a COVID-19 test who now knows I got it?
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How to use Steams new chat filters to block profanity and slurs - The Next Web
A continent works to grow its stake in quantum computing – University World News
AFRICA
South Africa is a few steps ahead in the advancement of quantum computing and quantum technologies in general, said Mark Tame, professor in photonics at Stellenbosch University in the Western Cape.
South Africas University of KwaZulu-Natal has also been working on quantum computing for more than a decade, gradually building up a community around the field.
The buzz about quantum computing in South Africa just started recently due to the agreement between [Johannesburgs] University of the Witwatersrand and IBM, said Professor Francesco Petruccione, interim director, National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Science, and South African Research Chair in Quantum Information Processing and Communication at the School of Chemistry and Physics Quantum Research Group, University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Interest was intensified by Googles announcement last October that it had developed a 53-qubit device which it claimed took 200 seconds to sample one instance of a quantum circuit a million times. The IT company claimed it would take a state-of-the-art digital supercomputer 10,000 years to achieve this.
A University of Waterloo Institute for Quantum Computing paper stresses quantum computers ability to express a signal (a qubit) of more than one value at the same time (the superposition ability) with that signal being manifested in another device independently, but in exactly the same way (the entanglement ability). This enables quantum computers to handle much more complex questions and problems than standard computers using binary codes of ones and zeros.
The IBM Research Laboratory in Johannesburg offers African researchers the potential to harness such computing power. It was established in 2015, part of a 10-year investment programme through the South African governments Department of Trade and Industry.
It is a portal to the IBM Quantum Experience, a cloud-based quantum computing platform accessible to other African universities that are part of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), which involves 16 of the continents leading universities (in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa).
Levelling of the playing field
The IBM development has levelled the playing field for students, [giving them] access to the same hardware as students elsewhere in the world. There is nothing to hold them back to develop quantum applications and code. This has been really helpful for us at Stellenbosch to work on projects which need access to quantum processors not available to the general public, said Tame.
While IBM has another centre on the continent, at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2018 the University of the Witwatersrand became the first African university to join the American computing giants Quantum Computing Network. They are starting to increase the network to have an army of quantum experts, said Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, a nuclear physicist, and vice-chancellor and principal of the University of the Witwatersrand.
At a continental level, Vilakazi said Africa is still in a learning phase regarding quantum computing. At this early stage we are still developing the skills and building a network of young students, he said. The university has sent students to IBMs Zurich facility to learn about quantum computing, he said.
To spur cooperation in the field, a Quantum Africa conference has been held every year since 2010, with the first three in South Africa, and others in Algeria and Morocco. Last years event was in Stellenbosch, while this years event, to be hosted at the University of Rwanda, was postponed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Growing African involvement
Rwanda is making big efforts to set up quantum technology centres, and I have former students now working in Botswana and the Gambia. It is slowly diffusing around the continent, said Petruccione.
Academics participating at the Stellenbosch event included Yassine Hassouni of Mohammed V University, Rabat; Nigerian academic Dr Obinna Abah of Queens University Belfast; and Haikel Jelassi of the National Centre for Nuclear Sciences and Technologies, Tunisia.
In South Africa, experimental and theoretical work is also being carried out into quantum communications the use of quantum physics to carry messages via fibre optic cable.
A lot of work is being done on the hardware side of quantum technologies by various groups, but funding for these things is not the same order of magnitude as in, say, North America, Australia or the UK. We have to do more with less, said Tame.
Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, is carrying out research into quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum sensing (the ability to detect if a quantum-sent message is being read).
I would like it to grow over the next few years by bringing in more expertise and help the development of quantum computing and technologies for South Africa, said Tame.
Witwatersrand is focusing on quantum optics, as is Petrucciones team, while there is collaboration in quantum computing with the University of Johannesburg and the University of Pretoria.
University programmes
Building up and retaining talent is a key challenge as the field expands in Africa, as is expanding courses in quantum computing.
South Africa doesnt offer a masters in quantum computing, or an honours programme, which we need to develop, said Petruccione.
This is set to change at the University of the Witwatersrand.
We will launch a syllabus in quantum computing, and were in the process of developing courses at the graduate level in physics, natural sciences and engineering. But such academic developments are very slow, said Vilakazi.
Further development will hinge on governmental support, with a framework programme for quantum computing being developed by Petruccione. There is interest from the [South African] Department of Science and Innovation. Because of [the economic impact of] COVID-19, I hope some money is left for quantum technology, but at least the government is willing to listen to the community, he said.
Universities are certainly trying to tap non-governmental support to expand quantum computing, engaging local industries, banks and pharmaceutical companies to get involved in supporting research.
We have had some interesting interactions with local banks, but it needs to be scaled up, said Petruccione.
Applications
While African universities are working on quantum computing questions that could be applicable anywhere in the world, there are plans to look into more localised issues. One is drug development for tuberculosis, malaria and HIV, diseases that have afflicted Southern Africa for decades, with quantum computings ability to handle complex modelling of natural structures a potential boon.
There is potential there for helping in drug development through quantum simulations. It could also help develop quantum computing networks in South Africa and more broadly across the continent, said Vilakazi.
Agriculture is a further area of application. The production of fertilisers is very expensive as it requires high temperatures, but bacteria in the soil do it for free. The reason we cant do what bacteria do is because we dont understand it. The hope is that as quantum computing is good at chemical reactions, maybe we can model it and that would lead to cheaper fertilisers, said Petruccione.
With the world in a quantum computing race, with the US and China at the forefront, Africa is well positioned to take advantage of developments. We can pick the best technology coming out of either country, and that is how Africa should position itself, said Vilakazi.
Petrucciones group currently has collaborations with Russia, India and China. We want to do satellite quantum communication. The first step is to have a ground station, but that requires investment, he said.
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A continent works to grow its stake in quantum computing - University World News