The fabric of the universe just got much more intriguing with evidence of the elusive glueball.
Category: particle physics – Page 139
A breakthrough experiment brings particles into unprecedented proximity, revealing new quantum behaviors.
We are all very familiar with the concept of the Earth’s magnetic field. It turns out that most objects in space have magnetic fields but it’s quite tricky to measure them. Astronomers have developed an ingenious way to measure the magnetic field of the Milky Way using polarized light from interstellar dust grains that align themselves to the magnetic field lines. A new survey has begun this mapping process and has mapped an area that covers the equivalent of 15 times the full moon.
Many people will remember experiments in school with iron filings and bar magnets to unveil their magnetic field. It’s not quite so easy to capture the magnetic field of the Milky Way though. The new method to measure the field relies upon the small dust grains which permeate space between the stars.
The grains of dust are similar in size to smoke particles but they are not spherical. Just like a boat turning itself into the current, the dust particles’ long axis tends to align with the local magnetic field. As they do, they emit a glow in the same frequency as the cosmic background radiation and it is this that astronomers have been tuning in to.
In an amazing phenomenon of quantum physics known as tunneling, particles appear to move faster than the speed of light. However, physicists from Darmstadt believe that the time it takes for particles to tunnel has been measured incorrectly until now. They propose a new method to stop the speed of quantum particles.
In classical physics, there are strict laws that cannot be circumvented. For instance, if a rolling ball lacks sufficient energy, it will not get over a hill; instead, it will roll back down before reaching the peak. In quantum physics, this principle is not quite so strict. Here, a particle may pass a barrier, even if it does not have enough energy to go over it. It acts as if it is slipping through a tunnel, which is why the phenomenon is also known as “quantum tunneling.” Far from mere theoretical magic, this phenomenon has practical applications, such as in the operation of flash memory drives.
Quantum Tunneling and Relativity.
To be clear, humans are not the pinnacle of evolution. We are confronted with difficult choices and cannot sustain our current trajectory. No rational person can expect the human population to continue its parabolic growth of the last 200 years, along with an ever-increasing rate of natural resource extraction. This is socio-economically unsustainable. While space colonization might offer temporary relief, it won’t resolve the underlying issues. If we are to preserve our blue planet and ensure the survival and flourishing of our human-machine civilization, humans must merge with synthetic intelligence, transcend our biological limitations, and eventually evolve into superintelligent beings, independent of material substrates—advanced informational beings, or ‘infomorphs.’ In time, we will shed the human condition and upload humanity into a meticulously engineered inner cosmos of our own creation.
Much like the origin of the Universe, the nature of consciousness may appear to be a philosophical enigma that remains perpetually elusive within the current scientific paradigm. However, I emphasize the term “current.” These issues are not beyond the reach of alternative investigative methods, ones that the next scientific paradigm will inevitably incorporate with the arrival of Artificial Superintelligence.
The era of traditional, human-centric theoretical modeling and problem-solving—developing hypotheses, uncovering principles, and validating them through deduction, logic, and repeatable experimentation—may be nearing the end. A confluence of factors—Big Data, algorithms, and computational resources—are steering us towards a new type of discovery, one that transcends the limitations of human-like logic and decision-making— the one driven solely by AI superintelligence, nestled in quantum neo-empiricism and a fluidity of solutions. These novel scientific methodologies may encompass, but are not limited to, computing supercomplex abstractions, creating simulated realities, and manipulating matter-energy and the space-time continuum itself.
An international research team has shown that phonons, the quantum particles behind material vibrations, can be classified using topology, much like electronic bands in materials. This breakthrough could lead to the development of new materials with unique thermal, electrical, and mechanical properties, enhancing our understanding and manipulation of solid-state physics.
An international group of researchers has found that quantum particles, which play a key role in the vibrations of materials affecting their stability and other characteristics, can be classified through topology. Known as phonons, these particles represent the collective vibrational patterns of atoms within a crystal structure. They create disturbances that spread like waves to nearby atoms. Phonons are crucial for several properties of solids, such as thermal and electrical conductivity, neutron scattering, and quantum states including charge density waves and superconductivity.
The spectrum of phonons—essentially the energy as a function of momentum—and their wave functions, which represent their probability distribution in real space, can be computed using ab initio first principle codes. However, these calculations have so far lacked a unifying principle. For the quantum behavior of electrons, topology—a branch of mathematics—has successfully classified the electronic bands in materials. This classification shows that materials, which might seem different, are actually very similar.
Strong field quantum optics is a rapidly emerging research topic, which merges elements of non-linear photoemission rooted in strong field physics with the well-established realm of quantum optics. While the distribution of light particles (i.e., photons) has been widely documented both in classical and non-classical light sources, the impact of such distributions on photoemission processes remains poorly understood.
Perturbative expansion is a valuable mathematical technique which is widely used to break down descriptions of complex quantum systems into simpler, more manageable parts. Perhaps most importantly, it has enabled the development of quantum field theory (QFT): a theoretical framework that combines principles from classical, quantum, and relativistic physics, and serves as the foundation of the Standard Model of particle physics.
The tension between quantum mechanics and relativity has long been a central split in modern-day physics. Developing a theory of quantum gravity remains one of the great outstanding challenges of the discipline. And yet, no one has yet been able to do it. But as we collect more data, it shines more light on the potential solution, even if some of that data happens to show negative results.
That happened recently with a review of data collected at IceCube, a neutrino detector located in the Antarctic ice sheet, and compiled by researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington. They looked for signs that gravity could vary even a minuscule amount based on quantum mechanical fluctuations. And, to put it bluntly, they didn’t find any evidence of that happening.
To check for these minuscule fluctuations, they analyzed more than 300,000 detected neutrinos that IceCube had captured. IceCube is an impressive engineering feat, with thousands of sensors buried over one sq km in the ice. When one of the detectors is triggered by one of a hundred trillions of neutrinos passing through it every second, data on whether it was affected by any perturbations in the local gravity of that area can be collected.
Overturned that picture entirely. The Universe, on the largest of cosmic scales, wasn’t static and unchanging at all, but rather was dynamically expanding.
If that’s true, and the Universe is expanding, then what else is expanding along with it? Is our galaxy expanding? What about the Solar System, planet Earth, or even the atoms in our own body? That’s the topic of this week’s inquiry courtesy of Jim Robison, who asks:
“We are part of the expanding universe. Does that mean we are expanding with it? Is the distance between the Earth and the Sun expanding, or between San Francisco and New York? Is the distance between the atoms in my body expanding? Is that why I need a larger belt?”