Daily Archives: May 26, 2017

Quantum physics is weird. To begin to understand it, you have to set aside everything you thought you knew about space and time and develop complex, abstract models of a universe in which the tiniest divisions of matter exist in constantly changing states and where the normal rules of action at a distance dont apply . . .

Oh, wait. Thats Emanuel Swedenborg.

Spiritual concepts have nothing to do with space. They have to do solely with state, state being an attribute of love, life, wisdom, desires, and the delights they providein general, an attribute of what is good and true. A truly spiritual concept of these realities has nothing in common with space. . . .

However, since angels and spirits see with their eyes the way we do on earth, and since objects can be seen only in space, there does seem to be space in the spiritual world where angels and spirits are, space like ours on earth. Still, it is not space but an appearance of space. It is not fixed and invariant like ours. It can be lengthened, shortened, changed and altered; and since it cannot be defined by measurement, we here cannot grasp it with an earthly concept, but only with a spiritual one. Spiritual concepts are no different when they apply to spatial distances than when they apply to distances of what is good and distances of what is true, which are agreements and likenesses as to state. (Divine Love and Wisdom 7; see also Heaven and Hell 15455)

Swedenborg emphasizes that space in the spiritual world is nothing like ours: he describes angels traveling over huge distances in an instant to reach someone who is thinking about them, communities of angels who are bound together by similarities in their states of love and wisdom, and surroundings that change in response to peoples thoughts and emotions. During the eighteenth century, when Isaac Newtons laws of physics were still brand new, this must have been hard to imagine. Today, quantum physics is giving us new ways to think about the universe that have interesting parallels to what Swedenborg described.

Take the principle of quantum entanglement, for example:

Entanglement occurs when two quantum particles interact with each other so that their quantum states become interdependent. If the first particle is in state A, say, then the other must be in state B, and vice versa.

Until a measurement is made of one of the particles, its state is undetermined: it can be regarded as being in both states A and B simultaneously, known as a superposition. The act of measuring collapses this superposition into just one of the possible states.

But if the particles are entangled, then this measurement also determines the state of the other particleeven if they have become separated by a vast distance. The effect of the measurement is transmitted instantaneously to the other particle, through what Albert Einstein skeptically called spooky action at a distance. [1]

In other words, if two particles are entangled, they function together as a single system. An action taken to affect one will also affect the other, no matter how far away they are. You could visualize this on a larger scale by imagining a pair of dice: if the dice were entangled in the same way that particles can become entangled, then when rolled simultaneously they would always turn up matching numbers, even if one die was on the opposite side of the planet from the other.

Entanglement between particles can happen as a result of almost any type of interaction, as long as they are close enough to affect each other. The effect can be almost unmeasurably brief (for example, when produced in a lab, as described in the article referenced above) or it could last indefinitely.

Compare this to the way that Swedenborg describes interaction between souls in the afterlife:

All motion in the spiritual world is the effect of changes of inner states, to the point that motion is nothing but change of state. . . .

This being the nature of motion, we can see that drawing near is likeness of inner state and moving away is dissimilarity. This is why the people who are nearby are the ones in a similar state and the ones who are far away are in dissimilar states. It is why space in heaven is nothing but the outward states that correspond to the inner ones.

This is also why in the spiritual world one individual is present to another if only that presence is intensely desired. This is because one person sees another in thought in this way and identifies with that individuals state. Conversely, one person moves away from another to the extent that there is any sense of reluctance; and since all reluctance comes from an opposition of affections and disagreement of thoughts, there can be many people appearing together in one place as long as they agree, but as soon as they disagree, they vanish. (Heaven and Hell 19294)

In Swedenborgs case, the interaction between two souls is a thought or feelingan emotional or spiritual state that can either draw individuals closer or drive them apart. This works not only for individuals, as described above, but for communities of angels in heaven, who are bound together by similarities in the things they love (Heaven and Hell 4144). And, like quantum particles, two individuals can align either briefly or indefinitely, depending on their internal qualities.

Of course, the similarity isnt perfect; as far as scientists know today, quantum entanglement cant be used to move objects or information through space. But the idea of two objects being so aligned that they can affect each other regardless of the distance between them is one that has a powerful resonance in Swedenborgs thought.

If we use quantum entanglement as a model, we see love as the glue that connects people together. In fact, in many places, Swedenborg observes that love is life itself (for example, the very first sentence of Divine Love and Wisdom). If thats true, then when people share a common love, they share a common lifea common existence that stretches from this world to the next.

Theres one more very intriguing way in which quantum entanglement parallels Swedenborgs thought. When building mathematical models of the universe based on quantum theory, researchers have found that entanglement is necessary to the existence of, well, everything:

Mark Van Raamsdonk, a string theorist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, likens the holographic concept [of the structure of the universe] to a two-dimensional computer chip that contains the code for creating the three-dimensional virtual world of a video game. We live within that 3-D game space. . . .

In 2010 Van Raamsdonk proposed a thought experiment to demonstrate the critical role of entanglement in the formation of space-time, pondering what would happen if one cut the memory chip in two and then removed the entanglement between qubits [quantum bits of information] in opposite halves. He found that space-time begins to tear itself apart, in much the same way that stretching a wad of gum by both ends yields a pinched-looking point in the center as the two halves move farther apart. Continuing to split that memory chip into smaller and smaller pieces unravels space-time until only tiny individual fragments remain that have no connection to one another. If you take away the entanglement, your space-time just falls apart, said Van Raamsdonk. [2]

Swedenborg says something very similar about the spiritual universe:

If you look at the created universe with an eye to its design, it is so full of wisdom from love that you might say everything taken all together is wisdom itself. There are things without measure in such a pattern, both sequential and simultaneous, that taken all together they constitute a single entity. This is the only reason they can be held together and sustained forever. (Divine Love and Wisdom 29)

Bringing these two ideas together gives us a new way to think about loving others: If there was no love connecting us as individuals, connecting individuals into communities, andconnectingcommunities into a larger and larger whole, then our spiritual universe would fall apart. Loving everybody might seem like a difficult goal, but loving the people closest to you just might be the first step in the process of bringing all of creation a little bit closer together.

***

For even more parallels between quantum mechanics and Swedenborgs writings, watch Spiritual Physics andHow to Travel in the Afterlife,two episodes of our weekly webcast Swedenborg and Life on the offTheLeftEye YouTube channel.

You can also download all of Swedenborgs writings, including the two works mentioned above, fromour bookstore.

[1] Philip Ball, Entangled diamonds vibrate together, Nature, December 1, 2011,http://www.nature.com/news/entangled-diamonds-vibrate-together-1.9532

[2] Jennifer Ouellette, How Quantum Pairs Stitch Space-Time, Quanta Magazine,April 28, 2015, https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150428-how-quantum-pairs-stitch-space-time

Go here to see the original:

What Quantum Physics Can Tell Us about the Afterlife ...

Physics (from AncientGreek: ()phusik (epistm)"knowledge of nature", from phsis "nature"[1][2][3]) is the natural science that involves the study of matter[4] and its motion and behavior through space and time, along with related concepts such as energy and force.[5] One of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, the main goal of physics is to understand how the universe behaves.[a][6][7][8]

Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy.[9] Over the last two millennia, physics was a part of natural philosophy along with chemistry, biology, and certain branches of mathematics, but during the scientific revolution in the 17th century, the natural sciences emerged as unique research programs in their own right.[b] Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined. New ideas in physics often explain the fundamental mechanisms of other sciences[6] while opening new avenues of research in areas such as mathematics and philosophy.

Physics also makes significant contributions through advances in new technologies that arise from theoretical breakthroughs. For example, advances in the understanding of electromagnetism or nuclear physics led directly to the development of new products that have dramatically transformed modern-day society, such as television, computers, domestic appliances, and nuclear weapons;[6] advances in thermodynamics led to the development of industrialization, and advances in mechanics inspired the development of calculus.

The United Nations named 2005 the World Year of Physics.

Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences. The earliest civilizations dating back to beyond 3000BCE, such as the Sumerians, ancient Egyptians, and the Indus Valley Civilization, all had a predictive knowledge and a basic understanding of the motions of the Sun, Moon, and stars. The stars and planets were often a target of worship, believed to represent their gods. While the explanations for these phenomena were often unscientific and lacking in evidence, these early observations laid the foundation for later astronomy.[9]

According to Asger Aaboe, the origins of Western astronomy can be found in Mesopotamia, and all Western efforts in the exact sciences are descended from late Babylonian astronomy.[11]Egyptian astronomers left monuments showing knowledge of the constellations and the motions of the celestial bodies,[12] while Greek poet Homer wrote of various celestial objects in his Iliad and Odyssey; later Greek astronomers provided names, which are still used today, for most constellations visible from the northern hemisphere.[13]

Natural philosophy has its origins in Greece during the Archaic period, (650 BCE 480 BCE), when pre-Socratic philosophers like Thales rejected non-naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena and proclaimed that every event had a natural cause.[14] They proposed ideas verified by reason and observation, and many of their hypotheses proved successful in experiment;[15] for example, atomism was found to be correct approximately 2000 years after it was first proposed by Leucippus and his pupil Democritus.[16]

Islamic scholarship had inherited Aristotelian physics from the Greeks and during the Islamic Golden Age developed it further, especially placing emphasis on observation and a priori reasoning, developing early forms of the scientific method.

The most notable innovations were in the field of optics and vision, which came from the works of many scientists like Ibn Sahl, Al-Kindi, Ibn al-Haytham, Al-Farisi and Avicenna. The most notable work was The Book of Optics (also known as Kitb al-Manir), written by Ibn Al-Haitham, in which he was not only the first to disprove the ancient Greek idea about vision, but also came up with a new theory. In the book, he was also the first to study the phenomenon of the pinhole camera and delved further into the way the eye itself works. Using dissections and the knowledge of previous scholars, he was able to begin to explain how light enters the eye, is focused, and is projected to the back of the eye: and built then the world's first camera obscura hundreds of years before the modern development of photography.[17]

The seven-volume Book of Optics (Kitab al-Manathir) hugely influenced thinking across disciplines from the theory of visual perception to the nature of perspective in medieval art, in both the East and the West, for more than 600 years. Many later European scholars and fellow polymaths, from Robert Grosseteste and Leonardo da Vinci to Ren Descartes, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, were in his debt. Indeed, the influence of Ibn al-Haytham's Optics ranks alongside that of Newton's work of the same title, published 700 years later.

The translation of The Book of Optics had a huge impact on Europe. From it, later European scholars were able to build the same devices as what Ibn al-Haytham did, and understand the way light works. From this, such important things as eyeglasses, magnifying glasses, telescopes, and cameras were developed.

Physics became a separate science when early modern Europeans used experimental and quantitative methods to discover what are now considered to be the laws of physics.[18][pageneeded]

Major developments in this period include the replacement of the geocentric model of the solar system with the heliocentric Copernican model, the laws governing the motion of planetary bodies determined by Johannes Kepler between 1609 and 1619, pioneering work on telescopes and observational astronomy by Galileo Galilei in the 16th and 17th Centuries, and Isaac Newton's discovery and unification of the laws of motion and universal gravitation that would come to bear his name.[19] Newton also developed calculus,[c] the mathematical study of change, which provided new mathematical methods for solving physical problems.[20]

The discovery of new laws in thermodynamics, chemistry, and electromagnetics resulted from greater research efforts during the Industrial Revolution as energy needs increased.[21] The laws comprising classical physics remain very widely used for objects on everyday scales travelling at non-relativistic speeds, since they provide a very close approximation in such situations, and theories such as quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity simplify to their classical equivalents at such scales. However, inaccuracies in classical mechanics for very small objects and very high velocities led to the development of modern physics in the 20th century.

Modern physics began in the early 20th century with the work of Max Planck in quantum theory and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Both of these theories came about due to inaccuracies in classical mechanics in certain situations. Classical mechanics predicted a varying speed of light, which could not be resolved with the constant speed predicted by Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism; this discrepancy was corrected by Einstein's theory of special relativity, which replaced classical mechanics for fast-moving bodies and allowed for a constant speed of light.[22]Black body radiation provided another problem for classical physics, which was corrected when Planck proposed that the excitation of material oscillators is possible only in discrete steps proportional to their frequency; this, along with the photoelectric effect and a complete theory predicting discrete energy levels of electron orbitals, led to the theory of quantum mechanics taking over from classical physics at very small scales.[23]

Quantum mechanics would come to be pioneered by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrdinger and Paul Dirac.[23] From this early work, and work in related fields, the Standard Model of particle physics was derived.[24] Following the discovery of a particle with properties consistent with the Higgs boson at CERN in 2012,[25] all fundamental particles predicted by the standard model, and no others, appear to exist; however, physics beyond the Standard Model, with theories such as supersymmetry, is an active area of research.[26] Areas of mathematics in general are important to this field, such as the study of probabilities and groups.

In many ways, physics stems from ancient Greek philosophy. From Thales' first attempt to characterise matter, to Democritus' deduction that matter ought to reduce to an invariant state, the Ptolemaic astronomy of a crystalline firmament, and Aristotle's book Physics (an early book on physics, which attempted to analyze and define motion from a philosophical point of view), various Greek philosophers advanced their own theories of nature. Physics was known as natural philosophy until the late 18th century.[27]

By the 19th century, physics was realised as a discipline distinct from philosophy and the other sciences. Physics, as with the rest of science, relies on philosophy of science and its "scientific method" to advance our knowledge of the physical world.[28] The scientific method employs a priori reasoning as well as a posteriori reasoning and the use of Bayesian inference to measure the validity of a given theory.[29]

The development of physics has answered many questions of early philosophers, but has also raised new questions. Study of the philosophical issues surrounding physics, the philosophy of physics, involves issues such as the nature of space and time, determinism, and metaphysical outlooks such as empiricism, naturalism and realism.[30]

Many physicists have written about the philosophical implications of their work, for instance Laplace, who championed causal determinism,[31] and Erwin Schrdinger, who wrote on quantum mechanics.[32][33] The mathematical physicist Roger Penrose has been called a Platonist by Stephen Hawking,[34] a view Penrose discusses in his book, The Road to Reality.[35] Hawking refers to himself as an "unashamed reductionist" and takes issue with Penrose's views.[36]

Though physics deals with a wide variety of systems, certain theories are used by all physicists. Each of these theories were experimentally tested numerous times and found to be an adequate approximation of nature. For instance, the theory of classical mechanics accurately describes the motion of objects, provided they are much larger than atoms and moving at much less than the speed of light. These theories continue to be areas of active research today. Chaos theory, a remarkable aspect of classical mechanics was discovered in the 20th century, three centuries after the original formulation of classical mechanics by Isaac Newton (16421727).

These central theories are important tools for research into more specialised topics, and any physicist, regardless of their specialisation, is expected to be literate in them. These include classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, electromagnetism, and special relativity.

Classical physics includes the traditional branches and topics that were recognised and well-developed before the beginning of the 20th centuryclassical mechanics, acoustics, optics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism. Classical mechanics is concerned with bodies acted on by forces and bodies in motion and may be divided into statics (study of the forces on a body or bodies not subject to an acceleration), kinematics (study of motion without regard to its causes), and dynamics (study of motion and the forces that affect it); mechanics may also be divided into solid mechanics and fluid mechanics (known together as continuum mechanics), the latter include such branches as hydrostatics, hydrodynamics, aerodynamics, and pneumatics. Acoustics is the study of how sound is produced, controlled, transmitted and received.[37] Important modern branches of acoustics include ultrasonics, the study of sound waves of very high frequency beyond the range of human hearing; bioacoustics, the physics of animal calls and hearing,[38] and electroacoustics, the manipulation of audible sound waves using electronics.[39]

Optics, the study of light, is concerned not only with visible light but also with infrared and ultraviolet radiation, which exhibit all of the phenomena of visible light except visibility, e.g., reflection, refraction, interference, diffraction, dispersion, and polarization of light. Heat is a form of energy, the internal energy possessed by the particles of which a substance is composed; thermodynamics deals with the relationships between heat and other forms of energy. Electricity and magnetism have been studied as a single branch of physics since the intimate connection between them was discovered in the early 19th century; an electric current gives rise to a magnetic field, and a changing magnetic field induces an electric current. Electrostatics deals with electric charges at rest, electrodynamics with moving charges, and magnetostatics with magnetic poles at rest.

Classical physics is generally concerned with matter and energy on the normal scale of observation, while much of modern physics is concerned with the behavior of matter and energy under extreme conditions or on a very large or very small scale. For example, atomic and nuclear physics studies matter on the smallest scale at which chemical elements can be identified. The physics of elementary particles is on an even smaller scale since it is concerned with the most basic units of matter; this branch of physics is also known as high-energy physics because of the extremely high energies necessary to produce many types of particles in particle accelerators. On this scale, ordinary, commonsense notions of space, time, matter, and energy are no longer valid.[40]

The two chief theories of modern physics present a different picture of the concepts of space, time, and matter from that presented by classical physics. Classical mechanics approximates nature as continuous, while quantum theory is concerned with the discrete nature of many phenomena at the atomic and subatomic level and with the complementary aspects of particles and waves in the description of such phenomena. The theory of relativity is concerned with the description of phenomena that take place in a frame of reference that is in motion with respect to an observer; the special theory of relativity is concerned with relative uniform motion in a straight line and the general theory of relativity with accelerated motion and its connection with gravitation. Both quantum theory and the theory of relativity find applications in all areas of modern physics.[41]

While physics aims to discover universal laws, its theories lie in explicit domains of applicability. Loosely speaking, the laws of classical physics accurately describe systems whose important length scales are greater than the atomic scale and whose motions are much slower than the speed of light. Outside of this domain, observations do not match predictions provided by classical mechanics. Albert Einstein contributed the framework of special relativity, which replaced notions of absolute time and space with spacetime and allowed an accurate description of systems whose components have speeds approaching the speed of light. Max Planck, Erwin Schrdinger, and others introduced quantum mechanics, a probabilistic notion of particles and interactions that allowed an accurate description of atomic and subatomic scales. Later, quantum field theory unified quantum mechanics and special relativity. General relativity allowed for a dynamical, curved spacetime, with which highly massive systems and the large-scale structure of the universe can be well-described. General relativity has not yet been unified with the other fundamental descriptions; several candidate theories of quantum gravity are being developed.

Mathematics provides a compact and exact language used to describe of the order in nature. This was noted and advocated by Pythagoras,[42]Plato,[43]Galileo,[44] and Newton.

Physics uses mathematics[45] to organise and formulate experimental results. From those results, precise or estimated solutions, quantitative results from which new predictions can be made and experimentally confirmed or negated. The results from physics experiments are numerical measurements. Technologies based on mathematics, like computation have made computational physics an active area of research.

Ontology is a prerequisite for physics, but not for mathematics. It means physics is ultimately concerned with descriptions of the real world, while mathematics is concerned with abstract patterns, even beyond the real world. Thus physics statements are synthetic, while mathematical statements are analytic. Mathematics contains hypotheses, while physics contains theories. Mathematics statements have to be only logically true, while predictions of physics statements must match observed and experimental data.

The distinction is clear-cut, but not always obvious. For example, mathematical physics is the application of mathematics in physics. Its methods are mathematical, but its subject is physical.[46] The problems in this field start with a "mathematical model of a physical situation" (system) and a "mathematical description of a physical law" that will be applied to that system. Every mathematical statement used for solving has a hard-to-find physical meaning. The final mathematical solution has an easier-to-find meaning, because it is what the solver is looking for.[clarification needed]

Physics is a branch of fundamental science, not practical science. Physics is also called "the fundamental science" because the subject of study of all branches of natural science like chemistry, astronomy, geology, and biology are constrained by laws of physics,[47] similar to how chemistry is often called the central science because of its role in linking the physical sciences. For example, chemistry studies properties, structures, and reactions of matter (chemistry's focus on the atomic scale distinguishes it from physics). Structures are formed because particles exert electrical forces on each other, properties include physical characteristics of given substances, and reactions are bound by laws of physics, like conservation of energy, mass, and charge.

Physics is applied in industries like engineering and medicine.

Applied physics is a general term for physics research which is intended for a particular use. An applied physics curriculum usually contains a few classes in an applied discipline, like geology or electrical engineering. It usually differs from engineering in that an applied physicist may not be designing something in particular, but rather is using physics or conducting physics research with the aim of developing new technologies or solving a problem.

The approach is similar to that of applied mathematics. Applied physicists use physics in scientific research. For instance, people working on accelerator physics might seek to build better particle detectors for research in theoretical physics.

Physics is used heavily in engineering. For example, statics, a subfield of mechanics, is used in the building of bridges and other static structures. The understanding and use of acoustics results in sound control and better concert halls; similarly, the use of optics creates better optical devices. An understanding of physics makes for more realistic flight simulators, video games, and movies, and is often critical in forensic investigations.

With the standard consensus that the laws of physics are universal and do not change with time, physics can be used to study things that would ordinarily be mired in uncertainty. For example, in the study of the origin of the earth, one can reasonably model earth's mass, temperature, and rate of rotation, as a function of time allowing one to extrapolate forward or backward in time and so predict future or prior events. It also allows for simulations in engineering which drastically speed up the development of a new technology.

But there is also considerable interdisciplinarity in the physicist's methods, so many other important fields are influenced by physics (e.g., the fields of econophysics and sociophysics).

Physicists use the scientific method to test the validity of a physical theory. By using a methodical approach to compare the implications of a theory with the conclusions drawn from its related experiments and observations, physicists are better able to test the validity of a theory in a logical, unbiased, and repeatable way. To that end, experiments are performed and observations are made in order to determine the validity or invalidity of the theory.[48]

A scientific law is a concise verbal or mathematical statement of a relation which expresses a fundamental principle of some theory, such as Newton's law of universal gravitation.[49]

Theorists seek to develop mathematical models that both agree with existing experiments and successfully predict future experimental results, while experimentalists devise and perform experiments to test theoretical predictions and explore new phenomena. Although theory and experiment are developed separately, they are strongly dependent upon each other. Progress in physics frequently comes about when experimentalists make a discovery that existing theories cannot explain, or when new theories generate experimentally testable predictions, which inspire new experiments.[50]

Physicists who work at the interplay of theory and experiment are called phenomenologists, who study complex phenomena observed in experiment and work to relate them to a fundamental theory.[51]

Theoretical physics has historically taken inspiration from philosophy; electromagnetism was unified this way.[d] Beyond the known universe, the field of theoretical physics also deals with hypothetical issues,[e] such as parallel universes, a multiverse, and higher dimensions. Theorists invoke these ideas in hopes of solving particular problems with existing theories. They then explore the consequences of these ideas and work toward making testable predictions.

Experimental physics expands, and is expanded by, engineering and technology. Experimental physicists involved in basic research design and perform experiments with equipment such as particle accelerators and lasers, whereas those involved in applied research often work in industry developing technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and transistors. Feynman has noted that experimentalists may seek areas which are not well-explored by theorists.[52]

Physics covers a wide range of phenomena, from elementary particles (such as quarks, neutrinos, and electrons) to the largest superclusters of galaxies. Included in these phenomena are the most basic objects composing all other things. Therefore, physics is sometimes called the "fundamental science".[47] Physics aims to describe the various phenomena that occur in nature in terms of simpler phenomena. Thus, physics aims to both connect the things observable to humans to root causes, and then connect these causes together.

For example, the ancient Chinese observed that certain rocks (lodestone and magnetite) were attracted to one another by an invisible force. This effect was later called magnetism, which was first rigorously studied in the 17th century. But even before the Chinese discovered magnetism, the ancient Greeks knew of other objects such as amber, that when rubbed with fur would cause a similar invisible attraction between the two.[53] This was also first studied rigorously in the 17th century and came to be called electricity. Thus, physics had come to understand two observations of nature in terms of some root cause (electricity and magnetism). However, further work in the 19th century revealed that these two forces were just two different aspects of one forceelectromagnetism. This process of "unifying" forces continues today, and electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force are now considered to be two aspects of the electroweak interaction. Physics hopes to find an ultimate reason (Theory of Everything) for why nature is as it is (see section Current research below for more information).[54]

Contemporary research in physics can be broadly divided into nuclear and particle physics; condensed matter physics; atomic, molecular, and optical physics; astrophysics; and applied physics. Some physics departments also support physics education research and physics outreach.[55]

Since the 20th century, the individual fields of physics have become increasingly specialised, and today most physicists work in a single field for their entire careers. "Universalists" such as Albert Einstein (18791955) and Lev Landau (19081968), who worked in multiple fields of physics, are now very rare.[f]

The major fields of physics, along with their subfields and the theories and concepts they employ, are shown in the following table.

Particle physics is the study of the elementary constituents of matter and energy and the interactions between them.[56] In addition, particle physicists design and develop the high energy accelerators,[57]detectors,[58] and computer programs[59] necessary for this research. The field is also called "high-energy physics" because many elementary particles do not occur naturally but are created only during high-energy collisions of other particles.[60]

Currently, the interactions of elementary particles and fields are described by the Standard Model.[61] The model accounts for the 12 known particles of matter (quarks and leptons) that interact via the strong, weak, and electromagnetic fundamental forces.[61] Dynamics are described in terms of matter particles exchanging gauge bosons (gluons, W and Z bosons, and photons, respectively).[62] The Standard Model also predicts a particle known as the Higgs boson.[61] In July 2012 CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, announced the detection of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson,[63] an integral part of a Higgs mechanism.

Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies the constituents and interactions of atomic nuclei. The most commonly known applications of nuclear physics are nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons technology, but the research has provided application in many fields, including those in nuclear medicine and magnetic resonance imaging, ion implantation in materials engineering, and radiocarbon dating in geology and archaeology.

Atomic, molecular, and optical physics (AMO) is the study of mattermatter and lightmatter interactions on the scale of single atoms and molecules. The three areas are grouped together because of their interrelationships, the similarity of methods used, and the commonality of their relevant energy scales. All three areas include both classical, semi-classical and quantum treatments; they can treat their subject from a microscopic view (in contrast to a macroscopic view).

Atomic physics studies the electron shells of atoms. Current research focuses on activities in quantum control, cooling and trapping of atoms and ions,[64][65][66] low-temperature collision dynamics and the effects of electron correlation on structure and dynamics. Atomic physics is influenced by the nucleus (see, e.g., hyperfine splitting), but intra-nuclear phenomena such as fission and fusion are considered part of nuclear physics.

Molecular physics focuses on multi-atomic structures and their internal and external interactions with matter and light. Optical physics is distinct from optics in that it tends to focus not on the control of classical light fields by macroscopic objects but on the fundamental properties of optical fields and their interactions with matter in the microscopic realm.

Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic physical properties of matter.[67] In particular, it is concerned with the "condensed" phases that appear whenever the number of particles in a system is extremely large and the interactions between them are strong.[68]

The most familiar examples of condensed phases are solids and liquids, which arise from the bonding by way of the electromagnetic force between atoms.[69] More exotic condensed phases include the superfluid[70] and the BoseEinstein condensate[71] found in certain atomic systems at very low temperature, the superconducting phase exhibited by conduction electrons in certain materials,[72] and the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases of spins on atomic lattices.[73]

Condensed matter physics is the largest field of contemporary physics. Historically, condensed matter physics grew out of solid-state physics, which is now considered one of its main subfields.[74] The term condensed matter physics was apparently coined by Philip Anderson when he renamed his research grouppreviously solid-state theoryin 1967.[75] In 1978, the Division of Solid State Physics of the American Physical Society was renamed as the Division of Condensed Matter Physics.[74] Condensed matter physics has a large overlap with chemistry, materials science, nanotechnology and engineering.[68]

Astrophysics and astronomy are the application of the theories and methods of physics to the study of stellar structure, stellar evolution, the origin of the Solar System, and related problems of cosmology. Because astrophysics is a broad subject, astrophysicists typically apply many disciplines of physics, including mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, relativity, nuclear and particle physics, and atomic and molecular physics.[76]

The discovery by Karl Jansky in 1931 that radio signals were emitted by celestial bodies initiated the science of radio astronomy. Most recently, the frontiers of astronomy have been expanded by space exploration. Perturbations and interference from the earth's atmosphere make space-based observations necessary for infrared, ultraviolet, gamma-ray, and X-ray astronomy.

Physical cosmology is the study of the formation and evolution of the universe on its largest scales. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity plays a central role in all modern cosmological theories. In the early 20th century, Hubble's discovery that the universe is expanding, as shown by the Hubble diagram, prompted rival explanations known as the steady state universe and the Big Bang.

The Big Bang was confirmed by the success of Big Bang nucleosynthesis and the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1964. The Big Bang model rests on two theoretical pillars: Albert Einstein's general relativity and the cosmological principle. Cosmologists have recently established the CDM model of the evolution of the universe, which includes cosmic inflation, dark energy, and dark matter.

Numerous possibilities and discoveries are anticipated to emerge from new data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope over the upcoming decade and vastly revise or clarify existing models of the universe.[77][78] In particular, the potential for a tremendous discovery surrounding dark matter is possible over the next several years.[79] Fermi will search for evidence that dark matter is composed of weakly interacting massive particles, complementing similar experiments with the Large Hadron Collider and other underground detectors.

IBEX is already yielding new astrophysical discoveries: "No one knows what is creating the ENA (energetic neutral atoms) ribbon" along the termination shock of the solar wind, "but everyone agrees that it means the textbook picture of the heliospherein which the Solar System's enveloping pocket filled with the solar wind's charged particles is plowing through the onrushing 'galactic wind' of the interstellar medium in the shape of a cometis wrong."[80]

Research in physics is continually progressing on a large number of fronts.

In condensed matter physics, an important unsolved theoretical problem is that of high-temperature superconductivity.[81] Many condensed matter experiments are aiming to fabricate workable spintronics and quantum computers.[68][82]

In particle physics, the first pieces of experimental evidence for physics beyond the Standard Model have begun to appear. Foremost among these are indications that neutrinos have non-zero mass. These experimental results appear to have solved the long-standing solar neutrino problem, and the physics of massive neutrinos remains an area of active theoretical and experimental research. Large Hadron Collider had already found the Higgs Boson. Future research aims to prove or disprove the supersymmetry, which extends the Standard Model of particle physics. The research on dark matter and dark energy is also on the agenda.[83]

Theoretical attempts to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity into a single theory of quantum gravity, a program ongoing for over half a century, have not yet been decisively resolved. The current leading candidates are M-theory, superstring theory and loop quantum gravity.

Many astronomical and cosmological phenomena have yet to be satisfactorily explained, including the existence of ultra-high energy cosmic rays, the baryon asymmetry, the acceleration of the universe and the anomalous rotation rates of galaxies.

Although much progress has been made in high-energy, quantum, and astronomical physics, many everyday phenomena involving complexity,[84]chaos,[85] or turbulence[86] are still poorly understood. Complex problems that seem like they could be solved by a clever application of dynamics and mechanics remain unsolved; examples include the formation of sandpiles, nodes in trickling water, the shape of water droplets, mechanisms of surface tension catastrophes, and self-sorting in shaken heterogeneous collections.[87]

These complex phenomena have received growing attention since the 1970s for several reasons, including the availability of modern mathematical methods and computers, which enabled complex systems to be modeled in new ways. Complex physics has become part of increasingly interdisciplinary research, as exemplified by the study of turbulence in aerodynamics and the observation of pattern formation in biological systems. In the 1932 Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, Horace Lamb said:[88]

I am an old man now, and when I die and go to heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather optimistic.

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Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.

This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before, said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work.

The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. Interactions that were previously calculated with mathematical formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like amplituhedron, which yields an equivalent one-term expression.

The degree of efficiency is mind-boggling, said Jacob Bourjaily, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University and one of the researchers who developed the new idea. You can easily do, on paper, computations that were infeasible even with a computer before.

The new geometric version of quantum field theory could also facilitate the search for a theory of quantum gravity that would seamlessly connect the large- and small-scale pictures of the universe. Attempts thus far to incorporate gravity into the laws of physics at the quantum scale have run up against nonsensical infinities and deep paradoxes. The amplituhedron, or a similar geometric object, could help by removing two deeply rooted principles of physics: locality and unitarity.

Both are hard-wired in the usual way we think about things, said Nima Arkani-Hamed, a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and the lead author of the new work, which he is presenting in talks and in a forthcoming paper. Both are suspect.

Locality is the notion that particles can interact only from adjoining positions in space and time. And unitarity holds that the probabilities of all possible outcomes of a quantum mechanical interaction must add up to one. The concepts are the central pillars of quantum field theory in its original form, but in certain situations involving gravity, both break down, suggesting neither is a fundamental aspect of nature.

In keeping with this idea, the new geometric approach to particle interactions removes locality and unitarity from its starting assumptions. The amplituhedron is not built out of space-time and probabilities; these properties merely arise as consequences of the jewels geometry. The usual picture of space and time, and particles moving around in them, is a construct.

Its a better formulation that makes you think about everything in a completely different way, said David Skinner, a theoretical physicist at Cambridge University.

The amplituhedron itself does not describe gravity. But Arkani-Hamed and his collaborators think there might be a related geometric object that does. Its properties would make it clear why particles appear to exist, and why they appear to move in three dimensions of space and to change over time.

Because we know that ultimately, we need to find a theory that doesnt have unitarity and locality, Bourjaily said, its a starting point to ultimately describing a quantum theory of gravity.

The amplituhedron looks like an intricate, multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions. Encoded in its volume are the most basic features of reality that can be calculated, scattering amplitudes, which represent the likelihood that a certain set of particles will turn into certain other particles upon colliding. These numbers are what particle physicists calculate and test to high precision at particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

The 60-year-old method for calculating scattering amplitudes a major innovation at the time was pioneered by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. He sketched line drawings of all the ways a scattering process could occur and then summed the likelihoods of the different drawings. The simplest Feynman diagrams look like trees: The particles involved in a collision come together like roots, and the particles that result shoot out like branches. More complicated diagrams have loops, where colliding particles turn into unobservable virtual particles that interact with each other before branching out as real final products. There are diagrams with one loop, two loops, three loops and so on increasingly baroque iterations of the scattering process that contribute progressively less to its total amplitude. Virtual particles are never observed in nature, but they were considered mathematically necessary for unitarity the requirement that probabilities sum to one.

The number of Feynman diagrams is so explosively large that even computations of really simple processes werent done until the age of computers, Bourjaily said. A seemingly simple event, such as two subatomic particles called gluons colliding to produce four less energetic gluons (which happens billions of times a second during collisions at the Large Hadron Collider), involves 220 diagrams, which collectively contribute thousands of terms to the calculation of the scattering amplitude.

In 1986, it became apparent that Feynmans apparatus was a Rube Goldberg machine.

To prepare for the construction of the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas (a project that was later canceled), theorists wanted to calculate the scattering amplitudes of known particle interactions to establish a background against which interesting or exotic signals would stand out. But even 2-gluon to 4-gluon processes were so complex, a group of physicists had written two years earlier, that they may not be evaluated in the foreseeable future.

Stephen Parke and Tomasz Taylor, theorists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, took that statement as a challenge. Using a few mathematical tricks, they managed to simplify the 2-gluon to 4-gluon amplitude calculation from several billion terms to a 9-page-long formula, which a 1980s supercomputer could handle. Then, based on a pattern they observed in the scattering amplitudes of other gluon interactions, Parke and Taylor guessed a simple one-term expression for the amplitude. It was, the computer verified, equivalent to the 9-page formula. In other words, the traditional machinery of quantum field theory, involving hundreds of Feynman diagrams worth thousands of mathematical terms, was obfuscating something much simpler. As Bourjaily put it: Why are you summing up millions of things when the answer is just one function?

We knew at the time that we had an important result, Parke said. We knew it instantly. But what to do with it?

The message of Parke and Taylors single-term result took decades to interpret. That one-term, beautiful little function was like a beacon for the next 30 years, Bourjaily said. It really started this revolution.

In the mid-2000s, more patterns emerged in the scattering amplitudes of particle interactions, repeatedly hinting at an underlying, coherent mathematical structure behind quantum field theory. Most important was a set of formulas called the BCFW recursion relations, named for Ruth Britto, Freddy Cachazo, Bo Feng and Edward Witten. Instead of describing scattering processes in terms of familiar variables like position and time and depicting them in thousands of Feynman diagrams, the BCFW relations are best couched in terms of strange variables called twistors, and particle interactions can be captured in a handful of associated twistor diagrams. The relations gained rapid adoption as tools for computing scattering amplitudes relevant to experiments, such as collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. But their simplicity was mysterious.

The terms in these BCFW relations were coming from a different world, and we wanted to understand what that world was, Arkani-Hamed said. Thats what drew me into the subject five years ago.

With the help of leading mathematicians such as Pierre Deligne, Arkani-Hamed and his collaborators discovered that the recursion relations and associated twistor diagrams corresponded to a well-known geometric object. In fact, as detailed in a paper posted to arXiv.org in December by Arkani-Hamed, Bourjaily, Cachazo, Alexander Goncharov, Alexander Postnikov and Jaroslav Trnka, the twistor diagrams gave instructions for calculating the volume of pieces of this object, called the positive Grassmannian.

Named for Hermann Grassmann, a 19th-century German linguist and mathematician who studied its properties, the positive Grassmannian is the slightly more grown-up cousin of the inside of a triangle, Arkani-Hamed explained. Just as the inside of a triangle is a region in a two-dimensional space bounded by intersecting lines, the simplest case of the positive Grassmannian is a region in an N-dimensional space bounded by intersecting planes. (N is the number of particles involved in a scattering process.)

It was a geometric representation of real particle data, such as the likelihood that two colliding gluons will turn into four gluons. But something was still missing.

The physicists hoped that the amplitude of a scattering process would emerge purely and inevitably from geometry, but locality and unitarity were dictating which pieces of the positive Grassmannian to add together to get it. They wondered whether the amplitude was the answer to some particular mathematical question, said Trnka, a post-doctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology. And it is, he said.

Arkani-Hamed and Trnka discovered that the scattering amplitude equals the volume of a brand-new mathematical object the amplituhedron. The details of a particular scattering process dictate the dimensionality and facets of the corresponding amplituhedron. The pieces of the positive Grassmannian that were being calculated with twistor diagrams and then added together by hand were building blocks that fit together inside this jewel, just as triangles fit together to form a polygon.

Like the twistor diagrams, the Feynman diagrams are another way of computing the volume of the amplituhedron piece by piece, but they are much less efficient. They are local and unitary in space-time, but they are not necessarily very convenient or well-adapted to the shape of this jewel itself, Skinner said. Using Feynman diagrams is like taking a Ming vase and smashing it on the floor.

Arkani-Hamed and Trnka have been able to calculate the volume of the amplituhedron directly in some cases, without using twistor diagrams to compute the volumes of its pieces. They have also found a master amplituhedron with an infinite number of facets, analogous to a circle in 2-D, which has an infinite number of sides. Its volume represents, in theory, the total amplitude of all physical processes. Lower-dimensional amplituhedra, which correspond to interactions between finite numbers of particles, live on the faces of this master structure.

They are very powerful calculational techniques, but they are also incredibly suggestive, Skinner said. They suggest that thinking in terms of space-time was not the right way of going about this.

The seemingly irreconcilable conflict between gravity and quantum field theory enters crisis mode in black holes. Black holes pack a huge amount of mass into an extremely small space, making gravity a major player at the quantum scale, where it can usually be ignored. Inevitably, either locality or unitarity is the source of the conflict.

We have indications that both ideas have got to go, Arkani-Hamed said. They cant be fundamental features of the next description, such as a theory of quantum gravity.

String theory, a framework that treats particles as invisibly small, vibrating strings, is one candidate for a theory of quantum gravity that seems to hold up in black hole situations, but its relationship to reality is unproven or at least confusing. Recently, a strange duality has been found between string theory and quantum field theory, indicating that the former (which includes gravity) is mathematically equivalent to the latter (which does not) when the two theories describe the same event as if it is taking place in different numbers of dimensions. No one knows quite what to make of this discovery. But the new amplituhedron research suggests space-time, and therefore dimensions, may be illusory anyway.

We cant rely on the usual familiar quantum mechanical space-time pictures of describing physics, Arkani-Hamed said. We have to learn new ways of talking about it. This work is a baby step in that direction.

Even without unitarity and locality, the amplituhedron formulation of quantum field theory does not yet incorporate gravity. But researchers are working on it. They say scattering processes that include gravity particles may be possible to describe with the amplituhedron, or with a similar geometric object. It might be closely related but slightly different and harder to find, Skinner said.

Physicists must also prove that the new geometric formulation applies to the exact particles that are known to exist in the universe, rather than to the idealized quantum field theory they used to develop it, called maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. This model, which includes a superpartner particle for every known particle and treats space-time as flat, just happens to be the simplest test case for these new tools, Bourjaily said. The way to generalize these new tools to [other] theories is understood.

Beyond making calculations easier or possibly leading the way to quantum gravity, the discovery of the amplituhedron could cause an even more profound shift, Arkani-Hamed said. That is, giving up space and time as fundamental constituents of nature and figuring out how the Big Bang and cosmological evolution of the universe arose out of pure geometry.

In a sense, we would see that change arises from the structure of the object, he said. But its not from the object changing. The object is basically timeless.

While more work is needed, many theoretical physicists are paying close attention to the new ideas.

The work is very unexpected from several points of view, said Witten, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study. The field is still developing very fast, and it is difficult to guess what will happen or what the lessons will turn out to be.

Note: This article was updated on December 10, 2013, to include a link to the first in a series of papers on the amplituhedron.

This article was reprinted on Wired.com.

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Physicists Discover Geometry Underlying Particle Physics

A recent argument has popped up suggesting that Ant-Man is quite possibly Marvels most deadly superhero, and that he could defeat DCs Superman if the full extent of his abilities were realized. But does it hold up upon closer examination of understanding the wacky world of comic book physics?

Inverse recently had a talk with Dr. Spiros Michalakis, who served as a scientific consultant on Marvels 2015 sleeper hitAnt-Man. The scientistpreviously wrote the following back in 2015 right after the release of the film:

If someone could go to a place where the laws of physics as we know them were not yet formed, at a place where the arrow of time was broken and the fabric of space was not yet woven, the powers of such a master of the quantum realm would only be constrained by their ability to come back to the same (or similar) reality from which they departed. All the superheroes of Marvel and DC Comics combined would stand no chance against Ant-Man with a malfunctioning regulator.

More recently, Dr. Michalakis expanded upon his original thesis when he wrote back to Inverse.

What Im saying is that potentially understanding the quantum code from which curvature of space-time comes from, [Ant-Man] could manipulate to increase it or decrease it. Ant-Man could have created say, a black hole. Could Superman escape the black hole? Probably not. Then game over.

So at face value, Ant-Man could win by fundamentally altering the basic values of quantum physics a fair assumption to make under normal circumstances, as with those kinds of powers, the character could probably beat the vast majority of comic book characters across multiple fictional universes. Im no scientist, but Id like to take a shot at playing devils advocate here. In such a scenario, Ant-Man probably could take on a number of superheroes without issues and win every time by more-or-less Doctor Manhattan-ing his way through existence. But the thing is that were talking about God-Mode Ant-Man going up against Superman, and Supermans no slouch when it comes to messing with the laws of physics as well, in part because, at his core, Superman is meant to be a character free from all limitations at his absolute best even though hes only as strong as the story needs him to be. A story could necessitate that hed get stuck in a black hole, while another would say he could escape.

Among some of Kal-Els greatest science-defying feats include the ability to hold a personification of Infinity (an object thats so massive that it should be completely impossible within any given Universe), hearing emergency signals light-years away from the source and getting back there in a matter of minutes (something which is impossible because sound cant be transmitted through space, as is traveling faster than light without tearing a hole in reality), and obliterating the New God Darkseid from the Universe by singing. (Seriously, all of that happened Post-Crisis.) And thats allwiththe standard physical limitations of the DC Universe. Could you imagine how much more powerful you could potentially make Superman could be if you messed around with the quantum physicsof the Universe?

Admittedly, the article notes that there are limitations to this line of thought, which is something thats lost in the actual headline of the piece. Theres no indication that theres any version of Ant-Man, let alone the one weve seen in the MCU, has been able to cheese his way toward omnipotence, which is something the original article mentions. And thats also not getting into the fact that my explanation of Supermans impossible feats neglect to mention his weaknesses (Kryptonite and magic, among other things), nor do they mention that Supermans powers are entirely based on solar energy and that he could lose them if its blocked off either of which Ant-Man could exploit under the right circumstances. So yeah, Ant-Man probablycoulddestroy Superman in this kind of a situation, but one could just turn around and argue that Superman could find a way to defeat Ant-Man. In the end, I feel as though Im in agreement with Stan Lees position on the prospect of a different What If? battle the victor can only be decided by whomever is actually writing the story.

Superman (portrayed by Henry Cavill) will next be seen on film in this Autumns Justice Leagueand in a standalone Supermanfilm sometime after that. Ant-Man (portrayed by Paul Rudd) has yet to be confirmed for eitherAvengers: Infinity War or its sequel, but he will be returning in next years Ant-Man & The Wasp.

Source: Inverse

The DCEU has found its own definitive version of Superman. Henry Cavill has been given the opportunity to play the iconic superhero in this monster of a DC franchise and so far hes done a great job with the role and brining Superman into the new century in a new way. With Justice League set to hit theaters later this year its safe to say that we will be seeing a lot from him over the next several years. So far there have only been two movies featuring him but these two movies have already given us some memorable moments with the character. These moments in particular stand out and give a weight to the character that is crucial to this series continued success. While it still may be early its a good time to look back at said great moments.

Here are 5 of the Best DCEU Superman Moments So Far. Click Next to continue

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Could Ant-Man Beat Superman With Quantum Physics? - Heroic Hollywood (blog)