Daily Archives: January 7, 2022

The universe is governed by two sets of seemingly incompatible laws of physics theres the classical physics were used to on our scale, and the spooky world of quantum physics on the atomic scale. MIT physicists have now observed the moment atoms switch from one to the other, as they form intriguing quantum tornadoes.

Things that seem impossible to our everyday understanding of the world are perfectly possible in quantum physics. Particles can essentially exist in multiple places at once, for instance, or tunnel through barriers, or share information across vast distances instantly.

These and other odd phenomena can arise as particles interact with each other, but frustratingly the overarching world of classical physics can interfere and make it hard to study these fragile interactions. One way to amplify quantum effects is to cool atoms right down to a fraction above absolute zero, creating a state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) that can exhibit quantum properties on a larger, visible scale.

For the new study the MIT team did just that, to investigate whats known as a quantum Hall fluid. This strange type of matter is made up of clouds of electrons trapped in magnetic fields, which begin to interact with each other in unusual ways to produce quantum effects. Rather than electrons, which are too hard to see clearly in this system, the researchers made a BEC out of about a million ultracold sodium atoms.

We thought, lets get these cold atoms to behave as if they were electrons in a magnetic field, but that we could control precisely, says Martin Zwierlein, corresponding author of the study. Then we can visualize what individual atoms are doing, and see if they obey the same quantum mechanical physics.

The team placed this cloud of atoms in an electromagnetic trap, then spun them around at 100 rotations per second. The cloud stretched out into a long needle shape that got thinner and thinner and thats when the atoms switched over into quantum behavior.

The needle structure first started to bend back and forth like a snake in motion, then it broke into discrete segments. Still spinning, these segments formed a strange crystalline pattern that the team described as a string of quantum tornadoes. This behavior is governed entirely by the interactions between the atoms, and could have some intriguing implications for quantum and classical mechanics.

This evolution connects to the idea of how a butterfly in China can create a storm here, due to instabilities that set off turbulence, says Zwierlein. Here, we have quantum weather: The fluid, just from its quantum instabilities, fragments into this crystalline structure of smaller clouds and vortices. And its a breakthrough to be able to see these quantum effects directly.

The research was published in the journal Nature.

Source: MIT

Excerpt from:

"Quantum tornadoes" mark crossover from classical to quantum physics - New Atlas

Michigan State University has joined Purdue University and the University of Michigan to form a Midwest-based alliance that will push the frontiers of quantum science and engineering research, education and training.

The Midwest Quantum Collaboratory, or MQC, will foster new cutting-edge projects across the universities, creating new opportunities for leading researchers in quantum computing and information science. MQC will also bolster the universities work preparing their graduates to power the rapidly growing quantum workforce.

Angela K. Wilson, John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at MSU. Credit: Harley Seeley

Each of the MQC universities is bringing its unique strengths and partnerships to the collaboration to provide even greater training and opportunities for our students," said Angela K. Wilson, John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor in MSUs College of Natural Sciences Department of Chemistry.

Although navigating everyday life usually doesnt require expertise in quantum mechanics the science governing atoms and electrons it can revolutionize how we solve a variety of real-world problems. For example, researchers are creating quantum computing hardware and software and that could lead to paradigm shifts in finance, logistics and cybersecurity.

In the future, the use of quantum computers will be everywhere, regardless of field. Quantum computers are predicted to take the place of computers as we now know them, so jobs will become quite prevalent, said Wilson, who is also the director of the MSU Center for Quantum Computing, Science and Engineering, or MSU-Q.

Bringing together three of our nation's largest universities and three of the largest quantum computing efforts provides potential employers with a great source of interns and potential employees encompassing a broad range of quantum computing.

The Midwest Quantum Collaboratory logo. Credit: Courtesy of MQC

Scientists are also developing quantum technology to help better understand fundamental science, improve communications and advance clean energy production. As researchers push the quantum boundaries, they also anticipate new and exciting opportunities.

"We scientists are now in a position to start combining these quantum building blocks to quantum applications that have never existed," said the MQCs inaugural director Mackillo Kira, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of physics at the University of Michigan.

It is absolutely clear that any such breakthrough will happen only through a broad, diverse and interdisciplinary research effort, he said. MQC has been formed also to build scientific diversity and critical mass needed to address the next steps in quantum science and technology.

Johannes Pollanen, Jerry Cowen Chair of Experimental Physics at MSU. Credit: Harley Seeley

"We know collaboration is key to driving innovation, especially for quantum," said David Stewart, managing director of the Purdue Quantum Science and Engineering Institute.

The MQC will not only provide students with scientific training, but also develop their interpersonal skills so they will be ready to contribute to a currently shorthanded quantum workforce, Stewart said.

With so much promise, quantum technology has already captured the attention and research investments of many prominent corporations, including IBM, Google, Amazon and Goldman Sachs. MQC is partnering with such companies to help their efforts through scientific collaborations and by introducing them to students and postdocs who have the skills to help drive a growing industrial sector.

The demand for technically skilled quantum employees is exploding, said Johannes Pollanen, the Jerry Cowen Chair of ExperimentalPhysics at MSU and associate director of MSU-Q.

Finding qualified employees for these positions is already a critical bottleneck for advancing the quantum information age, he said. MQC is not only pushing the envelope of quantum technology development but also actively working to train this next generation workforce and connect them with the leading companies in the field.

This dilution fridge found in Johannes Pollanens lab is an example of equipment on MSUs campus designed to make quantum measurements and test quantum technology. Credit: Courtesy of the Laboratory for Hybrid Quantum Systems

For its part, MSU brings extensive and interdisciplinary expertise in quantum computing technology and algorithms to the table. With decades of experience in these realms, MSU researchers, including Pollanen, have helped start companies and driven the formation of MSU-Q.

Founded in 2019 by Wilson, Pollanen and Andrew Christlieb, an MSU Foundation Professor in the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering, MSU-Q spans departments to strengthen Spartan quantum collaborations. Now, MQC will enable MSU to extend this work beyond campus, joining forces with Purdue and University of Michigan.

Collaborations like the ones were building at MSU-Q and MQC are bringing about a transformative new era in information processing and high-performance computing, said Pollanen. I really see this so-called second quantum revolution as a truly amazing time to be working in the field.

News of the MQC comes on the heels of another recent announcement of a multi-institute quantum initiative supported by the National Science Foundation. Along with Ohio State University and the University of Chicago, MSU is co-leading QuSTEAM, short for Convergent Undergraduate Education in Quantum Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics.

Link:

MSU forms quantum alliance with Purdue and University of Michigan - MSUToday

The Planck time is an incredibly small interval of time that emerges naturally from a few basic quantities in theoretical physics. When it was discovered by Max Planck at the end of the 19th century, it seemed to be no more than a scientific curiosity. But today it plays a tantalizing role in our understanding of the Big Bang and the search for a theory of quantum gravity.

Heres a summary of everything we know about the Planck time: where it came from, what it is, and what it might reveal about the way the universe works.

Related: How does time work?

The Planck time was first described in a scientific paper written by Planck in 1899, in a section called Natural Measurement Units (the paper, in German, can be found at the Biodiversity Heritage Library). In everyday use, measurement units are no big deal. We use whatever is convenient ounces or tons for mass, miles or inches for distance, minutes or days for time. Scientists tend to use SI units of kilograms, meters and seconds, because they simplify complex calculations but only up to a point. The math can still get tortuously complicated.

In Newtons equation for the force of gravity, for example, the gravitational constant G has brain-twisting units of cubic meters per kilogram per second squared, according to Swinburne University. In these units, G which is one of the most fundamental numbers in the universe has the arbitrary-looking value of 0.0000000000667. Planck wanted to find a more natural set of units in which G, and similar fundamental constants, are exactly equal to 1.

Related: What is a light-year?

Who was Max Planck?

Max Planck may not be a household name, but he gave the world a household phrase: quantum theory. According to the European Space Agency, which named its Planck spacecraft after him, the breakthrough came in 1900 when he discovered that energy can only be transmitted in small packets of prescribed size, which he termed quanta. This was decades before the likes of Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrdinger discovered all the quantum weirdness were familiar with today, but none of that would have been possible if Planck hadnt paved the way first. As such, hes rightly described as the father of quantum physics.

The second parameter Planck chose was the speed of light c, in meters per second. This was known to be an important constant even in 1899, despite the fact that Einsteins theory of relativity, with which its closely associated, still lay several years in the future. The third parameter was a brand-new constant Planck himself had just discovered, now known simply as Plancks constant. Usually represented by the letter h, its the ratio of a photon's energy to its frequency, with units of kilograms multiplied square meters per second.

Taking these three constants as his starting point, Planck was able to find a new set of measurement units in which theyre all precisely equal to one. These basic units are referred to as the Planck mass, Planck length and Planck time. Our particular interest here is in the last of these, but theres a close relationship between the last two: the Planck length is equal to the Planck time multiplied by the speed of light.

The U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology gives the value of the Planck time as 5.391247 10^-44 seconds. In other sources, including Plancks original paper, you may find a slightly bigger value around 1.35 10^-43 seconds. As explained on Eric Weissteins World of Physics site, this is due to the use of two different versions of Plancks constant. The larger value uses Plancks original quantity, h, while the smaller, more common value uses a parameter called h-bar, which is h divided by 2 pi.

Whichever value is used, the result is a time interval that is unimaginably tiny in the context of everyday experience. A nanosecond, often used colloquially to mean a very short time, is 0.000000001 seconds, with 8 zeros between the decimal point and the first significant figure. The Planck time has no fewer than 43 zeroes. Its the time it takes light to travel one Planck length, which is around a hundredth of a millionth of a trillionth of the diameter of a proton, according to Symmetry magazine.

Because the Planck time is so impractically small, it was largely ignored by scientists prior to the 1950s, according to K. A. Tomilin of the Moscow Institute for the History of Science and Technology. At best it was considered an interesting curiosity with no real physical significance. Then, when physicists started looking for a theory of everything that would encompass both gravity and quantum mechanics, they realized that the Planck time might have enormous significance after all.

The key lies in the fact that the Planck time, along with the other Planck units, incorporates both the gravitational constant G and Plancks constant h, which is central to quantum theory. Inadvertently, back in 1899, Planck had come up with a formula that straddled both halves of modern physics, long before anyone had started looking for such a connection.

Universal units

Plancks original motivation in devising his measurement system was to define a set of units that werent Earth-centric, in the way our units usually are. Thats even true of the so-called astronomical unit, which is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun, according to the University of Surrey, or the light year, which is the distance light travels in the time it takes the Earth to orbit once around the Sun. In contrast, Plancks units as impractical as they are for everyday use have no such anthropocentric connections. As Planck himself put it, according to Don Lincoln of Fermilab, his units necessarily retain their meaning for all times and for all civilizations, even extraterrestrial and non-human ones.

For any given mass, Einsteins theory of gravity general relativity gives a characteristic length scale called the Schwarzschild radius. But quantum theory has its own length scale for that mass, which is termed the Compton wavelength, according to Georgia State University. So is there any mass for which the Schwarzschild radius is exactly equal to the Compton wavelength? It turns out there is and its the Planck mass, for which those two parameters, one from quantum theory and one from general relativity, both equal the Planck length.

Is this just a coincidence, or does it mean that gravitational and quantum effects really do start to overlap at the Planck scale?

Some scientists, such as Diego Meschini of Jyvaskyla University in Finland, remain skeptical, but the general consensus is that Planck units really do play a key role in connecting these two areas of physics. One possibility is that spacetime itself is quantized at the level of a Planck length and Planck time. If this is true, then the fabric of spacetime, when looked at on that scale, would appear chunky rather than smoothly continuous.

In the universe we see today, there are four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. But as we look backward in time through the first moments after the Big Bang, the universe becomes so hot and dense that these forces gradually merge into each other. It all happened very quickly; from ten microseconds onward, the four forces looked just as they do today. Before that, however, there was no distinction between the electromagnetic and weak forces and prior to 10^-36 seconds, these were joined by the strong force as well.

At this point, gravity was still a separate force and based on current theories, we cant look back any further in time than this. But its widely believed that, given a better understanding of quantum gravity, wed find that prior to the Planck time gravity was also merged into the other forces. It was only at the Planck time, around 5 10^-44 seconds after the Big Bang, that gravity became the separate force we see today.

Read this article:

What is the Planck time? - Space.com

01/02/2022

Act. At 10:52 CET

Drafting T21

The year 2022 will be important for quantum physics, with the restart of activities of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, as well as for space exploration, which will not only bring us closer to the Moon and Mars, but will also crash a suicide probe against a distant asteroid.

The journal Nature advances that the year that now begins promises significant advances in the field of Physics and space exploration.

It notes that after a multi-year shutdown and extensive maintenance work, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is scheduled to restart operations at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory outside Geneva, in June, Swiss.

The main LHC experiments, ATLAS and CMS, were updated and expanded with additional layers of detector components. This will allow them to collect more data from the 40 million proton collisions that each of them produces every second, the magazine notes.

The Large Hadron Collider returns in 2022. | CNRS

And after their own updates, the worlds four gravitational wave detectors one in Japan, one in Italy and two in the United States will also begin a new series of observations in December 2022.

Additionally, the magazine adds, at Michigan State University in East Lansing, the rare isotope beam facility is expected to begin operations early in the new year.

The multistage accelerator aims to synthesize thousands of new isotopes of known elements, and will investigate the nuclear structure and physics of neutron stars and supernova explosions.

The magazine stands out as the second relevant scientific field in the new year will be space.

Remember that a veritable armada of orbiters and landers from space agencies and private companies is scheduled to leave for the Moon this year.

NASA will launch the Artemis I orbiter in the long-awaited first launch system test that will eventually carry astronauts back to the Moons surface.

Likewise, the US agencys CAPSTONE orbiter will carry out experiments in preparation for Gateway, the first space station to orbit the Moon.

Indias third lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, aims to be the first to make a soft landing (one that does not damage the spacecraft) and will carry its own rover.

Japan will also attempt its first soft landing on the Moon, with the SLIM mission, as well as put a transformable robot on its surface, in order to prepare for the deployment of a future manned rover, which would arrive at our satellite in 2029.

For its part, Russia aims to revive the glory of the Soviet lunar program with the Luna 25 lander. The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter will inaugurate South Koreas own lunar exploration.

In 2022 we will also advance in the knowledge and terraforming of Mars, with an eye to sending the first human expeditions later.

An epic space trip will be the joint Russian-European ExoMars mission, which is scheduled to take off in September and will take the European Space Agencys Rosalind Franklin rover to Mars, where it will look for signs of past life.

The launch was originally scheduled for 2020, but was delayed in part due to problems with the parachutes required to land safely.

China, which hopes to send people to Mars in 2033, plans this year to complete its space station, Tiangong, and has prepared more than 1,000 experiments to do so, ranging from astronomical and Earth observation to the effects of microgravity and gravity. cosmic radiation in bacterial growth.

NASAs DART suicide probe. | NASA / JHUAPL / Steve Gribben

Asteroids wont be without news this 2022: NASAs Psyche mission will launch in August to explore a strange metal-dominated asteroid that may once have been part of the core of a long-dead planet.

NASAs Suicide Probe (DART) is also expected to hit its asteroid target this new year, hoping to crash into it and discover what it would take to launch a dangerous space rock off a trajectory that would lead to it colliding. with the Earth.

New developments are expected this year from NASAs James Webb Space Telescope, Hubbles successor, finally launched into space on December 25.

JWST is tasked with reconstructing the early history of the universe using its powerful and sensitive instrumentation to see the light from some of the universes earliest galaxies and cut through the dust to view newborn stars.

The space telescope is also expected to analyze the atmospheres of distant alien planets.

Astronomers and planetary scientists have made it a priority for this decade to find a potential Earth twin orbiting a star like the Sun. We are on our way to that, and 2022 may reveal something about it.

Continued here:

2022 will boost quantum physics and space exploration - Central Valley Business Journal

Black holes really are giant fuzzballs, a new study says.

The study attempts to put to rest the debate over Stephen Hawkings famous information paradox, the problem created by Hawkings conclusion that any data that enters a black hole can never leave. This conclusion accorded with the laws of thermodynamics, but opposed the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics.

What we found from string theory is that all the mass of a black hole is not getting sucked in to the center, said Samir Mathur, lead author of the study and professor of physics at The Ohio State University. The black hole tries to squeeze things to a point, but then the particles get stretched into these strings, and the strings start to stretch and expand and it becomes this fuzzball that expands to fill up the entirety of the black hole.

The study, published Dec. 28 in the Turkish Journal of Physics, found that string theory almost certainly holds the answer to Hawkings paradox, as the papers authors had originally believed. The physicists proved theorems to show that the fuzzball theory remains the most likely solution for Hawkings information paradox. The researchers have also published an essay showing how this work may resolve longstanding puzzles in cosmology; the essay appeared in December in the International Journal of Modern Physics.

Mathur published a study in 2004 that theorized black holes were similar to very large, very messy balls of yarn fuzzballs that become larger and messier as new objects get sucked in.

The bigger the black hole, the more energy that goes in, and the bigger the fuzzball becomes, Mathur said. The 2004 study found that string theory, the physics theory that holds that all particles in the universe are made of tiny vibrating strings, could be the solution to Hawkings paradox. With this fuzzball structure, the hole radiates like any normal body, and there is no puzzle.

After Mathurs 2004 study and other, similar works, many people thought the problem was solved, he said. But in fact, a section of people in the string theory community itself thought they would look for a different solution to Hawkings information paradox. They were bothered that, in physical terms, the whole structure of the black hole had changed.

Studies in recent years attempted to reconcile Hawkings conclusions with the old picture of the hole, where one can think of the black hole as being empty space with all its mass in the center. One theory, the wormhole paradigm, suggested that black holes might be one end of a bridge in the space-time continuum, meaning anything that entered a black hole might appear on the other end of the bridge the other end of the wormhole in a different place in space and time.

In order for the wormhole picture to work, though, some low-energy radiation would have to escape from the black hole at its edges.

This recent study proved a theorem the effective small corrections theorem to show that if that were to happen, black holes would not appear to radiate in the way that they do.

The researchers also examined physical properties from black holes, including topology change in quantum gravity, to determine whether the wormhole paradigm would work.

In each of the versions that have been proposed for the wormhole approach, we found that the physics was not consistent, Mathur said. The wormhole paradigm tries to argue that, in some way, you could still think of the black hole as being effectively empty with all the mass in the center. And the theorems we prove show that such a picture of the hole is not a possibility.

Other Ohio State researchers who worked on this study include Madhur Mehta, Marcel R. R. Hughes and Bin Guo.

Link:

Resolving the black hole 'fuzzball or wormhole' debate - The Ohio State University News

Scientific pursuits have often acted as the inspiration for electronic music, from Kraftwerks The Man-Machine through to Bjorks Biophilia and the techno-futurist aesthetic of acts like Autechre and Aphex Twin.

Scientist, researcher, musician and producer Valery Vermeulen is taking this one step further with his multi-album project Mikromedas, which transforms scientific data gathered from deep space and astrophysical models into cosmic ambient compositions.

The first album from this project, Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001, runs data generated by simulation models of astrophysical black holes and extreme gravitational fields through custom-made Max/MSP instruments, resulting in a unique kind of aleatoric music thats not just inspired by scientific discovery, but literally built from it.

Could you tell us a little about your background in both science and music?

I started playing piano when I was six or seven years old. The science part came when I was like, 15 or 16, I think in my teenage years, I got to the library, and I stumbled upon a book, which had a part on quantum physics. I was very curious. And I think this is how the two got started.

During my career path I always had the impression that I had to choose one or the other: music or mathematics, music or physics, theoretical physics. So in the beginning, I did a PhD in the mathematical part of superstring theory with the idea of doing research in theoretical physics. And I was really interested in the problem of quantum gravity - that's finding a theory that unifies quantum physics and general relativity theory.

But at the same time, I was always making music, I started busking on the street, then I started playing in bands. Then, after my PhD, I switched, because I wanted to pursue more music. So I started at IPEM, that is the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music in Belgium.

What kind of work were you doing there?

At IPEM I did research on music, artificial intelligence, and biofeedback. Out of that came the first project which combined the two and that is called EMO-Synth. With that project, with a small team, we try to build a system that can automatically generate personalised soundtracks that adapt themselves to emotional reaction.

"So the idea of the system is to have an AI assistant that can automatically generate a personalised soundtrack for a movie, specialised and made for you using genetic programming. That's a technique from AI.

Could you tell us about the Mikromedas project?

After EmoSynth, I wanted to do some more artistic stuff. That is how I stumbled upon Mikromedas, the project with which Ive recorded the album. There's two series for the moment, and every series has a different topic. The first series started in 2014, as a commissioned work for The Dutch Electronic Arts Festival in Rotterdam.

"They wanted me to do something with space and sound. The question was: could I represent a possible hypothetical voyage from earth to an exoplanet near the centre of the Milky Way? Is it possible to evoke this using only sound, no visuals, that was the question. And this is how I stumbled upon data sonification for the first time.

The question was: could I represent a possible hypothetical voyage from earth to an exoplanet near the centre of the Milky Way?

Basically, that's the scientific domain in which scientists are figuring out ways to use sound to convey data. Normally, you would look at data - as a data scientist, you look at your screen, you present the data on your screen, and you try to figure out structures in the data. But you can also do that using sound. Its called multimodal representations. So if you both use your ears and your eyes, you can have a better understanding of data.

With Mikromedas I got into that field, a very interesting scientific domain. Of course, artists have also started using it for creative purposes. It was a one-time concert that I made the whole show for, but it turned out that I played more and more concerts with that. And this is how the Mikromedas project got started.

After the first series, I wanted to dive even deeper into my fascination for mathematics and theoretical physics. I still had the idea of quantum gravity, this fascinating problem, in the back of my head. And black holes are a very hot topic - they are one of the classical examples where we can combine general relativity and quantum physics.

The next step was, I needed to find ways to get data. I could program some stuff myself, but I also lacked a lot of very deep scientific knowledge and expertise. A venue here in Belgium put me in contact with Thomas Hertog, a physicist who worked with Stephen Hawking, and we did work on sonifications of gravitational waves, and I made a whole concert with that.

"From there, we made the whole album. Its a bit of a circle, I think - at first the music and physics were apart from each other, these longtime fascinations that were split apart, and now theyve come together again.

What kinds of data are you collecting to transform into sound and music?

If were talking from a musical perspective, I think the most fascinating data and the most close to music are gravitational wave data. Gravitational waves are waves that occur whenever you have two black holes, and they're too close to each other, they will swirl around each other, and they will merge to a bigger black hole. This is a super cataclysmic event. And because of this event, it will emit gravitational waves. If you encounter a gravitational wave, you become larger, smaller, thicker, or thinner. So it's sort of an oscillation that you would undergo.

What I discovered via the work with Thomas is that there's some simulations of gravitational waves that are emitted by certain scenarios, because you have different types of black holes, you can have different masses, etc. To calculate and to programme it, you need something which we call spherical harmonics. And those are three dimensional generalisations of sine wave functions.

I wear two hats. So one hat is the hat of the scientist, the physicist, and the other hat is the hat of a music producer

And if you're into sound synthesis, I mean, if you're studying sounds, this is what we all learn about - the square wave is just a sum of all the overtones of a fundamental frequency, the sawtooth wave has all the overtones linearly decaying. And it's the same principle that holds with those generalisations of sine waves, those spherical harmonics. Using those, you can calculate gravitational waves in three dimensions, which is really super beautiful to watch. And this is what I did for one of the datasets.

They say everything is waves. And it is, in a way - I mean, I don't like this New Age expression so much, saying everything is connected - but in some sort of way, vibrations are, of course, essential to music, but also to physics.

How are you transforming that data into sounds we can hear?

First I made 3D models. So these are STL files, 3D object files. And then, together with Jaromir Mulders, hes a visual artist that I collaborate with, he could make a sort of a movie player. And so you can watch them in 3D, evolving. But then I thought, how on earth am I going to use this for music?

The solution was to make two-dimensional intersections with two-dimensional planes. And then you have two-dimensional evolving structures. And those you can transform into one-dimensional evolutions and one dimensional number streams. Then you can start working with this data - thats how I did it. Once you have those, it's a sort of a CV signal.

I'm working in Ableton Live, using Max/MSP and Max for Live, and can easily connect those number streams to any parameter in Ableton Live, using the API in Max for Live, you can quite easily connect it to all the knobs you want. Another thing that I was using was quite a lot of wavetable synthesis. Different wave tables: Serum, Pigments, and the Wavetable synth from Ableton.

How much of what were hearing on the album is determined by the data alone, and how much comes from your own aesthetic decision-making?

I wear two hats. So one hat is the hat of the scientist, the physicist, and the other hat is the hat of a music producer, because I also studied music composition here at the Conservatory in Ghent. And I'm also teaching at the music production department there. Its all about creativity. That's the common denominator, you know, because I always think it's difficult to say this is the science part, this is the musical part.

In the more numerical part, what I would do is collect the data sets. You have all the different datasets, then you have to devise different strategies to sonify it, to turn all those numbers into sound clips, sound samples, you could say. These are sort of my field recordings, I always compare it to field recordings, but they are field recordings that come from abstract structures that give out data. I collect a whole bank of all these kinds of sounds.

Next you design your own instruments, in something like Reaktor or Max/MSP, that are fed by the data streams. Once I have those two, I'm using those two elements to make dramatic compositions, abstract compositions. One theme of the album was to try to evoke the impression of falling into a black hole, something that is normally not possible, because you break all laws of physics, because we don't know what the physics looks like inside of a black hole, the region inside the event horizon.

Sometimes people ask me, why on earth make it so difficult? I mean, just make a techno track and release it. But no, I mean, everyone is different! And this is who I am

Then I wear a hat as a music producer, because I want to make this into a composition. I was working before for a short time as a producer for dance music. So I want to have a kind of an evolution in the track. So how am I going to do that? I'm working with the sounds, I'm editing the sounds a lot with tools in Ableton, in Reaktor, and I also have some analogue synths here.

"So I have a Juno-106, a Korg MS-20. Sometimes I would just take my Juno, I put it into unison, you know, use the low pass filter, and then get a gritty, beautiful low analogue sound to it, mix it underneath to give an impression of this abstract theme.

After that, once the arrangement is done, then theres the mixing process. I did quite a lot of mixing, I think over a year, because I wanted the sound quality to be really very good. And I also started using new plugins, new software. And the whole idea was to make it sound rather analogue. I hope I managed to do the job with a record that did not make it sound too digital.

Which plugins were you using to mix the material?

Slate, of course. SoundToys, Ohmforce, I love Ohmforce plugins. Waves, we use a lot of Waves plugins. I also use the native plugins of Ableton. I started to appreciate them because before that I didn't know how to use them properly. I also have some hardware here. So I have a Soundcraft mixing table that I love a lot.

The record was released on an international label, Ash International. It's a subsidiary of Touch. And Mike Harding, he let me know, the record is going to be mastered by Simon Scott. He's the drummer of Slowdive, the band Slowdive. So I was a little bit nervous to send a record to Simon, but he liked it a lot. So it's like, okay, I managed to do a mix that's okay. I was really happy about it.

Aside from the scientific inspiration, what were the musical influences behind the project?

Because the music is quite ambient, quite slow, Alva Noto is a big inspiration. Loscil, I was listening to a lot at the time. Biosphere, Tim Hecker. Also, at the same time, to get my head away a little bit, I tend to listen to other kinds of music when Im doing this stuff. I was at the same time studying a lot of jazz, Im studying jazz piano. I was listening to a lot of Miles Davis, Coltrane, Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner. Im a big Bill Evans fan because of his crazy beautiful arrangements. Grimes is a big influence, and Lil Peep, actually - his voice is like, whoa.

Do you have any plans to play the material live? How would you approach translating the project to a live performance?

There are plans to play live. We're gonna play it as an audiovisual show. The visuals are produced by Jaromir Mulders, this amazing, talented visual artist from the Netherlands. Live, of course, I'm using Ableton Live. I have a lot of tracks, and basically splitting them out into a couple of different frequency ranges. So high, high-mid, low-mid, low and sub frequency ranges.

Then I try to get them in different clips, loops, that make sense. And then I can remix the tracks in a live situation, I also add some effects. And I also add some new drones underneath. There's no keys or musical elements going into it. It's a very different setup than I was used to when I was still doing more melodic and rhythmic music.

Whats in store for the next series of the project?

Theres two routes, I think. Mikromedas is experimental, and I want it to remain experimental, because its just play. Ive discovered something new, I think - it's finding a way to make a connection between the real hardcore mathematical theoretical physics, the formulas, and the sound synthesis and the electronic music composition. But with one stream that I'm looking at, I already have a new album ready. And that's to combine it with some more musical elements, just because I'm very curious.

I think the Mikromedas project gave me a new way to approach making electronic music. Sometimes people ask me, why on earth make it so difficult? I mean, just make a techno track and release it. But no, I mean, everyone is different! And this is who I am. But going back a little bit towards the musical side, that's something that's really fascinating me.

The other stream that I want to follow is to connect it even more with abstract mathematics. So my PhD was in the classification of infinite dimensional geometrical structures, which are important for superstring theory. The problem was always how can you visualise something that is infinitely dimensional. So you have to take an intersection with a finite dimensional structure to make sense out of it. But now I'm thinking that maybe I can try to make a connection with that and with sound, that's even more abstract than black holes. Making a connection with geometry, 3D, and sound using sonification.

Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001 is out now on Ash International.

You can find out more about Valery's work by visiting his website or Instagram page.

Read more here:

Meet Valery Vermeulen, the scientist and producer turning black holes into music - MusicRadar

Photo credit: Vladislav Babienko via Unsplash.

The conventional view of nature held by materialists, who deny free will, is that all acts of nature, including our human acts and beliefs, are wholly determined by the laws of nature, understood as the laws of physics. We cannot be free, they assert, because all aspects of human nature are matter, and the behavior of matter is wholly determined by physical laws. There is no room for free will

Its noteworthy that physicists who have studied determinism in nature (specifically, in quantum mechanics) have for the most part rejected this deterministic view of free will and implicitly (if not explicitly) endorsed the reality of free will. There are two reasons for this.

First, experiments that have followed from the research done by Irish physicistJohn Bell(19281990) in the 1970s have shown that determinism on a local level is not true. The theory and the experiments are subtle, but suffice to say, detailed and quite rigorous experiments have shown that the outcomes of quantum processes are not determined locally. That is, theres nothing baked in inanimate matter that determines the outcome of the quantum measurement. Nature is not locally deterministic.

The second reason that physicists have rejected determinism relates to the theory ofSuperdeterminism.Superdeterminism posits that, while inanimate matter is not locally determined, the entire universe including the thoughts and actions of the experimenters who are investigating nature is determined as a whole. The experiments based on Bells theorem have disproven local determinism but they do not disprove Superdeterminism.

The problem with Superdeterminism from the perspective of most physicists is that it seems to invalidate the process of science itself. That is, if the scientists own thoughts, ideas, and judgments are just as determined as the behavior of inanimate matter, then science itself has no claim to seek or find the truth. In other words, the laws of physics are not propositions and they have no truth value. If all of nature is an enormous robot, then it makes no sense to claim that tiny parts of the robot are seeking or have found the truth. Because Superdeterminism seems to obviate the very scientific method used to investigate it, physicists have generally rejected Superdeterminism.

Recently, however, several physicists have suggested that Superdeterminism is a quite plausible way of solving the measurement problem in quantum physics so it seems to be having a bit of a resurgence. PhysicistSabine Hossenfelderoffers aninteresting videoon the topic:

A detailed discussion of her views is beyond this post, but I note a few things:

1) I think Hossenfelder is right that Superdeterminism has been inappropriately dismissed by the physics community. It offers a rigorous and elegant way of understanding quantum mechanics and of beginning a path toward uniting quantum theory with general relativity.

2) Hossenfelder is wrong to deny the reality of free will. I think her critique of physicists who deny Superdeterminism because it denies free will has salience, but the denial of free will is self-refuting regardless of the issues in theoretical physics. Free will is a precondition for all science, all reasoning, and all claims to know the truth. As noted above, if free will is not real and all of our actions, including our investigations of reality, are determined by the laws of nature which in themselves are not propositions and have no truth value. Thus, if free will is not real, human thought has no access to truth. To deny free will is to assert it, and any denial of free will on any basis whatsoever is nonsensical. If we lack free will, we have no justification whatsoever to believe that we lack free will.

3) I do believe, however, that Superdeterminism is a viable and even attractive way of understanding nature, and that genuine free will is true and is quite compatible with Superdeterminism.

How so? Superdeterminism is the view that the outcomes of all possibilities both inanimate nature and the human mind are baked in to nature itself. There are two ways of understanding what that means. The first way is to see nature as a mindless machine running like clockwork without free will. As Ive said, such a view is incompatible with human reason.

However there is another way to understand how the outcomes of all possibilities in nature are baked into nature itself. This involves the concept of a block universe and the Augustinian understanding of nature as a thought in Gods mind.

Read the rest at Mind Matters News, published by Discovery Institutes Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

Continue reading here:

Superdeterminism and Free Will - Discovery Institute