Category Archives: Quantum Physics

In A Sound of Thunder, the short story by Ray Bradbury, the main character travels back in time to hunt dinosaurs. He crushes a butterfly underfoot in the prehistoric jungle, and when he returns to the present, the world he knows is changed: the feel of the air, a sign in an office, the election of a U.S. president. The butterfly was a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time.

This butterfly effect that Bradbury illustrated where a small change in the past can result in enormous future effects is not reserved for fiction. As the famed mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz discovered by accident, natural systems do exist in which tiny shifts in initial conditions can lead to highly variable outcomes. These systems, including weather and even how fluids mix are known as chaotic. Chaotic systems are normally understood within the realm of classical physics, which is the method we use to predict how objects will move to a certain degree of accuracy (think motion, force or momentum from your high school science class.)

But a new study shows that the effect doesnt work in a quantum realm. Two researchers at Los Alamos National Labs in New Mexico, created a simulation where a qubit, a quantum bit, moved backwards and forwards in time on a quantum computer. Despite being damaged, the qubit held on to its original information instead of becoming unrecognizable like the time travelers world after he killed the butterfly. In the study, the process used to simulate time travel forwards and backwards is known as evolution.

From the point of view of classical physics, it's very unexpected because classical physics predicts that complex evolution has a butterfly effect, so that small changes deep in the past lead to huge changes in our world, says Nikolai Sinitsyn, a theoretical physicist and one of the researchers who conducted the study.

The finding furthers our understanding of quantum systems, and also has potential applications in securing information systems and even determining the quantum-ness of a quantum processor.

The rules of the quantum realm, which explain how subatomic particles move, can be truly mind-boggling because they defy traditional logic. But briefly: Particles as small as electrons and protons don't just exist in one point in space, they can occupy many at a time. The mathematical framework of quantum mechanics tries to explain the motion of these particles.

The laws of quantum mechanics can also be applied to quantum computers. These are very different from computers we use today, and can solve certain problems exponentially faster than normal computers can because they adhere to these completely different laws of physics. A standard computer uses bits with a value of either 0 or 1. A quantum computer uses qubits, which can attain a kind of combined state of 0 or 1, a unique characteristic of quantum systems for example, an electron called superposition.

In a quantum system, small changes to qubits even looking at or measuring them can have immense effects. So in the new study, the researchers wanted to see what would happen when they simulated sending a qubit back in time while also damaging it. Researchers constructing quantum experiments often use the stand-ins Alice and Bob to illustrate their theoretical process. In this case, they let Alice bring her qubit back in time, scrambling the information as part of what they call reverse evolution. Once in the past, Bob, an intruder, measures Alices qubit, changing it. Alice brings her qubit forward in time.

If the butterfly effect had held, the original information in Alices qubit would have been exponentially changed. But instead, the evolution forward in time allowed Alice to recover the original information, even though Bobs intrusion had destroyed all the connections between her qubit and others that travelled with hers.

So normally, many people believe that if you go back in time, and scramble the information, that information is lost forever, says Jordan Kyriakidis, an expert in quantum computing and former physicist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. What they have shown in this paper is that for quantum systems, that under certain circumstances, if you go back in time, you can recover the original information even though someone tried to scramble it on you.

So does this mean that the butterfly effect doesnt exist at all? No. Sinitsyn and his coauthor, Bin Yan, showed it doesnt exist within the quantum realm, specifically.

But this does have implications for real-world problems. One is information encryption. Encryption has two important principles: It should be hidden so well that no one can get to it, but who it was intended for should to be able to reliably decipher it. For example, explains Kyriakidis, if a hacker attempts to crack a code that hides information in todays world, the hacker might not be able to get to it, but they could damage it irreparably, preventing anyone from reading the original message. This study may point to a way to avoid this by protecting information, even after its damaged, so the intended recipient can interpret it.

And because this effect (or non-effect) is so particular to quantum systems, it could theoretically be used to test the integrity of a quantum computer. If one were to replicate Yan and Sinitsyns protocol in a quantum computer, according to the study, it would confirm that the system was truly operating by quantum principles. Because quantum computers are highly prone to errors, a tool to easily test how well they work has huge value. A reliable quantum computer can solve incredibly complex problems, which have applications from chemistry and medicine to traffic direction and financial strategy.

Quantum computing is only in its birth but if Yan and Sinitsyns quantum time machine can exist in a realm usually saved for subatomic particles, well, the possibilities could be endless.

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Does the Butterfly Effect Exist? Maybe, But Not in the Quantum Realm - Discover Magazine

The academic journeys of the Austrian-Irish quantum physicist, Erwin Schrodinger and the Hungarian-American geophysicist Joseph Kaplan might seem strikingly relevant to the emphasis put upon multidisciplinary education, inclusive of the Indian knowledge systems, in the National Educational Policy 2020. Yes, these are not Indian examples; there are many Indian examples. But I have consciously chosen these two scientists to support my argument, because such has been colonial atmosphere of higher education in the country that unless one mentions renowned names from the West such as Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Goethe, Einstein, Thoreau, and the like, who were either influenced by the Indian thought or found it worthy of reflection, there is no way that an Indian student can be convinced that there lies any worth in a textual-intellectual tradition that has survived for thousands of years.

Shrodinger won the Nobel prize for his work in quantum physics in 1933. His work was yet another blow to Macaulays infamous statement in Minute on Education(1835) that the whole literature of India and the Arab world was inferior to a single shelf of European books. The Nobel Prize winner for what came to be known as the Schrodinger equation was deeply influenced by Indian thought systems. Dick Teresi, the acclaimed author of The Three-Pound Universe (1986) and Would the Buddha Wear a Walkman (1990) writes in an article titled The Long Range of Quantum Physics, published in The New York Times:

Schrodinger never achieved his greatest dream, to reinstate classical physics with its almost Vedantic continuity over the lumpiness of quantum mechanics. Perhaps as a revenge against his quantum enemies, he did leave behind a paradox that torments scientists to this day.

The Hungarian-American physicist, on the other hand, commemorated again by The New York Times for his leadership in international work in Geophysics, was drawn towards the Samkhya philosophical system. He found in its epistemology a reflection of the modern physicists enquiry into the dynamism of matter and energy. In his own words,

By this I mean that if a modern physicist were to discuss the gunas, he would, in the light of knowledge and experience, use the same argument [as the Samkhyas].

As in other colonized nations, colonialism in India produced a mental attitude of subordination to the West and its intellectual history. However, post-Independence, the political exigencies of those who determined what got included into the curriculum and shaped the pedagogies of intermediate and higher education shoved the Indian intellectual texts away to either libraries where dust gathered on the book covers or limited them to the Sanskrit or Tamil departments, thereby preventing their access to the students of other disciplines. It would not surprise anyone that our students would have never even heard of names such as Panini, Patanjali, Pingala, Aryabhatta, Nagarjuna, Dharmakirti, and Abhinavagupta. In 2019, Ayurveda made headlines for all wrong reasons. A section of the academic community teaching in elite Indian colleges and universities mocked the fact that ancient Indians knew and performed surgery. What underlay such strong belief that Indians of the past had nothing to do with scientific knowledge? What else than a systematic and ideological construction of a mentally and intellectually subordinate consciousness that looks upon its culture and people as mere empirical data. The Columbia University Medical Irving Medical Centre on a webpage titled History of Medicine: Ancient Indian Nose Jobs and the Origins of Plastic Surgery, states:

Think plastic surgery is a modern luxury During 6th century BCE, an Indian physician named Sushruta- widely regarded in India as the father of surgery- wrote one of the worlds earliest works on medicine and surgery. The Sushruta Samhita documented the etiology of more than 1100 diseases.

Ironically, the Indians from the elite institutions who mock the existence of surgery in ancient India would not bother to even open a single page of the Sushruta Samhita.

I do not suggest that we remain stuck in the past. Past can be, and is, used for regressive politics as well. And modern science and the modern Intellectual traditions of the West are undeniably important. But a young mind rooted in its traditions of knowledge, when it comes into contact with the modern thought would have the ability to contribute originally to the knowledge it receives, to modify and create new knowledge.

The National Education Policy (NEP) announced on 29 July 2020 has grasped the foundational principle of the Indian knowledge tradition- its multidisciplinary nature. Most students and scholars understand interdisciplinarity as an outcome of a modern Western phenomenon with conceptual roots in the Greek thought. They would not know that knowledge (vidya) was essentially interdisciplinary in India.

Vidya in Sanskrit denotes knowledge pertaining to arts, sciences, and philosophy. Sciences include all shastras (scientific treatises) such as astronomy and mathematics, logic, medicine, mining, metaphysics, phonetics, literature as well as economics, agriculture, trade, commerce, law, polity, etc. There are epistemological differences between a particular discipline and another. However, the discourses overlap disciplinary domains. Ideas and facts from disciplines flow into the texts of other disciplines. Artistic and scientific texts are differentiated only by their modes of expression.

For example, Rajashekhara (8th century CE), a poet, in his Kavyamimasa, lays down that an aspiring poet and critic must be well-versed in sixty-four disciplines of knowledge that include painting, pottery, weaving, carpentry, tailoring, making cots of cane, locating mines, etc. The multidisciplinary method of knowledge creation and dissemination enabled the mind and its cognitive and creative faculty to think diversely and converge multiple perspectives onto a subject of study. It is not surprising, therefore, that this knowledge tradition produced thinkers such as Panini (6th-5th century BCE), whose text on Sanskrit grammar has become a reference point for computational studies and Pingala (3rd-2nd century BCE) who was a mathematician, but wrote a seminal work on prosody called Chhandahshashtra.

The multidisciplinary method of learning in the higher education, as envisaged by the NEP, with an open-minded reception of the Indian knowledge traditions, will decolonize the young Indian mind, while making it equally aware of the knowledge created in other intellectual centres of the world, including other Asian civilizational giants.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Dismantling disciplinary boundaries and decolonizing young India: Decoding the National Educational Policy (20 - The Times of India Blog

Deepak Chopra explains how there is one mystery after another nested inside everyday experience. (Photo by: Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)

As we go about everyday life, we are embedded in a mystery no one has ever solved. The mystery was voiced by one of the most brilliant quantum pioneers, Werner Heisenberg: Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think. (There are variants of the quote that use reality for universe, and the remark has also been attributed to other famous scientists, but the gist is always the same.)

If we take this remark seriously, it turns out to be truer today than it was in 1900 when the quantum revolution began and the revolutionary new theory of quantum mechanics was put together. How can reality be stranger than we could possibly think? Look at the framework of your life. You pick up your morning coffee, and instantly you are acting in space and time. Your perception of the cup in your hand depends upon the five senses as communicated through the brain. You can think about anything you fancy as you sip your coffee.

These might not seem so mysterious, but there is one mystery after another nested inside everyday experience. Science can reach no consensus on the following:

Where did time come from?

Why do properties of physical objects have their origin in invisible waves of the probability of observation?

Where does a thought come from?

How did matter transform into mind?

Is consciousness solely a human trait or is it everywhere in the universe?

The pioneers of quantum physics werent the first to ask such questions, but quantum physics got to the nub of how the physical universe is constructed. Everything in existence emerges from ripples in the quantum field, and underlying these ripples is an invisible or virtual domain that goes beyond spacetime, matter, and energy. In the virtual domain, the universe and everything in it is a field of infinite possibilities, and yet the virtual domain cannot be observed directly. As a result, contemporary physics can take us to the horizon of reality, the womb of creation, but it cannot cross the boundary between us and our source of existence.

Story continues

Almost all the recent models that have gained popularity, including superstrings, the multiverse, and dark matter and energy, exist in so-called mathematical space, or Hilbert space, in recognition that they are not going to yield direct empirical evidence that can be perceived with our senses. Astrophysics had already gotten used to the fact that just four percent of the created universe is accounted for by the matter and energy visible to the eye or to telescopes. With dark matter and energy added in, most of what we see is not really what the universe consists of.

Leaving the technicalities aside, it has become far more difficult to foresee that the human mind can fully comprehend the nature of reality when so many crucial aspects are beyond the setup that our brains can grasp. The thinking mind needs the brain in order to operate, and the brain is a creation in spacetime consisting of matter and energy, that is in spacetime. We wear mind-made manacles. When this fact dawned on the late Stephen Hawking, he ruefully conceded that scientific models might no longer describe reality in any reliable or complete way.

When we discussed these issues in our book, You Are the Universe, the title reflected another approach entirely. Instead of founding the universe on physical things, however small, or even ripples in the quantum field, which are knowable only through advanced mathematics, reality can be grounded in experience. Everything we call real is an experience in consciousness, including the experience of doing science. Mathematics is a very refined, complex language, but there is no language, simple or complex, without consciousness.

The vast majority of scientists will continue to engage in experimentation and theoretical modeling without this venture into metaphysics, which is a no-no word in science (a famous put down when things get to speculative is Shut up and calculate). But it was quantum physics that brought the mystery of reality into the laboratory in modern terms, even though Plato and Aristotle also wondered about what is real.

A younger generation has proved more open-minded, and a growing cadre of cosmologists now hold to the notion of panpsychism, which holds that mind is built into reality from the start. This is a huge turn-around from the view that the mind evolved out of matter here on earth as a unique creation. The fact is that nobody in the physicalist camp could explain how atoms and molecules learned to thinkcreating mind out of matter was dead on arrival, even though the vast majority of scientists still hold on to this view as an assumption or superstition.

Ironically, to say that reality is stranger than we can think isnt confined to the queer behavior of atoms and subatomic particles. You cannot think about consciousness, either, any more than the eye can see itself or the brain know that it exists (without cutting through the skull to see the brain from the outside). A fish cannot know that water is wet unless it jumps out of the sea and splashes back down again. We cannot think about consciousness without a place to stand outside consciousness, and such a place doesnt exist in the entire cosmos.

The source of space isnt inside space; the source of time isnt in time. Likewise, the source of mind isnt inside the mind. The ceaseless stream of sensations, images, feelings and thoughts that run through your mind are the products of consciousness. Consciousness itself has no location. It is infinite, without dimensions in space and time, unborn and undying. Can you really think about such a thing as consciousness? And yet you know without a doubt that you are conscious. This is what allows us to make peace with reality being too strange to think about.

We can simply drop the strange part. Reality can be founded on knowing that you exist and that you are aware. Existence is consciousness. If science is dedicated to the simplest, most complete explanation of things, existence, consciousness is the simplest and most complete explanation. There is no need for religious or spiritual beliefs in order to accept this foundation for reality since it is based on what science has arrived at. By removing our outdated allegiance to things existing independently of consciousness, the basis of reality can be seen clearly. In our everyday life, we navigate with existence and consciousness at our side, indivisible, secure, inviolate, and unchallengeable. A whole new future may spring from accepting this simple but awe-inspiring fact.

Menas C. Kafatos contributed to this article

DEEPAK CHOPRA MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a modern-day health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 89 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His 90th book, Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential, unlocks the secrets to moving beyond our present limitations to access a field of infinite possibilities. Time magazine has described Dr. Chopra as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.

Menas C. Kafatos is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Computational Physics at Chapman University. Author, physicist and philosopher, he works in quantum mechanics, cosmology, the environment and climate change and extensively on philosophical issues of consciousness, connecting science to metaphysical traditions. Member or candidate of foreign national academies, he holds seminars and workshops for individuals, groups and corporations on the universal principles for well-being and human potential. His doctoral thesis advisor was the renowned M.I.T. professor Philip Morrison who studied under J. Robert Oppenheimer. He has authored 334 articles, is author or editor of 20 books, including The Conscious Universe, Looking In, Seeing Out, Living the Living Presence (in Greek and in Korean), Science, Reality and Everyday Life (in Greek), and is co-author with Deepak Chopra of the New York Times bestseller You are the Universe (Harmony Books), translated into many languages and at many countries. You can learn more here.

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The spread of 'stranger than we can think' - Yahoo Lifestyle

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Aug. 18, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Raytheon Technologies (NYSE: RTX) gave a $4 million grant tothe newly formed Alabama School of Cyber Technology and Engineering (ASCTE) to help prepare students for cybersecurity careers in government and industry.

"The school offers an incredible opportunity for students to learn from leaders in STEM education, as well as subject matter experts within industry like those from Raytheon Technologies," said Matt Massey, ASCTE President. "This initiative is exciting for the entire state of Alabama with even further-reaching impact."

ASCTE is Alabama's only fully public, residential high school for students from across the state's 137 school districts seeking advanced studies in engineering and cyber technology.Tuition and housing for ASCTE are free.

"Alabama students now have the opportunity to access one of the most advanced engineering and cybersecurity preparatory programs anywhere," said Roy Azevedo, president of Raytheon Intelligence & Space, which includes the company's cyber business. "Raytheon Technologies' partnership with ASCTE, Huntsville and the state of Alabama will help our nation meet the demand for a future cyber and engineering workforce, while providing students with the education and skills they need to thrive in these careers."

The curriculum at ASCTE will address America's shortage of qualified cybersecurity and engineering development talent. According to a 2019 (ISC)2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study, the current cybersecurity workforce needs to grow by 145 percent to meet global demand.

"Advanced cybersecurity capabilities are critical to our national defense today and in the future," said Wes Kremer, president of Raytheon Missiles & Defense. "Through collaborative partnerships like ASCTE, we will grow our capacity in cyberspace to ensure its security for generations to come."

The City of Huntsville has donated 25 acres of land in Cummings Research Park for construction of the school's campus. The permanent facility will open in August 2022, but an interim site at Oakwood University opened its doors on August 17th to ASCTE's first cohort of 75 students.The school expects to grow to over 350 students by 2024.

"Leadership from the private sector will play a big part in maximizing the potential of the Alabama School of Cyber Technology and Engineering," said Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who sponsored state legislation passed in 2018 to establish ASCTE. "All of us involved in creating this unique school thank Raytheon Technologies for its generous donation and its leaders for their pledge of ongoing support."

Raytheon Technologies invests millions of dollars in STEM education programs around the world every year to develop future technology leaders and give back to local communities. These programs include:

About Raytheon Technologies Raytheon Technologies Corporation is an aerospace and defense company that provides advanced systems and services for commercial, military and government customers worldwide. With 195,000 employees and four industry-leading businesses Collins Aerospace Systems, Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon Intelligence & Space and Raytheon Missiles & Defense the company delivers solutions that push the boundaries in avionics, cybersecurity, directed energy, electric propulsion, hypersonics, and quantum physics. The company, formed in 2020 through the combination of Raytheon Company and the United Technologies Corporation aerospace businesses, is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Raytheon Technologies 870 Winter Street Waltham, MA 02451 USA

Media Contacts Ryan Elliott C: +1 469.933.8913 [emailprotected]

Briana Gabrys C: +1 520.354.0871 [emailprotected]

SOURCE Raytheon Technologies

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Raytheon Technologies invests in new transformational STEM high school - PRNewswire

While Spirit was found equally in men and in women, great ability with Earth and/or Fire was found much more often among men, with Water and/or Air among women. There were exceptions, but it was so often so that Earth and Fire came to be regarded as male Powers, Air and Water as female. Generally, no ability is considered stronger than any other, though there is a saying among Aes Sedai: There is no rock so strong that water and wind cannot wear it away, no fire so fierce that water cannot quench it or wind snuff it out. It should be noted this saying came into use long after the last male Aes Sedai was dead. Any equivalent saying among male Aes Sedai is long lost.

Glossary, The Eye of the World

I, like many other fans and critics, have written before about my dislike of the gendered nature of channeling in The Wheel of Time. You dont have to be a gender studies major to recognize the problems with suggesting that the driving power of the universe is divided into two halves, which are diametrically different from each other and which each correspond to human gender.

Even if you (incorrectly) believe that there are only two genders (nope) and that these genders are recognizable by a strict and limited set of physical traits (nope again), this premise still doesnt make a lot of sense. Sure, it corresponds to the general societal assertion that men and women are basically different species. But if you think about it for more than five seconds, the idea becomes pretty laughable, especially when you consider the complexities of physics and philosophy that Jordan employs in other aspects of his world-building in The Wheel of Time.

Consider, if you will, how the One Power is accessed. A woman channeling saidar must surrender to its river-like flow, opening up to it like a blossoming flower and letting herself be filled, then guide in the direction she wants. A man, on the other hand, has to seize control of the wild torrent of saidin, fighting it every step of the way and bending it to his will before he can wield it, like a tool or weapon. It does make sense to think of the One Power as a river (and the Wheel of Time as the waterwheel over which it flows) and a great river will have both rough, turbulent parts as well as slow-moving, deep parts. But what happens to a male channeler who is not a dominant type of person? Can he not learn to channel well? Are only men with the proper commanding and aggressive tendencies given the ability in the first place? Or is the insinuation that this is just what men are like, all men, and so saidins nature makes perfect sense?

The problem becomes even more obvious when we consider women and saidar, since we have so many more examples to choose from. What, I ask you, is particularly yielding about Moiraine, or Siuan? Or Elaida, for that matter? How about Nynaeve? I mean, it makes sense, given her personality, that she would have a block around channeling. But rather than that block being overcome only in moments when she can convince herself to relax and let go of her need for defensive control over everything, it is overcome only by her anger and rage. That sounds to me like a technique that would be far more effective with saidin.

The obvious connotation between concepts of yielding and subduing respectively is an uncomfortably physical one, referencing traditional ideas of heteronormative sex, and the concept really isnt born out in any other way within the narrative. It would have made a lot more sense for ones access to saidin and saidar to have to do with temperament: People who prefer to work more calmly and sedately, people who are open and empathetic and calm, are channelers of saidar, while those who are bold to the point of brashness, who prefer big deeds and feats of strength and daring, are channelers of saidin. If you remove the gendered element from these categories, it actually gives you a lot of room to play with character types, with how channelers work together and what sorts of strategies different types of people employ. Instead, Jordan has written himself into a bit of a corner, presenting us with a host of fierce, stubborn, brilliant female characters and then either ignoring or finding ways around the assertions about their character that his own world-building is making.

The Five Powers present a similar problem. When we were first introduced to them I thought they were merely a human concept, a way of categorizing what you can do with the One Power. But given what we have seen of channeling and flows now, it seems they are actually alike to the classical elements, they are the base components that are being manipulated by channelers. This also feels a bit simplistic, but perhaps that is because the greater understanding of things like atomic particles have been lost to the Aes Sedai of Rands time. I appreciate how the gendered lines are blurred a little heremen are generally better with Fire and Earth and women with Air and Water, but not always. (Shout out to Moiraine who primarily uses Earth and Fire, at least as far as the first four books, and to Egwenes impressive skill with Earth). Im curious how all five elements are equally manipulatable by saidin and saidar; the difference seems to lie solely in the strength and natural tendency of the channeler. If were going to mark saidin and saidar as being two halves of the substance that makes up all of creation, how is it that any part of creation can be touched and manipulated by only one half of that whole?

The narrative does address this to an extent: More than one character has spoken about how the feats of channeling that can be achieved by men and women working together are far greater than either gender can accomplish alone, and I think that might be one of my favorite concepts in regards to channeling. With the taint on saidin and the subsequent gentling of all male channelers, its hard to say what this teamwork really looked like, and I hope we get to see our Emonds Fielders figuring some of these things out going forward.

I think what rankles me most about the binary structure of the One Power is the fact that Jordan has some truly complex ideas for the makeup of reality in The Wheel of Time. Take the mirror worlds, for instance, in which all the choices of ones life are reflected in other realities in which a different choice was made. The Aes Sedai only know a very little about these worlds, but they appear to be only echoes of the real world, and there are some that are quite close to Rands reality while others are much farther away, and much more different. This idea, that every choice might be played out to each possible conclusion, resembles the theory of daughter universes, developed from the observation of how subatomic particles behave. Rather than just one outcome to an event, there is, in fact, every outcome, reflected in multiple realities.

There appears to be a distinct difference between the mirror worlds and parallel worlds, and I love the way Jordan is exploring these ideas. There is also much I love about the One Power. But the oversimplified and binary nature of it hampers complex storytelling in many places, especially when it comes to character building. Jordan even goes so far as to reinforce this binary throughout the different cultures he creates, which are quite culturally varied and yet seem to more or less have the same ideas about men and women, which matches, and makes impossible to escape, what the natures of saidin and saidar imply about gender.

After seeing what Jordan can do with mirror worlds and Telaranrhiod, I wish the concepts of quantum mechanics were brought out a little more fully in other aspects of world-building. Quantum mechanics, after all, defies neat categorization, boxes and labels. And it definitely defies a binary.

Sylas K Barrett is not a scientist, but was inspired to learn just a little bit more about Quantum Mechanics after seeing this video from Amrou Al-Kadhi on quantum physics and queer identity!

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The Wheel of Time and the Storytelling Problem in the Concept of a Binary - tor.com

Were quickly learning more about time crystals, strange phases of matter that appear to break time-translation symmetry something that was thought impossible until recently. Now scientists have observed two time crystals interacting for the first time, which could be the first step towards using them for practical applications like quantum computing.

Regular crystals are defined by their highly-ordered atomic structures in a sense, their atoms repeat through space. But could there also be crystals that repeat through time? That was the hypothesis put forward in 2012 by Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek, and in 2016 these time crystals were created in the lab for the first time.

Time crystals have the bizarre ability to repeat patterns of motion through time, even when theres no external force driving them. The weirdness is best illustrated as a bowl of Jell-O if you tap the dessert, youd expect it to jiggle for a few seconds then stop, until you tap it again. But time crystals might take a few seconds to start jiggling, then stop, then start again on their own, repeating indefinitely. They might not make sense to our everyday experience of physics, but believe it or not they arent violating any laws of thermodynamics.

Scientists continue to investigate these weird structures, and now a team has made an important breakthrough observing two time crystals interacting. The researchers, from Yale, Lancaster and Aalto Universities, as well as Royal Holloway London, started with a superfluid form of helium-3.

Aalto University/Mikko Raskinen

The team cooled the helium-3 down to a hair above absolute zero (-273.15 C, or -459.67 F), then created two time crystals in the superfluid and let them touch. They observed the two time crystals passing particles back and forth between each other, leading their motions into an alternating pattern. This is a sign of a phenomenon called the Josephson effect.

Controlling the interaction of two time crystals is a major achievement, says Samuli Autti, lead author of the new study. Before this, nobody had observed two time crystals in the same system, let alone seen them interact. Controlled interactions are the number one item on the wish list of anyone looking to harness a time crystal for practical applications, such as quantum information processing.

Currently, the main problem with quantum computers is that its hard for the information to remain coherent, or stable, for long periods. But time crystals do so with relative ease, meaning they could help us overcome these issues. They could also lead to advances in more precise timekeeping, such as atomic clocks, and the systems that rely on them, like GPS.

The research was published in the journal Nature Materials.

Source: Lancaster University

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Physicists witness time crystals interacting for the first time ever - New Atlas

That could help with the design of quantum computers

Aug 15th 2020

IN RAY BRADBURYs science-fiction story A Sound of Thunder, a character time-travels far into the past and inadvertently crushes a butterfly underfoot. The consequences of that minuscule change ripple through reality such that, upon the time-travellers return, the present has been dramatically changed.

The butterfly effect describes the high sensitivity of many systems to tiny changes in their starting conditions. But while it is a feature of classical physics, it has been unclear whether it also applies to quantum mechanics, which governs the interactions of tiny objects like atoms and fundamental particles. Bin Yan and Nikolai Sinitsyn, a pair of physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, decided to find out. As they report in Physical Review Letters, quantum-mechanical systems seem to be more resilient than classical ones. Strangely, they seem to have the capacity to repair damage done in the past as time unfolds.

To perform their experiment, Drs Yan and Sinitsyn ran simulations on a small quantum computer made by IBM. They constructed a simple quantum system consisting of qubitsthe quantum analogue of the familiar one-or-zero bits used by classical computers. Like an ordinary bit, a qubit can be either one or zero. But it can also exist in superposition, a chimerical mix of both states at once.

Having established the system, the authors prepared a particular qubit by setting its state to zero. That qubit was then allowed to interact with the others in a process called quantum scrambling which, in this case, mimics the effect of evolving a quantum system backwards in time. Once this virtual foray into the past was completed, the authors disturbed the chosen qubit, destroying its local information and its correlations with the other qubits. Finally, the authors performed a reversed scrambling process on the now-damaged system. This was analogous to running the quantum system all the way forwards in time to where it all began.

They then checked to see how similar the final state of the chosen qubit was to the zero-state it had been assigned at the beginning of the experiment. The classical butterfly effect suggests that the researchers meddling should have changed it quite drastically. In the event, the qubits original state had been almost entirely recovered. Its state was not quite zero, but it was, in quantum-mechanical terms, 98.3% of the way there, a difference that was deemed insignificant. The final output state after the forward evolution is essentially the same as the input state before backward evolution, says Dr Sinitsyn. It can be viewed as the same input state plus some small background noise. Oddest of all was the fact that the further back in simulated time the damage was done, the greater the rate of recoveryas if the quantum system was repairing itself with time.

The mechanism behind all this is known as entanglement. As quantum objects interact, their states become highly correlatedentangledin a way that serves to diffuse localised information about the state of one quantum object across the system as a whole. Damage to one part of the system does not destroy information in the same way as it would with a classical system. Instead of losing your work when your laptop crashes, having a highly entangled system is a bit like having back-ups stashed in every room of the house. Even though the information held in the disturbed qubit is lost, its links with the other qubits in the system can act to restore it.

The upshot is that the butterfly effect seems not to apply to quantum systems. Besides making life safe for tiny time-travellers, that may have implications for quantum computing, too, a field into which companies and countries are investing billions of dollars. We think of quantum systems, especially in quantum computing, as very fragile, says Natalia Ares, a physicist at the University of Oxford. That this result demonstrates that quantum systems can in fact be unexpectedly robust is an encouraging finding, and bodes well for potential future advances in the field.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline "A flutter in time"

Excerpt from:

Quantum mechanics is immune to the butterfly effect - The Economist

MIP* = RE is not a typo. It is a groundbreaking discovery and the catchy title of a recent paper in the field of quantum complexity theory. Complexity theory is a zoo of complexity classes collections of computational problems of which MIP* and RE are but two.

The 165-page paper shows that these two classes are the same. That may seem like an insignificant detail in an abstract theory without any real-world application. But physicists and mathematicians are flocking to visit the zoo, even though they probably dont understand it all. Because it turns out the discovery has astonishing consequences for their own disciplines.

In 1936, Alan Turing showed that the Halting Problem algorithmically deciding whether a computer program halts or loops forever cannot be solved. Modern computer science was born. Its success made the impression that soon all practical problems would yield to the tremendous power of the computer.

But it soon became apparent that, while some problems can be solved algorithmically, the actual computation will last long after our Sun will have engulfed the computer performing the computation. Figuring out how to solve a problem algorithmically was not enough. It was vital to classify solutions by efficiency. Complexity theory classifies problems according to how hard it is to solve them. The hardness of a problem is measured in terms of how long the computation lasts.

RE stands for problems that can be solved by a computer. It is the zoo. Lets have a look at some subclasses.

The class P consists of problems which a known algorithm can solve quickly (technically, in polynomial time). For instance, multiplying two numbers belongs to P since long multiplication is an efficient algorithm to solve the problem. The problem of finding the prime factors of a number is not known to be in P; the problem can certainly be solved by a computer but no known algorithm can do so efficiently. A related problem, deciding if a given number is a prime, was in similar limbo until 2004 when an efficient algorithm showed that this problem is in P.

Another complexity class is NP. Imagine a maze. Is there a way out of this maze? is a yes/no question. If the answer is yes, then there is a simple way to convince us: simply give us the directions, well follow them, and well find the exit. If the answer is no, however, wed have to traverse the entire maze without ever finding a way out to be convinced.

Such yes/no problems for which, if the answer is yes, we can efficiently demonstrate that, belong to NP. Any solution to a problem serves to convince us of the answer, and so P is contained in NP. Surprisingly, a million dollar question is whether P=NP. Nobody knows.

The classes described so far represent problems faced by a normal computer. But computers are fundamentally changing quantum computers are being developed. But if a new type of computer comes along and claims to solve one of our problems, how can we trust it is correct?

Imagine an interaction between two entities, an interrogator and a prover. In a police interrogation, the prover may be a suspect attempting to prove their innocence. The interrogator must decide whether the prover is sufficiently convincing. There is an imbalance; knowledge-wise the interrogator is in an inferior position.

In complexity theory, the interrogator is the person, with limited computational power, trying to solve the problem. The prover is the new computer, which is assumed to have immense computational power. An interactive proof system is a protocol that the interrogator can use in order to determine, at least with high probability, whether the prover should be believed. By analogy, these are crimes that the police may not be able to solve, but at least innocents can convince the police of their innocence. This is the class IP.

If multiple provers can be interrogated, and the provers are not allowed to coordinate their answers (as is typically the case when the police interrogates multiple suspects), then we get to the class MIP. Such interrogations, via cross examining the provers responses, provide the interrogator with greater power, so MIP contains IP.

Quantum communication is a new form of communication carried out with qubits. Entanglement a quantum feature in which qubits are spookishly entangled, even if separated makes quantum communication fundamentally different to ordinary communication. Allowing the provers of MIP to share an entangled qubit leads to the class MIP*.

It seems obvious that communication between the provers can only serve to help the provers coordinate lies rather than assist the interrogator in discovering truth. For that reason, nobody expected that allowing more communication would make computational problems more reliable and solvable. Surprisingly, we now know that MIP* = RE. This means that quantum communication behaves wildly differently to normal communication.

In the 1970s, Alain Connes formulated what became known as the Connes Embedding Problem. Grossly simplified, this asked whether infinite matrices can be approximated by finite matrices. This new paper has now proved this isnt possible an important finding for pure mathematicians.

In 1993, meanwhile, Boris Tsirelson pinpointed a problem in physics now known as Tsirelsons Problem. This was about two different mathematical formalisms of a single situation in quantum mechanics to date an incredibly successful theory that explains the subatomic world. Being two different descriptions of the same phenomenon it was to be expected that the two formalisms were mathematically equivalent.

But the new paper now shows that they arent. Exactly how they can both still yield the same results and both describe the same physical reality is unknown, but it is why physicists are also suddenly taking an interest.

Time will tell what other unanswered scientific questions will yield to the study of complexity. Undoubtedly, MIP* = RE is a great leap forward.

The rest is here:

Major quantum computational breakthrough is shaking up physics and maths - The Conversation UK

The quantum world is a pretty wild one, where the seemingly impossible happens all the time: Teensy objects separated by miles are tied to one another, and particles can even be in two places at once. But one of the most perplexing quantum superpowers is the movement of particles through seemingly impenetrable barriers.

Now, a team of physicists has devised a simple way to measure the duration of this bizarre phenomenon, called quantum tunneling. And they figured out how long the tunneling takes from start to finish from the moment a particle enters the barrier, tunnels through and comes out the other side, they reported online July 22 in the journal Nature.

Quantum tunneling is a phenomenon where an atom or a subatomic particle can appear on the opposite side of a barrier that should be impossible for the particle to penetrate. It's as if you were walking and encountered a 10-foot-tall (3 meters) wall extending as far as the eye can see. Without a ladder or Spider-man climbing skills, the wall would make it impossible for you to continue.

Related: The 18 biggest unsolved mysteries in physics

However, in the quantum world, it is rare, but possible, for an atom or electron to simply "appear" on the other side, as if a tunnel had been dug through the wall. "Quantum tunneling is one of the most puzzling of quantum phenomena," said study co-author Aephraim Steinberg, co-director of the Quantum Information Science Program at Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. "And it is fantastic that we're now able to actually study it in this way."

Quantum tunneling is not new to physicists. It forms the basis of many modern technologies such as electronic chips, called tunnel diodes, which allow for the movement of electricity through a circuit in one direction but not the other. Scanning tunneling microscopes (STM) also use tunneling to literally show individual atoms on the surface of a solid. Shortly after the first STM was invented, researchers at IBM reported using the device to spell out the letters IBM using 35 xenon atoms on a nickel substrate.

While the laws of quantum mechanics allow for quantum tunneling, researchers still don't know exactly what happens while a subatomic particle is undergoing the tunneling process. Indeed, some researchers thought that the particle appears instantaneously on the other side of the barrier as if it instantaneously teleported there, Sci-News.com reported.

Researchers had previously tried to measure the amount of time it takes for tunneling to occur, with varying results. One of the difficulties in earlier versions of this type of experiment is identifying the moment tunneling starts and stops. To simplify the methodology, the researchers used magnets to create a new kind of "clock" that would tick only while the particle was tunneling.

Subatomic particles all have magnetic properties and when magnets are in an external magnetic field, they rotate like a spinning top. The amount of rotation (also called precession) depends on how long the particle is bathed in that magnetic field. Knowing that, the Toronto group used a magnetic field to form their barrier. When particles are inside the barrier, they precess. Outside it, they don't. So measuring how long the particles precess told the researchers how long those atoms took to tunnel through the barrier.

Related: 18 times quantum particles blew our minds

"The experiment is a breathtaking technical achievement," said Drew Alton, physics professor at Augustana University, in South Dakota.

The researchers prepared approximately 8,000 rubidium atoms, cooled them to a billionth of a degree above absolute zero. The atoms needed to be this temperature, otherwise they would have moved around randomly at high speeds, rather than staying in a small clump. The scientists used a laser to create the magnetic barrier; they focused the laser so that the barrier was 1.3 micrometers (microns) thick, or the thickness of about 2,500 rubidium atoms. (So if you were a foot thick, front to back, this barrier would be the equivalent of about half a mile thick.) Using another laser, the scientists nudged the rubidium atoms toward the barrier, moving them about 0.15 inches per second (4 millimeters/s).

As expected, most of the rubidium atoms bounced off the barrier. However, due to quantum tunneling, about 3% of the atoms penetrated the barrier and appeared on the other side. Based on the precession of those atoms, it took them about 0.6 milliseconds to traverse the barrier.

Chad Orzel, an associate professor of physics at Union College in New York, who was not part of the study, applauded the experiment, "Their experiment is ingeniously constructed to make it difficult to interpret as anything other than what they say," said Orzel, author of "How to Teach Quantum Mechanics to Your Dog" (Scribner, 2010) It "is one of the best examples you'll see of a thought experiment made real," he added.

Experiments exploring quantum tunneling are difficult and further research is needed to understand the implications of this study. The Toronto group is already considering improvements to their apparatus to not only determine the duration of the tunneling process, but to also see if they can learn anything about velocity of the atoms at different points inside the barrier. "We're working on a new measurement where we make the barrier thicker and then determine the amount of precession at different depths," Steinberg said. "It will be very interesting to see if the atoms' speed is constant or not."

In many interpretations of quantum mechanics, it is impossible even in principle to determine a subatomic particle's trajectory. Such a measurement could lead to insights into the confusing world of quantum theory. The quantum world is very different from the world we're familiar with. Experiments like these will help make it a little less mysterious.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Physicists watch quantum particles tunnel through solid barriers. Here's what they found. - Space.com

There arent many aspiring astrophysicists who go on to become strategists, but Publicis Media head of strategy Shann Biglione is the exception. Here, he shares a thought-provoking piece about science, marketing and the contradictions that rule us all.

When I was young and naive, my ambition was to become an astrophysicist. I was starstruck by the cosmos, inebriated by Hubbles imagery and the mind-blowing concepts of Einsteins general relativity. A painstakingly obtained undergraduate in physics later, I realized I wasnt nearly smart enough for rocket science and fittingly decided for a career in marketing instead.

As the years went by and the hairline receded, I found that great marketing is fairly simple, but hard. Yet, we keep celebrating people who want us to believe they make the complicated easy, waving change as a scare tactic or asking us to simply start with the why. And so, we come with perfectly held models that explain it all, billing expensive hours to introduce new paradigms we can pitch in the elevator.

But the more you learn about marketing, the more you realize that being able to entertain seemingly contradicting models is not a bug, but a feature. And after years of trying to make sense of my daily work, there are a few parallels between scientific theory and marketing theory I find titillating to draw. Especially if those literally keep physicists up at night.

As our understanding of quantum scale objects grew, a baffling realization challenged the very definition of how matter operates. Electrons, photons and protons not only carry their properties like particles that move as points in space, but also as waves that ripple through it. Light (photons), when sent through a thin hole, doesnt just send a straight line of its particle through the holes, it projects wave-like patterns that echo behind it. Einstein described this as having two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do.

The together they do part is a very interesting provocation for marketers, one brilliantly entertained a few years ago by Bob AdContrarian Hoffman. In it, Bob drew the parallel with consumer behavior. He argues that we tend to define consumer behavior through either a rational, persuasive lens where they do not throw their money away on stupid crap, or an irrational model where consumers are deeply influenced by emotions and heuristics, often unaware of their true motivations.

The reality is that we have seen evidence for both, and its easy to think one is more important than the other. But like photons, they are more likely explained by their contradictions. One can both display extremely rational behaviors at times all the while being emotionally driven a second later. And yes, there is absolutely value in understanding how to fit either pattern, but its important to remember they are not either/or questions as much as they are an either/and combination.

A second interesting theory is Heisenbergs uncertainty principle (yes, that Heisenberg, although no, not that Heisenberg). It states that the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be predicted from initial conditions. We cannot know both accurately at the same time.

It may remind you of the observer principle, which dictates that the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon (for example, running a focus group creates a severe bias in the response). But the uncertainty principle is quite specific about the fact we can define position or momentum, we simply cannot know both at once.

Of course, this is a metaphorical analysis, but I cannot help thinking data (and the way we use it in advertising) often suffers from the same level of uncertainty. We can know that someone has had a connection with a theme, for example through search behaviors or contextual analysis, but we cannot really know why theyre there, or where they are going with this. Could it be, for example, that I am tagged as a sports enthusiast because I was researching the latest Netflix docuseries?

This is not a trivial question to answer for data system, because relying too heavily on data creates dangerous levels of misattribution between provenance, intent and context of the user. And so, it begs the question: would we be more effective as marketers if we made the assumption data-driven marketing is dictated by an uncertainty principle that dispels the illusion of it being deterministic?

One of the most fascinating questions of modern physics is one that Einstein obsessed about until his death: we have completely different theories to explain how the universe works at a macro level than we do for a micro level.

Our understanding of the atomically small is defined by the probabilistic models of quantum field theory, while the world at a cosmic level is currently explained by Einsteins deterministic models of general relativity. Individually, they have worked absolute wonders for human progress: one brought us the magic of modern electronics, the other gives us the GPS and the concept of black holes. But together? Physicists still arent sure how to reconcile the two. There just is a scale at which the laws of one go out of the window while the rules of the other take over.

This was unacceptable to Einstein, and his rejection of a probabilistic model led to one of his most famous quotes: God does not play dice. Decades later, scientists are still trying to solve one of the greatest challenges of modern physics: uncovering a unified theory that makes sense of the small and the big.

Turn to marketing, and the equivalence can be framed in two different ways. Its tempting first to think of the direct parallel with small and big brands. And sure, because their means are very limited small brands tend to operate differently from big brands. But generally, this is more a function of context and operational reality than a true difference in laws of growth.

This is why Byron Sharp, who certainly came closest to a unified theory of marketing, likes to remind us niche just means small when people argue the Ehrenberg-Bass Institutes laws of growth only work for big consumer packages goods companies.

No, where I see a more interesting parallel is with Binet and Fields contrast between short-term and long-term thinking. According to them, marketing works with two different models: one that is emotionally led and mass streamed, another that is more persuasive, and activation based, with more precision in targeting. This has been an increasingly popular theory in the industry, further validated and popularized as part of Mark Ritsons recent analysis of the Effies.

The problem is that this model is often introduced to marketers in an effort to move the pendulum away from something; more recently its been particularly relevant among those where performance marketing obsessed with efficiencies became the new gospel. And like Einstein, people want to believe in a unified theory that speaks to their own bias and dogmas (consumers dont play with dice). Performance marketers remain convinced its still about tracking return on advertising spend on every behavior, just at a bigger scale, while brand marketers think the job is still all about culture.

This misses the core of the message. Its not about being long-term or short-term, its about accepting that both play a role and that every brand needs to strike a balance between the two. Like in physics where the scale you wish to study defines the rules, the ways of marketing can be different depending on the objective youre trying to balance. And thus, hyper targeting may not be the paradigm that defines everything, but remains extremely relevant to an entire side of your plan. Data will provide you lots of actionable behavioral insights, but it wont give you the wider cultural texture. Building the brand will reduce price sensitivity but giving consumers a good understanding of what theyre buying in the first place remains essential.

Marketing in general is a high stakes game decided by a committee of people who are not marketing experts, and so it remains tempting to provide the simplistic view. This is probably why some of the most popular gurus do so well: not because they inspire marketers, but precisely because the simplicity of their recommendation sits well beyond just marketers. Nevertheless, its valuable to find relief in the beauty of balance, nuance, complementarity and yes, just as in physics, sometimes even contradictions.

Shann Biglione is head of strategy, Publicis Media

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The science of marketing: taking inspiration from quantum physics - The Drum