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Category Archives: Quantum Physics
Creator of Wolfram Alpha Has a Bold Plan to Find a New Fundamental Theory of Physics – ScienceAlert
Posted: April 24, 2020 at 3:03 pm
Stephen Wolfram is a cult figure in programming and mathematics. He is the brains behind Wolfram Alpha, a website that tries to answer questions by using algorithms to sift through a massive database of information. He is also responsible for Mathematica, a computer system used by scientists the world over.
Last week, Wolfram launched a new venture: the Wolfram Physics Project, an ambitious attempt to develop a new physics of our Universe.
The new physics, he declares, is computational. The guiding idea is that everything can be boiled down to the application of simple rules to fundamental building blocks.
Why do we need such a theory? After all, we already have two extraordinarily successful physical theories.
These are general relativity a theory of gravity and the large-scale structure of the Universe and quantum mechanics a theory of the basic constituents of matter, sub-atomic particles, and their interactions. Haven't we got physics licked?
Not quite. While we have an excellent theory of how gravity works for large objects, such as stars and planets and even people, we don't understand gravity at extremely high energies or for extremely small things.
General relativity "breaks down" when we try to extend it into the miniature realm where quantum mechanics rules. This has led to a quest for the holy grail of physics: a theory of quantum gravity, which would combine what we know from general relativity with what we know from quantum mechanics to produce an entirely new physical theory.
The current best approach we have to quantum gravity is string theory. This theory has been a work in progress for 50 years or so, and while it has achieved some success there is a growing dissatisfaction with it as an approach.
Wolfram is attempting to provide an alternative to string theory. He does so via a branch of mathematics called graph theory, which studies groups of points or nodes connected by lines or edges.
Think of a social networking platform. Start with one person: Betty. Next, add a simple rule: every person adds three friends. Apply the rule to Betty: now she has three friends. Apply the rule again to every person (including the one you started with, namely: Betty). Keep applying the rule and, pretty soon, the network of friends forms a complex graph.
A simple rule multiple times creates a complex network of points and connections. (Author provided)
Wolfram's proposal is that the universe can be modelled in much the same way. The goal of physics, he suggests, is to work out the rules that the universal graph obeys.
Key to his suggestion is that a suitably complicated graph looks like a geometry. For instance, imagine a cube and a graph that resembles it.
(Author provided)
Above:In the same way that a collection of points and lines can approximate a solid cube, Wolfram argues that space itself may be a mesh that knits together a series of nodes.
Wolfram argues that extremely complex graphs resemble surfaces and volumes: add enough nodes and connect them with enough lines and you form a kind of mesh. He maintains that space itself can be thought of as a mesh that knits together a series of nodes in this fashion.
How can complicated meshes of nodes help with the project of reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics? Well, quantum theory deals with discrete objects with discrete properties. General relativity, on the other hand, treats the universe as a continuum and gravity as a continuous force.
If we can build a theory that can do what general relativity does but that starts from discrete structures like graphs, then the prospects for reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics start to look more promising.
If we can build a geometry that resembles the one given to us by general relativity using a discrete structure, then the prospects look even better.
Space may be a complex mesh of points connected by a simple rule that is iterated many times. (Wolfram Physics Project)
While Wolfram's project is promising, it does contain more than a hint of hubris. Wolfram is going up against the Einsteins and Hawkings of the world, and he's doing it without a life spent publishing in physics journals.
(He did publish several physics papers as a teenage prodigy, but that was 40 years ago, as well as a book A New Kind of Science, which is the spiritual predecessor of the Wolfram Physics Project.)
Moreover, his approach is not wholly original. It is similar to two existing approaches to quantum gravity: causal set theory and loop quantum gravity, neither of which get much of a mention in Wolfram's grand designs.
Nonetheless, the project is notable for three reasons.
First, Wolfram has a broad audience and he will do a lot to popularise the approach that he advocates. Proponents of loop quantum gravity in particular lament the predominance of string theory within the physics community. Wolfram may help to underwrite a paradigm shift in physics.
Second, Wolfram provides a very careful overview of the project from the basic principles of graph theory up to general relativity. This will make it easier for individuals to get up to speed with the general approach and potentially make contributions of their own.
Third, the project is "open source", inviting contributions from citizen scientists.
If nothing else, this gives us all something to do at the moment in between baking sourdough and playing Animal Crossing, that is.
Sam Baron, Associate professor, Australian Catholic University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Three Pictures of Reality – The Great Courses Daily News
Posted: at 3:03 pm
By Steven Gimbel, Ph.D., Gettysburg CollegeImage of the universe, showing the visible and near-infrared spectrum, captured by NASAs Hubble Telescope in 2014. (Image: NASA/Public domain)
Einstein contended that every property in the universe had well-defined values at all times. If quantum mechanics failed to provide us these values or failed to uniquely determine these values at all times, it indicated the limitations of the theory and informed us that the theory needed to be augmented. Only then would we get a complete sense of reality.
John von Neumann, a Hungarian-American mathematician and physicist, provided us with the first picture of reality. He claimed that the superposed state was, in fact, real and that objects are spread out without well-defined values until we make an attempt to measure it.
He further claimed that it was the act of measurement that skewed reality. It caused a disturbance that forces the wave function to collapse into a single value. Since the measurement is a physical act, he contended, it changes the system and this causes the results obtained by the application of the Schrdinger equation to change into the random results we see.
Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist and mathematician Eugene Paul Wigner, who was a contemporary and colleague of Neumann, proposed a second picture of reality. His postulation was that the collapse occurs when the system interacts with the human mind. Human consciousness affects the system.
He contended that its simply not possible that a physical thing would violate physical law. Hence, the problem didnt lie with the method or instrument used to observe the system, but with the observer or the scientist. The problem was the conscious seeing of the value.
Learn more about Whether the Conscious Mind is Really in control of Your Body.
Its worth noting here that a number of scientists found Wigners theory of attributing human consciousness with a physical role to be strange.
American physicist Hugh Everett, the proponent of the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics, provided us with an even stranger image of reality. He posited that the wave function in Schrdingers equation never really collapses and that all objects in the superposed state are actually objectively real.
This is a transcript from the video series Redefining Reality: The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.
According to Everett, when a system is not observed, it exists simultaneously in every possible state. But when its observed, reality splits and new sub-realities or parallel universes are created. And in each of these new sub-realities or parallel universes, one possible state is represented. In other words, every time we observe a system reality is divided into multiple worlds. So, theres one world where the coin is heads and another where the coin is tails.
Learn more about What Is Reality.
These three interpretations of reality play a key role when we try to understand the greatest piece of art to be directly influenced by quantum mechanicsMichael Frayns stage play, Copenhagen. The play is based on certain events that took place during World War II, and it focuses on the uncertainty that emerged from these events.
It is a well-known fact that German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg, who made key contributions in the field of quantum mechanics and was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932, had been recruited by the Nazis to head their nuclear weapons program, which was known as Uranverein.
It is also known for a fact that Heisenberg was stuck. Extensive research had been carried out by various scientists under the Uranverein, between September 1939 and June 1942, but no actual nuclear weapon had been developed. In June 1942, during a meeting with Albert Speer, Germanys Minister of Armaments, Heisenberg informed him that it would take at least three more years to build a nuclear bomb.
There was a minor (or rather subtle) error in Heisenbergs work, which prevented him from building a nuclear weapon for the Nazis. Heisenberg had traveled to Denmark during this period to meet his former mentor and colleague Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist and a major contributor in developing a deeper understanding of the atomic structure and quantum theory. After this meeting, Heisenberg and Bohr never spoke again, but we do not know what was said during this meeting.
Over the years, historians have put forward three hypotheses. The first claims that Heisenberg was working with utmost seriousness towards building an atomic weapon for Nazi Germany. When he got stuck, he reached out to Bohr for advice and help. On learning that Heisenberg was working for the Nazis, Bohr refused to help him. This led to a falling out between the two and thats why they never spoke again.
The second hypothesis claims that Heisenberg, in fact, was conflicted about his involvement with the Nazis. He didnt want to help them, but neither did he want any harm to come his or his familys way. This is understandable given the irrationality of the Nazis. Hence, he couldnt refuse them. This is the reason why he met Bohr, his old mentor, for fatherly advice. They discussed politics and a possible course of action for Heisenberg and physics never came up.
Finally, the third hypothesis claims that Heisenberg had been pretending to work on an atomic bomb all along. He had no intention whatsoever to build such a weapon for the Nazis. In fact, he intended to sabotage the effort. This is where Bohr comes into the picture. The error that would sabotage the effort had to be subtle so it eluded the attention of other scientists in Germany and he needed Bohrs help for this.
Learn more about Extra Dimensions.
There is no way for us to know which of these three scenarios is true or if there exists a fourth version. If we view this through the lens of quantum mechanics, we can posit that since the system is unobserved, its in a superposed state. In Copenhagen, Frayn traces out each of these possibilities in the three acts of the play. Since we didnt observe it, all three are brought to life. Is there one that really occurred or, as Everett would have it, are there three worldsin each a different possibility being the real one?
American physicist Hugh Everett had proposed the many-worlds interpretation. It is deterministic in nature. It attempts to explain why the world can appear to be indeterministic to human observers, i.e., scientists.
The wave function, which is also referred to as a state variable, is a key component of any theory. The wave function of the universe is known as the Hartle-Hawking state, named after American physicist James Hartle and English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. Its used to determine the start of the universe. Feynmans path integral is used to calculate this wave function.
The first attempt at establishing a German nuclear weapons program happened in April 1939, but this effort fizzled out a few months later. In September 1939, Germany made a second attempt at establishing this program, which was known as Uranverein. This second attempt coincided with the start of World War II.
To put it simply, reality represents the state of things in the form they actually exist. It doesnt take into account how things may appear to exist or as they may be imagined to exist. It includes all that currently exists and all that has existed, irrespective of whether human consciousness can observe or comprehend it or not.
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The Three Pictures of Reality - The Great Courses Daily News
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Quantum Mechanics and horizon of impossible – Greater Kashmir
Posted: at 3:03 pm
Weird, bizarre and incompressible thats how one can best describe Quantum Mechanics, a theory of microscopic realm, with subsequent implications on Macrocosm that has dominated the turf of physics for over a century now. Starting as a response to a simple question of atomic spectrum and stability of atomic systems, the theory soon emerged as parallel epistemological model with its ramifications on everything under the sun and beyond. The theory demands a basic shift in how we look at the universe and our own consciousness, and this shift is so dramatic that scientists and philosophers are yet to come in terms with it. So deep are its implications, that when Quantum theory was emerging and our previous understanding of the universe was about to fall, Einstein wrote pessimistically that, I still believe in the possibility of model of reality that is to say of a theory that represents things themselves and not merely the probability of their occurrence.
This was actually a Critique of Quantum Mechanics that had forced the scientists to give up the rigid, classical and mechanical understanding of the universe, and to re-evaluate it in terms of probability, uncertainty and indeterminacy.
What quantum mechanics has at heart is easy to state, but difficult to come in terms with. It starts with the empirically based statement that matter at atomic and subatomic levels, tends to behave differently, rather weirdly, then how we expect it to behave. Material particles down the scale tend to exhibit wave- like properties. What this means, has been interpreted differently, the most wide interpretation being the one now known as the Copenhagen interpretation, which maintains that when an observer intervenes with subatomic systems, the particles seem to occupy no definite and specific position in space they are rather smeared, like waves, probability waves to be precise, throughout space time. It is difficult to locate a specific region of space and say that particle is residing here, what quantum mechanics gives us, is a recipe in the form of Schrodingers equation to calculate the probability of existence of particle in a particular region of space, and surprisingly, though the probability goes down as we move away from the particle, it never goes to zero. It means that there is a probability of existence of particle anywhere in the universe. This is as weird as it can be, but this is how it is. This quandrum is best brought to fore by the famous double slit experiment, that Feynman described as the only problem of Quantum Mechanics. In this experiment, electrons tend to behave both as waves as well as particles depending on configuration of the experimental set up. What this experiment reveals, a shocking revelation indeed, is that the behaviour of electrons is seriously determined by the presence of an observer at slit openings. This brings us face to face with one of the weird facets of reality as described by quantum mechanics, and that is, as Paulson stated it, An observer doesnt merely observe reality, rather he creates it.
In quantum mechanics, reality is not something objectively lying there independently in space time, it is rather created by interaction of the observer with the system, and it is only in presence of the observer that a particular event of quantum probability turns into a physical possibility . This is what is meant by the collapse of Quantum States. This involves and brings in torrent of subjectivity and squarely brings us back to Hermeneutic interpretation of life and universe. In the continental analytic split that occurred in philosophy in the beginning of twentieth century, Quantum mechanics has swung pendulum in the direction of continental tradition, so to say. Quantum mechanics posits the fact that we as individuals and as carriers of our own subjectivity chose subjectively from the objective field of reality. Amit Goswami, makes this statement the starting and culminating point of his much quoted book God is not dead. This view, along with quantum model of consciousness has diluted the Cartesian mind-body and inner-outer dichotomy and has been trying to ground being in consciousness. The quantum emphasis on consciousness and its subsequent acceptance of the fact that consciousness is something beyond the grasp of scientific structures and it can never be quantified and theorised in a structured pattern has brought this theory, circularly, very close to views held in the East since millennia. The three fold formulation of Sat-Chit-Anand seems to be fitting well in quantum scheme, though it remains debatable as to how long shall it take for quantum mechanics and therefore for entire physics to completely agree with the picture that has come to us from Eastern religious and metaphysical traditions. Neils Bohr wasnt entirely hyperbolic when he noted that in order to come in terms with epistemological issues raised by quantum mechanics one must return to the questions raised by Hindu and Buddhist monks, centuries ago. The resemblance between Quantum mechanics and traditional metaphysics becomes more acute when we listen masters from both camps crying that We cant describe what we see. Language is inadequate to describe our experiences. This indescribability of both epistemes brings them further close.
The philosophy of determinism that Newtonian mechanics has chained us to, and thereby rendering our moral responsibilities, accountability before divine redundant is also falling apart in the wake of quantum theory. The theory is based on the very premise that matter and therefore universe is governed by indeterminacy and a sort of free will at atomic and subatomic scale. This observation and its consequences on macro world is surely going to establish the theory of free will and human accountability as a rational and well proven proposition. Additionally, the quantum Maxim that things arent as they appear to be is going to throw open doors of fresh thinking and is surely expected to awaken die hard materialists to subtler levels of reality. People have already come up with scores of good and bad books on the subject which lay bare the philosophical underpinnings of quantum mechanics and subsequent boost that religion can have had from these underpinnings. Of all the diverse interpretations that philosophers have extracted from the postulates of Quantum mechanics we are bound to make a transition from our classical, rigid, deterministic and material picture of universe to its Quantum, in deterministic and subtle picture of universe. Fritjof Capra has thus summarised this paradigm shift in our thinking that In modern physics, the image of the universe as machine has been replaced by that of an interconnected, dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interdependent and have to be understood as patterns of cosmic process. What this entire episode has to offer to us and why is it important for us to understand because it touches upon our basic existential, epistemological and ontological issues and with convergences so profound, a seeker can afford no longer ignorance neither of traditional metaphysics nor of modern physics.
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Henry Geller, Who Helped Rid TV of Cigarette Ads, Dies at 96 – The New York Times
Posted: at 3:03 pm
John F. Banzaf III was watching football on television with his family in the Bronx on Thanksgiving 1966 when he realized that the most strategic plays were being made off the field in the cigarette commercials whose jingles, gags, slogans and images of virile cowboys and urbane women glamorized smoking.
Two years had elapsed since the United States surgeon general declared that smoking caused lung cancer. But while Congress had voted to require health warning labels on cigarette packaging, it had, for the time being, not required them for T.V. commercials.
Mr. Banzaf, a 25-year-old recent graduate of Columbia Law School, complained in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission that while television news coverage included both sides of the tobacco debate, the cigarette commercials did not. Under the so-called fairness doctrine, which required that both sides of an issue of public concern be presented, werent opponents of smoking entitled to free airtime?
When his letter came in, it struck a responsive chord, and I thought why not use it? Henry Geller, the F.C.C. counsel at the time, recalled in an unpublished memoir.
Mr. Geller, who died on April 7 in Washington at 96, did just that. He suggested that one antismoking public service message be broadcast free for every paid cigarette advertisement.
That proposed formula so unnerved station owners afraid of jeopardizing their licenses, and tobacco companies concerned about competing with powerful antismoking commercials, that Congress was finally able to ban the advertising altogether.
The industry desperately wanted to stop these counter ads and did so by eliminating its own ads, Mr. Geller said. From April 1, 1970, forward, all cigarette advertising was eliminated from radio and television.
In effect, Mr. Banzaf said this week, Geller fortuitously made new federal law in a most unusual manner, and probably helped to save millions of lives. (Mr. Banzaf became a professor at George Washington University Law School and a litigious defender of public health, challenging cigarette, fast food and soft drink firms.)
Mr. Geller later profoundly influenced American politics by successfully challenging the fairness doctrine as a private citizen, a challenge that led to a ruling allowing for televised debates between the major presidential candidates. Such debates have been held in every presidential election since 1976.
In 1960, the networks had been granted a special dispensation by Congress to broadcast the groundbreaking face-off between Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Under the fairness doctrine, a dozen or so minor party candidates would have been entitled to participate in the debates.
After no televised debates were held in 1964, 1968 and 1972, Mr. Geller persuaded the commission that broadcasting debates was the equivalent of covering any other breaking news event and was therefore exempt from that requirement.
Mr. Geller was also instrumental in expanding the channels available to new cable subscribers in 1970, while he was still at the F.C.C. The commission voted to allow the cable industry to import distant television signals to distribute to its customers. It also required the industry both to subsidize educational programming and to compensate local broadcasters.
Unlike many of his colleagues in government, Mr. Geller never capitalized on his public service to get a high-paying job in the private sector. He worked for the RAND Corporation, the Aspen Institute and, from 1980 to 1991, Duke Universitys Washington Center for Public Policy Research, where, as director, he helped draft and successfully lobby for federal legislation that imposed limits on how much advertising was allowed on childrens programming.
Henry Geller was born on Feb. 14, 1924, in Springfield, Mass., to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father, Samuel, was a homebuilder. His mother, Sadie (Kramer) Geller, was a homemaker.
He grew up in Detroit and, after graduating from the University of Michigan at 19 in 1943 with a degree in chemistry, served with the Army in the Pacific during World War II. When he returned, he began graduate study in chemistry at Michigan. But, he later recalled, when he encountered several law school students and learned that they rarely studied, he enrolled in Northwestern University School of Law.
I thought Henry was the smartest guy in law school, Newton N. Minow, who was a year behind him at Northwestern and who later became F.C.C. chairman, told Broadcast magazine in 1979. He was a movie nut. Hed go to three movies a day and never hit the books until a week before exams.
Mr. Geller graduated second in his class in 1949, went to work for the F.C.C. and then for the National Labor Relations Board, and clerked for an Illinois state judge.
In 1955 he married Judy Foelak, who ran a speakers bureau. She survives him and confirmed his death, from complications of bladder cancer, at their home in Washington. He is also survived by their children, Peter Geller and Kathryn Edwards, and a grandson.
Mr. Geller was the F.C.C.s general counsel from 1964 to 1970 and a special assistant to the chairman until 1973. From 1978 to 1980, he was the first administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
He remained current on evolving technology; not long ago he said he was trying to figure out how to persuade Congress to mandate attribution for online political advertising.
A rumpled man with a preference for sneakers and jeans, he played tennis into his 90s, taught himself quantum physics and could argue a complex case without a single note. He preferred movies to television which, borrowing from Frank Lloyd Wright, he referred to as chewing gum for the eyes and, when he did tune in, usually confined himself to nature documentaries or quirky British comedy like Monty Pythons Flying Circus.
Mr. Geller was that rare former public official who could not only laugh at himself but also admit a mistake such as when he advised Mr. Minow, the newly installed F.C.C. chairman, against using what would become his signature phrase.
In a scathing speech to the National Association of Broadcasters in 1961, Mr. Minow praised good television but challenged broadcast executives to spend a full day in front of their sets without any distraction. What you will observe, he said, is a vast wasteland.
I told him not to say it, Mr. Geller recalled in an oral history interview for the Fordham University Libraries in 2010. I said, You have every right to say theyre not delivering public service, but you shouldnt go around on the quality of programs. The government cant do quality. Its subjective. It violates the First Amendment.
He laughs now, Mr. Geller continued, and he always introduces me saying, This is the man who told me not to say vast wasteland.
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Henry Geller, Who Helped Rid TV of Cigarette Ads, Dies at 96 - The New York Times
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Stephen Wolfram: The Path to a Fundamental Theory of Physics May Begin With a Hypergraph – Synced
Posted: at 3:03 pm
Physics is the most fundamental of the sciences, dealing with matter and energy. But despite centuries of study, scientists still struggle with the basic question of how the universe works in other words, we still lack a truly fundamental theory of physics.
And thats something Stephen Wolfram has been thinking about for nearly 50 years. Known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and theoretical physics, Wolfram announced this week that he may have found a path that leads to a fundamental theory of physics, and that it is beautiful.
Back in the 1980s, while studying the computational universe of programs, Wolfram observed that even if a systems rules are extremely simple, its behaviour can still be rich and complex. He later applied that discovery to his study of the non-computational, actual universe.
Wolfram says that by the end of the 1990s he had figured out some implications for space, time, gravity, etc. in physics. These would be expressed in his 2002 bestseller A New Kind of Science, which proposes that computation can inform an understanding of the physical world.
Wolfram says a fundamental theory of physics may now be within reach, and is inviting the global research community to help.
Weve built a paradigm and a framework, Wolfram writes in a summary published this week on his website. But now we need to finish the job. We need to work through a lot of complicated computation, mathematics and physics, and see if we can finally deliver the answer to how our universe fundamentally works.
Wolfram says the big answer lies in something simple and structureless: We can think of it as a collection of abstract relations between abstract elements. Or we can think of it as a hypergraphor, in simple cases, a graph.
When we draw the graph, all that matters is whats connected to what, he writes. It also doesnt matter what the elements are called all that matters is that the elements are distinct.
But since edges in ordinary graphs that connect pairs of nodes can hardly represent the complexity of the universe, Wolfram proposes hypergraphs, with hyperedges that can connect any number of nodes.
Wolfram says hypergraphs can be produced by applying a simple rule to graphs and doing it over and over again. When visualized, a hypergraph appears to take a definite shape which resembles the mathematical idealizations and abstractions of the universe, according to Wolfram.
In our model, everything in the universespace, matter, whatever is supposed to be represented by features of our evolving hypergraph, he writes.
Wolfram sees the universe as basically a big chunk of space in which abstract points are abstractly connected to each other as a hypergraph with countless intersection points.
Wolfram says that after zillions of computer experiments, his team began to understand how quantum mechanics works, and identified some deep structural connections between relativity and quantum mechanics.
Everything just started falling into place. All those things Id known about in physics for nearly 50 years and finally we had a way to see not just what was true, but why, Wolfram explains in a detailed technical intro.
Wolfram has officially launched his Physics Project and will be livestreaming activities, sharing discoveries, and producing educational programs around the project. The team also plans to release more than 400 hours of videos covering previous research. Wolfram has also uploaded related working materials dating back to the 1990s as well as software tools.
This is a project for the world. Its going to be a great achievement when its done. And Id like to see it shared as widely as possible, he writes.
Reaction in the scientific community has varied which is not unexpected in the face of a claim that many would regard as, well, astronomical. But history has shown that new ideas can have a tough time making a good first impression.
Sean Carroll, a California Institute of Technology physics professor and theoretical physicist specializing in quantum mechanics, gravity, and cosmology, tweeted that Wolframs approach is cool and fun. But he cautioned that science must be patient and collaborative, and that most bold ideas are wrong: please dont get too excited until others look it over.
The last word goes to Wolfram, whose enthusiasm cannot be denied: Lets have a blast. And lets try to make this the time in human history when we finally figure out how this universe of ours works!
Journalist: Yuan Yuan | Editor: Michael Sarazen
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Stephen Wolfram: The Path to a Fundamental Theory of Physics May Begin With a Hypergraph - Synced
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How Human Design can help you parent in the time of COVID-19 – Thrive Global
Posted: at 3:03 pm
I think we all vividly remember the day when we were told that WE, Mothers who opted-out of becoming teachers, would be homeschooling our children for the remainder of the year.
I work with many women who used that glorious 7 hours of freedom to work on their business and I know stay-at-home Mothers used it to catch up on the many household and family management activities running a home requires.
To have that snatched from us so quickly and without say felt jarring.
Yet, I am starting to see something happen that I always sort of dreamed would happen in families and especially the education system.
Parents are starting to see the glaring holes in our outdated education system (and how underpaid teachers are.)
One of the largest holes being: how children are compared to the other children to the left and right of them and then being treated the same as everyone else.
Being home with you children in this way is probably one of the hardest things youll ever do and also one of the most beautiful, transformative experiences as well if you apply what I am about to tell you.
Not only will it create space and time for you to do what YOU need to do, but it will also nurture the human they came here to be.
I often get compliments on how well they get along, how they treat others, and most importantly how self-aware and assured they are. Honestly I cant take much credit, I dont do anything other than partner with them as opposed to parent them.
I dont assume I know more than them they do about themselves (the world yes themselves, no) and I listen to what THEY tell me they need and want to do.
Once I remember I was beating myself up for the amount of YouTube Ford was watching, making myself wrong and a bad mom then I learned that because of his design, this was a form of research. It was in alignment with the investigator in him and was deeply empowering to him.
So, you see it is easier to trust THEM because I know their Human Designs.
Before we begin, I will give a brief intro to Human Design and then go into some tips on how to best partner with each Design during this wild time, so when you look back at this, you see it as a blessing and the moment your relationship with your child changed forever.
Human Design is a system that tells us how WE were uniquely built logically, emotionally, physically and energetically.
It is a system that brings together the principles of the ancient I Ching, the mathematics of Astrology, The Tree of Life (Kabbalah), Hindu-Brahmin Chakra System all combined with the knowledge of genetic coding and the understanding of neutrinos (Quantum Physics).
If you thought understanding your sun sign was fascinating youre going to love this.
Think of it as Astrology on steroids.
Basically, our bodies are vehicles and every vehicle has its own mechanics. It knows where to go, what to do, and who to talk to in order for each person to live their life with the least amount of resistance.
So for example, when a warning light pops-up on your dashboard you can either read your cars user manual or you can use your mind to try and figure it out and spend hours Googling, asking friends what they think.
Totally up to you, once is just faster and creates less stress.
In this analogy, your body is the vehicle and your Human Design and your BodyGraph is the manual.
Our Type is a model for a way of life, the way our vehicle best creates and works with life. We are often told to go make things happen, that is the model we have and its not working for a large percentage of the population.
Our Authority is how we uniquely make decisions. Some people are meant to make decisions over time, riding out their emotions and habit of making emotional decisions. Some are meant to make it with their gut, and still others with their heart.
However there is ONE place all of us are not meant to make decisions from and that is the mind.
You know how they say, Kids dont come with manuals.
False, they do.
Before we dive into the types, I want you to grab your Chart as well as your Childrens.
The best way to ensure youre helping them become the person they were born to be, is first and foremost, by being the person you were. The person they chose to guide them on their unique path.
Manifestor- if your child is a Manifestor, I am sure you can already feel the power and energy that they have. It can feel very pushy and sometime you innately feel the need to control. This is who they are, they are MEANT to initiate, break the rules, and do things their way. Attempts to control them for your own comfort simply dis-empower and break their spirit.
Give them MORE freedom than YOU think that you should literally, to the point of you being uncomfortable.
Inform them of what youre doing and why, they want to feel like they are a part of the process.
Do not compare them to others, especially their siblings.
And if they experience anger (which is what happens when they are out of alignment with their design) hold the space for them to do that and dont make them wrong for it.
Generator- these children have a lot of lifeforce energy and when they are lit up about what they are doing, they are focused and are quite the finishers.
I notice my pure generator doesnt like to leave ANYTHING undone/incomplete that he is invested in and he loves to help.
These types have a very primal way of communicating, it sounds like grunting, so telling them to, Use their words actually stifles their communication.
Ask them yes or no questions instead of, Why did you do that? ask them specifically, Did you do that because _________? and let them make their primal, Un-huh or, Un-uh.
This type has to exhaust their energy every day. Make sure that they are moving, thinking, and creating at their own pace, so at the end of the day they are able to fall asleep.
Manifesting Generators somewhat a hybrid of the two. These types have initiator tendencies with the life force of a generator so they need to have a lot of different things going on in order to feel expressed.
Space, space, and more space. Give these kids creative freedom!
My little Manifesting Generator Ruby LOVES to color on herself and the walls, wherein her Brother never did. This is her way of saying, Do not limit me.
When they are focused and working on something, do NOT interrupt them, their creative process is very internal and when its interrupted it can create resistance and anger.
The same as with Generators, make sure youre asking them Yes/No questions and just like with Manifestors, that youre keeping them informed and in the loop.
Projectors this type is different than most and they need to be treated as such. Generators and even Manifestors have a move, move, move, do, do, do energy and Projectors are much more fluid.
They arent necessarily meant to move throughout the world in that way they love their naps and they love to observe.
Dont force these kids to go out to play when they do not want to and honor their need for rest it does not make them lazy.
They need to be recognized and require one on one attention more than others. Whereas other types can be independent, Projectors enjoy partnering with others.
THIS is the type you can ask open ended questions to and they will be SO happy to find an answer for you, they simply need to be invited to do so and to share it.
To make them feel special, I will ask them often what they think about any given thing and you can see their face light up.
Reflectors- with only 1% of the population falling into this type, they are very rare and have special gifts. These children are a reflection of the people and places they are near. If a Reflector child is upset, sick, unhealthy the environment or the people in it are.
Make sure you expose these types to different experiences so they can exercise their gifts and experience new things. They are evaluators so this is their job and they will feel right at home doing it.
This type will naturally love nature and being outdoors (and away from others.)
Their behavior is a direct reflection of you, so being aware of who YOU are being will innately help them.
In order to make decisions, they need to talk it out with you, over time. Unlike the other types, Reflectors arent going to be quick decision makers.
Finally, help them embrace their inconsistency as a gift. This doesnt make them wrong, this makes them who they are.
Taking care of you, putting yourself first, making sure that youre feeling your absolute best will model what it looks like to THEM.
Can you imagine what this world will look like when every single person is being who they were meant to be?
No longer being compared to the person beside them, offering the gifts they were given to the world, and loving themselves (and others) fiercely?
I can.
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How Human Design can help you parent in the time of COVID-19 - Thrive Global
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Light and the quantum universe take center stage in ‘Cosmos: Possible Worlds’ – Space.com
Posted: April 11, 2020 at 3:57 am
Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Cosmos: Possible Worlds" is as much a treatise of the pursuit of science itself as it is the wonderous achievements humans have reached in the realms of mathematics, physics and other scientific disciplines. Episode 9, "Magic Without Lies," explores the world of light a concept Tyson notes has multiple meanings in scientific and cultural literature.
Tyson refers to light as "one of the greatest mysteries in the history of science," and one which would "unravel the fabric of the cosmos that we thought we knew." The story begins with the legendary Sir Isaac Newton, who contributed greatly to the study of light and color. Newton's homemade experiments some of which involved inserting long needles into his own eyes lead to major breakthroughs which would influence modern understanding of optical sciences. It was Newton who concluded that color is an aspect of light. "Newton's greatness stemmed from his questioning of the 'why' and 'how' of ordinary things," Tyson says of the brilliant physicist. These ordinary things, however, are about to get much more complicated.
Newton would go on to conclude and reason that light consisted of what he called "corpuscles," streams of particles that hit our retinas like bullets. Another visionary and familiar scientist, Christiaan Huygens whose work we explored last week in Episode 8, "The Sacrifice of Cassini" vigorously disagreed with Newton's findings; Hyugens saw light as a wave, much like sound.
Related: 'Cosmos: Possible Worlds' brings the search for E.T. down to Earth
To settle the score, scientist Thomas Young whose accomplishments included deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics and translating the ancient language, identifying a defect of the eye called astigmatism, and much more designed the experiment meant to discover once and for all what light was made of. What he found "sent physics down the rabbit hole we still live in," Tyson says.
"There's a reason that arguments from authority hold little weight in science," Tyson says. "Nature, and nature only, settles the argument." Young had discovered something Newton had missed, and left a ticking time bomb would both astonish and disturb future researchers and scientists. He discovered light had an interference pattern, proving it behaved like a wave and not as a particle as Newton had postulated.
Physicist J.J. Thompson would later discover the existence of the electron by heating up an electrode until it spat the subatomic particles out, one by one. This discovery set scientists on a path to isolate ever shrinking units of light until they arrived at the single photon, performing Young's double slit experiment to track the path a photon took to understand the seemingly random pattern the photons generated. They found the waves from Young's interference pattern had disappeared, inexplicably; scientists had stumbled upon the quantum universe, where the mere act of observation influences the way particles behave.
Quantum physics found that both Hyugens and Newton were right and wrong; light is a wave, and a particle, and neither. Hugyens' probability theory would prove to be instrumental in how we understand quantum reality, which Tyson says represents an "undiscovered frontier," where particles "divorce from our everyday experience." To help illustrate this point, Tyson transports us to the world imagined by Edwin Abbott, called "Flatland," and extends Abbott's theory and applies it to our own three-dimensional reality.
"It's the rarest of events when a searcher happens on a hole in the curtain that hides the matrix," muses Tyson, reflecting on how hints of the existence of a quantum reality were present even when Charles Darwin found that time and the environment sculpted all living beings from the first living cell. Decades later, Albert Einstein would discover the quantum world which seemed to violate every rule of the natural world and the very rules of existence.
Related: 'God plays dice with the universe,' Einstein writes in letter about his qualms with quantum theory
Light, as it turns out, is governed by rules that we have yet to fully understand. "Is there any hope of rescuing our classical idea of reality in the quantum universe," ponders Tyson, before explaining that we don't need to understand quantum physics to exploit its power. Sometimes, science (an excellent exercise in humility, we're finding) forces us to accept certain levels of ambiguity with our research, and to withhold judgement.
There are some instances, however, where judgement in the practice of science is paramount, and ambiguity unacceptable. Episode 10, "A Tale of Two Atoms," recounts our history with military applications of nuclear chain reactions. The story begins with atoms, the building blocks of all matter, which Tyson sees as a fitting point of departure.
"When we seek the origin of atoms, we're searching for our own beginning," Tyson says, and this story is as much about life as it is about absolute death. Our beginning can be traced back to two atoms: a carbon atom and uranium atom.
Until the 19th century, scientists didn't know anything about the activity that went on inside atoms. It wasn't until physicist and chemist Marie Curie and her husband acquired uranium ore from what is now the Czech Republic that the scientific community would have any inkling of the secrets held within atoms. Curie and her husband, Pierre, spent years distilling and purifying the ore into pitchblende, which was 50-80% uranium. "We lived in our single occupation, as in a dream," Curie wrote of the lengthy and arduous process; it took nearly three years to process a tenth of a gram into what she called radium.
The Curies would find the material would not react to extreme temperatures and would randomly emit energy millions of times more potent than chemical energy, suggesting radioactivity. The way these "earthly stars," as Curie called them, glowed was evidence of a process occurring Inside the nuclei of radioactive atoms, proving the existence of particles even smaller than atoms. The darker implications of these findings, akin to the devastation seen in H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine," would coin the phrase "atomic bomb," would soon be known to the world.
Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist, envisioned the concept of a nuclear chain reaction leading to a devastating nuclear reaction while waiting for a green light at a traffic stop. "This was the moment our world changed," Tyson said.
"It was just the latest development on a continuum of violence that began long, long before," he continues, before delving into the slow shift in mindset that occurred in early humans causing our "kill radius" to expand as communication became easier and faster and as technology swiftly advanced. Together, an increase in "kill range" and "kill ratio" changed the landscape of war. This leads us to the present day, where speed and technology have made the kill radius large enough to take out an entire civilization.
"It's hard to pinpoint the precise moment when the first nuclear war began; some might trace it all the way back to that arrow sailing over the treetops. Others might say it started much later, with three messages," Tyson says, referring to letters written by scientists who would inform their leaders "that a huge increase in kill ratio was possible." Scientists Paul Harteck, Edward Teller, Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Gregory Flerov, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Joseph Rotblat were at the forefront of the investigation into harnessing atomic nuclei for use in modern warfare.
Among these, Rotblat's story is highlighted by Tyson: "If Edward Teller had a polar opposite in this scientific community, it would have been Joseph Rotblat." Scientists cited the building of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to other countries using them, and this was the driving rationale behind the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government's efforts to research, build and use an atomic bomb during World War II.
The Manhattan Project would continue long after the possibility of Hitler acquiring such weapons waned and Germany had surrendered. Only one scientist resigned from the Manhattan Project at this point: Joseph Rotblat. Denying moral superiority, he embarked on a quest to find his long-lost wife in Warsaw, only to discover that she had been killed in the Holocaust.
Today, the specter of nuclear war haunts us still. "How can we sleep so soundly in the shadow of a smoking volcano," Tyson asks solemnly, standing in front of the modest Trinity Site monument in New Mexico, where the first test detonation of a nuclear bomb took place. The small stature of the monument contrasts starkly with Tyson's words and the site's historical significance and the implications of what occurred there.
Tyson ends the episode with a warning, telling us the harrowing story of the 1902 eruption of Mount Pele, a volcano on the Caribbean island of Martinique, whose pyroclastic flow consumed the town of Saint-Pierre in just minutes, killing approximately 30,000 people. This explosion, Tyson says, was the equivalent of just one nuclear warhead. We have "devised a means to tap cosmic fire, hidden at the heart of matter," Tyson says, adding that the ability to make nuclear weapons is knowledge we cannot unlearn.
The uranium and carbon atoms which were present at the origin of life on our planet have interwoven life and destruction into our genetic code. Ionizing radiation is destructive to living things and is what makes atomic weapons so much more dangerous than conventional ones. At high levels of ionizing radiation, exposure to lethal levels of radiation causes cells to become cancerous and genes to mutate, damage that is passed on, "vandalizing our future," as Tyson puts it. Perhaps a revolution in our thinking is what must follow the dawn of the atomic age, Tyson says. "Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."
"Cosmos" airs on the National Geographic channel on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT and will be reprised on the Fox television network this summer.
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Light and the quantum universe take center stage in 'Cosmos: Possible Worlds' - Space.com
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Making Sense of the Science and Philosophy of Devs – The Ringer
Posted: at 3:57 am
Let me welcome you the same way Stewart welcomes Forest in Episode 7 of the Hulu miniseries Devs: with a lengthy, unattributed quote.
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at any given moment knew all of the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the beings that compose it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit the data to analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain and the future, just like the past, would be present before its eyes.
Its a passage that sounds as if it could have come from Forest himself. But its not from Forest, or Katie, or evenas Katie might guess, based on her response to Stewarts Philip Larkin quoteShakespeare. Its from the French scholar and scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace, who wrote the idea down at the end of the Age of Enlightenment, in 1814. When Laplace imagined an omniscient intellectwhich has come to be called Laplaces demonhe wasnt even saying something original: Other thinkers beat him to the idea of a deterministic, perfectly predictable universe by decades and centuries (or maybe millennia).
All of which is to say that despite the futuristic setting and high-tech trappings of Devsthe eight-part Alex Garland opus that will reach its finale next weekthe series central tension is about as old as the abacus. But theres a reason the debate about determinism and free will keeps recurring: Its an existential question at the heart of human behavior. Devs doesnt answer it in a dramatically different way than the great minds of history have, but it does wrap up ancient, brain-breaking quandaries in a compelling (and occasionally kind of confusing) package. Garland has admitted as much, acknowledging, None of the ideas contained here are really my ideas, and its not that I am presenting my own insightful take. Its more Im saying some very interesting people have come up with some very interesting ideas. Here they are in the form of a story.
Devs is a watchable blend of a few engaging ingredients. Its a spy thriller that pits Russian agents against ex-CIA operatives. Its a cautionary, sci-fi polemic about a potentially limitless technology and the hubris of big tech. Like Garlands previous directorial efforts, Annihilation and Ex Machina, its also a striking aesthetic experience, a blend of brutalist compounds, sleek lines, lush nature, and an exciting, unsettling soundtrack. Most of all, though, its a meditation on age-old philosophical conundrums, served with a garnish of science. Garland has cited scientists and philosophers as inspirations for the series, so to unravel the riddles of Devs, I sought out some experts whose day jobs deal with the dilemmas Lily and Co. confront in fiction: a computer science professor who specializes in quantum computing, and several professors of philosophy.
There are many questions about Devs that we wont be able to answer. How high is Kentons health care premium? Is it distracting to work in a lab lit by a perpetually pulsing, unearthly golden glow? How do Devs programmers get any work done when they could be watching the worlds most riveting reality TV? Devs doesnt disclose all of its inner workings, but by the end of Episode 7, its pulled back the curtain almost as far as it can. The main mystery of the early episodeswhat does Devs do?is essentially solved for the viewer long before Lily learns everything via Katies parable of the pen in Episode 6. As the series proceeds, the spy stuff starts to seem incidental, and the characters motivations become clear. All that remains to be settled is the small matter of the intractable puzzles that have flummoxed philosophers for ages.
Heres what we know. Forest (Nick Offerman) is a tech genius obsessed with one goal: being reunited with his dead daughter, Amaya, who was killed in a car crash while her mother was driving and talking to Forest on the phone. (Hed probably blame himself for the accident if he believed in free will.) He doesnt disguise the fact that he hasnt moved on from Amaya emotionally: He names his company after her, uses her face for its logo, and, in case those tributes were too subtle, installs a giant statue of her at corporate HQ. (As a metaphor for the way Amaya continues to loom over his life, the statue is overly obvious, but at least it looks cool.) Together with a team of handpicked developers, Forest secretly constructs a quantum computer so powerful that, by the end of the penultimate episode, it can perfectly predict the future and reverse-project the past, allowing the denizens of Devs to tune in to any bygone event in lifelike clarity. Its Laplaces demon made real, except for the fact that its powers of perception fail past the point at which Lily is seemingly scheduled to do something that the computer cant predict.
I asked Dr. Scott Aaronson, a professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin (and the founding director of the schools Quantum Information Center) to assess Devs depiction of quantum computing. Aaronsons website notes that his research concentrates on the capabilities and limits of quantum computers, so hed probably be one of Forests first recruits if Amaya were an actual company. Aaronson, whom I previously consulted about the plausibility of the time travel in Avengers: Endgame, humored me again and watched Devs despite having been burned before by Hollywoods crimes against quantum mechanics. His verdict, unsurprisingly, is that the quantum computing in Devslike that of Endgame, which cites one of the same physicists (David Deutsch) that Garland said inspired himis mostly hand-wavy window dressing.
A quantum computer is a device that uses a central phenomenon of quantum mechanicsnamely, interference of amplitudesto solve certain problems with dramatically better scaling behavior than any known algorithm running on any existing computer could solve them, Aaronson says. If youre wondering what amplitudes are, you can read Aaronsons explanation in a New York Times op-ed he authored last October, shortly after Google claimed to have achieved a milestone called quantum supremacythe first use of a quantum computer to make a calculation far faster than any non-quantum computer could. According to Googles calculations, the task that its Sycamore microchip performed in a little more than three minutes would have taken 100,000 of the swiftest existing conventional computers 10,000 years to complete. Thats a pretty impressive shortcut, and were still only at the dawn of the quantum computing age.
However, that stat comes with a caveat: Quantum computers arent better across the board than conventional computers. The applications where a quantum computer dramatically outperforms classical computers are relatively few and specialized, Aaronson says. As far as we know today, theyd help a lot with prediction problems only in cases where the predictions heavily involve quantum-mechanical behavior. Potential applications of quantum computers include predicting the rate of a chemical reaction, factoring huge numbers and possibly cracking the encryption that currently protects the internet (using Shors algorithm, which is briefly mentioned on Devs), and solving optimization and machine learning problems. Notice that reconstructing what Christ looked like on the cross is not on this list, Aaronson says.
In other words, the objective that Forest is trying to achieve doesnt necessarily lie within the quantum computing wheelhouse. To whatever extent computers can help forecast plausible scenarios for the past or future at all (as we already have them do for, e.g., weather forecasting), its not at all clear to what extent a quantum computer even helpsone might simply want more powerful classical computers, Aaronson says.
Then theres the problem that goes beyond the question of quantum vs. conventional: Either kind of computer would require data on which to base its calculations, and the data set that the predictions and retrodictions in Devs would demand is inconceivably detailed. I doubt that reconstructing the remote past is really a computational problem at all, in the sense that even the most powerful science-fiction supercomputer still couldnt give you reliable answers if it lacked the appropriate input data, Aaronson says, adding, As far as we know today, the best that any computer (classical or quantum) could possibly do, even in principle, with any data we could possibly collect, is to forecast a range of possible futures, and a range of possible pasts. The data that it would need to declare one of them the real future or the real past simply wouldnt be accessible to humankind, but rather would be lost in microscopic puffs of air, radiation flying away from the earth into space, etc.
In light of the unimaginably high hurdle of gathering enough data in the present to reconstruct what someone looked or sounded like during a distant, data-free age, Forest comes out looking like a ridiculously demanding boss. We get it, dude: You miss Amaya. But how about patting your employees on the back for pulling off the impossible? The idea that chaos, the butterfly effect, sensitive dependence on initial conditions, exponential error growth, etc. mean that you run your simulation 2000 years into the past and you end up with only a blurry, staticky image of Jesus on the cross rather than a clear image, has to be, like, the wildest understatement in the history of understatements, Aaronson says. As for the future, he adds, Predicting the weather three weeks from now might be forever impossible.
On top of all that, Aaronson says, The Devs headquarters is sure a hell of a lot fancier (and cleaner) than any quantum computing lab that Ive ever visited. (Does Kenton vacuum between torture sessions?) At least the computer more or less looks like a quantum computer.
OK, so maybe I didnt need to cajole a quantum computing savant into watching several hours of television to confirm that theres no way we can watch cavepeople paint. Garland isnt guilty of any science sins that previous storytellers havent committed many times. Whenever Aaronson has advised scriptwriters, theyve only asked him to tell them which sciencey words would make their preexisting implausible stories sound somewhat feasible. Its probably incredibly rare that writers would let the actual possibilities and limits of a technology drive their story, he says.
Although the show name-checks real interpretations of quantum mechanicsPenrose, pilot wave, many-worldsit doesnt deeply engage with them. The pilot wave interpretation holds that only one future is real, whereas many-worlds asserts that a vast number of futures are all equally real. But neither one would allow for the possibility of perfectly predicting the future, considering the difficulty of accounting for every variable. Garland is seemingly aware of how far-fetched his story is, because on multiple occasions, characters like Lily, Lyndon, and Stewart voice the audiences unspoken disbelief, stating that something or other isnt possible. Whenever they do, Katie or Forest is there to tell them that it is. Which, well, fine: Like Laplaces demon, Devs is intended as more of a thought experiment than a realistic scenario. As Katie says during her blue pill-red pill dialogue with Lily, Go with it.
We might as well go along with Garland, because any scientific liberties he takes are in service of the seriess deeper ideas. As Aaronson says, My opinion is that the show isnt really talking about quantum computing at allits just using it as a fancy-sounding buzzword. Really its talking about the far more ancient questions of determinism vs. indeterminism and predictability vs. unpredictability. He concludes, The plot of this series is one that wouldve been totally, 100 percent familiar to the ancient Greeksjust swap out the quantum computer for the Delphic Oracle. Aaronsonwho says he sort of likes Devs in spite of its quantum technobabblewould know: He wrote a book called Quantum Computing Since Democritus.
Speaking of Democritus, lets consult a few philosophers on the topic of free will. One of the most mind-bending aspects of Devs adherence to hard determinismthe theory that human behavior is wholly dictated by outside factorsis its insistence that characters cant change their behavior even if theyve seen the computers prediction of what theyre about to do. As Forest asks Katie, What if one minute into the future we see you fold your arms, and you say, Fuck the future. Im a magician. My magic breaks tram lines. Im not going to fold my arms. You put your hands in your pockets, and you keep them there until the clock runs out.
It seems as if she should be able to do what she wants with her hands, but Katie quickly shuts him down. Cause precedes effect, she says. Effect leads to cause. The future is fixed in exactly the same way as the past. The tram lines are real. Of course, Katie could be wrong: A character could defy the computers prediction in the finale. (Perhaps thats the mysterious unforeseeable event.) But weve already seen some characters fail to exit the tram. In an Episode 7 scenewhich, as Aaronson notes, is highly reminiscent of the VHS scene in Spaceballswe see multiple members of the Devs team repeat the same statements that theyve just heard the computer predict they would make a split second earlier. They cant help but make the prediction come true. Similarly, Lily ends up at Devs at the end of Episode 7, despite resolving not to.
Putting aside the implausibility of a perfect prediction existing at all, does it make sense that these characters couldnt deviate from their predicted course? Yes, according to five professors of philosophy I surveyed. Keep in mind what Garland has cited as a common criticism of his work: that the ideas I talk about are sophomoric because theyre the kinds of things that people talk about when theyre getting stoned in their dorm rooms. Were about to enter the stoned zone.
In this story, [the characters] are in a totally deterministic universe, says Ben Lennertz, an assistant professor of philosophy at Colgate University. In particular, the watching of the video of the future itself has been determined by the original state of the universe and the laws. Its not as if things were going along and the person was going to cross their arms, but then a non-deterministic miracle occurred and they were shown a video of what they were going to do. The watching of the video and the persons reaction is part of the same progression as the scene the video is of. In essence, the computer would have already predicted its own predictions, as well as every characters reaction to them. Everything that happens was always part of the plan.
Ohio Wesleyan Universitys Erin Flynn echoes that interpretation. The people in those scenes do what they do not despite being informed that they will do it, but (in part) because they have been informed that they will do it, Flynn says. (Think of Katie telling Lyndon that hes about to balance on the bridge railing.) This is not to say they will be compelled to conform, only that their knowledge presumably forms an important part of the causal conditions leading to their actions. When the computer sees the future, the computer sees that what they will do is necessitated in part by this knowledge. The computer would presumably have made different predictions had people never heard them.
Furthermore, adds David Landy of San Francisco State University, the fact that we see something happen one way doesnt mean that it couldnt have happened otherwise. Suppose we know that some guy is going to fold his arms, Landy says. Does it follow that he lacks the ability to not fold his arms? Well, no, because what we usually mean by has the ability to not fold his arms is that if things had gone differently, he wouldnt have folded his arms. But by stipulating at the start that he is going to fold his arms, we also stipulate that things arent going to go differently. But it can remain true that if they did go differently, he would not have folded his arms. So, he might have that ability, even if we know he is not going to exercise it.
If your head has started spinning, you can see why the Greeks didnt settle this stuff long before Garland got to it. And if it still seems strange that Forest seemingly cant put his hands in his pockets, well, what doesnt seem strange in the world of Devs? We should expect weird things to happen when we are talking about a very weird situation, Landy says. That is, we are used to people reliably doing what they want to do. But we have become used to that by making observations in a certain environment: one without time travel or omniscient computers. Introducing those things changes the environment, so we shouldnt be surprised if our usual inferences no longer hold.
Heres where we really might want to mime a marijuana hit. Neal Tognazzini of Western Washington University points out that one could conceivably appear to predict the future by tapping into a future that already exists. Many philosophers reject determinism but nevertheless accept that there are truths about what will happen in the future, because they accept a view in the philosophy of time called eternalism, which is (roughly) the block universe ideapast, present, and future are all parts of reality, Tognazzini says. This theory says that the past and the future exist some temporal distance from the presentwe just havent yet learned to travel between them. Thus, Tognazzini continues, You can accept eternalism about time without accepting determinism, because the first is just a view about whether the future is real whereas the second is a view about how the future is connected to the past (i.e., whether there are tram lines).
According to that school of thought, the future isnt what has to happen, its simply what will happen. If we somehow got a glimpse of our futures from the present, it might appear as if our paths were fixed. But those futures actually would have been shaped by our freely chosen actions in the interim. As Tognazzini says, Its a fate of our own makingwhich is just to say, no fate at all.
If we accept that the members of Devs know what theyre doing, though, then the computers predictions are deterministic, and the past does dictate the future. Thats disturbing, because it seemingly strips us of our agency. But, Tognazzini says, Even then, its still the case that what we do now helps to shape that future. We still make a difference to what the future looks like, even if its the only difference we could have made, given the tram lines we happen to be on. Determinism isnt like some force that operates independently of what we want, making us marionettes. If its true, then it would apply equally to our mental lives as well, so that the future that comes about might well be exactly the future we wanted.
This is akin to the compatibilist position espoused by David Hume, which seeks to reconcile the seemingly conflicting concepts of determinism and free will. As our final philosopher, Georgetown Universitys William Blattner, says, If determinism is to be plausible, it must find a way to save the appearances, in this case, explain why we feel like were choosing, even if at some level the choice is an illusion. The compatibilist perspective concedes that there may be only one possible future, but, Flynn says, insists that there is a difference between being causally determined (necessitated) to act and being forced or compelled to act. As long as one who has seen their future does not do what has been predicted because they were forced to do it (against their will, so to speak), then they will still have done it freely.
In the finale, well find out whether the computers predictions are as flawless and inviolable as Katie claims. Well also likely learn one of Devs most closely kept secrets: What Forest intends to do with his perfect model of Amaya. The show hasnt hinted that the computer can resurrect the dead in any physical fashion, so unless Forest is content to see his simulated daughter on a screen, he may try to enter the simulation himself. In Episode 7, Devs seemed to set the stage for such a step; as Stewart said, Thats the reality right there. Its not even a clone of reality. The box contains everything.
Would a simulated Forest, united with his simulated daughter, be happier inside the simulation than he was in real life, assuming hes aware hes inside the simulation? The philosopher Robert Nozick explored a similar question with his hypothetical experience machine. The experience machine would stimulate our brains in such a way that we could supply as much pleasure as we wanted, in any form. It sounds like a nice place to visit, and yet most of us wouldnt want to live there. That reluctance to enter the experience machine permanently seems to suggest that we see some value in an authentic connection to reality, however unpleasurable. Thinking Im hanging out with my family and friends is just different from actually hanging out with my family and friends, Tognazzini says. And since I think relationships are key to happiness, Im skeptical that we could be happy in a simulation.
If reality were painful enough, though, the relief from that pain might be worth the sacrifice. Suppose, for instance, that the real world had become nearly uninhabitable or otherwise full of misery, Flynn says. It seems to me that life in a simulation might be experienced as a sanctuary. Perhaps ones experience there would be tinged with sadness for the lost world, but Im not sure knowing its a simulation would necessarily keep one from being happy in it. Forest still seems miserable about Amaya IRL, so for him, that trade-off might make sense.
Whats more, if real life is totally deterministic, then Forest may not draw a distinction between life inside and outside of his quantum computer. If freedom is a critical component of fulfillment, then its hard to see how we could be fulfilled in a simulation, Blattner says. But for Forest, freedom isnt an option anywhere. Something about the situation seems sad, maybe pathetic, maybe even tragic, Flynn says. But if the world is a true simulation in the matter described, why not just understand it as the ability to visit another real world in which his daughter exists?
Those who subscribe to the simulation hypothesis believe that what we think of as real lifeincluding my experience of writing this sentence and your experience of reading itis itself a simulation created by some higher order of being. In our world, it may seem dubious that such a sophisticated creation could exist (or that anything or anyone would care to create it). But in Forests world, a simulation just as sophisticated as real life already exists inside Devswhich means that what Forest perceives as real life could be someone elses simulation. If hes possibly stuck inside a simulation either way, he might as well choose the one with Amaya (if he has a choice at all).
Garland chose to tell this story on TV because on the big screen, he said, it would have been slightly too truncated. On the small screen, its probably slightly too long: Because weve known more than Lily all along, what shes learned in later episodes has rehashed old info for us. Then again, Devs has felt familiar from the start. If Laplace got a pass for recycling Cicero and Leibniz, well give Garland a pass for channeling Laplace. Whats one more presentation of a puzzle thats had humans flummoxed forever?
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We’re Getting Closer to the Quantum Internet, But What Is It? – HowStuffWorks
Posted: March 31, 2020 at 6:20 am
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Back in February 2020, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago revealed that they had achieved a quantum entanglement in which the behavior of a pair two tiny particles becomes linked, so that their states are identical over a 52-mile (83.7 kilometer) quantum-loop network in the Chicago suburbs.
You may be wondering what all the fuss is about, if you're not a scientist familiar with quantum mechanics that is, the behavior of matter and energy at the smallest scale of reality, which is peculiarly different from the world we can see around us.
But the researchers' feat could be an important step in the development of a new, vastly more powerful version of the internet in the next few decades. Instead of the bits that today's network uses, which can only express a value of either 0 or 1, the future quantum internet would utilize qubits of quantum information, which can take on an infinite number of values. (A quibit is the unit of information for a quantum computer; it's a like a bit in an ordinary computer).
That would give the quantum internet way more bandwidth, which would make it possible to connect super-powerful quantum computers and other devices and run massive applications that simply aren't possible with the internet we have now.
"A quantum internet will be the platform of a quantum ecosystem, where computers, networks, and sensors exchange information in a fundamentally new manner where sensing, communication, and computing literally work together as one entity, " explains David Awschalom via email. He's a spintronics and quantum information professor in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and a senior scientist at Argonne, who led the quantum-loop project.
So why do we need this and what does it do? For starters, the quantum internet is not a replacement of the regular internet we now have. Rather it would be a complement to it or a branch of it. It would be able to take care of some of the problems that plague the current internet. For instance, a quantum internet would offer much greater protection from hackers and cybercriminals. Right now, if Alice in New York sends a message to Bob in California over the internet, that message travels in more or less a straight line from one coast to the other. Along the way, the signals that transmit the message degrade; repeaters read the signals, amplify and correct the errors. But this process allows hackers to "break in" and intercept the message.
However, a quantum message wouldn't have that problem. Quantum networks use particles of light photons to send messages which are not vulnerable to cyberattacks. Instead of encrypting a message using mathematical complexity, says Ray Newell, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, we would rely upon the peculiar rules of quantum physics. With quantum information, "you can't copy it or cut it in half, and you can't even look at it without changing it." In fact, just trying to intercept a message destroys the message, as Wired magazine noted. That would enable encryption that would be vastly more secure than anything available today.
It's a little tricky to explain how this all works to non-scientists. "The easiest way to understand the concept of the quantum internet is through the concept of quantum teleportation," Sumeet Khatri, a researcher at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, says in an email. He and colleagues have written a paper about the feasibility of a space-based quantum internet, in which satellites would continually broadcast entangled photons down to Earth's surface, as this Technology Review article describes.
"Quantum teleportation is unlike what a non-scientist's mind might conjure up in terms of what they see in sci-fi movies, " Khatri says. "In quantum teleportation, two people who want to communicate share a pair of quantum particles that are entangled. Then, through a sequence of operations, the sender can send any quantum information to the receiver (although it can't be done faster than light speed, a common misconception). This collection of shared entanglement between pairs of people all over the world essentially constitutes the quantum internet. The central research question is how best to distribute these entangled pairs to people distributed all over the world. "
Once it's possible to do that on a large scale, the quantum internet would be so astonishingly fast that far-flung clocks could be synchronized about a thousand times more precisely than the best atomic clocks available today, as Cosmos magazine details. That would make GPS navigation vastly more precise than it is today, and map Earth's gravitational field in such detail that scientists could spot the ripple of gravitational waves. It also could make it possible to teleport photons from distant visible-light telescopes all over Earth and link them into a giant virtual observatory.
"You could potentially see planets around other stars, " says Nicholas Peters, group leader of the Quantum Information Science Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
It also would be possible for networks of super-powerful quantum computers across the globe to work together and create incredibly complex simulations. That might enable researchers to better understand the behavior of molecules and proteins, for example, and to develop and test new medications.
It also might help physicists to solve some of the longstanding mysteries of reality. "We don't have a complete picture of how the universe works," says Newell. "We have a very good understanding of how quantum mechanics works, but not a very clear picture of the implications. The picture is blurry where quantum mechanics intersects with our lived experience."
But before any of that can happen, researchers have to figure out how to build a quantum internet, and given the weirdness of quantum mechanics, that's not going to be easy. "In the classical world you can encode information and save it and it doesn't decay, " Peters says. "In the quantum world, you encode information and it starts to decay almost immediately. "
Another problem is that because the amount of energy that corresponds to quantum information is really low, it's difficult to keep it from interacting with the outside world. Today, "in many cases, quantum systems only work at very low temperatures," Newell says. "Another alternative is to work in a vacuum and pump all the air out. "
In order to make a quantum internet function, Newell says, we'll need all sorts of hardware that hasn't been developed yet. So it's hard to say at this point exactly when a quantum internet would be up and running, though one Chinese scientist has envisioned that it could happen as soon as 2030.
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How a new twist on quantum theory could solve its biggest mystery – New Scientist
Posted: March 30, 2020 at 7:50 am
The "wave function collapse" transforms vague clouds of quantum possibilities into the physical reality we know but no one knows how. New experiments are finally revealing reality in the making
By Philip Ball
IN THE minuscule realm of atoms and particles, it looks as though things exist not so much as things at all, but as vague clouds of possibilities. They seem to be here, there and everywhere, or appear to be this and that all at once until you look at them. Then the quantum haze is suddenly distilled into something definite and describable, a thing we recognise as real.
That much we know. The trouble is that quantum mechanics, the theory that describes this uncertain world, has been mostly silent about how the so-called collapse from fuzzy probabilities to solid certainties happens. Some physicists prefer to avoid the question altogether. Others suggest that we need to add something new to complete our understanding of how our familiar physical reality emerges from the quantum.
But what if the whole picture was there all along, and we just werent looking carefully enough? Thats the startling suggestion from recent experiments that have, for the first time, given us a glimpse inside collapse as it happens. Physicists are still coming to terms with what they have witnessed, and it is too early to say for certain what it all means. But already there are hints that the latest results could finally point the way towards the truth about how the world we know is conjured from the quantum realm.
Quantum theory enjoys exalted status in science because it describes the microscopic world with peerless accuracy. It was developed in the 1920s to explain why subatomic particles, such as electrons, seem to sometimes behave like waves, while light waves can show particle-like behaviour
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