Category Archives: Quantum Physics

As experimental proposals go, this one certainly doesnt lack ambition. First, take a black hole. Now make a second black hole that is quantum entangled with it, which means that anything that happens to one of the black holes will seem to have an effect on the other, regardless of how far apart they are.

The rest sounds a bit easier, but a lot weirder. Feed some information into the first black hole, encoded in a quantum particle. As it falls beyond the event horizon the point beyond which not even light can escape the information is rapidly smeared throughout the black hole and is scrambled seemingly beyond recall.

But have patience if youve linked the two black holes in the right way, after a short wait the quantum information will pop out of the second one, fully refocused into readable form. To get there, it will have traveled through a shortcut in space-time that links the two objects a wormhole.

That, at least, is what physicists have predicted. Now a group led by Sepehr Nezami of the California Institute of Technology has suggested how to actually perform this extraordinary experiment and they are beginning to work with collaborators to put the idea to the test.

If the predictions are borne out, the work may offer clues about where to look for the most elusive theory in physics: one that unites quantum mechanics with the theory of general relativity that describes gravity. And, for good measure, it would support the idea that space-time is not the fundamental backdrop against which the universe plays out but is itself woven from the interconnections between particles described by quantum entanglement.

This experiment, as you might have guessed,doesnt require black holes in the usual sense, meaning massive stars that have collapsed by their own gravity to an infinitesimally small volume. The researchers say that it could be done on a lab benchtop using just a few atoms or ions. All the same, the idea arises out of theoretical research on astrophysical black holes that has struggled to resolve a deep and unsettling question: Do these all-devouring monsters destroy information irreversibly?

Its widely thought that information, like energy, should obey a conservation rule: The total amount of information in the universe will always stay the same. Thats what quantum mechanics seems to imply: The wave functions that describe quantum entities always evolve smoothly in an information-conserving way and cant be suddenly snuffed out.

But black holes do seem to remove information from the universe. If, say, a quantum bit, or qubit, falls into a black hole, it can no longer be observed from outside the event horizon.

One possible resolution of this black hole information paradox can be found within the radiation that black holes emit from their event horizons. Hawking radiation, predicted by Stephen Hawking in the 1970s, will cause a black hole to lose gravitational energy and thus mass. In effect, black holes are not eternal. They slowly evaporate.

Hawking initially believed that even if a black hole fully evaporated, the information it had consumed would remain lost forever. But an idea known as the AdS/CFT correspondence shows how the photons of Hawking radiation might be able to encode information about the interior of the black hole, thereby carrying that information back out into the universe at large.

The AdS/CFT correspondence was postulated by the theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena in 1997, and its widely regarded as one of the most promising directions in which to pursue theories of quantum gravity. It suggests that the physical structure of space-time in, say, four dimensions is equivalent to the operation of a quantum theory at a three-dimensional boundary.

This connection is strange, deep and surprising. It says that if you construct a space-time with a particular kind of curvature (and thus gravity) known as an anti-de Sitter space thats the AdS part the mathematical description turns out to be equivalent to the description of a kind of quantum field theory called a conformal field theory thats the CFT part in one fewer dimension. In other words, the correspondence works like a hologram all the information in the higher-dimensional space-time projection is encoded within the lower-dimensional quantum interactions. This holographic principle was first proposed by the physics Nobel laureate Gerard t Hooft, and Maldacenas AdS/CFT correspondence provided the first concrete picture of how it might work for a particular form of space-time.

In this view, what looks like continuous space in the AdS universe manifests in the CFT quantum view as entanglement the interdependence of quantum bits. Here, said Maldacena, the emergence of space-time is supposed to happen in systems with a large number of qubits that are highly entangled and highly interacting. In other words, quantum entanglement can produce a space-time that seems to have gravity in it. Gravity, you might say, is spun from quantum effects.

What does all this have to do with black holes? The black hole information paradox asks what happens to the information that gets tossed into a black hole. The AdS/CFT correspondence is a key component of one proposed solution, since it supplies the means by which quantum entanglement could imprint the information on Hawking radiation and prevent it from being irrevocably lost.In 2004, Hawking himself explained how, assuming the AdS/CFT conjecture is true, we could recover this information by capturing every single Hawking photon a black hole radiates over its entire lifetime before fully evaporating. As Norman Yao of the University of California, Berkeley described it, If you were God and you collected all these Hawking photons, there is in principle some ungodly calculation you can do to re-extract the information in [each swallowed] qubit.

Up until the halfway point of a black holes evaporation, the information inside it remains concealed. After that point, however, the black hole starts to reveal its information in its Hawking radiation. So you have a long wait before you can start to get at it. And according to an argument made in 1993 by the physicist Don Page of the University of Alberta, it will then seep out gradually, at a constant rate.

But in 2007, Patrick Hayden and John Preskill revised this picture by showing that, in fact, after the halfway point the information emerges more rapidly than that. Weirdly enough, once the black hole is half-evaporated, any further quantum bit of information tossed into it literally bounces right back, said Yao. This is because the black hole has by that stage become so quantum-entangled with the Hawking radiation it has already emitted that any more information it swallows is effectively registered at once in any further radiation it emits. The black hole, Hayden and Preskill said, then acts like an information mirror.

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Wormholes Reveal a Way to Manipulate Black Hole Information in the Lab - Quanta Magazine

How did the universe begin? How does quantum mechanics, the study of the smallest things relate to gravity and the study of big things? These are some of the questions physicists have been working to solve ever since Einstein released his theory of relativity.

Formulas show that baby universes pops in and out of the main universe. However, we dont realize or experience this as humans. To calculate how this scales, theoretical physicists devised the so-called JT gravity, which turns the universe into a toy-like model with only one dimension of time or space. These restricted parameters allows for a model in which scientists can test their theories.

Building on the work of others, Professor Kazumi Okuyama of Shinshu University and Kazuhiro Sakai of Meiji Gakuin University set out to show how JT gravity, KdV equation and the macroscopic loop are related, thus pointing to the fact that gravity and quantum mechanics are unified. In the process, the duo succeeded in calculating the birth of baby universes 46 times which has never been done before, due to the fact the more times this is calculated the more things get increasingly complicated. Previously, Peter Zograf was able to calculate this 20 times.

The mathematical KdV equation formulated in the late 19th Century has been thought to be linked to the gravity since the 1990s. The KdV equation was first used to show how water waves behave, for example inside the canals in waterway laden Holland, solitons can be observed, or how a crest of a water wave continues unchanged for a long time when not disturbed. The macroscopic loop was also said to be related to the gravity in the 1990s.

Waves and gravity are thought to be comparable in how they manifest themselves. The holographic principle was introduced by Gerard t Hooft as a way to understand how gravity and quantum mechanics work. When these theories are combined, one can think of the 3D physical as the gravity and the information that it is sprung from; flat like how a hologram is on a credit card. This speaks to the dimensions in space. There is no formula yet for the holographic principle.

The bulk-boundary correspondence idea is similar to this in that the bulk is the three-dimensional manifestation of the boundary which is the information that gives rise to the hologram.

Professor Okuyama was able to show in this study that the JT gravity, KdV equation and macroscopic loop are intimately connected, pointing to the fact that quantum mechanics and gravity are indeed unified holographically in this model. He hopes to keep working to solve this problem in physics by devising a method to calculate the birth of baby universes not just in the toy model but for the existent universe.

Reference: JT gravity, KdV equations and macroscopic loop operators by Kazumi Okuyama and Kazuhiro Sakai, 24 January 2020, Journal of High Energy Physics.DOI: 10.1007/JHEP01(2020)156

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Witnessing the Birth of Baby Universes 46 Times: Space Is Information Encoded in a Lower-Dimensional Boundary? - SciTechDaily

Since the fall of 2004, Assistant Professor Christopher Search has been working with the Physics department. For five years, Search exclusively taught graduate-level courses until he was offered the opportunity to teach undergraduate-level courses. When asked about the nature of the transition from graduate to undergraduate classes, Search said, It is like what the Romans did to the Christians: they threw them to the lions. He later added, It is not because students are disruptive or disinterested, but, rather, there were too many students in a given lecture.

Students who have taken Electricity & Magnetism with Search, such as myself, are familiar with his distinct teaching style of drawing connections between physics theories and how they manifest in the real world. Search emphasized, I like the lower-level courses more than graduate courses because there is more attention to fundamental physics concepts that entail some proficiency in mathematics, but it does not involve fancy mathematics to provide an explanation of how the world works.

Search declared that many of his students have sought him out for career advice or general advice, which he is happy to share. Not unlike many undergraduate students trying to find their niche in engineering, business, or other fields, Search received two masters degrees: one in Biomedical Engineering and one in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, after obtaining his bachelors degree in Physics from the University of Arizona. This was an effort to ascertain the direction of his physics career. For Search, the moment of clarity followed his elective course in Quantum Mechanics, which inspired him to pursue a Ph.D. in Applied Physics.

As of now, Search, in collaboration with other faculty, is working on developing the fairly new Optical Engineering degree program here at Stevens. As the Associate Chair for the Undergraduate Physics Program, he is responsible for class scheduling, degree requirements, and curriculum developments.

When asked about what the Physics department is currently lacking, he said, more funding is necessary in order to hire more lab TAs and upgrade lab equipment. Additionally, he maintained that the large lectures for the Mechanics and Electricity & Magnetism courses create an impersonal teaching environment. This makes it nearly impossible for a professor to connect with individual students unless they stop by office hours. In contrast, the scholars class section does not have a recitation or TA. This allows Professor Search to interact with students and witness first-hand which students need extra help. Search believes that the discrepancy between the regular and scholars sections for introductory physics courses significantly impacts the learning outcomes. Lastly, he asserted, All students should get what they paid for.

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A day in the life of a physics professor - The Stute

By Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied ScienceFebruary 29, 2020

Illustration of an integrated micro-ring resonator based low loss optical cavity with semiconductor 2D material on top of the waveguide. Credit: Ipshita Datta and Aseema Mohanty, Lipson Nanophotonics Group/Columbia Engineering

Researchers use 2D materials1/100,000 the size of a human hairto manipulate the phase of light without changing its amplitude, at extremely low power loss; could enable applications such as LIDAR, phased arrays, optical switching, and quantum and optical neural networks.

Optical manipulation on the nano-scale, or nanophotonics, has become a critical research area, as researchers seek ways to meet the ever-increasing demand for information processing and communications. The ability to control and manipulate light on the nanometer scale will lead to numerous applications including data communication, imaging, ranging, sensing, spectroscopy, and quantum and neural circuits (think LIDAR light detection and ranging for self-driving cars and faster video-on-demand, for example).

Today, silicon has become the preferred integrated photonics platform due to its transparency at telecommunication wavelengths, ability for electro-optic and thermo-optic modulation, and its compatibility with existing semiconductor fabrication techniques. But, while silicon nanophotonics has made great strides in the fields of optical data communications, phased arrays, LIDAR, and quantum and neural circuits, there are two major concerns for large-scale integration of photonics into these systems: their ever-expanding need for scaling optical bandwidth and their high electrical power consumption.

Existing bulk silicon phase modulators can change the phase of an optical signal, but this process comes at the expense of either high optical loss (electro-optic modulation) or high electrical power consumption (thermo-optic modulation). A Columbia University team, led by Michal Lipson, Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and professor of applied physics at Columbia Engineering, announced that they have discovered a new way to control the phase of light using 2D materials atomically thin materials, ~0.8 nanometer, or 1/100000 the size of a human hair without changing its amplitude, at extremely low electrical power dissipation.

Illustration of an integrated optical interferometer with semiconductor monolayers such as TMDs on both the arms of the silicon nitride (SiN) interferometer. One can probe the electro-optic properties of the monolayer with high precision using these on-chip optical interferometers. Credit: Ipshita Datta and Aseema Mohanty, Lipson Nanophotonics Group/Columbia Engineering

In this new study, published on February 24, 2020, by Nature Photonics, the researchers demonstrated that by simply placing the thin material on top of passive silicon waveguides, they could change the phase of light as strongly as existing silicon phase modulators, but with much lower optical loss and power consumption.

Phase modulation in optical coherent communication has remained a challenge to scale, due to the high optical loss that was associated with phase change, says Lipson. Now weve found a material that can change the phase only, providing us another avenue to expand the bandwidth of optical technologies.

The optical properties of semiconductor 2D materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are known to change dramatically with free-carrier injection (doping) near their excitonic resonances (absorption peaks). However, very little is known about the effect of doping on the optical properties of TMDs at telecom wavelengths, far away from these excitonic resonances, where the material is transparent and therefore can be leveraged in photonic circuits.

The Columbia team, which included James Hone, Wang Fong-Jen Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia Engineering, and Dimitri Basov, professor of physics at the University, probed the electro-optic response of the TMD by integrating the semiconductor monolayer on top of a low-loss silicon nitride optical cavity and doping the monolayer using an ionic liquid. They observed a large phase change with doping, while the optical loss changed minimally in the transmission response of the ring cavity. They showed that the doping-induced phase change relative to change in absorption for monolayer TMDs is approximately 125, which is significantly higher than that observed in materials commonly employed for silicon photonic modulators including Si and III-V on Si, while being simultaneously accompanied by negligible insertion loss.

We are the first to observe strong electro-refractive change in these thin monolayers, says the papers lead author Ipshita Datta, a PhD student with Lipson. We showed pure optical phase modulation by utilizing a low loss silicon nitride (SiN)-TMD composite waveguide platform in which the optical mode of the waveguide interacts with the monolayer. So now, by simply placing these monolayers on silicon waveguides, we can change the phase by the same order of magnitude, but at 10000 times lower electrical power dissipation. This is extremely encouraging for the scaling of photonic circuits and for low-power LIDAR.

The researchers are continuing to probe and better understand the underlying physical mechanism for the strong electrorefractive effect. They are currently leveraging their low-loss and low-power phase modulators to replace traditional phase shifters, and therefore reduce the electrical power consumption in large-scale applications such as optical phased arrays, and neural and quantum circuits.

Reference: Low-loss composite photonic platform based on 2D semiconductor monolayers by Ipshita Datta, Sang Hoon Chae, Gaurang R. Bhatt, Mohammad Amin Tadayon, Baichang Li, Yiling Yu, Chibeom Park, Jiwoong Park, Linyou Cao, D. N. Basov, James Hone and Michal Lipson, 24 February 2020, Nature Photonics.DOI: 10.1038/s41566-020-0590-4

The study was supported by Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (EFRC Pro-QM #De-SC0019443), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (#HR001110720034 and #FA8650-16-7643), Air Force Office of Scientific Research MURI (#FA9550-18-1-0379), Office of Naval Research (#N00014-16-1-2219), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (#NNX16AD16G). Competing interests: M.L., J.H., I.D., S.C., G.R.B. and D.N.B are named inventors on US provisional patent application 16/282,013 regarding the technology reported in this article.

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New Way to Control the Phase of Light Using Atomically Thin Materials Enables Quantum and Neural Circuits - SciTechDaily

Salvador Dali: Gardens of the Mind takes a walk on the weird side at Selby Gardens

"Salvador Dali: Gardens of the Mind": Runs through June 28 at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, 811 S. Palm Ave., Sarasota. Admission $25 or free for members. (941) 366-5731; selby.org

"Salvador Dali: Gardens of the Mind" has blossomed at Selby Botanical Gardens. Curated by Dr. Carol Ockman, this garden of unearthly delights evokes Dalis obsessions with a series of witty botanical vignettes. How does his mental garden grow?

From the earth, naturally. The human mind has its roots there.

That flies in the face of Dalis otherworldly reputation. Surrealists are famed for fleeing reality. The mind is its own place, and their minds are someplace else. So the story goes, anyway. But this witty exhibit tells a different story. The seed of that narrative?

Surrealist artists explore the worlds of the mind. But theyre not worlds of pure imagination, even in Dalis mind. His fantastic imagery was grounded in real-world experience the evidence of the five senses. Because thats all his imagination had to play with.

This exhibit grounds Dalis surreal world in the real world. Its not a lecture on phenomenology. But it connects the dots between the artists dreamscapes and the Catalan landscapes that flooded his eyes. Philosophy aside, its also a lot of fun.

The topsy-turvy trip begins before you enter. You pass between rows of upside-down trees, (actually) support columns in disguise.

From here, the path takes you deeper into Dalis fevered mind. Large-scale recreations evoke basic elements of his symbolic vocabulary.

Eggs. Eyeballs. Butterflies. Spirals. Crutches. Boats. Pianos. Mae West. Dalis mustache.

Eggs. An ancient symbol of life. Here, a tree grows from one cracked egg; bromeliads sprout from another.

Eyeballs. The eye of the beholder; the petrifying gaze. Across the surreal journey, you can cast your eyes on unblinking orbs glued to orchids, slapped on trees, and woven from bromeliads.

Butterflies. Transformation and resurrection. Selby Gardens flutters with butterfly art pieces (glued to one tree in place of leaves; a banyan turned into an elephant with butterfly wings for ears) and the real thing (a butterfly house fluttering with Florida natives).

The Fibonacci Spiral. Gods math; the underlying order of the world. In nature, this logarithmic pattern pops up in pinecones and pineapples. In this exhibit, spirals of copper, bromeliads and a path beneath your feet.

Crutches. In Dalis mind, if humans could use crutches, why couldnt nature? Across the gardens, crutches support the limbs of banyan trees and displays of orchids and bromeliads.

Boats. In reality, designed to float. In Dalis art, a metaphor for going nowhere. This exhibit echoes his absurdity with boats turned into planters and hanging from trees and rafters.

Pianos. The dead weight of decadent culture. Here, pianos hang from trees, float in ponds, and burst with greenery.

Mae West. Raw sex appeal. At Selby Gardens, you can sit on a bouncy red sofa based on Mae Wests lips. Or gaze at a trompe loeil recreation of her face.

Dalis mustache. Branding, what else? A portrait of the artist as a mad visionary. This exhibit twirls the artists metaphorical mustache with a 10-foot incarnation of pilea libanensis, an eight-foot version planted with silver tillandsia plants, and an 18-foot stache created from zip-tied birch twigs.

In his paintings, prints and drawings, the artist expressed his symbolic vocabulary with a realistic style. This exhibit paints a mental picture with the real thing. Angel Lara, director of greenhouse collections, and Mike McLaughlin, director of hoticulture, recreate his mental garden with orchids, bromeliads and vines. The effect is to bring Dalis otherworldly dreams into our world. As Ockman points out, they were never that far from the real world to begin with. Dalis fantastic visions reflected a fantastic reality.

"Dalis otherworldly vistas of flat sand and sea, punctuated by fantastical rock formations, are inspired by the rugged coastal landscape of his beloved Catalonia," Ockman said.

The Museum of Botany & the Arts offers evidence of this real-world connection. You can see it in the "Flordali" series of Dalis lithographs, on loan from The Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg. Clyde Butchers massive photos of Dalis home turf manifest it as well.

At first glance, Dalis prints are garden-variety botanical illustrations. You can clearly identify the flora. (Of course, real plants dont sprout bacon and eggs.) Butchers massive photos of Catalonia show that Dalis imagination didnt stray as far from reality as we tend to think. The artist once described this region as a "grandiose geological delirium." He wasnt wrong.

These prints and photos reveal the artists deep connection to nature. Dalis art didnt spring from his mad mind ab nihilo. His visions were surreal. But they were born in a vision of reality.

What does it all mean?

In this exhibit, whatever you want.

In Dalis actual work?

He tried not to tip his hand.

Dalis symbols are a mishmash of Catholic iconography, neo-Platonic mysticism, Quantum physics, re-fried Freud, and his idiosyncratic associations. On the surface level, there are obvious meanings (egg=life), but he often flipped the script. An egg might sprout the Grim Reaper.

Like a DJ mixing samples, Dali mashed his symbols together in weird juxtapositions. Hed take mundane objects out of context and put them where they shouldnt be. Boats belong in the water, not in trees. Pianos arent supposed to float.

The effect can be wonder or terror. But this family friendly exhibit avoids the dark side. No sexually aroused skeletons. No rotting, dead horses. Its all fun, whimsical and G-rated.

What did it mean? Wrong question. Dalis mental landscape isnt a rebus to decode. The enigma is the point. Let the mystery be. And just enjoy it.

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Life in the surreal world of Dali - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Even on a black holes turf, anessential constant of nature holds steady.

According to standard physics, the fine-structureconstant, which governs interactions of electrically charged particles, is thesame everywhere in the universe. Some alternative theories, however, suggestthat the constant might be different in certain locales, such as the extremegravitational environment around a black hole. But when put to the test nearthe supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, the number didnt budge, physicists report in a paper accepted in Physical Review Letters.

The fine-structure constant is one of anassortment of unchanging numbers found in physics formulas, such as the mass ofan electron or the speed of light. It determines the strength with whichelectrically charged particles pull on one another. Scientists dont know whyit has the value it does about 1/137. But its size seems crucial: If that number were much different, atoms wouldntform (SN: 11/2/16).

Using experiments on Earth, scientistshave previously shown that the fine-structure constant doesnt vary over time.Whats interesting here is to try to search for variation somewhere else inthe universe, in a totally different environment, says physicist Aurlien Heesof SYRTE at lObservatoire de Paris.

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Using observations of light from fivestars that cruise around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy,Hees and colleagues searched for hints of an altered fine-structure constant. Whenthe starlight is separated into different wavelengths, it shows features calledabsorption lines, which indicate particular wavelengths of light that areabsorbed by certain atoms. If the fine-structure constant were altered at thegalaxys center, the separation between those absorption lines would differfrom measurements of those absorption lines made on Earth.

But the absorption lines agreed withexpectations. The researchers calculated that the fine-structure constant nearthe black hole agreed with its earthly value to better than a thousandth of apercent.

Its the first time scientists havesearched for a variation of the fine-structure constant in the general vicinityof a black hole, says Wim Ubachs of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, a physicistwho previously has searched for changes in various constants of nature.

A 2010 study gave tentative hints thatthe fine-structure constant might vary as scientists look farther outinto space, with the number increasing or decreasing in certain directions, but the evidence for that phenomenon is notconclusive (SN: 9/3/10). Soscientists are probing the constant in a variety of ways, including near ablack hole.

The work is very important because itdenotes the beginning of a new type of study, namely, searching for variationof the fine-structure constant at the center of the galaxy, says physicist JohnWebb of the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

In previous research, Webb andcolleagues found no variation while probing the fine-structure constant in an environment thatseven more gravitationally extreme: the surface of dense dead stars called whitedwarfs. So if the new research had found any indication of change in thesteadfast constant, Webb says, I would have been very surprised.

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This fundamental constant of nature remains the same even near a black hole - Science News

In case you havent seen it, I highly recommend the trailer for the new Amazon Studios series Tales from the Loop. Im not gonna lie, Im pretty excited to see how this series turns out. And I dont have to wait several months for the release. The premiere date is set for April 3.

If you dont know much about Tales, here is a super quick rundown. Simon Stlenhag (below right) is a futuristic painter of incredible post-apocalyptic landscapes. I remember stumbling upon some of his work a few years back and I was immediately captivated. It reminded me of Villeneuves Blade Runner but with a more apocalyptic and retro tone.

Tales from the Loop, one of Stlenhags older projects (2015), depicts scenes of robots and otherworldly creatures. In the art books, a large particle accelerator was built underneath a town out in the countryside and decommissioned in the 1990s. The result was a landscape altered in unexpected ways. If you ever have the chance to flip through some of his work in Tales, I would certainly recommend it. If not, check out this fan-made animation of Stlenhags work in The Electric State.

While there isnt much to say about the series until its release, I am hoping for something along the lines of a combination of Electric Dreams (based on the work of Philip K. Dick) and Eureka. (futurist inventions go wrong).

I can envision a landscape created by unfamiliar and uncontrollable sources. The world of quantum physics is intriguing and somewhat magical, full of speculation and theorizing. Anything might be possible in quantum physics: time-travel, alternate universe, alternate dimensions etc. Stlenhags work is certainly science fiction, but it conjures the vision to which truly creative science fiction is meant to aspire.

Whether venturing into the unknown or discovering the unimaginable, truly creative science fiction tells tales of what we might find just around the corner in the future, just across the stars of another galaxy. Science fiction, as an art, has always meant to inspire. Its meant to push the boundaries of the possible. In a culture that is so polemic and so utterly narrow-minded as ours, its inspiring and refreshing to be reminded that the world could at any time be different from what we think it is. And Stlenhags world isnt just different, its unique.

Now, I dont want to get ahead of myself here. For all I know, the series could be a complete flop (knock on wood). Big studios like Amazon and Netflix make me nervous. Im always holding my breath lest some promising new series or feature film be suffocated by Netflix or Amazons wokeness. To be fair, not everything Amazon or Netflix does is woke

One thing I know for certain look for more about Tales from the Loop in next weeks Sci-Fi Saturday.

Last week: Does science fiction encourage narcissism? As a sci-fi critic, I think most fans are just looking for a genre where they can understand and be understood. Its true that many people who are attracted to science fiction feel like outcasts or disconnected from mainstream popular culture. And many of them feel welcome, loved, accepted, and validated in the sci-fi community. Does that really make them narcissists?

If you enjoyed these reflections by Adam Nieri, you might want to check through his sci-fi reviews below brought to you by Mind Matters News Sci-Fi Saturday:

2019s Best and Worst Sci-Fi TV: 2019 featured many sci-fi television and movies that were less sci-fi than political narrative. In 2019, I fell out with Netflix. I felt bombarded by more and more edgy content, as though Netflix wanted me to know how adult it is. Rather than producing a few amazing originals, Netflix started vomiting up a ton of terrible originals.

Ad Astra: The Great Silence becomes personal. The film images the fate of those who seek significance in the stars and may well wait indefinitely. In a world where the divine touch of extraterrestrial intelligence doesnt elevate human existence to any level of significance, we are left with Ad Astra: a slow, methodical decay of human significance.

Alita, Battle Angel A Mind Matters Review: If you love anime and felt betrayed by the flop of Ghost, I would highly recommend Alita.

Another Life All fun and games till an AI falls in love. Then it descends into a convoluted drift of uncertain storytelling. And the victim is not primarily the viewer, who has other options. The victim is the art itself.

The Expanse: A Mind Matters TV Series ReviewThe attention to detail and the realistic portrayal of space set it apart from run-of-the-mill sci-fi. I love the deep mystery surrounding the shows central narrative device, the proto-molecule. It is somewhat sentient and is desperately trying to figure out what happened to the civilization that created it and was then wiped out while it lay dormant in our solar system for millions of years.

The Expanse, Season 4: The Best So Far? A Mind Matters Perspective: Unlike critic Zac Giaimo, I preferred Season 3 but it really depends on what you are looking for. Season 4 is, as critic Zac Giaimo notes, integral to character building and plot development for the overall series. I gave it 9/10 in an earlier review. However, I dont know if I completely agree with Giaimos Amazonian optimism. Season 3 set up urgent questions that should be answered by the end of the show, preferably beginning in Season 5.

The FeedA Mind Matters TV Series Review: I started out thinking that the show was just the usual ho-hum tyrant-AI-takes-over flick and it is so good to be wrong! Imagine a world where your mind is stored on social media. Now, what happens if someone steals, then abandons it? What will you do?

Her (2013): If you created her, is it real love? In this retrospective Mind Matters movie review, Adam Nieri ponders the questions raised by a thoughtful AI film. Unlike Catherine, Samantha is exactly what Theodore was looking for. No surprise there; Samantha is, literally, adjusted and updated according to Theodores preferences from when he initially began speaking to her. She exists only to be Theodores soulmate. Is that enough?

How To Become HumanA Mind Matters Short Film Review. This new film turns a conventional sci-fi storytelling premise upside down. Rather than an AI struggling to become human in a human-dominated world, we watch a human struggling to be more like an artificial intelligence in an AI-dominated world.

Lost in Space, A Mind Matters TV series review. I was skeptical at first, based on Netflixs track record, but was pleasantly surprised. If I could rewind time a week and add a piece of 2019 sci-fi to my list of the years Best and Worst Sci-Fi TV, I would add Netflixs Lost in Space, Season 2which came out just after I had published. Lets fix that now.

Love, death, & robots Despite the trash and ruined expectations, several shorts were enjoyable and downright fun to watch

Nightflyers: A Mind Matters TV Series Review Despite its flaws, Nightflyers does not deserve all the criticism it received. Its the saga of a ship of scientists making their way through the cosmos to unlock the secrets of a mysterious entity known as Volcryn. It turns out that Volcryn is not the only mystery; the good ship Nightflyer holds many of its own secrets.

The Outer WorldsA Mind Matters Game Review: You must discover the dark secret of the Halcyon space colony, despite the greed and corruption of a handful of powerful corporations. After the raging dumpster fire that Fallout 76 (2018) turned out to be, I hesitated to invest my time and money in another role-playing game (RPG) epic. But I am glad I did.

Picard (2020): Episode 1 Is an AI-Themed Mystery. The mystery is related to another familiar Star Trek character. Seeing the Star Trek universe from a different perspectivethat is, not from the interior of a starshipwas super refreshing and rewarding. It gives viewers a unique look at what day-to-day life is like for other people (much as The Mandalorian did for the Star Wars universe).

Star Trek: Picard On second thought, some serious quibbles. Now that Im four episodes in, Ive gotta say, the haters might be onto something. Not everything but something. Why does Picard seem to be obsessed with Commander Data? And what happened to The Federation? Star Trek fans are quick to point out that Star Trek: Picard takes an unnecessary malevolent tone towards The Federation. Why do the Romulans look different? Im still watching but Id like some answers.

Simulation: Would a simulated universe even make sense? A well-crafted short sci-fi film suggests, intentionally or otherwise, maybe not. Ive seen quite a few sci-fi short films over the years and Simulation is certainly one of the better ones. However, beyond that, Im not sure this film knows what it is; its an identity crisis.

Sprites: Will plausible robots replace movie stars? A short film prepares us to think about it.

Terminator: Dark FateA Mind Matters Movie Review. Aside from the fact that it felt like a retextured version of Terminator 2, I was constantly being reminded of the films obvious political agenda. Movies like Terminator: Dark Fate dont seem to be made by people who care about the narrative. They seem to think that they need only make something that looks like a movie but acts as a medium for broadcasting their message to the masses.

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Tales of the Loop: Pushing the Boundaries of the Possible - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

A research team at Wits has discovered how to use quantum physics to improve data transmission across fibre networks.

Wits PhD student Isaac Nape worked alongside his supervisor and a team from China to ensure that data security is increased on fibre networks.

Our team showed that multiple patterns of light are accessible through conventional optical fibre that can only support a single pattern, said Nape.

We achieved this quantum trick by engineering the entanglement of two photons. We sent the polarised photon down the fibre line and accessed many other patterns with the other photon.

Nape is from Gauteng, and moved to different areas of the province a few times as a child.

I constantly had the opportunity of reinventing myself wherever we lived. I was fascinated with everything!

This meant that he has dabbled in various pastimes and activities which have helped him to develop into a well-rounded person.

I taught myself how to play guitar in university, participated a lot of competitive dancing competitions reaching up national level while representing my high school, and even won a telescope for my primary school at a regional astronomy quiz.

This passion for science saw him decide to study Physics at university. He completed his Honours degree at the University of Pretoria, working alongside Professor Manyala, who is a Carbon-Nano technology expert.

I was learning how to synthesise supercapacitors for about two years but wanted something more abstract but yet applicable, said Nape.

He said that he had always loved quantum physics, meaning that when the opportunity arose to work alongside his current supervisor, Professor Forbes, he jumped at the opportunity.

He completed his Masters degree under Forbes supervision and decided to continue his studies by doing his PhD.

Nape said that when he received the opportunity to combine quantum physics and data security in his studies, he jumped at the opportunity.

The idea of using quantum physics to develop cutting edge technology, relevant to ICT, was mesmerizing, said Nape.

Since our work primarily involves optics here at the Structured Light Lab, you are bound to play around with fibres at some point. There are some interesting research questions from the fibre world in quantum communication, and my supervisor is fond of taking on interesting challenges!

Nape said that in the quantum physics field, there are still many opportunities to take broad concepts and frameworks and apply them to real-world applications.

I get to play around with intriguing and ambiguous concepts from physics and apply them to solve real-world problems.

Moreover, because optics is such wide and broad field I find myself involved in many interesting projects and not just limited to one specific field, he added.

Nape said that he hopes to expose himself to ideas beyond the borders of South Africa, and has already visited German, China, and the UK during his PhD.

Beyond this, he said hed like to convince government departments and private entities to invest more into quantum technologies.

China, Europe and the USA are throwing billions into quantum research because they understand how valuable it is for security (military), communication and computing, said Nape.

I hope to be one of the few to compete internationally with private companies by using this technology in the future. So I hope I find myself in a company or research institute that will allow me to develop quantum-based tech.

Nape said that those with crucial minds must ensure that they find the right supervisor, as this guidance is critical to your development in the science and technology fields.

There is a wealth of knowledge out there waiting for curious minds like yours. With the right guidance you can navigate through it with ease, said Nape.

Once you have found your way around it, work, create and invent, said Nape.

Developing new technology requires creativity and the right set of skills. That can only be achieved by learning from the right people and applying yourself effectively.

MyBroadband asked Isaac Nape about his tech and business choices.

Which smartphone do you use?

Which laptop do you use?

What is the best gadget you have ever bought?

What is the worst gadget you have ever bought?

What Internet connection (fixed broadband) do you have at home?

What is the best ICT/technology book you have ever read?

Read more:

Isaac Nape The South African changing the fibre game - MyBroadband

Scientists have trapped and observed individual atoms for what they say is the first time ever. The mechanism is a kind of supercooled atom rodeo, where individual atoms at nearly absolute zero are held in separate compartments before being released to interact in specific ways.

The researchers use optical tweezers as part of their setup. Atoms can be isolated and held in place with optical tweezers, and these researchers simultaneously used three separate tweezers. Once three atoms are held in laser lock, the researchers move all three setups together and then drop two of the gates. All three atoms are then free to interact in the remaining optical tweezer setup.

This process may sound simple, but it's actually complex and fussy to do. It was worth it: When three atoms interact, one possible outcome is that two of the atoms collide to form a molecule while the third gets a kick of energy as a result, Physics reports. This process, known as three-body recombination, occurs everywhere from laboratory plasmas to star-forming gas clouds, but despite its ubiquity, it had yet to be directly observed.

The researchers had fairly open-ended predictions for outcomes of this experiment, but they were still surprised by what happened. Atoms did act out the predicted three-body recombination, but they were much slower than the researchers predicted. They arent sure why this is, but they speculate that the tight confines in the optical tweezer setup has something to do with it. And other iterations showed that two atoms bonded without doing anything to the third, simply leaving it behind. (Sad trombones.)

Physics reports that the slow recombination rates are considered a promising and exciting outcome. The research teams predictions were based on existing knowledge about three-body recombination and theoretical models of how it works up close. For results to go against those predictions, it shows that something more interesting is at play than what scientists currently understand.

This is one reason why sophisticated nano-observation and manipulation are so important. Experimental quantum mechanics has been something of a black box due to the sheer difficulty of managing to look at anything that was happening. The introduction of optical tweezers for trapping atoms has opened remarkable opportunities for manipulating few-body systems, the researchers explain in their abstract.

Few-body problems are no relation to the three-body problem, beyond the fact that both have, well, a few things. Or are they related? In quantum mechanics, more than three interacting particles of certain kinds end up behaving in ways that are unpredictable and insoluble using traditional (for quantum mechanics) methods.

Springers wide-ranging Few-Body Systems journal defines it this way:

Thats a real twist there at the end.

Optical tweezers are just one of the ways scientists are getting up close and personal with individual particles for the first time, and supercooled environments allow for a variety of manipulations that previous generations couldnt have dreamed of. Now, the tools to explain a delayed three-body recombination could be within our graspor within an atoms grasp.

Read the original here:

Scientists Have Held Individual Atoms for the Very First Time - Popular Mechanics

Scientists have observed a new state of electronic matter on the quantum scale, one that forms when electrons clump together in transit, and it could advance our understanding and application of quantum physics.

Movement is key to this new quantum state. When electric current is applied to semiconductors or metals, the electrons inside usually travel slowly and somewhat haphazardly in one direction.

Not so in a special type of medium known as aballistic conductor, where the movement is faster and more uniform.

The new study shows how in very thin ballistic conducting wires, electrons can gang up creating a whole new quantum state of matter made solely from speeding electrons.

"Normally, electrons in semiconductors or metals move and scatter, and eventually drift in one direction if you apply a voltage," says physicist Jeremy Levy, from the University of Pittsburgh. "But in ballistic conductors the electrons move more like cars on a highway."

"The discovery we made shows that when electrons can be made to attract one another, they can form bunches of two, three, four and five electrons that literally behave like new types of particles, new forms of electronic matter."

Ballistic conductors can be used for stretching the boundaries of what's possible in electronics and classical physics, and the one used in this particular experiment was made from lanthanum aluminate and strontium titanate.

Interestingly, when the researchers measured the levels of conductance they found they followed one of the most well-known patterns in mathematics Pascal's triangle. Asconductanceincreased, it stepped up in a pattern that matches one of the rows of Pascal's triangle, following the order 1, 3, 6, 10 and so on.

"The discovery took us some time to understand but it was because we initially did not realise we were looking at particles made up of one electron, two electrons, three electrons and so forth," says Levy.

This clumping of electrons is similar to the way that quarks bind together to form neutrons and protons, according to the researchers. Electrons in superconductors can team up like this too, joining together in pairs to coordinate movement.

The findings may have something to teach us about quantum entanglement, which in turn is key to making progress with quantum computing and a super-secure, super-fast quantum internet.

According to Levy, it's another example of how we're reverse engineering the world based on what we've found from the discovery of the fundamentals of quantum physics building on important work done in the last few decades.

"Now in the 21st century, we're looking at all the strange predictions of quantum physics and turning them around and using them," says Levy.

"When you talk about applications, we're thinking about quantum computing, quantum teleportation, quantum communications, quantum sensing ideas that use the properties of the quantum nature of matter that were ignored before."

The research has been published in Science.

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Scientists Have Discovered a Brand New Electronic State of Matter - ScienceAlert