Category Archives: Quantum Physics

Have you ever wondered whether theres more to reality than what we can see, perceive, detect, or otherwise observe? One of the most intriguing but speculative ideas of 20th and 21st century physics is the notion that our Universe, which seems to consist of three spatial and one temporal dimension, might possess additional, extra dimensions beyond the ones we can see. Originally thought up independently by Theodr Kaluza and Oskar Klein in an attempt to unify Einsteins General Relativity with Maxwells electromagnetism, the idea lives on in the modern context of quantum field theory and a specific extension of its ideas: string theory.

But for all of its mathematical beauty and elegance, does it have anything to do with our physical Universe? Thats what our Patreon supporter Benhead, who was thinking about this recent New York Times piece, wrote to inquire about:

Ive never really bought into the holographic thing as a physical concept. Im not even sure how well it works as a mathematical abstraction in the analogy I thought we were the image but what was real was the film.

The idea that the Universe is a hologram also known as the holographic principle or the holographic Universe is more than 20 years old now, but remains both as curious and as problematic as ever. Heres an overview of the concept.

This hologram of a DNA molecules double helix structure is projected with the use of mirrors, displaying a true three-dimensional appearance from any angle. This is because its possible, through the use of coherent light, to create a map of the light field of an object and encode it onto a flat surface.

If youve ever seen a hologram before, youve truly beheld a wondrous application of the optical behavior of light. Printed onto a two-dimensional surface, a hologram when it catches the light just right shows you not a standard two-dimensional image like youd typically see, but a fully three-dimensional image. Not only can the third dimension, depth, be readily perceived by your eyes, but as you change your viewing angle with respect to the hologram, the relative distance from your eye to various parts of the encoded, holographic image appears to change correspondingly as well.

It appears as though, behind the surface of the hologram, a fully three-dimensional world exists, and you can see its details just as surely as you could see the three-dimensional world reflected in a mirror.

This is because a hologram isnt simply a static image, but rather a light map of the three dimensional object/setting that went into creating the hologram itself. Creating a hologram is itself an instructive look at how light, optics, and physics come together to encode a higher-dimensional set of information onto a lower-dimensional surface.

Although a photograph encodes an image of the three-dimensional world onto a two-dimensional surface, the three-dimensional information about depth is flattened and lost. The difference between a photograph and a hologram is all about having not just a light image, but a light field encoded and mapped onto the lower-dimensional surface.

The way a photograph works, by contrast to a hologram, is very simple. Take light thats emitted or reflected from an object, focus it through a lens, and record it onto a flat surface. Thats not only how photography works, but also how you physically see objects biologically, as the lens in your eyeball focuses the light onto your retina, where the rods and cones on the back of your eye record it, send it to your brain, and there it gets processed into an image.

But by using coherent light, such as that from a laser, and a special emulsion on the recording surface, youre no longer limited to recording a light image, but rather you can record and create a map of the entire light field. Part of the information encoded in a light field is the three-dimensional position of every object within the image, including features such as:

All of these properties are encoded in the light field, and are faithfully recorded onto the two-dimensional hologram surface. When that surface is then properly illuminated, it will display to any observer the full suite of recorded three-dimensional information, and will do so from every possible perspective that its viewable from. By printing this two-dimensional light field/map onto a metallic film, you can create a conventional hologram.

This photograph of a hologram at the MIT museum looks like a three-dimensional object, but is only a two-dimensional light field encoded onto the surface of a hologram. When properly illuminated, the three-dimensional properties can be clearly seen.

The big idea behind a hologram is actually ubiquitous in physics: the notion that you can examine a lower-dimensional surface and obtain not only substantial information about the higher-dimensional reality that is encoded on it, but complete information that reveals to you the full set of physical properties concerning that higher-dimensional reality. The key is to have the lower-dimensional surface serve as the boundary of your higher-dimensional space; if you can both:

you can then draw conclusions about the precise physical state that occurs inside that region, fully.

You can accomplish this in electromagnetism, for example, by measuring any of three properties on the surface enclosing the region: with Dirichlet, Neumann, or Robin boundary conditions. You can do something analogous in General Relativity, with the caveat that if youre not dealing with a closed spacetime manifold, you must add an additional boundary term. In many areas of physics, if you know the laws that govern the boundary and the region of space that it encloses, simply measuring enough of the properties encoded on the boundary enables you to determine the full set of physical properties that describe the inside.

This set of radiofrequency cavities within a linear accelerator in Australia consist of a very intricate electromagnetic setup. If you were to draw an imaginary two-dimensional boundary around any region either inside or outside this cavity, the information encoded on the surface, if you measured enough of it, could tell you what was going on in the volume inside that boundary as well.

This type of analysis even has applications to black holes, although theyve only ever been tested in quantum analogue systems, as we have yet to actually measure a black hole precisely enough to test the idea. In theory, whenever individual quanta fall into a black hole and remember, black holes are fundamentally entities that exist in our Universe with three spatial dimensions they carry all the quantum information that they previously possess with them into the black hole.

But when black holes decay, which they do via the emission of Hawking radiation, the radiation that comes out should simply possess a blackbody spectrum, with no memory of things like the mass, charge, spin, polarization, or baryon/lepton number of the quanta that went into creating them. This non-conservative property is known as the black hole information paradox, with the only two realistic possibilities being that either information is not conserved, after all, or that the information must somehow escape the black holes clutches during the process of evaporation.

Its possible, even likely, that theres a two dimensional surface, either on or interior to the event horizon, where all of the information that went into and radiated away from the black hole is preserved. Its possible that the holographic principle, as applied to black holes, can actually solve the black hole information paradox, preserving unitarity (the idea that the sum of the probabilities of all possible outcomes must add up to 1) in the process.

Encoded on the surface of the black hole can be bits of information, proportional to the event horizons surface area. When the black hole decays, it decays to a state of thermal radiation. Whether that information survives and is encoded in the radiation or not, and if so, how, is not a question that our current theories can provide the answer to.

Now, here we are, in what appears to us to be a four-dimensional spacetime: with three spatial and one temporal dimension. But what if this isnt representative of the full picture of reality; what if there are:

Its a wild idea, but one that has its roots in a seemingly unrelated discipline: String Theory.

String Theory grew from a proposalthe string modelto explain the strong interactions, as the insides of protons, neutrons and other baryons (and mesons) were known to have a composite structure. It gave a whole bunch of nonsensical predictions, though, that didnt correspond to experiments, including the existence of a spin-2 particle. But people recognized if you took that energy scale way up, toward the Planck scale, the string framework could unify the known fundamental forces with gravity, and thus String Theory was born.

The idea that the forces, particles, and interactions that we see today are all manifestations of a single, overarching theory is an attractive one, requiring extra dimensions and lots of new particles and interactions. The lack of a single verified prediction of String Theory thats distinct from what the Standard Model predicts, plus internal inconsistencies with the Universe as we understand it, both stand as enormous strikes against it.

A feature (or flaw, depending on how you look at it) of this attempt at a holy grail of physics is that it absolutely requires a large number of extra dimensions. So a big question then becomes how do we get our Universe, which has justthreespatial dimensions, out of a theory that gives us many others? And which string theory, since there are many possible realizations of string theory, is the right one?

Perhaps, the realization goes, the many different string theory models and scenarios that are out there are actually all different aspects of the same fundamental theory, seen from a different point of view. In mathematics, two systems that are equivalent to one another are known as dual, and one surprising discovery thats related to a hologram is that sometimes two systems that are dual to one another have different numbers of dimensions.

The reason physicists get very excited about this is that in 1997, physicist Juan Maldacena proposedthe AdS/CFT correspondence, which claimed that our three dimensional (plus time) Universe, with its quantum field theories describing elementary particles and their interactions, was dual to a higher-dimensional spacetime (anti-de Sitter space) that plays a role in quantum theories of gravity.

The idea that a higher-dimensional space, often called the bulk, is mathematically equivalent to a lower-dimensional space that defined the boundary of the bulk, known as the brane, is the core idea at the root of the AdS/CFT correspondence. This lower-dimensional analogue of the 5-to-4 dimensional relation derived by Juan Maldacena in 1997 is shown here.

For the past 25 years, physicists and mathematicians have explored this correspondence to the best of our abilities, and it turns out that it has been usefully applied to a number of condensed matter and solid state physical systems. As far as applications to our entire Universe, however, and specifically to a framework where we have to have at least 10 dimensions total (as required by String Theory), we run into a significant set of problems that have not been so easy to solve.

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For one, were very certain we dont live in anti-de Sitter space, because weve measured the effects of dark energy, and those effects show us that the Universes expansion is accelerating in a fashion thats consistent with a positive cosmological constant. A spacetime with a positive cosmological constant looks like de Sitter space, and specifically not like anti-de Sitter space, which would have a negative cosmological constant. Mathematically, because of a series of problems (like the bubble nucleation/percolation problem) that arise in de Sitter space and not in anti-de Sitter space, we cannot build that same correspondence.

The string landscape might be a fascinating idea thats full of theoretical potential, but it cannot explain why the value of such a finely-tuned parameter like the cosmological constant, the initial expansion rate, or the total energy density have the values that they do. One of the more important deficiencies of the AdS/CFT correspondence is that AdS stands for anti-de Sitter space, which requires a negative cosmological constant. However, the observed Universe has a positive cosmological constant, implying de Sitter space; there is no equivalent dS/CFT correspondence.

For another, the only dualities weve ever discovered relate the properties of the higher-dimensional space to its lower-dimensional boundary: a reduction in dimension by one. Two-dimensional holograms can only encode three-dimensional information; the four-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs) that are part of the AdS/CFT correspondence only apply to five-dimensional anti-de Sitter spaces. The question of compactification of how you get down to no more than five dimensions in the first place remains unaddressed.

However, theres another aspect of the AdS/CFT correspondence that many find compelling. Sure, those two problems are real: we have the wrong sign for the cosmological constant and the wrong number of dimensions. However, when two spaces of different dimensions are mathematically dual to one another, one can sometimes obtain more information about the higher-dimensional space than you might initially think. Sure, theres less information available on a lower-dimensional boundary of a surface than inside the volume of the full space enclosed by the surface. That implies that when you measure one thing thats happening on the boundarys surface, you might wind up learning multiple things that are occurring inside of the larger, higher-dimensional volume.

The idea that two quanta could be instantaneously entangled with one another, even across large distances, is often talked about as the spookiest part of quantum physics. If reality were fundamentally deterministic and were governed by hidden variables, this spookiness could be removed. Unfortunately, attempts to do away with this type of quantum weirdness have all failed, but the AdS/CFT correspondence has led some to remain hopeful this could be possible by invoking extra dimensions.

One wild possibility potentially related to 2022s Nobel Prize in physics on quantum entanglement is that something occurring in the larger-dimensional space may wind up relating two disparate, seemingly disconnected regions along the lower-dimensional boundary. If youre bothered by the notion that measuring one entangled particle appears to give you information about the other entangled pair instantaneously, appearing as though communication is occurring faster-than-light, the holographic principle might be your best hope for a physically-rooted savior.

Nevertheless, the past 25 years have arguably brought us no closer to finding extra dimensions, understanding whether or not theyre relevant for our reality, or delivering any important theoretical insights that help us better comprehend our own Universe. Duality, however, cannot be denied: it is a mathematical fact. The AdS/CFT correspondence will continue to be mathematically interesting, but the two major problems with it:

loom large and remain unaddressed. The idea that the Universe is a hologram, known as the holographic Universe, may indeed someday lead us to quantum gravity. Until these puzzles are solved, however, its impossible to foresee how well get there.

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Ask Ethan: Is our Universe a hologram? - Big Think

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Research Fellow positions are open in the research group of Dr. Gong Xiao, at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS). The Research Fellows will work closely with the Principal Investigator (PI) on one or more research projects. The project aims to explore advanced photonics and electronic devices for future advanced integrated circuits and quantum technology.

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There are certain properties about the Universe that for better or worse we take for granted. The laws of physics, we presume, are the same at other locations in space and other moments in time as they are in the here-and-now. The fundamental constants that relate various physical properties of our Universe are assumed to truly possess the same, constant value at every time and place. The fact that the Universe appears to be consistent with these presumptions at least, to the limits of our observations seems to support this view, placing great constraints on how much its possible these various aspects of reality have evolved.

Wherever and whenever we can measure or infer the fundamental physical properties of the Universe, it appears that they do not change over time or space: they are the same for everybody. But earlier on, the Universe underwent transitions: from higher-energy states to lower-energy ones. Some of the conditions that arose spontaneously under those high-energy conditions could no longer persist at lower energies, rendering them unstable. Unstable states all have one thing in common: they decay. And in one of the most terrifying realizations of all, weve learned that the fabric of our Universe itself may inherently be one of those unstable things as well. Heres what we know, today, about how precarious our continued existence is.

Every planet orbiting a star has five location around it, Lagrange points, that co-orbit. An object precisely located at L1, L2, L3, L4, or L5 will continue to orbit the Sun with precisely the same period as Earth does, meaning that the Earth-spacecraft distance will be constant. L1, L2, and L3 are unstable points of equilibrium, requiring periodic course corrections to maintain a spacecrafts position there, while L4 and L5 are stable. The JWST, for example, successfully inserted itself in orbit around L2, and must always face away from the Sun for cooling purposes.

In any physical system that is, a system made up of particles that interact via one or more forces theres at least one way to configure them that is more stable than any other way to do it. This is what we call the lowest-energy state, or the ground-state, of a system.

When we see something like a ball balanced precariously atop a hill, this appears to be what we call a finely-tuned state, or a state of unstable equilibrium. A much more stable position is for the ball to be down somewhere at the bottom of the valley. Whenever we encounter a finely-tuned physical situation, there are good reasons to seek a physically-motivated explanation for it; when we have hills with false minima on them, its possible to get caught up in one and not arrive at the true minimum.

Only, that last example has a catch to it: sometimes, if your conditions arent precisely right, your ball wont end up in the lowest-energy state possible. Rather, it can roll into a valley thats still lower than where it started, but that doesnt represent the true ground state of the system. This state can happen naturally for a great variety of physical systems, and we generally think about it as though the system is hung up in some sort of false minimum. Even though it would be more energetically stable in the ground state, or in its true minimum, it cant necessarily get there on its own.

What can you do when youre stuck in a false minimum?

If youre a classical system, the only solution is Sisyphean: you have to input enough energy into your system irrespective of whether thats kinetic energy, chemical energy, electrical energy, etc. to kick that system out of the false minimum. If you can overcome the next energy barrier, you have the opportunity to wind up in an even more stable state: a state that takes you down closer to, and possible even all the way to, the ground state. Only in the true ground state is it impossible to transition down to an even lower-energy state.

If you draw out any potential, it will have a profile where at least one point corresponds to the lowest-energy, or true vacuum, state. If there is a false minimum at any point, that can be considered a false vacuum. In the classical world, you must overcome the hill or barrier confining you to the false minimum to arrive elsewhere. But, assuming this is a quantum field, its possible to quantum tunnel directly from the false vacuum to the true vacuum state.

Thats whats true for a classical system. But the Universe isnt purely classical in nature; rather, we live in a quantum Universe. Inherently quantum systems not only undergo these same types of reorganizations as classical systems where inputting energy can kick them out of unstable equilibrium states but they have another effect that theyre subject to: quantum tunneling.

Quantum tunneling is a probabilistic venture, but one that doesnt require what you might think of as activation energy to get over that hump keeping you in that unstable equilibrium state. Instead, dependent on specifics like how far your field is from the true equilibrium state and how high the barrier is preventing you from leaving the false minimum that youre stuck in, theres a certain probability that you can spontaneously leave your unstable equilibrium state and find yourself, all of a sudden, in a more stable (or even the true) minimum of your quantum system.

Unlike in the purely classical case, this can happen spontaneously, with no outside, energetic influence or impetus required.

This generic illustration of quantum tunneling assumes there is a high, thin, but finite barrier separating a quantum wavefunction on one side of the x-axis from the other. While most of the wavefunction, and hence the probability of the field/particle that its a proxy for, reflects and remains on the original side, there is a finite, non-zero probability of tunneling through to the other side of the barrier.

Some common examples of quantum systems that exhibit tunneling involve atoms and their constituent particles.

Heavy, unstable elements will radioactively decay, typically by emitting either an alpha particle (a helium nucleus) or by undergoing beta decay, as shown here, where a neutron converts into a proton, electron, and anti-electron neutrino. Both of these types of decays change the elements atomic number, yielding a new element different from the original, and result in a lower mass for the products than for the reactants. These quantum transitions are spontaneous but probabilistic and unpredictable in nature, but always take the overall system into a more stable, lower-energy state overall.

Well, you know what the ultimate quantum system is?

Empty space itself. Empty space even without any particles, quanta, or external fields present still appears to have a non-zero amount of energy inherent to it. This evidences itself through the observed effects of dark energy, and even though it corresponds to a very small energy density of barely more than a protons worth of energy per cubic meter of space, thats still a positive, finite, non-zero value.

We also know that regardless of how much you remove from any particular region of space, you cannot get rid of the fundamental quantum fields that describe the interactions and forces inherent to the Universe. Just as you cannot have space without the laws of physics, you cannot have a region without the presence of quantum fields owing to (at least) the forces of the Standard Model.

It had long been assumed, although it was untested, that because we do not know how to calculate the energy inherent to empty space what quantum field theorists call the vacuum expectation value in any way that doesnt yield complete nonsense, it probably all just cancels out. But the measurement of dark energy, and that it affects the expansion of the Universe and must have a positive, non-zero value, tells us that it cannot all cancel out. The quantum fields permeating all of space give a positive, non-zero value to the quantum vacuum.

Even in the vacuum of empty space, devoid of masses, charges, curved space, and any external fields, the laws of nature and the quantum fields underlying them still exist. If you calculate the lowest-energy state, you may find that it is not exactly zero; the zero-point (or vacuum) energy of the Universe appears to be positive and finite, although small. We do not know whether this is a true vacuum state or not.

Now, heres the big question: is the value that were measuring for dark energy, today, the same value that the Universe recognizes as its true minimum for the contributions of the quantum vacuum to the energy density of space?

If it is, then great: the Universe will be stable forever and ever, as theres no lower-energy state for it to ever quantum tunnel into.

But if were not in a true minimum, and there is a true minimum out there that actually represents a more stable, lower-energy configuration than the one we currently find ourselves (and the entire Universe) in, then theres always a probability that well eventually quantum tunnel into that true vacuum state.

This latter option, unfortunately, is not so great. The vacuum state of the Universe, remember, depends on the fundamental laws, quanta, and constants that underlie our Universe. If we spontaneously transitioned from our current vacuum state to a different, lower-energy one, it isnt just that space would now take on a different configuration. In fact, by necessity, wed have at least one of:

If this change were to spontaneously occur, what happened next would be a Universe-ending catastrophe.

In the far future, its conceivable that the quantum vacuum will decay from its current state to a lower-energy, still more stable state. If such an event were to occur, every proton, neutron, atom, and other composite structure in the Universe would spontaneously destroy itself in a remarkably destructive event, whose effects would propagate and ripple outward in a sphere at the speed of light. This bubble of destruction would be unnoticeable until it arrived.

Wherever the quantum vacuum transitioned from this false vacuum state into the true vacuum state, everything that we recognize as a bound state of quanta things like protons-and-neutrons, atomic nuclei, atoms, and everything that they make up, for example would immediately be destroyed. As the fundamental particles that compose reality rearrange themselves according to these new rules, everything from molecules to planets to stars to galaxies would come undone, including human beings and any living organisms.

Without knowing what the true vacuum state is and what these new sets of laws, interactions, and constants our current ones would be replaced with, we have no way of predicting what sorts of new structures would emerge. But we can know that not only would the ones we see today cease to exist, but that wherever this transition occurred, it would propagate outward at the speed of light, infecting space as it expanded with a great bubble of destruction. Even with the Universe expanding, and even with that expansion accelerating due to dark energy, if a vacuum decay event such as the one envisioned here occurred anywhere within 18 billion light-years of us, at present, it would eventually reach us, destroying every atom at the speed of light in a Ghostbusters-level event when it did.

The size of our visible Universe (yellow), along with the amount we can reach (magenta) if we left, today, on a journey at the speed of light. The limit of the visible Universe is 46.1 billion light-years, as thats the limit of how far away an object that emitted light that would just be reaching us today would be after expanding away from us for 13.8 billion years. Anything that occurs, right now, within a radius of 18 billion light-years of us will eventually reach and affect us; anything beyond that point will not.

Is this something we actually have to worry about?

Maybe. There are consistency conditions that must be obeyed by the laws of physics, and there are parameters that we need to measure in order to find out whether we live in a:

In the context of quantum field theory, this means that if we take the properties of the Standard Model, including the particle content of the Universe, the interactions that exist between particles, and the relationships that govern the overarching rules, then we can measure the parameters of the particles within it (such as the rest masses of the particles), and determine what type of Universe we live in.

Right now, the two most important parameters in performing such a calculation are the mass of the top quark and the Higgs boson. The best value we have for the top mass is 171.770.38 GeV, and the best value we have for the Higgs mass is 125.380.14 GeV. This appears extremely close to the metastable/stable border, where the blue dot and the three blue circles below represent 1-sigma, 2-sigma, and 3-sigma departures from the mean value.

Based on the masses of the top quark and the Higgs boson, we could either live in a region where the quantum vacuum is stable (true vacuum), metastable (false vacuum), or unstable (where it cannot stably remain). The evidence suggested, but did not prove, that we occupy a false vacuum at the time this figure was published: in 2018. Since then, as of 2022, the values of the top mass and the Higgs mass have shifted the best-fit contours closer to the region of stability.

Does this mean the Universe is really in a metastable state, and the quantum vacuum may actually someday decay where we are, ending the Universe in a catastrophic fashion thats very different from the slow, gradual heat death wed otherwise expect?

Travel the Universe with astrophysicist Ethan Siegel. Subscribers will get the newsletter every Saturday. All aboard!

That depends. It depends on which side of that curve were on, and that depends on whether weve correctly identified all of the underlying laws of physics and the contributors to the quantum vacuum, whether weve done our calculations correctly assuming weve written down the underlying equations properly, and whether our measurements for the masses of the constituent particles of the Universe are accurate and precise. If we want to know for certain, we know at least this much: we need a better determination of these measurable parameters, and that means creating more top quarks and Higgs bosons, measured to at least the best precision we can currently muster.

The Universe may fundamentally be unstable, but if it is, well never see this bubble of destruction caused by vacuum decay coming our way. No information-carrying signal can travel faster-than-light, and that means that if the vacuum does decay, our first warning of its arrival will coincide with our instantaneous demise. Nevertheless, if our Universe truly is fundamentally unstable, Id want to know. Would you?

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Is the Universe fundamentally unstable? - Big Think

This weeks Good News bulletin brings you everything you need to know about the people who won the Nobel Awards, the people who as well as contributing to the significant progress of humanity can also give us a lesson in humility and determination.

Good News is highlighting the Nobel prizes, though they dont represent one-off news events, because they reward the slow and broader developments that have reshaped the world we live in.

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry in equal shares to Carolyn Bertozzi, Stanford University, California, USA; Morton Meldal, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; and Barry Sharpless, Scripps Research, La Jolla, California, USA.

They received the prize for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.

Click chemistry, coined in 2000, is partly explained by its name. Its basically snapping molecules together.

They say: imagine if you could attach small chemical buckles to different types of building blocks. Then imagine you could link these buckles together and produce molecules of greater complexity and variation. Thats clicking chemistry.

The other part of the chemistry prize, for the concept of bioorthogonal chemistry, is still in its early phases.

I think there are probably many new reactions to be discovered and invented, said Carolyn Bertozzi in a statement.

The biotech industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical industry with new approaches to treating and diagnosing diseases will be strongly impacted by click chemistry, says Bertozzi.

Its basically a superpower that opens the door to all kinds of interesting applications.

Bertozzi says that before the advent of bioorthogonal chemistry and then the related click chemistry developed by professors Sharpless and Meldal, there was really no way to study certain biological processes. They were just invisible to the scientists. But these chemistries make those processes visible.

Because the Nobel Academy is in northern Europe, and the winners are announced in the morning, laureates in the Americas are usually woken up to the incredible news.

Watch the video above to see the laureates reactions after being told in the early hours of the morning they had won a Nobel Prize.

Immediately I thought, maybe, maybe it's not real. Maybe it's something, you know. But it was real, said Morten Meldal, who won the award jointly with Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless.

Meldal says his hope is that the award will help persuade young people to take chemistry as a discipline, which is a little bit difficult at the moment. He thinks chemistry is the solution to many of our challenges.

Barry Sharpless, the third recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, said he just wanted to create a chemistry that worked "in hours instead of days."

"I guess I've always been impatient. I like to go in the lab, mix up some things that work, and I go on from there. If I have to wait a day or two, I just can't. That's not good. So I'm trying to create a chemistry that moves in hours instead of days," he said.

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine to Svante Pbo, a Swedish scientist, for his discoveries in human evolution.

Pbos sequencing of the DNA of Neanderthals proved that our ancestors had sex and children with them.

"What we do is to look for the genetic material, for DNA from people who have lived here long before us and try to see how they are related to us, and how they are related to other forms of humans that were also here, such as Neanderthals, he said.

He retrieved genetic material from 40,000-year-old bones, producing a complete Neanderthal genome and opening up the study of ancient DNA as a field.

The scientist, like many of the other laureates, said that what drives his work is mere curiosity. It is as if you do an archaeological excavation to find out about the past. We make excavations in the human genome.

But his curiosity had a deep impact; his research has provided key insights into our immune system and what makes us unique compared to our extinct cousins.

We have discovered, for example, that in the COVID pandemic the greatest risk factor to becoming severely ill and even dying when you're infected with the virus has come over to modern people from Neanderthals, says Pbo.

Nils-Gran Larsson, a Nobel Assembly member, has called it "a basic scientific discovery.

We already know that it affects our defence against different types of infections for instance, or how we can cope with high altitudes, but like all great discoveries in basic science, more and more insights will come over the next decades."

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics

The joint winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics were Alain Aspect, from the Universite Paris-Saclay and cole Polytechnique Palaiseau, France; John F Clauser, J.F. Clauser and Associates, Walnut Creek, California, USA; and to Anton Zeilinger, from University of Vienna, Austria.

The award celebrates their work in quantum information science and their discoveries on how unseen particles, such as tiny bits of matter, can be linked, or "entangled", with each other, even when they are separated by large distances.

Clauser developed quantum theories first put forward in the 1960s into a practical experiment. Aspect closed a loophole in those theories, and Zeilinger demonstrated a phenomenon called quantum teleportation that effectively allows information to be transmitted over distances.

Their research has provided the foundations for many practical applications of quantum science, particularly encryption.

Clauser said the Nobel had been awarded for work he did more than 50 years ago when he was just a graduate student.

I wrote a paper in 1969 proposing to do an original experiment testing the foundations of quantum mechanics everybody told me I was nuts, that I would ruin my career.

Zeilinger also made reference to the way his work had been dismissed in the past.

During the first experiments I was sometimes asked by the press, 'What is all of this supposed to be good for?' And I told them: 'I can tell you with pride this is good for nothing. I am only doing this out of curiosity because I have been excited by quantum physics from the very moment I first heard about it. Because of the mathematical beauty of this description.

Zeilinger, who is based at the University of Vienna, said he was grateful to Austrian and European taxpayers, as they have enabled him to pursue his work regardless of the possible benefits it might have.

Alain Aspect, the third winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, thinks quantum is fantastic.

[Quantum] has been on the agenda for more than one century and there are still a lot of mysteries, of stranger things to discover in the quantum. It shows that the quantum is still alive. Because of course this prize today, in my opinion, is anticipating, one that will one day be on quantum technologies."

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature

The highest literary prize went to French author Annie Ernaux. She is the first female French Nobel literature winner and just the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel literature laureates.

Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for literature, said Ernaux's writing is subordinated throughout the process of time, adding that Nowhere else does the power of social conventions over our lives play such an important role as in Les Annes.

Published in English in 2008, The Years has been called the first collective autobiography.

Ernaux gave a moving speech at the Nobel academy: It is enormous luck that I was able to accomplish this. The Nobel Prize does not seem part of reality for me just yet, but it is true that I feel it brings a new responsibility," she said.

"I will fight until my last breath so that women can choose to be mothers or not to be mothers. It is a fundamental right.

The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize

The Peace Prize, considered the most significant of them all, and which is awarded to those who have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind, was given to Ales Bialiatski, a Belarusian human rights defender; the Russian human rights organisation Memorial, and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties, which has worked to document Russian war crimes against Ukrainian civilians.

Oleksandra Romantsova, executive director of the Center for Civil Liberties, took to the stage to make a powerful condemnation of the war in Ukraine and the oppressive Belarusian government:

"The absence of respect towards human rights sooner or later led to the war. Lukashenko and Putin, the whole regime, and all people who commit war crimes with their own hands against humanity must be punished," she said.

Ales Bialiatski is currently in prison, but his recognition was nonetheless applauded.

I am really honoured and delighted this award was given to Ales Bialiatski He is a wonderful person, and in 1995 he established the Human Rights Center Viasna in Belarus. He, many times, was in prison for his views, for his intention to protect people and human rights in our country. And, of course, he deserves to be the winner of the Peace Prize," said Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a Belarusian opposition leader.

Tsikhanouskaya said the award to Ales Bialiatski would help to bring more attention to the humanitarian situation in Belarus.

Ales Bialiatski has now been in prison for more than one year, and he is suffering a lot in punishment cells in prison. But there are thousands of other people who are detained because of their political views.

Tatyana Glushkova, board member of the Russian Memorial human rights centre, the third laureate of the award, said that after everything that happened in the past several months, the award was a sign that their work, whether it is recognised by Russian authorities or not, it is important, It is important for the world. It is important for people in Russia."

And thats all from this special edition of the Good News round-up. If you felt inspired by these extraordinary and passionate people, share this episode with your friends.

See you next time, and remember, some news can be good news.

Read more here:

Good News | Meet the Nobel Prize winners: This is how they have changed our lives - Euronews

Whoever said, You cant get something from nothing must never have learned quantum physics. As long as you have empty space the ultimate in physical nothingness simply manipulating it in the right way will inevitably cause something to emerge. Collide two particles in the abyss of empty space, and sometimes additional particle-antiparticle pairs emerge. Take a meson and try to rip the quark away from the antiquark, and a new set of particle-antiparticle pairs will get pulled out of the empty space between them. And in theory, a strong enough electromagnetic field can rip particles and antiparticles out of the vacuum itself, even without any initial particles or antiparticles at all.

Previously, it was thought that the highest particle energies of all would be needed to produce these effects: the kind only obtainable at high-energy particle physics experiments or in extreme astrophysical environments. But in early 2022, strong enough electric fields were created in a simple laboratory setup leveraging the unique properties of graphene, enabling the spontaneous creation of particle-antiparticle pairs from nothing at all. The prediction that this should be possible is 70 years old: dating back to one of the founders of quantum field theory, Julian Schwinger. The Schwinger effect is now verified, and teaches us how the Universe truly makes something from nothing.

This chart of the particles and interactions details how the particles of the Standard Model interact according to the three fundamental forces that Quantum Field Theory describes. When gravity is added into the mix, we obtain the observable Universe that we see, with the laws, parameters, and constants that we know of governing it. Mysteries, such as dark matter and dark energy, still remain.

In the Universe we inhabit, its truly impossible to create nothing in any sort of satisfactory way. Everything that exists, down at a fundamental level, can be decomposed into individual entities quanta that cannot be broken down further. These elementary particles include quarks, electrons, the electrons heavier cousins (muons and taus), neutrinos, as well as all of their antimatter counterparts, plus photons, gluons, and the heavy bosons: the W+, W-, Z0, and the Higgs. If you take all of them away, however, the empty space that remains isnt quite empty in many physical senses.

For one, even in the absence of particles, quantum fields remain. Just as we cannot take the laws of physics away from the Universe, we cannot take the quantum fields that permeate the Universe away from it.

For another, no matter how far away we move any sources of matter, there are two long-range forces whose effects will still remain: electromagnetism and gravitation. While we can make clever setups that ensure that the electromagnetic field strength in a region is zero, we cannot do that for gravitation; space cannot be entirely emptied in any real sense in this regard.

Instead of an empty, blank, three-dimensional grid, putting a mass down causes what would have been straight lines to instead become curved by a specific amount. No matter how far away you get from a point mass, the curvature of space never reaches zero, but always remains, even at infinite range.

But even for the electromagnetic force even if you completely zero out the electric and magnetic fields within a region of space theres an experiment you can perform to demonstrate that empty space isnt truly empty. Even if you create a perfect vacuum, devoid of all particles and antiparticles of all types, where the electric and magnetic fields are zero, theres clearly something thats present in this region of what a physicist might call, from a physical perspective, maximum nothingness.

Travel the Universe with astrophysicist Ethan Siegel. Subscribers will get the newsletter every Saturday. All aboard!

All you need to do is place a set of parallel conducting plates in this region of space. Whereas you might expect that the only force theyd experience between them would be gravity, set by their mutual gravitational attraction, what actually winds up happening is that the plates attract by a much greater amount than gravity predicts.

This physical phenomenon is known as the Casimir effect, and was demonstrated to be true by Steve Lamoreaux in 1996: 48 years after it was calculated and proposed by Hendrik Casimir.

The Casimir effect, illustrated here for two parallel conducting plates, excludes certain electromagnetic modes from the interior of the conducting plates while permitting them outside of the plates. As a result, the plates attract, as predicted by Casimir in the 1940s and verified experimentally by Lamoreaux in the 1990s.

Similarly, in 1951, Julian Schwinger, already a co-founder of the quantum field theory that describes electrons and the electromagnetic force, gave a complete theoretical description of how matter could be created from nothing: simply by applying a strong electric field. Although others had proposed the idea back in the 1930s, including Fritz Sauter, Werner Heisenberg, and Hans Euler, Schwinger himself did the heavy lifting to quantify precisely under what conditions this effect should emerge, and henceforth its been primarily known as the Schwinger effect.

Normally, we expect there to be quantum fluctuations in empty space: excitations of any and all quantum fields that may be present. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle dictates that certain quantities cannot be known in tandem to arbitrary precision, and that includes things like:

While we normally express the uncertainty principle in terms of the first two entities, alone, the other applications can have consequences that are equally profound.

This diagram illustrates the inherent uncertainty relation between position and momentum. When one is known more accurately, the other is inherently less able to be known accurately. Every time you accurately measure one, you ensure a greater uncertainty in the corresponding complementary quantity.

Recall that, for any force that exists, we can describe that force in terms of a field: where the force experienced by a particle is its charge multiplied by some property of the field. If a particle passes through a region of space where the field is non-zero, it can experience a force, depending on its charge and (sometimes) its motion. The stronger the field, the greater the force, and the stronger the field, the greater the amount of field energy exists in that particular region of space.

Even in purely empty space, and even in the absence of external fields, there will still be some non-zero amount of field energy that exists in any such region of space. If there are quantum fields everywhere, then simply by Heisenbergs uncertainty principle, for any duration of time that we choose to measure this region over, there will be an inherently uncertain amount of energy present within that region during that time period.

The shorter the time period were looking at, the greater the uncertainty in the amount of energy in that region. Applying this to all allowable quantum states, we can begin to visualize the fluctuating fields, as well as fluctuating particle-antiparticle pairs, that pop in-and-out of existence due to all of the Universes quantum forces.

Even in the vacuum of empty space, devoid of masses, charges, curved space, and any external fields, the laws of nature and the quantum fields underlying them still exist. If you calculate the lowest-energy state, you may find that it is not exactly zero; the zero-point (or vacuum) energy of the Universe appears to be positive and finite, although small.

Now, lets imagine turning up the electric field. Turn it up, higher and higher, and what will happen?

Lets take an easier case first, and imagine theres a specific type of particle already present: a meson. A meson is made of one quark and one antiquark, connected to one another through the strong force and the exchange of gluons. Quarks come in six different flavors: up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top, while the anti-quarks are simply anti-versions of each of them, with opposite electric charges.

The quark-antiquark pairs within a meson sometimes have opposite charges to one another: either + and - (for up, charm, and top) or + and - (for down, strange, and bottom). If you apply an electric field to such a meson, the positively charged end and the negatively charged end will be pulled in opposite directions. If the field strength is great enough, its possible to pull the quark and antiquark away from one another sufficiently so that new particle-antiparticle pairs are ripped out of the empty space between them. When this occurs, we wind up with two mesons instead of one, with the energy required to create the extra mass (via E = mc) coming from the electric field energy that ripped the meson apart in the first place.

When a meson, such as a charm-anticharm particle shown here, has its two constituent particles pulled apart by too great an amount, it becomes energetically favorable to rip a new (light) quark/antiquark pair out of the vacuum and create two mesons where there was one before. A strong enough electric field, for long-enough lived mesons, can cause this to occur, with the needed energy for creating more massive particles coming from the underlying electric field.

Now, with all of that as background in our minds, lets imagine weve got a very, very strong electric field: stronger than anything we could ever hope to make on Earth. Something so strong that it would be like taking a full Coulomb of charge around ~1019 electrons and protons and condensing each of them into a tiny ball, one purely of positive charge and one purely of negative charge, and separating them by only a meter. The quantum vacuum, in this region of space, is going to be extremely strongly polarized.

Strong polarization means a strong separation between positive and negative charges. If your electric field in a region of space is strong enough, then when you create a virtual particle-antiparticle pair of the lightest charged particle of all (electrons and positrons), you have a finite probability of those pairs being separated by large enough amounts due to the force from the field that they can no longer reannihilate one another. Instead, they become real particles, stealing energy from the underlying electric field in order to keep energy conserved.

As a result, new particle-antiparticle pairs come to exist, and the energy required to make them, from E = mc, reduces the exterior electric field strength by the appropriate amount.

As illustrated here, particle-antiparticle pairs normally pop out of the quantum vacuum as a consequences of Heisenberg uncertainty. In the presence of a strong enough electric field, however, these pairs can be ripped apart in opposite directions, causing them to be unable to reannihilate and forcing them to become real: at the expense of energy from the underlying electric field.

Thats what the Schwinger effect is, and unsurprisingly, its never been observed in a laboratory setting. In fact, the only places where it was theorized to occur was in the highest-energy astrophysical regions to exist in the Universe: in the environments surrounding (or even interior to) black holes and neutron stars. But at the great cosmic distances separating us from even the nearest black holes and neutron stars, even this remains conjecture. The strongest electric fields weve created on Earth are at laser facilities, and even with the strongest, most intense lasers at the shortest pulse times, we still arent even close.

Normally, whenever you have a conducting material, its only the valence electrons that are free to move, contributing to conduction. If you could achieve large enough electric fields, however, you could get all of the electrons to join the flow. In January of 2022, researchers at the University of Manchester were able to leverage an intricate and clever setup involving graphene an incredibly strong material that consists of carbon atoms bound together in geometrically optimal states to achieve this property with relatively small, experimentally accessible magnetic field. In doing so, they also witnesses the Schwinger effect in action: producing the analogue of electron-positron pairs in this quantum system.

Graphene has many fascinating properties, but one of them is a unique electronic band structure. There are conduction bands and valence bands, and they can overlap with zero band gap, enabling both holes and electrons to emerge and flow.

Graphene is an odd material in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is that sheets of it behave effectively as a two-dimensional structure. By reducing the number of (effective) dimensions, many degrees of freedom present in three-dimensional materials are taken away, leaving far fewer options for the quantum particles inside, as well as reducing the set of quantum states available for them to occupy.

Leveraging a graphene-based structure known as a superlattice where multiple layers of materials create periodic structures the authors of this study applied an electric field and induced the very behavior described above: where electrons from not just the highest partially-occupied energy state flow as part of the materials conduction, but where electrons from lower, completely filled bands join the flow as well.

Once this occurs, a lot of exotic behaviors arise in this material, but one was seen for the first time ever: the Schwinger effect. Instead of producing electrons and positrons, it produced electrons and the condensed-matter analogue of positrons: holes, where a missing electron in a lattice flows in the opposite directions to the electron flow. The only way to explain the observed currents were with this additional process of spontaneous production of electrons and holes, and the details of the process agreed with Schwingers predictions from all the way back in 1951.

Atomic and molecular configurations come in a near-infinite number of possible combinations, but the specific combinations found in any material determine its properties. Graphene, which is an individual, single-atom sheet of the material shown here, is the hardest material known to humanity, and in pairs-of-sheets it can create a type of material known as a superlattice, with many intricate and counterintuitive properties.

There are many ways of studying the Universe, and quantum analogue systems where the same mathematics that describes an otherwise inaccessible physical regime applies to a system that can be created and studied in a laboratory are some of the most powerful probes we have of exotic physics. Its very difficult to foresee how the Schwinger effect could be tested in its pure form, but thanks to the extreme properties of graphene, including its ability to withstand spectacularly large electric fields and currents, it arose for the very first time in any form: in this particular quantum system. As coauthor Dr. Roshan Krishna Kumar put it:

When we first saw the spectacular characteristics of our superlattice devices, we thought wow it could be some sort of new superconductivity. Although the response closely resembles those routinely observed in superconductors, we soon found that the puzzling behavior was not superconductivity but rather something in the domain of astrophysics and particle physics. It is curious to see such parallels between distant disciplines.

With electrons and positrons (or holes) being created out of literally nothing, just ripped out of the quantum vacuum by electric fields themselves, its yet another way that the Universe demonstrates the seemingly impossible: we really can make something from absolutely nothing!

Originally posted here:

How the Universe really makes something from nothing - Big Think

The researchers show frequencies of spatially separated clocks can be compared more precisely

The researchers show frequencies of spatially separated clocks can be compared more precisely

An experiment carried out by the University of Oxford researchers combines two unique and one can say even mind-boggling discoveries, namely, high-precision atomic clocks and quantum entanglement, to achieve two atomic clocks that are entangled. This means the inherent uncertainty in measuring their frequencies simultaneously is highly reduced.

While this is a proof-of-concept experiment, it has the potential for use in probing dark matter, precision geodesy and other such applications. The two-node network that they build is extendable to more nodes, the researchers write, in an article on this work published in Nature recently.

Atomic clocks grew in accuracy and became so dependable that in 1967, the definition of a second was revised to be the time taken by 9,19,26,31,770 oscillations of a cesium atom. At the start of the 21st century, the cesium clocks that were available were so accurate that they would gain or lose a second only once in about 20 million years. At present, even this record has been broken and there are optical lattice clocks that are so precise that they lose a second only once in 15 billion years. To give some perspective, that is more than the age of the universe, which is 13.8 billion years.

The more mundane uses to which these clocks can be put include accurate time keeping in GPS, or monitoring stuff remotely on Mars.

If you can measure the frequency difference between these two clocks that are in different locations, that opens up a host of applications, says Raghavendra Srinivas, from the Department of Physics, Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, U.K., who is an author of the Nature paper.

Their work is a proof-of-principle demonstration that two strontium atoms separated in space by a small distance, can be pushed into an entangled state so that a comparison of their frequencies becomes more precise. Potential applications of this when extended in space and including more nodes than two, are in studying the space-time variation of the fundamental constants and probing dark matter deep questions in physics.

In quantum physics, entanglement is a weird phenomenon described as a spooky action at a distance by Albert Einstein. Normally, when you consider two systems separated in space that are also independent and you wished to compare some physical attribute of the two systems, you would make separate measurements of that attribute and this would involve a fundamental limitation to how precisely you can compare the two for two separate measurements have to be made.

On the other hand, if the two were entangled, it is a way of saying that their physical attributes, say spin, or in this case, the frequency, vary in tandem. Measuring the attribute on one system, tells you about the other system. This in turn improves the precision of the measurement to the ultimate limit allowed by quantum theory.

Quantum networks of this kind have been demonstrated earlier, but this is the first demonstration of quantum entanglement of optical atomic clocks.

Dr. Srinivas says, The key development here is that we could improve the fidelity and the rate of this remote entanglement to the point where its actually useful for other applications, like in this clock experiment.

For their demonstration, the researchers used strontium atoms for the ease in generating remote entanglement. They plan to try this with better clocks such as those that use calcium.

We showed that you can now generate remote entanglement in a practical way. At some point, it might be useful for state-of-the art systems, says Dr. Srinivas.

See the rest here:

Using spooky action at a distance to link atomic clocks - The Hindu

UCDs Dr Steve Campbell reflects on the past, present and future of Irelands role in the advancement of quantum technologies.

Many fundamental theories of physics have resulted in important technological revolutions, such as engines and refrigerators from thermodynamics, or modern electronics from electromagnetism.

Recent decades have seen great strides taken in our ability to prepare and manipulate systems such as individual atoms, electrons, or photons which are so small and isolated that they can only be accurately described using quantum mechanics.

Now, the seemingly exotic rules of the quantum world are providing remarkable new opportunities for technological breakthroughs.

In this endeavour, Ireland has a remarkably intimate and grand history. The Irish physicist John Bell provided the fundamental breakthrough to test the veracity of arguably the most counterintuitive aspect of quantum mechanics its inherent non-local character which now lies at the heart of this technological revolution.

Nonlocality refers to the curious fact that, for quantum systems comprised of two or more constituents that have interacted (imagine, for example, two electrons that collided at some point), the act of measuring one of these electrons affects the state of the other, even if they are separated by vast distances.

Bells nonlocality arises from a very fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics concerning how strong correlations can be. Think of a light switch and the bulb it is connected to. In so-called classical physics the world of Newton and Einstein the switch can only be on or off, never anything in between, and the state of the bulb is correlated with the state of the switch.

Quantum mechanics tells us that before we look at the switch, it can exist in a combination (or superposition, in the quantum lingo) of the possibilities. Essentially, it can simultaneously be both on and off. The resulting correlation with the bulb due to this superposition is what we call entanglement.

Once thought to be a fundamental flaw in quantum theory, quantum superposition and entanglement are now established physical phenomena and are ushering in a new wave of devices which utilise these distinctly quantum mechanical effects as resources. These quantum technologies include the most accurate sensors allowed by the laws of physics, unbreakable communication channels and, most excitingly, entirely new paradigms for computation and information processing.

While there has been steady activity in the area of quantum information in Ireland for more than 25 years, recently there has been a significant surge. Driven largely by grassroots activity, supported through national and European funding, virtually every Irish higher education institution is host to an internationally recognised group at the forefront of quantum science and technology.

This has precipitated several major initiatives, such as the establishment of research centres at University College Dublin (UCD) and Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork, and the recently launched MSc in quantum science and technology at Trinity College Dublin, which saw its first cohort of graduates this summer.

These activities feed into the overarching goal to train the next generation of quantum scientists and engineers and to facilitate key knowledge exchange between major industry players with a presence in Ireland, such as IBM, Microsoft, Dell, Google, Intel, homegrown quantum computing enterprise Equal1, and our universities.

The symbiotic relationships being created across these sectors are allowing our researchers to attack a range of exciting challenges from simulating complex molecular dynamics to developing ultraprecise sensors and beyond.

The Irish quantum community is coming together to meet the grand challenge of developing quantum devices. The Irish Research Council, in conjunction with the Shared Island initiative from the Department of An Taoiseach, recently funded EQUITY: ire Strategy for Quantum Information and Technology.

The first activity under this scheme brought together most of Irelands leading scientists in the field, together with major industry representatives, for a two-day workshop to discuss where Ireland stands currently and where we are poised to make an impact.

Several directions are now driving forward including major projects on quantum computing architectures, quantum sensing, and developing a secure quantum communications network. In an age where the protection of our personal data is more important than ever, this last point is highly relevant beyond the ivory tower of academia.

Most of all, EQUITY placed high importance on ensuring that the impact of quantum technologies reached as broad an audience as possible. One step in achieving this goal is with the upcoming Quantum Festival at UCD, where quantum researchers across the whole Island of Ireland will come together to showcase their work.

This event also includes a public lecture by leading quantum securities expert Dr Eleni Diamanti, CNRS research director at the LIP6 Laboratory of Sorbonne University in Paris. In her lecture, Secure communication in a quantum world, Diamanti will explain how the way in which we transmit information is changing thanks to quantum mechanics, what that means for security, and how quantum technologies are poised to impact so many aspects of our lives.

By Dr Steve Campbell

Dr Steve Campbell is a theoretical physicist at the UCD School of Physics and a member of the UCD Centre for Quantum Engineering, Science, and Technology (C-QuEST).

Dr Eleni Diamanti will speak at the UCD Quantum Festival on 29 September. Register for free here.

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Ireland is gearing up for the next generation of quantum technologies - SiliconRepublic.com

This week, scientists will put the finishing touches on the Zetawatt-Equivalent Ultrashort Pulse Laser System (ZEUS) at the University of Michigan, ushering in a new era in high-powered laser experiments, as reported first byNew Atlas.

The device, touted as the most potentlasersystem in the US, will aid researchers in their study of a variety of phenomena, such as quantum physics, space exploration, and cancer therapy.

(Photo : Marcin Szczepanski, Michigan Engineering)

It is worth noting that the ZEUS laser at theUniversity of Michiganwill serve as the replacement for the 0.5-Petawatt Herculeslaser, which was used to set the Guinness World Record for the Highest Intensity Focused Laser in 2008.

ZEUS is built to replicate a beam approximately a million times more powerful than its maximum strength of 3 Petawatts by aiming its laser towards a high-energy electron beam traveling in the opposite direction.

This full power operation of ZEUS will imitate a zetawatt laser pulse, allowing researchers to study extreme plasmas and explore quantum electrodynamics.

The tests could result in the generation of matter and antimatter that could explain the origins of some of the cosmos' most fundamental phenomena.

"Magnetars, which are neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields around them, and objects like active galactic nuclei surrounded by very hot plasma - we can recreate the microphysics of hot plasma in extremely strong fields in the laboratory," ZEUS' Associate Director Louise Willingale said in a statement.

But that kind of operation is not anticipated to happen soon since n ewX-rayimaging technologies will be studied first using low-power laser pulses of 30 terawatts, but 500 terawatt experiments are scheduled for the local fall before starting zetawatt operations in 2023, which is referred to as ZEUS's signature experiment.

Read also:Researchers Use Infrared Laser Light to Wirelessly Transmit Power Over 98 Feet of Thin Air!

In addition to helping scientists understand how materials change over very short periods of time, ZEUS is anticipated to contribute to the development of technologies that enhancenuclear weaponsdetection in shipping materials.

The facility's research could potentially result in more compact and effective particle accelerators that produce radioactive isotopes and proton beams, speeding up the creation of cancer treatments.

Karl Krushelnick, director of the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science, which houses ZEUS, said that it would be among the most powerful laser systems in the world and the highest peak power laser in the US.

The high-repetition target area, which conducts tests with more frequent but lower strength laser pulses, is the first target area of the team to start the system's operation.

Franklin Dollar, a graduate of Michigan who is currently an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California Irvine, is the instrument's first user, and his group is investigating a novel form of X-ray imaging.

They will utilize ZEUS to fire infrared laser pulses into a helium gas target, converting the gas to plasma. By accelerating electrons to high energy, this plasma creates very small X-ray bursts as the electron beams flicker, according to scientists.

Related Article:Laser Coffee? Researchers Create A 'Laser-Powered Extractor' That Pumps Out Cold-Brew 300 Times Faster Than Regular Methods!

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Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla

2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

Excerpt from:

Scientists Will Activate The 'Most Powerful Laser' in the US Later This Week - Tech Times

Observing todays world and all conundrums of postmodernism, along with pluralism and the tyranny of choice, one can witness an era of gaps, where great lack of common denominators is a contemporary hazard. The situations redefine diligence and empowers individuals to act like agents of change, not solemnly passive receivers. Now in the era of artificial intelligence, a new underreported challenge has emerged when will humans become obsolete? If one believes that this question is yet another example of philosophical melodrama, it is important to consider that society will soon have to redefine what it considers to be life itself (Bajrektarevi, 2020).

In this article I discuss and investigate the idea of unity and pluralism, inclusion nor integration of EU Members and mostly focus on philosophical and existentialistic constituents of stability in the post-covid era of meaning loss. I specially introduce the triad trust-collaboration- mediation.

Many contemporary reflections on the events of last few decades are surmounting the genuine role of pluralism to unfold democratic standards. Major changes and shifts were induced by general alternations of beliefs, conduct and perception. When our sporadic breakthroughs finally became faster than their infrequent transmissions, this marked a major turning point in the history of human development. Simply put, our civilizations started to significantly differentiate from each other in their respective techno-agrarian, politico-military, ethno-religious, ideological, and economic structures (Bajrektarevi, 2020).

We can bow to the idea of multilateral and plural, dignifying understanding of many different views, aspects, and perceptions. Unquestionably we as humanity are denoting diversity of views or standards alongside our brutal colonial, postcolonial and post war conditions. Pluralism can be an answer, side off totalitarianisms and one-sided approaches. Since everyone is unique from one another, whilst there are infinite differences in humans, our backgrounds, education, and expectation, we must learn to recognize, interlace, and adapt to historic and social-economic context of our fellow beings. We need to question our grounding positioning and reembrace the idea of enlightened argumentation.

Essential question here is, who is managing common denominators of the modern and contemporary pluralisms? Who is translating the gaps of meaning, contexts, and perceptions? To whom we justify our modus operandi? Is there any kind of individual responsibility behind the international clusters and organizations?We do not dispute the idea and practice of pluralism rather searching for unfolded ground, solid in structure and prone to any kind of criticism. But we encounter technological devolvement of human affairs; engendering the idea of biological relativity upholds the question of what life really is. For example, AI now has it all quantum physics, quantum computing, nanorobotics, bioinformatics, and organic tissue tailoring. All of this could eventually lead to a synthesis of all the above into what are usually referred to as xenobots a sort of living robot and biodegradable symbiotic nanorobots that exclusively rely on self-navigable algorithms (Bajrektarevi, 2020).

Pluralism certainly is an ecosystem of democracy, shielding the subtle nuances of partitions, supporting the core, and distinguishing it from the tainted and awry interpretations. The diligence of modern diplomacy faced with conundrum of believes and brown-nosing interests, outdoes the schism, self-regarding positioning, and frictions in the map of human empathy and wisdom.

This is also a reason why diplomats need to respond to cumbersome media in the wake of interpretative realties attacks (e.g. fake news), lukewarmly summoned in social media and e-worlds.

Todays pundits are more likely to study neuroscience, philosophy, and anthropology rather solely art of diplomacy against contemporary labyrinth of possible realities, yielding and era where no mind can encompass it all, rather estimates, prescribes, visions, and predicts. And all we can dwell into is a structure of possible scenarios, relying only on our knowledge, clean perception and trustworthy colleagues, social groups, and intimate circles. And we need to search for common denominators where we suggest one of them.

Trust is a new category not just in contemporary workplaces where we need to create environments of psychological safety to support mutual and successful cooperation. As well it is a genuine link in the chain of negotiating in desultory or hostile environments of contemporary global politics.

Since each international milieu deploys a diverse team of people, reflecting their own culture and believes, we need to be aware of a fragile equilibrium to support strong HR inclusion politics. As definitions says, diversity encompasses the spectrum of infinite dissimilarities that distinguish individuals from one another. Whilst search for common denominator is a big ask, one must conscientiously foster and uphold focus on things that bind, not separate us. Impactful are diverse surroundings we originate and derive from, that can easily put question mark to our cognition, hence to possible misunderstandings: citizenship status, cognitive abilities, cultural differences, education, ethnicity, family, gender, gender expression, geographical location, ideologies, income, language, marital status, morals, neurodiversity, parental status, physical abilities, political beliefs, privilege, race, religious beliefs, skills, social roles, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, upbringing, work experiences etc.

But if we follow the formula of three stated notions, is clear that what we UNDERSTAND, we can ACCEPT; what we FEEL, we can CO-RELATE TO and what we INTERNALIZE, we can CO-CREATE.

In pursuing the goal of collective abundance and stability, leaders sometimes carry to heavy burden. They need to address collective imagination of peoples and create framework of shared reality, identity, bringing together four particulate and individual dimensions: body (healthy living), mind (smart decisions), heart (trustworthy relationships) and spirit (contribution to the benefit of all) and other important cultural beliefs of EU.

While social scientists classically studied trust, conceptualized it as a mental state and measured as such, they were assuming that high levels of trust reflect a social reality in which people are more trustworthy and tend to cooperate more frequently. Only actors who trust one another should cooperate with each other, e.g., exchange information, resources, etc. Of course, reality is relentlessly far away from stated ideal; entering a cooperative relationship normally requires a certain level of trust, and the same is necessary to sustain that relationship. We have accounts of trust as a form of moral commitment, a character disposition, or a dynamic of encapsulated interests, where trust emerges as a mutual co-implication of interests on all transacting parties.

These conceptions turn on a notion of trust as a cognitive category because all depend on assessments of the trustworthiness of the potentially trusted person. (Hardin 2006: 17)

We could estimate that trust emerges as an epiphenomenon of social knowledge: what peoples relationships look like after the fact of cognitive re-appraisals is a sine qua non of the idiom of trust. Can we just bluntly trust, willing to meet all perils of such an irrational decision?

There is more to trust that its relation to cognitive and knowledgeable structures. Trust may be encapsulated in reciprocal expectations (Hardin 2006), but it is also distributed in a variety of human and nonhuman forms; it is as much as cognitive category as it is a material one; indeed, it belongs to the realm of the intersubjective in as much as it belongs to the interobjective. It is as much an anthropological object (of theory) as an object of social knowledge. The question of trust therefore qualifies as an anthropological concept.

In this respect we introduce the TABLES OF TRUST.

TABLE 1.: LEVELS OF TRUST

TABLE 2.: WHOM WE TRUST TO?

TABLE 3.: IN WHAT WE TRUST

TABLE4.: LEVELS OF TRUST / MATERIAL, SPIRITUAL

Collaboration is an old way to work efficiently; at the core of collaboration is trust and exercise of agreed meaning, which can be achievable in many ways, one of which is mediation. Sincerely trust needs to be evident in the relationships how work is done, how words are spoken, and how the results are driven. Without trust, collaboration falls apart quickly and, sometimes, irreparably.

Before entering any sorts of ADRs, one must ask oneself the following introspective questions, regarding ones inner inclination towards trust to be sincere, truthful or the opposite:

TABLE 5: ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS BEFORE ADR

Meanwhile, The Trust Game, designed by Berg et al. (1995) and otherwise called the investment game, is the experiment of choice to measure trust in economic decisions. The experiment is designed to demonstrate that trust is an economic primitive, or that trust is as basic to economic transactions as self-interest (give and get, get, and give). What about higher visons, missions, and inspiration? Of goodness, sacred and beneficial to all? How can we discern the subtle and hidden pivots of status quo or change in the process of mediation for example? How can we set the grounding for effective collaboration in international set up?

We generally expect the role of the mediator is to consist in assisting the parties, finding common ground and business interests that may be explored to settle the dispute through reaching a mutually satisfactory settlement agreement. The mediator is bound to always keep the substance of the mediation confidential. Also, mediators are independent and impartial and may not be involved in any further proceedings involving the case at issue, or any related case. As we know the European Union actively promotes methods of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), such as mediation. The Mediation Directive applies in all EU countries. The Directive concerns mediation in civil and commercial matters. Mediation is at varying stages of development in Member States. The role of the mediator consists of assisting the parties in finding common ground and business interests that may be explored to settle the dispute https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en/mediation.

So, the mediation as a process needs to be aware of gaps in meaning and trust algorithms described above. The rapid growth of social networks facilitates the exchange of information, whereas malicious behaviours in those ecosystems are also steadily increasing, meanwhile the chances to find correct common denominators vary distinctively. This results in a challenging situation for individuals to trust other parties, mediators or new models and approaches of ADR.

This reflection on pluralism, trust and collaborations shows the propagation of trust within a chain of trust relations.

The precise selection of trustworthy paths as well as the integration of indigenous values, contexts, and inherent plurality of idioms, shows the significant importance of awareness and mindfulness.

What we allocate and are ready to reflect upon or project in comparison to ability to observe with trust and introspection, is pivotal.

Therefore, trust models play a significant role in the context of social, political, and geopolitical trustworthiness. Inferring the trust levels between two unknown parties is a challenging task, specially in the realm of ADR methods, what would certainly be a major and crucial future agenda.

References:

Hardin, Russell (2006): Trust. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Mllering, Guido (2001): The nature of trust: from Georg Simmel to a theory of expectation, interpretationand suspension. Sociology 35(2):403-420.

OHara, Kieron (2004): Trust: from Socrates to spin. Duxford: Icon Books.

ONeill, Onora (2002): A question of trust. The BBC Reith Lectures 2002. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

https://euipo.europa.eu/ohimportal/en/mediation

A future filled with empty choices? | New Europe

Prof. Lucija Mulej, Ph.D is an author, columnist, professor and creator of the non-technological innovations (such as her own method: Connectivity of Intelligences 4 Q )

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Of Tyranny Of Choice And The Trust In Pluralistic Societies Analysis - Eurasia Review

With the teaser release of Gehraiyaan earlier this year, the world woke up to the musical genius of Kabeer Kathpalia aka OAFF. Having made his name in the indie music scene for his eclectic atmospheric pop sound and for his ability to lend a theatrical vibe to tracks, the music producer is now tasting mainstream success and rightfully so. Having been following his journey for a while, it is almost unmissable to trace his sonic evolution, his love for music that evokes nostalgia and a need to reinvent and experiment. If there is a music producer to watch out for in this generation, it is him. In a tell-all conversation with Homegrown, OAFF lets us in on his punk rock band days from high school, his love for quantum physics, and creating music.

It is quite known that you were in a punk rock band in high school with Savera and thats what started your musical journey. Was there ever a moment before that when you thought Maybe I want to make music for the rest of my life?

Was there ever a moment before the punk rock band? No, I dont think that moment came even during the punk rock band. It was mostly to be cool in school and impress girls. It was only after that I got into learning music theory because I picked up the guitar for the band. I used to sing before and then I realised I should probably hold something so I picked up the guitar. It wasnt until many many many years later that I thought that this could be a career option. I actually wanted to become a physicist. (Oh thats on quite the opposite end of what you ended up doing) yeah, it worked out that way but in an alternate lifetime maybe I would have done that.

We listen to very different music growing up, whats the kind of music you grew up listening to? What were some of your favourites?

I think I was lucky, in the sense that my family was interested in different kinds of music and I remember waking up, we had this speaker at home when I was a child and there used to be music playing. My father would put something. There was a lot of Indian classical, a lot eclectic Western classical, Philip Glass and stuff like that and then there was the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel and stuff like that. I remember now and I think now that it left a big impression on me, there used to be this record label called Wildermin records which was this small record label that started there and my father used to collect these CDs cause he liked the artwork when he was younger. He had these CDs and they were these ambient-y kind of very soothing music. And I think a lot of it, (not consciously) stayed in my music-making process. Somehow it has crept in.

In the playlist you shared in an interview, your playlist seems to be dominated by an indie folk sound one that has an atmospheric and cinematic feel to it. Whats your favourite album of all time? And do you feel like its impacted the way you create music?

I feel like that Bon Iver album, which was his second album Bon Iver, Bon Iver. Then theres an album called Dive, its Tychos album. Theres an Asian ambi-electronic producer, I remember that one song, called Walk in the Hills. Even now when I listen to it, it just feels like its been years and years and its the one song I played throughout. Ive been listening to it and I still love it. It was really interesting how he created this cinematic, atmospheric environment using a lot of sounds that are kind of going through some distortion or sounds that are going through a tape effect. So I got really fascinated by how you make things sound old also.

So, basically what youre essentially saying is this the theres this imperfect sound that you feel drawn to?

Yeah. I think that is it, because in both of these Bon Iver albums and with the other producer, theres this like really human element to it. I dont know how much of that translates to my music because I dont know if I do that, but I love listening to that. At least I feel like then theres honesty in the music.

Youve coined the phrase atmospheric pop to describe the kind of music you create. Have you felt a sort of evolution in the kind of music youve been making? Do you feel like youve come into yourself sonically?

Thats a difficult question because I dont like to think this is who I am, but as you change your interests change and youre like, Oh wait, maybe thats just who I was at that point or an aspect to me.

But there are these other things that I havent explored that I want to explore. So more than trying to decide who I am and trying to discover that solely for me, its more fun to kind of explore things that are new and exciting for me. So whether people think thats my sound or some different sound. For me, I think the only way to make music is if Im excited about what Im doing and that constantly changes with new music that Im listening to.

Whats one genre youre excited about experimenting with?

A bunch of stuff. Firstly it was new for me to make music in Hindi. Its not a new genre or anything but it is a new experience for me because the first Hindi song I made was with Kayan, who is a really amazing independent artist. Then I did Gehraiyaan and thats opened up a whole new world to me. Im listening to so many new artists that I didnt listen to before. Recently Ive been listening to bedroom-produced indie pop, which has guitars in it and like badly recorded drums, but like, its kind of cool. I like that vibe.

Do you think its an exciting time to be in the music industry? Especially with people moving away from the perception of needing a studio space to create music to artists creating music from with their laptops in the four walls of their homes.

So the interesting thing is that all the music of Gehraiyaan was made on this laptop that Im having this Zoom call on. It was literally on this one laptop that the songs Doobey and Gehraiyaan, the main title track were made and then later in the studio we finished them. But a lot of it happened at home like a bedroom producer. So I really dont believe this thing about people needing super fancy studios and equipment to make music. I do feel like its always fun to have a new instrument because thats inspiring. Thats a different thing, but youre not limited because your laptop has enough to make whatever you want if you can figure it out. So I feel like a lot of these artists are coming up that are doing this. I feel like the next generation is going to be even far more removed and just be recording via their phones, but theyll be connected to those sounds in a different way.

From an indie music space to seeing commercial success in Gehraiyaan, whats that journey been like? Has it in any way changed the way you create music? What was the creative process for Gehraiyaan like?

I mean, first of all, I wish I knew what that process is. It can be anything at any point in time and you dont really know it. You think that you have a structure, but usually, the good things happen somewhere else. Its not really in that formula or its not in that design that you had. So, the process pretty much stays the same, except that now a few more people are involved in the process. I feel like Im just learning more and more about music and what makes good music good. So thats, whats changed. I dont think the process itself has changed.

What do you think has been your personal favorite project till date?

Personally, I feel Gehraiyaan. I cant say anything except that at this point because it has changed so much for me in terms of not just music, but life, like things change after that. After having a movie like that and having songs that people like so much, every song is special, but Gehraiyaan made a big difference in my life for sure.

How did Gehraiyaan happen to you in that sense?

Shakun Batra, the director reached out to me on Instagram saying he likes my music and if we could meet. We met and he was interested. He had heard some of my independent music and wanted my sound to be the sound of the background score. Then they offered us a song asking Do you guys wanna give it a shot? So we gave it a shot, then there was a long waiting period but finally, that song got approved. Then we were offered one more song, then that got approved and then they were like, Just do the whole album.

Thats very interesting. You started from one song and ended up doing the entire thing.

We werent even supposed to do the song. We were supposed to do the score. And we were like Wow! Were getting to do a score where he wants us to do what we do anyway and then it became like full-fledged songs.

Whats been the most joyous part of creating music for you?

The joyous part is always that moment when youre creating something that initial first time youre sitting on the computer or whatever instrument and you come up with something new and that excites you. Thats amazing. Like thats the feeling that everybody chases.

Who is Kabeer as a person, when removed from the artist?

I dont think Im too different from what I put up on. Like what people see of me, Im pretty similar to that because I think itll be harder to be someone else and to have this artist persona and then go back to living your normal life. I find that has more effort involved than just being whoever you are. But one thing that people might not know is that Im a bit of an obsessive person. Im a nerd, a geek where if theres something that interests me, physics, for example, then I want to really know everything about it and Im consumed by it. So I feel like that happens to me every once in a while about some new topic. And then I need to know everything about it.

Whats the latest obsession at the moment then?

Quantum physics. I started that in college and I started physics in college in my bachelors and then I didnt study physics because I got into music. So I always had this fascination of understanding how the universe works. What is it all about? What are we made of? What is happening? What is the nature of reality? So, Im getting back to studying those things again a little more seriously.

What defines OAFF as an artist?

I think its a constant process of experimentation trying new things and a sense of wonder for me as an artist. That is the feeling that Im always gravitating towards, this sort of bittersweet feeling, which is happy but when its over you feel sad about it. Its almost like nostalgia. I think thats what I really gravitate towards. I think its such a beautiful feeling. Even TV shows or books or songs, the ones which are kind of sad, but really beautiful. I think thats what I love a lot. I think its got to do with trying to remember your childhood or remembering an old memory. Theres something about that is very beautiful to me.

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Inside The Inimitable Atmospheric Pop World Of OAFF - Homegrown