Category Archives: Quantum Physics

MANOUSH ZOMORODI, HOST:

It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm a Manoush Zomorodi.

And if you've ever heard a song and instantly been transported back in time, you know the power of music to punctuate an event in your life or distill a moment in history. Musician Rosanne Cash calls this the rhythm and rhyme of memory. And she says it's the force behind her songwriting.

ROSANNE CASH: There's a mystery and a magic at the center of this process that's really undefinable and unexplainable. And when you touch that, you're touching something of the divine. It's this creative source.

ZOMORODI: That creative source has led her to record 15 albums over the past four decades and win four Grammy Awards. It also, she says, helped her accept the scrutiny that came with being the legendary Johnny Cash's daughter and, more recently, confront America's painful past, including her family's own role in that history.

R CASH: I often don't know what I feel or think. And I don't know how to process things. And I don't know what I want until I write about it.

ZOMORODI: On this episode, we explore the links between memory and music with singer, songwriter and musician Rosanne Cash, who is incredibly cool and funny and punctual.

Wait a minute, it's exactly 9 a.m. and we're both recording and ready to go.

R CASH: (Laughter).

ZOMORODI: How is that even possible?

R CASH: It's unheard of.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A FEATHER'S NOT A BIRD")

R CASH: (Singing) A stone is not a mountain, but a river runs through me.

ZOMORODI: And off we go.

Rosanne Cash, hello, and thank you so much for being here.

R CASH: Hi, Manoush. I'm thrilled to talk to you.

ZOMORODI: So, Rosanne, I have to imagine that as the daughter of Johnny Cash, there was probably a good amount of music in your life as a child. Was it something that was just everywhere? I mean, I know that your dad had his first single put out just a couple months after you were born.

R CASH: About a month, actually.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CRY, CRY, CRY")

JOHNNY CASH: (Singing) I wasted my time when I would try, try, try 'cause when the lights have lost their glow, you'll cry, cry, cry.

R CASH: Yeah. It was in the house all the time - and not just what my father was playing - you know, Jimmie Rodgers and Woody Guthrie and, you know, Hank Williams and all of the older country stars and Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the gospel and blues. All of that was around.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "UP ABOVE MY HEAD")

SISTER ROSETTA THARPE: (Singing) Up above my head. Up above my head. I hear music in the air.

R CASH: But then when my dad was on the road, what my mother played was also incredibly influential. She loved Patsy Cline.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STRANGE")

PATSY CLINE: (Singing) Well I guess that I was just your puppet you held on a string.

R CASH: And then when I was old enough to discover the songs on the radio for myself, then it was the Beatles.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I SAW HER STANDING THERE")

THE BEATLES: (Singing) Well, she was just 17.

R CASH: I learned to love the Beatles and Patsy Cline and blues and Southern gospel and Marty Robbins and, you know, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. It was all swirling around.

ZOMORODI: In the talk you gave in 2021, which is called "The Rhythm And Rhyme Of Memory, Solitude And Community," you say that in your family there was a song for every loss, every celebration, every unspoken need, every longing. And I guess I would think, wow, that is a family that is great at communicating with each other. But that was not necessarily the case, right?

R CASH: No. Well, what you describe is the - if that was actually carried out, if that was actually something that was happening, the idea that we could sit down and go, this is how I'm feeling, and here's the song for it - no. What happened is that I found those songs for myself. They helped explain me to my selves, you know, that indefinable longing or sadness or melancholy or hope or loss or thrill. There were songs for every most nuanced expression of all of those emotions. There are songs for each one. And I was able to find them, you know?

There's something in my DNA that was attuned to that language. But the - my house was much more chaotic. I think that the - music is how I made sense of a lot of things, and it was my particular kind of special cave that I went into. You know, my father was a drug addict in my early years. My mother was not equipped to handle either a partner who was a drug addict or fame. And those are the two things that kind of permeated our household - and then my mother's anger and fear and grief about all of those things. So there was not a lot of room for other emotion.

And I think me and my sisters were - we didn't have anything explained to us. You know, they didn't talk to kids back then. There was no way they were going to sit down and say, look, your father's a drug addict, and here's what's happening. No. So the confusion and fear, you know? - and children think, oh, that's - this has to be my fault. It was complicated.

ZOMORODI: What were some of the ways that you coped with having a dad who was so famous?

R CASH: The thing is, is that I my family was so abnormal that I looked for, what did normal families do? I loved the "Little House On The Prairie" series because, you know, the washing was on Monday, and the baking was on Tuesday. And you did this and you didn't wear this, and you didn't speak like this. And I thought, OK, that's normal. And I wanted to create my own sense of normalcy.

ZOMORODI: So if you didn't live a normal childhood and you were looking for normalcy, what are some of your first memories, or what did you think you would grow up to become?

R CASH: Oh, I knew I would be a writer. I had a dream when I was 13 years old, and it was of my mother and my grandmother. And they were sitting at a card table. And they were vacant, just vacant behind the eyes and rote in their actions. And they kept putting cards slowly on the table to each other. And I woke up in a sweat at 13. And I said to myself, I will never be a card player. And I wrote my dad a letter - my dad was on the road - about my - those impulses. I didn't want to live in that kind of deadening routine. I wanted to do something that touched the divine. I didn't use those words at that time. But he wrote me back, and he said, I see that you see as I see.

ZOMORODI: Wow.

R CASH: And I held on to that. And I realized that there was a template for me to be who I was in the world, and it wasn't to copy, but it was to explore and find myself. And in some ways, my dad and I had a simpler relationship than I had with my mother. She saw that I was - there was some kind of DNA thread that was similar to my dad's, that I was an artist. And I think she saw that from a young age, and it terrified her.

ZOMORODI: So you started writing pretty early on.

R CASH: Yeah. Well, I did write poetry starting from about the age of 8 or 9. Rhyme and language were already - even from the time I was 3, my mother said, you asked what every word said and what it meant. So I was writing poetry all through my teens. And then at some point - this babysitter I had wrote to me, you know, like 10, 15 years ago and said, I babysat you. And I remember you said, how do you put poetry to music? And I thought to myself, why was I asking her?

(LAUGHTER)

R CASH: I had a better authority in my own house. But yeah, that's what happened, is that when I learned to play guitar, I started writing songs. And that was about age 18.

ZOMORODI: You tell a story in your TED Talk about some writing you did when you were younger - this phrase that you came up with that ended up revisiting you later in life and really influencing you.

R CASH: Yeah. I was in my mid-30s, and I was working on a song. And my mom at the same time across the country was going through my school papers and drawings and, you know, things from childhood of mine that she'd saved. And she sent me this whole box. And I was leafing through the box, and I came across this paper I had done in seventh grade on metaphors and similes.

And I looked at this paper, and I - it suddenly just washed over me. The thrill I had felt in doing that paper was the first time that I had ever been excited about anything that they had asked me to do in Catholic school. And there was this metaphor I had written. A lonely road is a bodyguard. This is a beautiful metaphor that I wrote at 12 years old. And it really moved me and struck me. And I just took that line and put it right in the song I was writing. The song's called "Sleeping In Paris."

ZOMORODI: Here's Rosanne Cash performing on the TED stage.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

R CASH: (Singing) I'll send the angels to watch over you tonight, and you send them right back to me. A lonely road is a bodyguard if we really want it to be.

A lonely road is a bodyguard. What did it mean? I had even pasted a picture of this empty road next to the line. So my 12-year-old waved at me across the decades saying that who I was was who I would become. As painful as that was then and as it still can be painful now, I knew what she was telling me - that solitude can protect the seeds of creativity and that loneliness contains a priceless gift. If we can tolerate the initial discomfort and avoid the seduction of despair, we're all just radios hoping to pick up each other's signals. And some of those signals have a backbeat and a melody, and they're universal. And music can unlock a frozen memory that melts into the seeds of our creativity. And the reverse is also true. A memory can unlock a song that's waiting to be written.

ZOMORODI: When we come back, more with Rosanne Cash, including a recent revelation about her mother that adds a twist to her family's history. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DANCE WITH THE TIGER")

R CASH: (Singing) Of just how alone are all who live here.

ZOMORODI: It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and with me for the hour is Rosanne Cash.

Hi, Rosanne.

R CASH: Hi, Manoush.

ZOMORODI: So we were talking about your dad, Johnny Cash. In the '60s, he moved your family from Tennessee to California. But as you said, it was kind of a tough childhood. As your father's success exploded, your parents' relationship really suffered. And I think most people know more about your dad's second wife, June Carter. But tell us about your mom, his first wife, Vivian, because she was a quiet but intense character.

R CASH: She wasn't very quiet at home.

(LAUGHTER)

R CASH: She was very intense. She's Sicilian, you know? She was very private and was not equipped to deal with my dad's sudden fame - explosive fame - and then his subsequent drug addiction. You know, in the '60s, it was like - he would have to drive 200 miles and do three shows a night, you know, on these tours. And at some point, someone gave a pill to him and said, take this. It'll keep you awake. Take this, and it'll help you sleep afterwards. And then that was it.

So my mom was not prepared for that. And then, you know, her - the template she had later on - when I went into, you know, became a songwriter and she realized that this was going to be my life path, she - her template for that was, oh, you get on drugs. You get divorced. Your family falls apart. You're never home, you know? And she was terrified that that's - was going to be my life.

ZOMORODI: Did you reassure her and say, no, I've learned from what not to do?

R CASH: No. I was not in the business of reassuring my mom anything at the age of 18.

(LAUGHTER)

R CASH: I just wanted to get away.

ZOMORODI: Just to step back for a second, in the beginning of your parents' relationship, they were madly in love.

R CASH: Absolutely. My dad was in the Air Force for three years. And my sisters and I have 1,000 letters they wrote to each other.

ZOMORODI: Wow.

R CASH: Yeah.

ZOMORODI: That's crazy - a thousand. And is he saying, like, I'm going to be a big musical superstar?

R CASH: No, he was - it was mostly besotted teenage love. You know...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

J CASH: I do, Vivian. I love you very much. I love you more than anything in the world. We'll be together soon.

R CASH: My darling, my darling, my darling, and then, you know, he would throw in, I bought this record. I bought a cheap guitar. I have a little band with two of the other, you know, Air Force guys. And so there were these sprinklings of what was being seeded in him at that time.

ZOMORODI: And so there was this period where your parents were really happy.

R CASH: Oh, yeah - I mean, until I was about 6, I think. You know, it was great. They were in love. They were building a life together. Like you said, we moved to California when I was 3 from Memphis. And then things started falling apart.

ZOMORODI: I had read the story - I knew in the history books that in 1965 your father was arrested in Texas for drug possession. But I didn't know the story that your mom went down to get him out of jail and that there's a famous photo that was taken as they left the courthouse. And the public had, I mean, outrageous reaction to this photo. Can you explain what happened?

R CASH: Well, it was a, you know, a photo in the newspaper - not very pixelated, as it was back then. And it was dark. And my mother's features are Sicilian. And it appeared that she was African American. And there was this outcry that my father had married a Black woman. And the Ku Klux Klan started this campaign against my father to ban his records. And, you know, they excoriated him in the press. And it was this kind of - it got very intense and scary. And I didn't know what this was all about. But it was very frightening.

And he had to - he wrote this letter, you know, saying that my mother was Italian. And, you know, this went on for a while. And my mother was, like I said, so private. And she was extremely embarrassed by this attention - you know, something about her appearance or about her history or her race. And that was incredibly hard for her to process. It was too much attention and in the wrong way.

ZOMORODI: And there is actually another layer to this story, because your mother always believed that she came from an Italian American family, but you recently learned that there actually is some African heritage, too.

R CASH: It's so fascinating. I did "Finding Your Roots" a few years ago. And my mother's paternal side was, indeed, 100% Sicilian. They - you know, her grandparents immigrated from Sicily in the late 1900s and opened a store in San Antonio. All of this is well documented. And - but it turns out on her maternal side, whose history goes back deep in America, that in the 1840s there was a freed slave married to - actually, I don't know if they could get married, but they were living as man and wife in Alabama in the 1840s. They had nine children together. And one of those children is my grandmother's - my maternal grandmother's - direct ancestor.

ZOMORODI: Yeah. It's an amazing coda to this chapter in your family's history. Was it on your mind when you wrote the song "The Killing Fields"? You sing about your family's Southern roots and the history there of lynchings and racism in the South. It is haunting.

R CASH: Yeah. So writing "The Killing Fields" was a slow awakening. And I do not claim to be awakened about race and about the suffering of African Americans and about the history of slavery. But I am - I want to be awakened about it.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE KILLING FIELDS")

R CASH: (Singing) There was cotton on the killing fields. It blows down through the years. It sticks to me just like a burn, fills my eyes and ears. And all that came before me...

And I had already been thinking about race. My grandfather - Cash - had a deep thread of racism running through him - you know, Arkansas farmer. And he was not well educated. And I'm not making excuses for him. It was a - it's a very painful thing to acknowledge about him. But I had been involved with the restoration of my dad's boyhood home in Arkansas for the past 12 years, 14 years. And going to Arkansas a lot, I became more aware of the really dark, dark history of racism and violence in Arkansas.

At around the same time, I was doing a show at Dockery Farms in Mississippi, which is really one of the birthplaces of the blues. It was a cotton farm where some of the great blues artists - Howlin' Wolf and Charley Patton - had picked cotton in the day and played guitar and music and juke joints at night. So doing this show, there was an after-party, all white people at the after-party and this nearly 90-year-old Black man playing blues harp with a guitarist - a white guitarist - at the after-party while the white people were milling around. And I kept looking at him all night.

And I went over to him after the party to say thank you so much, you know? That was so beautiful. Really appreciate you coming and playing. And he said, oh, I just want to tell you that when I was out behind the plow in the fields, that we had a radio sitting on the porch. And whenever your daddy came on the radio in the '50s, I would run over to listen to him. And I started weeping. I was thinking about my racist grandfather across the river in Arkansas behind the same kind of plow. And I realized that everything I do musically, creatively - that in some ways there's a thread that goes back to that Black man behind the plow in Mississippi musically and that white man behind the plow in Arkansas. And I started thinking about the threads you have to break in your life - the ones you bind, the ones you break.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

ZOMORODI: OK. So that reminds me of another story you tell in your TED Talk about your grandmother, Carrie Cash, and what it was like to be a woman in the South - the American South - a century or so ago.

R CASH: Yeah. So she had seven children - one who died when he was 14. But she gave birth at home with the assistance of a doctor who came by in a horse-and-buggy to check on her. One of her labors - she was in labor for three days - he came by on a horse-and-buggy to check on her every day, once a day and pulled two aspirin from his pocket to give her. It was the same pocket in which he kept his fishing worms.

ZOMORODI: Wow.

R CASH: I know (laughter).

ZOMORODI: Here's Rosanne Cash again on the TED stage.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

R CASH: I read once that every time an old woman dies, a library disappears. And before her library disappeared, I tuned in to my grandmother's signals and gleaned her tenacity, which I borrowed, and her long suffering and her life of constant work with seven children - six of whom made it to adulthood - in a house without electricity in the sweltering cotton fields. And I wrote these words about her.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SUNKEN LANDS")

R CASH: (Singing) Five cans of paint in the empty fields, and the dust reveals. And the children cry. The work never ends. There's not a single friend. Who will hold her hand in the sunken lands? And the mud and tears melt the cotton bolls. It's a heavy toll - oh, oh. His words are cruel, and they sting like fire, like the devil's choir - oh, oh. But who will hold her hand in the sunken lands? The river rises, and she sails away. But she could never stay - oh, oh. Now her work is done in the sunken lands. There's five empty cans.

(APPLAUSE)

Read more:

Rosanne Cash Reflects on Her Life and Legacy - NPR

The worlds top physicists will gather in Vancouver this August to launch a Quantum Gravity Institute that could significantly advance our understanding of physics and gravity.

The goal is to discover the theory of quantum gravity, one of sciences greatest mysteries.

Discovering the theory of quantum gravity could lead to the possibility of time travel, new quantum devices, or even massive new energy resources that produce clean energy and help us address climate change, said Philip Stamp, a professor at the University of British Columbia.

The conference will take place between Aug. 15-19, and will welcome two dozen of the worlds top physicists, including Nobel Laureates Jim Peebles, Sir Roger Penrose and Kip Thorne who is well known for developing the original idea for the 2014 film Interstellar.

For roughly 100 years, physics has been based on Einsteins theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

The theory of relativity has helped us understand the cosmos, leading to space travel and technology like atomic clocks, which govern GPS systems. Quantum mechanics is responsible for the electronics, lasers, computers, cell phones and plastics that support modern transportation, communications, medicine, agriculture and energy systems.

The two theories have provided countless breakthroughs but are seemingly contradictory the theory of quantum gravity is meant to be the bridge between these two theories.

The potential long-term ramifications of this discovery are so incredible that life on earth 100 years from now could look as miraculous to us now as todays technology would have seemed to people living 100 years ago, Stamp said.

The conference will be open to the public on Aug. 17 and provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from the worlds pre-eminent physicists.

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Worlds top physicists to be in B.C. this summer to bring down sciences greatest mystery - Nelson Star

About the Centre for Quantum Technologies

The Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) is a research centre of excellence in Singapore. It brings together physicists, computer scientists and engineers to do basic research on quantum physics and to build devices based on quantum phenomena. Experts in this new discipline of quantum technologies are applying their discoveries in computing, communications, and sensing.

CQT is hosted by the National University of Singapore and also has staff at Nanyang Technological University. With some 180 researchers and students, it offers a friendly and international work environment.

Learn more about CQT atwww.quantumlah.org

Job Description

The candidate will conduct research on the classical and quantum complexity of submodularfunction minimization. Both the classical and quantum query complexities of this problemremain wide open. On the classical side the best upper bound is O(n^2) and the best lowerbound is Omega(n * log n). The quantum side is even more wide open, with no non-triviallower bound known, and also no general upper bound known better than the classical one.The successful candidate will investigate these questions with a special emphasis ondesigning new quantum algorithms for submodular function minimization.

Job Requirements

PhD in computer science or related field and a strong track record of research intheoretical computer science.

Covid-19 Message

At NUS, the health and safety of our staff and students are one of our utmost priorities, and COVID-vaccination supports our commitment to ensure the safety of our community and to make NUS as safe and welcoming as possible. Many of our roles require a significant amount of physical interactions with students/staff/public members. Even for job roles that may be performed remotely, there will be instances where on-campus presence is required.

Taking into consideration the health and well-being of our staff and students and to better protect everyone in the campus, applicants are strongly encouraged to have themselves fully COVID-19 vaccinated to secure successful employment with NUS.

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Visiting Research Associate Professor, Centre For Quantum Technologies job with NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE | 302907 - Times Higher Education

Australian scientists are making strides towards solving one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: the nature of invisible dark matter.

The ORGAN Experiment, Australias first major dark matter detector, recently completed a search for a hypothetical particle called an axiona popular candidate among theories that try to explain dark matter.

ORGAN has placed new limits on the possible characteristics of axions and thus helped narrow the search for them. But before we get ahead of ourselves

About 14 billion years ago, all the little pieces of matterthe fundamental particles that would later become you, the planet, and the galaxywere compressed into one very dense, hot region.

Then the Big Bang happened and everything flew apart. The particles combined into atoms, which eventually clumped together to make stars, which exploded and created all kinds of exotic matter.

After a few billion years came Earth, which was eventually crawling with little things called humans. Cool story, right? Turns out its not the whole story; its not even half.

People, planets, stars, and galaxies are all made of regular matter. But we know regular matter makes up just one-sixth of all the matter in the universe.

The rest is made of what we call dark matter. Its name tells you almost everything we know about it. It doesnt emit light (so we call it dark), and it has mass (so we call it matter).

When we observe the way things move in space, we find time and again that we cant explain our observations if we consider only what we can see.

Spinning galaxies are a great example. Most galaxies spin at speeds that cant be explained by the gravitational pull from visible matter alone.

So there must be dark matter in these galaxies, providing extra gravity and allowing them to spin fasterwithout parts being flung off into space. We think dark matter literally holds galaxies together.

The Bullet Cluster is a massive cluster of galaxies which has been interpreted as being strong evidence for the existence of dark matter. Image Credit: NASA

So there must be an enormous amount of dark matter in the universe, pulling on all the things we can see. Its passing through you, too, like some kind of cosmic ghost. You just cant feel it.

Many scientists believe dark matter could be composed of hypothetical particles called axions. Axions were originally proposed as part of a solution to another major problem in particle physics called the strong CP problem (which we could write a whole article about).

Anyway, after the axion was proposed, scientists realized the particle could also make up dark matter under certain conditions. Thats because axions are expected to have very weak interactions with regular matter, but still have some mass: the two conditions needed for dark matter.

So how do you go about searching for axions?

Well, since dark matter is thought to be all around us, we can build detectors right here on Earth. And, luckily, the theory that predicts axions also predicts that axions can convert into photons (particles of light) under the right conditions.

This is good news, because were great at detecting photons. And this is exactly what ORGAN does. It engineers the correct conditions for axion-photon conversion and looks for weak photon signalslittle flashes of light generated by dark matter passing through the detector.

This kind of experiment is called an axion haloscope and was first proposed in the 1980s. There are a few in the world today, each one slightly different in important ways.

The ORGAN Experiments main detector. A small copper cylinder called a resonant cavity traps photons generated during dark matter conversion. The cylinder is bolted to a dilution refrigerator which cools the experiment to very low temperatures. Image Credit: Author provided

An axion is believed to convert into a photon in the presence of a strong magnetic field. In a typical haloscope, we generate this magnetic field using a big electromagnet called a superconducting solenoid.

Inside the magnetic field we place one or several hollow chambers of metal, which are meant to trap the photons and cause them to bounce around inside, making them easier to detect.

However, there is one hiccup. Everything that has a temperature constantly emits small random flashes of light (which is why thermal imaging cameras work). These random emissions, or noise, make it harder to detect the faint dark matter signals were looking for.

To work around this, weve placed our resonator in a dilution refrigerator. This fancy fridge cools the experiment to cryogenic temperatures, about 273C, which greatly reduces the noise.

The colder the experiment is, the better we can listen for faint photons produced during dark matter conversion.

An axion of a certain mass will convert into a photon of a certain frequency, or color. But since the mass of axions is unknown, experiments must target their search to different regions, focusing on those where dark matter is considered more likely to exist.

If no dark matter signal is found, then either the experiment is not sensitive enough to hear the signal above the noise, or theres no dark matter in the corresponding axion mass region.

When this happens, we set an exclusion limitwhich is just a way of saying we didnt find any dark matter in this mass range, to this level of sensitivity. This tells the rest of the dark matter research community to direct their searches elsewhere.

ORGAN is the most sensitive experiment in its targeted frequency range. Its recent run detected no dark matter signals. This result has set an important exclusion limit on the possible characteristics of axions.

This is the first phase of a multi-year plan to search for axions. Were currently preparing the next experiment, which will be more sensitive and target a new, as-yet-unexplored mass range.

Well, for one, we know from history that when we invest in fundamental physics, we end up developing important technologies. For instance, all modern computing relies on our understanding of quantum mechanics.

We never would have discovered electricity, or radio waves, if we didnt pursue things that, at the time, appeared to be strange physical phenomena beyond our understanding. Dark matter is the same.

Consider everything humans have accomplished by understanding just one-sixth of the matter in the universeand imagine what we could do if we unlocked the rest.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Illustris Collaboration

See the article here:

Scientists Hunt for an Elusive Particle to Unlock the Mystery of Dark Matter - Singularity Hub

Most assume that matter is fundamental, and that consciousness arises out of the complexity of matter. But Nobel Prize winning quantum physicist Erwin Schrdinger does not share that assumption. For him, the universe contains a single mind, writes Robert Prentner and Donald D. Hoffman.

In February 1943, Erwin Schrdinger, quantum physicist and Nobel laureate (sharing his prize with Paul Dirac and Werner Heisenberg), gave a series of lectures at Trinity College Dublin, which later turned into his book What is life? [1]. This work has been highly influential for a generation of molecular biologists such as Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of DNA. Less known perhaps is the fact that during his whole life Schrdinger was an ardent reader of philosophy from the East and West. From the 1950s on, when Schrdinger ceased to actively work on the physics of his time, he focused more on wider philosophical and ethical issues related to science. Back then, his conferences always ended with what he jokingly called the second Schrdinger equation: Atman = Brahman, the Indian doctrine of identity.

The present article investigates some of these ideas and gives them a reading in terms of a recent theory of consciousness. We believe that, just as Schrdingers ideas on the physical basis of life have inspired groundbreaking work in molecular biology, his ideas on mind and reality might inspire groundbreaking work in understanding the nature of consciousness and its relation to physics.

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Early on, Schrdinger expressed the conviction that metaphysics does not come after physics, but inevitably precedes it. Metaphysics is not a deductive affair but a speculative one.

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In 1925, just a few months before Schrdinger discovered the most basic equation of quantum mechanics, he wrote down the first sketches of the ideas that he would later develop more thoroughly in Mind and Matter. Already then, his thoughts on technical matters were inspired by what he took to be greater metaphysical (religious) questions. Early on, Schrdinger expressed the conviction that metaphysics does not come after physics, but inevitably precedes it. Metaphysics is not a deductive affair but a speculative one.

The many meanings of Schrdinger's catRead more One such speculative assumption (which can neither be proven nor disproven) is the one that there exists an external (mind-independent) world. Another one is the assumption that there exist separate minds. For both claims, according to Schrdinger, we cannot get any empirical evidence: how could we step out of our own experience to check them? But both create insurmountable problems. The first creates the problem of how to think about the relation between these two types of realities (mind-matter). Why does it appear (according to our best science) that we live in a purely physical world devoid of qualities? The second creates the problem of how to think about the relation between different minds (mind-mind). Why and how are we different from each other? Schrdinger believed that there is an elegant way to dissolve both of these problems by starting with an alternative metaphysical assumption. He did not endorse traditional Western views that go under the names of reductive materialism and subjective idealism, but he found inspiration in non-Western, particularly Indian philosophies.

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We are all but aspects of one single mind that forms the essence of reality.

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His second Schrdinger equation refers to an old staple of Indian philosophy according to which the self (Atman) is identical to the ultimate reality of the universe (Brahman), which forms a central part of the teachings of the Advaita Vednta. Schrdinger was quick to add that this self must not be conflated with the individual self but rather refers to a cosmic, universal entity of which individual selves are mere aspects.

A metaphor that Schrdinger liked to invoke to illustrate this idea is the one of a crystal that creates a multitude of colors (individual selves) by refracting light (standing for the cosmic self that is equal to the essence of the universe). We are all but aspects of one single mind that forms the essence of reality. He also referred to this as the doctrine of identity. Accordingly, a non-dual form of consciousness, which must not be conflated with any of its single aspects, grounds the refutation of the (merely apparent) distinction into separate selves that inhabit a single world.

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Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world.

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Schrdinger drew remarkable consequences from this. For example, he believed that any man is the same as any other man that lived before him. In his early essay Seek for the Road, he writes about looking into the mountains before him. Thousands of years ago, other men similarly enjoyed this view. But why should one assume that oneself is distinct from these previous men? Is there any scientific fact that could distinguish your experience from another mans? What makes you you and not someone else? Similarly as John Wheeler once assumed that there is really only one electron in the universe, Schrdinger assumed that there really is only one mind. Schrdinger thought this is supported by the empirical fact that consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. [7]

In the contemporary scientific study of consciousness, many scholars try to circumvent the question of how and why matter gives rise to conscious experience by asking why there seems to be a hard problem in the first place (when there is in fact none): consciousness is an illusionary story that some physical systems equipped with brains tell themselves. While Schrdinger was far from accepting an illusionary stance about the reality of consciousness, in a very similar vein he asks why it seems as if there were a multiplicity of minds, where there is just one mind (the Atman=Brahman): the existence of many separate minds is an illusionary story that confused individuals would tell themselves. Thinking otherwise leads to the false belief that we are in some sense fundamentally isolated, rather than realizing that we are always connected with other beings (and ultimately also with what we now call non-living matter). Unlike in the hard problem case, there is no empirical evidence to suggest our initial belief is real.

An important characteristic of the way Schrdinger approached metaphysical and philosophical teachings was his prudence to uphold a rational and scientific methodology. The doctrine of identity cannot be adopted uncritically. We need to incorporate the doctrine into our best science, not throw our best science overboard. In other words, we should adopt a new metaphysics but keep with the scientific method. Our scientific theories need a bit of blood transfusion from Eastern thought [but] transfusions always need great precaution to prevent clotting. We do not wish to lose the logical precision that our scientific thought has reached, and that is unparalleled anywhere at any epoch. [8]

What Schrdinger sought, what he would have appreciated the most, is a scientific approach to studying consciousness with mathematical precision. An important constraint following from the doctrine of identity for any such theory of consciousness would be that it, in its very basic structure, acknowledges that individual conscious beings are (i) aspects of a higher, unifying agent (rather than being disconnected individuals), and (ii) that the entire collection of such beings constitutes the ultimate nature of reality (rather than being just one among many things such as electrons, rocks, or brains.)

Schrdinger desired a radically monist-theory that acknowledges the reality of consciousness. Given the current theoretical landscape in the study of consciousness, the theory of conscious agents [9] seems to fit best with these requirements. It aims for a precise, crisp formulation of what consciousness does, and it proposes that any combination of two or more conscious agents is itself another agent. It also seems to be compatible with the idea that the entire collection of agents constitutes the nature of reality, though this requires the theory to come up with a model of how the physical world can arise (and be nothing apart) from this collection.

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According to the theory of conscious agents, the idea of fundamentally separated selves is a useful fiction that arises only if we conflate what we see on the interface with the true reality of non-dual consciousness.

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How could this be so? Schrdinger relied on a couple of arguments that have been raised previously in philosophy (e.g. by Kant) but his position boils down to this: what we call the physical world is the result of a process that Schrdinger called objectivation, i.e. the transformation of the one self-world (Atman=Brahman) into something that can be readily conceptualized and studied objectively, hence something that is fully void of subjective qualities. In the theory of conscious agents this amounts to the creation of interfaces. Such interfaces simplify what is going on in order to allow you to act efficiently. Good interfaces hide complexity. They do not let you see reality as it is but only as it is useful to you. What you call the physical world is merely a highly-simplified representation of non-dual consciousness.

This physical world also appears to harbor a multitude of subjects directed at it. It is the very same process of objectivation, which led to the false impression of an autonomous physical world, that also leads to the fallacy of assuming different forms of consciousness inhabiting different bodies. The quick fix of adding mental properties to a non-mental world would not be able to really solve the problems mentioned earlier. Where to put them? Do we need to label them with a tag saying individual x? But then, why are you you and not someone else? How to combine one set of subjects into a higher one? But those problems can be circumvented by never giving in to the metaphysical assumption of the existence of one physical world that is opposed to many separated selves in the first place. According to the theory of conscious agents, the idea of fundamentally separated selves is a useful fiction that arises only if we conflate what we see on the interface with the true reality of non-dual consciousness.

The theory of conscious agents proposes an interesting answer to Schrdingers questions. Why does it appear that we are living in a physical world without qualities? Why and how are we different from each other? Because the dynamics of conscious agents results in the creation of interfaces that hide the true character of reality. We are the same, yet we can appear as different. From one perspective all agents combine into a single one which equals a (single) world. From a different perspective, this single agent is equal to a network of distinct agents that all inhabit their own worlds. Which perspective we choose, depends on what we want to explain.

References

[1] E. Schrdinger. What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1944.

[2] M. Bitbol. Schrdinger and Indian Philosophy, in: Cahiers du service culturel de lambassade de France en Inde, Allahabad, 1999.

[3, 7, 8] E. Schrdinger. Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1958.

[4,5] E. Schrdinger. Seek for the Road, in: My View of the World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1963.

[6] R. Feynman. The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics. Nobel Lecture, 1965.

[9] D.D. Hoffman & C. Prakash. Objects of Consciousness, Frontiers in Psychology, 5: 577, 2014.

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Schrdinger and the conscious universe IAI TV - IAI

The Simons Foundation has announced a new research collaboration to explore the "glue" that holds the visible matter of the universe together. This team of thirteen principal investigators, led by Igor Klebanov of Princeton University, will delve into the details of quantum chromodynamics (QCD)-;the theory that describes the interactions among the most fundamental building blocks of visible matter.

"The collaboration will bring together three communities of theorists specializing in the study of experimental data, computation, and analytical approaches to QCD," said Raju Venugopalan, a senior physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and adjunct professor at Stony Brook University, who is one of the principal investigators. "The big motivation is to bring together these communities to address a problem that's at the heart of all matter"-;namely, how the strong nuclear force keeps fundamental particles called quarks and gluons confined within the protons and neutrons that make up atomic nuclei.

"By understanding confinement, we can learn fundamentally how hadrons-;protons, neutrons, and other composite particles made of quarks and gluons-;are put together," Venugopalan said.

The theorists will benefit from close proximity to the researchers at-;and the data generated by-;the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a DOE Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research located at Brookhaven Lab. Research at RHIC is all about quarks and gluons.

Experiments at RHIC smash together ions (the nuclei of atoms) travelling at nearly the speed of light. RHIC's high energy heavy ion collisions recreate conditions last seen in the early universe, essentially dissolving the boundaries of individual protons and neutrons so that quarks and gluons are no longer confined within those individual nuclear building blocks. By tracking the variety of particles that stream out of the "quark-gluon plasma" (QGP) created in these collisions, RHIC's detectors gather data on how quarks and gluons behave.

Nuclear theorists like Venugopalan also study QGP created in higher-energy heavy ion collisions at Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). They use the equations of QCD to both predict and interpret what the RHIC and LHC experiments might reveal. Known as "phenomenologists," for their study of experimental phenomena, they form one arm of the new collaboration.

In the coming decade, they'll also make use of data from the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a facility that will be built on the backbone of RHIC. The EIC will collide electrons with ions, essentially using the electron beams to "see" inside protons, neutrons, and nuclei.

"The Electron-Ion Collider will be the brightest, highest intensity 'femtoscope' to shine on the structure of matter," Venugopalan said, referring to its ability to capture details on scales much smaller than a femtometer-;that's one millionth of a billionth of a meter! Using the future EIC, scientists will take "snapshots" of quarks and gluons and study their interactions within the matter that makes up our world today.

With as much as these experiments have (and will) reveal, understanding and predicting the interactions of quarks and gluons is complicated.

"The equations for QCD are extremely difficult to solve," said Venugopalan. "In general, you cannot solve them using a pen and paper."

Supercomputers can help, but physicists must be wary of how they input and run the equations describing QCD.

"If you put the theory into a computer naively, you would miss out on a lot of the details," Venugopalan said.

In the quantum world, quarks and gluons can explore an infinite number of paths between two points in space and time-;each with differing likelihoods, he explained. This makes the QCD equations hard to simulate.

To tackle this challenge, physicists invented a method called lattice QCD. As the name suggests, the method places each quark on a point on a four-dimensional "space-time" lattice, with gluons residing on the links between these points. A computer then models all the possible pathways quarks and gluons can take as they interact using the equations defined by QCD.

These calculations require the world's most powerful supercomputers. Using increasingly large lattices with smaller and smaller spacing between points, the simulations can capture increasingly fine details.

"Lattice QCD simulations are now able to demonstrate, with high precision, that fundamental quarks and gluons generate the masses and other key properties of protons, neutrons, and sub-atomic particles governed by the strong force," Venugopalan said.

Computational theorists who continue to develop and use lattice QCD are important members of the QCD-confinement collaboration. They will "design clever computational experiments that are focused on exploring confinement," Venugopalan explained. For example, they'll simulate QCD-like theories with different types of particles, different numbers of space-time dimensions, or at extreme temperatures. Such tools will give physicists the ability to stretch the principles of QCD beyond reality to advance their understanding of quark-gluon interactions.

"In a way theorists are playing games-;almost like video games-;because such simulations are not the real world," Venugopalan said. "But these kinds of games can give us deeper insight into how confinement actually works."

Scientists know that, at its core, confinement is a result of the strong nuclear force. As its name implies, the strong force-;which is generated by the interactions of quarks and gluons-;is the strongest of the four fundamental forces of nature (the other three being electromagnetism, the weak force, and gravity). And it has a unique characteristic: Unlike the other three, the strong force doesn't get weaker with increasing distance!

"We think of the quarks and gluons as being connected by a type of tube," said Venugopalan. He calls them chromoelectric flux tubes. These are the paths through which gluons move back and forth among quarks, transmitting the "color" charge (that's the chromo of quantum chromodynamics) that generates the strong force.

That exchange of color-charged gluons among color-charged quarks is what keeps the particles confined within composite "colorless" sub-atomic particles.

"As you try to pull the quarks apart, the tension between them grows, kind of like stretching a rubber band," Venugopalan said. If the tubes are stretched far enough-;beyond the length of a single proton-;they snap. But the energy released is immediately transformed into a new particle that pairs up with the separated quark.

"This is why quarks and gluons can never be free," Venugopalan said. "We want to understand how these 'chromoelectric' flux tubes, or QCD strings, work. That would be the secret to understanding the mechanism of confinement."

According to Venugopalan, the strong force (and confinement) was initially described using string theory-;the idea that fundamental particles and their forces interact through vibrating strings. However, string theory has since evolved away from describing confinement, instead seeking to understand the quantum nature of gravity and its unification with other the forces of nature.

Despite this, Venugopalan adds, "there's a strong motivation for the string theory community to return to its roots."

In the past decades, developments in string theory "have led to its formulation in ten space-time dimensions, which was found to be able to describe certain four-dimensional gauge theories akin to QCD," said Igor Klebanov, director of the Simons Confinement Collaboration. "This remarkable relation-;known as AdS/CFT correspondence-;can be extended to gauge theories that exhibit confinement."

This finding has piqued the curiosity of many in the physics community and has fueled interest in using string theory to further investigate quark-gluon interactions. Therefore, a third group of theorists will bring together string theory's principles and its possible relation to QCD to develop new analytical approaches to understand confinement.

"With this collaboration, we hope to bring this relation between string theory and gauge theory as close as possible to the real world of hadronic physics," Klebanov added.

Confinement is central to one of theseven most compelling outstanding problems in theoretical physics and mathematicslisted by theClay Mathematics Institute(the one on Yang-Mills theory), motivatingscientists worldwide.

"If physicists can pool together the scientific advances of recent decades and make progress in solving this problem, we will fundamentally learn how matter is put together," Venugopalan said.

The impacts may be far-reaching.

Venugopalan likened the idea of discovering the underlying processes that drive quark-gluon interactions and confinement to deciphering the guiding principles of biology that eventually sparked a revolution in medicine:

"Did the scientists who discovered the DNA double helix in 1953 think about making vaccines to target a specific virus in the future- If you'd asked them about that back then, they would have thought you were insane!" he said.

The same is true in nuclear physics. "In experiments at RHIC and the LHC, we see patterns that we think QCD should explain, but are unable to because of the sheer complexity of the theory. We need to get to a more fundamental understanding of confinement to understand those patterns in a different way."

Whether scientists will eventually apply the fundamental principles of nuclear physics the way that biologists have applied their understanding of DNA, RNA, and proteins-;say, to build designer nuclei-;is purely futuristic speculation, Venugopalan noted.

But along the way we'll satisfy our own curiosity about what makes up the matter within and all around us, and potentially benefit in unforeseen ways from the technologies and scientific approaches we develop to explore such profound questions.

The Simons Collaboration on Confinement and QCD Strings will be supported by the Simons Foundation. The Foundation will support postdoctoral fellows and students at the host institutions of the principal investigators and facilitate scientific meetings and specialized schools on related topics.

Source:https://www.energy.gov/science/office-science

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New Research Collaboration to Explore the Glue that Holds the Visible Matter of the Universe Together - AZoQuantum

A University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led team received a $1.4 million award from the W. M. Keck Foundation to study a new process that combines quantum physics and biochemistry. If successful, the research could lead to a major breakthrough in the quantum computing field.

The project is one of two proposals the University of Minnesota submits each year to the Keck Foundation and is the first grant of its kind the University has received in 20 years.

Quantum computers have the potential to solve very complex problems at an unprecedented fast rate. They have applications in fields like cryptography, information security, supply chain optimization and could one day assist in the discovery of new materials and drugs.

One of the biggest challenges for scientists is that the information stored in quantum bits (the building blocks of quantum computers) is often short-lived. Early-stage prototype quantum computers do exist, but they lose the information they store so quickly that solving big problems of practical relevance is currently unachievable.

One approach researchers have studied to attempt to make quantum devices more stable is by combining semiconductors and superconductors to obtain robust states called Majorana modes, but this approach has been challenging and so far inconclusive since it requires very high-purity semiconductors. U of M School of Physics and Astronomy Associate Professor Vlad Pribiag, who is leading the project, has come up with a new idea that could yield stable Majorana quantum structures.

Pribiags proposed method leverages recent advances in DNA nanoassembly, combined with magnetic nanoparticles and superconductors, in order to detect Majoranas, which are theoretical particles that could be a key element for protecting quantum information and creating stable quantum devices.

This is a radically new way to think about quantum devices, Pribiag said. When I heard about this technique of DNA nanoassembly, I thought it fit right into this problem I had been working on about Majoranas and quantum devices. Its really a paradigm shift in the field and it has tremendous potential for finding a way to protect quantum information so that we can build more advanced quantum machines to do these complex operations.

The project, entitled Topological Quantum Architectures Through DNA Programmable Molecular Lithography, will span three years. Pribiag is collaborating with Columbia University Professor Oleg Gang, whose lab will handle the DNA nanoassembly part of the work.

About the W. M. Keck FoundationBased in Los Angeles, the W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 by the late W. M. Keck, founder of the Superior Oil Company. The Foundations grant making is focused primarily on pioneering efforts in the areas of medical research and science and engineering. The Foundation also supports undergraduate education and maintains a Southern California Grant Program that provides support for the Los Angeles community, with a special emphasis on children and youth. For more information, visit the Keck Foundation website.

About the College of Science and EngineeringThe University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering brings together the Universitys programs in engineering, physical sciences, mathematics and computer science into one college. The college is ranked among the top academic programs in the country and includes 12 academic departments offering a wide range of degree programs at the baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral levels. Learn more at cse.umn.edu.

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UMN-led team receives $1.4M Keck Foundation grant to study possible breakthrough in quantum computing - UMN News

We tend to think of the laws of nature as fixed. They came into existence along with the universe, and have been the same ever since. But once you start asking why the laws of the universe are what they are, their invariance also comes into question. Lee Smolin is the type of theoretical physicist who likes asking such why questions. His inquiries have led him to believe that the laws of the universe have evolved from earlier forms, along the lines of natural selection. In this in depth interview he offers an account of how he came to this view of the evolving universe and explains why physics needs to change its view of time.

Lee Smolin is a rare breed of theoretical physicist. Whereas most physicists see themselves in the business of discovering what the laws of the universe are, Lee Smolin goes a step further: he wants to know why the laws of the universe are what they are.

I believe in an aspirational form of Leibnizs Principle of Sufficient Reason. When seeking knowledge, we should act on the assumption that the principle of sufficient reason is true, otherwise we are likely to give up too soon.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason being the idea that there is a reason for why things are the way they are and Leibniz being a 17th century rationalist philosopher. Lee Smolin is not like other physicists in another way: he draws inspiration from many different fields, including philosophy.

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Smolin admits that it might be the case that at some point our explanations simply run out and there are no further why questions we can ask.

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Its perhaps hard to appreciate how unconventional this way of thinking about physics is. Leibniz was a key figure of early modern rationalist philosophy that held necessity to be the key concept that would unlock the mysteries of the universe things are the way they are because they had to be this way, and reason could explain why that was. Modern science on the other hand for the most part has given up on this idea that the world is governed by rational necessity. Instead, contingency rules: the way things are is the way things are, we cant really know why. For many scientists the question doesnt even make sense. Smolin admits that it might be the case that at some point our explanations simply run out and there are no further why questions we can ask.

Of course this might be the case, and it might not be. The only way to find out is to try to see how far we can go.

And Smolin is prepared to go a lot further in his questioning than most. Pushing the boundaries of explanation has led him to put forward some extraordinary theories, including the idea that the laws of the universe are not invariable across space and time, but are evolving. When asked to give an account of how he arrived at this theory he offers a kind of intellectual autobiography, and why he sees the issue of time as crucial to how we think about laws of nature.

Smolin came of age during the era when the main puzzle of theoretical physics was how to make Einsteins General Relativity consistent with Quantum Mechanics. Time according to General Relativity was seen as a relational property not as something absolute or external to the universe, as Newton had thought. This means that time becomes secondary, as Smolin says a merely relational property between events in the universe, not something fundamental. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, still seemed to depend on an absolute framework of time that wasnt relational. This was one the key contradictions at the heart of physics at the time Smolin was still a physics student and laws of nature were seen as invariant as time-independent.

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Smolin wasnt satisfied with having just a description of how particles interact he also wanted to know why. Why is the neutron slightly heavier than the proton?

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The second big issue playing on Smolins mind when he was a graduate student at Harvard came from particle physics. The Standard Model had just started going, and it seemed to be an immensely powerful tool for explaining the interactions of fundamental particles. But Smolin wasnt satisfied with having just a description - even if it was a very good description - of how particles interact he also wanted to know why. Why is the neutron slightly heavier than the proton? And why is the mass of the electron 1800 times smaller than that of the neutron?

These near coincidences are very important for how the world turned out to be. Smolin adds.

There was a group of cosmologists at the time who were also asking this question of why the universe seemed to be so perfectly tuned to allow for matter to be formed all these constants, including the Cosmological Constant, had just the right values to allow life to eventually develop. Was this mere accident? Or was there a reason for it? Cosmologists like Martin Rees of Cambridge developed the idea of the Anthropic Principle that postulated the existence of many different universes in which these constants all had different values, leading to completely different outcomes. Life was possible in our universe because we got lucky in other universes not only is life not possible, there are no atoms to begin with.

Smolin admits this is a pretty cool idea but he doesnt think its really a scientific theory since it doesnt make any predictions. But the puzzle it tried to tackle was a real one, and Smolin had a better idea for how to solve it. He thought to himself, where else do we find systems that are fine tuned for the emergence of complexity? Biology was to him the obvious answer. Im pretty good at stealing ideas from other fields. Everybody has a trick, and thats mine he says jokingly.

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This seemingly paradoxical balance of the cosmos is not a mere accident - there was a process behind it, akin to natural selection, that gave rise to it.

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Thats how Smolin came up with the idea of applying the principles of evolutionary biology to the universe as a whole. In the same way that in biology Darwinian evolution was able to explain the existence of perfectly developed organisms, with organs that work just the right way to keep them alive and functioning, the idea that the universe as a whole has been undergoing a process of evolution can explain the existence of this fine tuning of cosmological constants. This seemingly paradoxical balance of the cosmos is not a mere accident - there was a process behind it, akin to natural selection, that gave rise to it. Its an idea that he was surprised to find the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Peirce had also hinted at in the early 20th century.

Putting forward this theory of the dynamically evolving universe led to the other central idea in Smolins work: a reassessment of the centrality of time.

Smolin is always talking about his collaborators - many of them unconventional thinkers and eccentric in their own way - and how theyve contributed to his work. Roberto Mangabeira Unger is one of them, a professor at Harvards Law School, a Brazilian politician, and a philosopher. Smolin credits Mangabeira with forcing him to come to terms with the contradiction he was seemingly committed to. On the one hand Quantum Gravity that Smolin was working on saw laws of nature as fundamental, and time as secondary, as emergent. But applying natural selection to cosmology we get the opposite: time becomes fundamental, and laws of nature evolve, are emergent. This led to a collaboration between the two thinkers, and the publication of their book The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time. Smollin ended up espousing the view that time is fundamental, not secondary as General Relativity would have it, and space an emergent property of it. This was a view that Fotini Markopoulou, another collaborator of Smolins, also arrived at independently a view that most theoretical physicists, including Carlo Rovelli, oppose (although Smolin thinks Rovelli is coming around to that view in his recent publications).

Both these theories, that the universe and its laws are changing, and that time is a fundamental property of the universe, whereas space derivative, pose several questions, questions that Smolin sees as invitations for further elaboration and investigation, rather than as objections.

One of the questions I was curious to find out more about was how Smolin thought of the evolution of the universe. What is the mechanism here, exactly?

Smolin has three possible answers to this question, all of them hypotheses, as he stresses to me, given that they arent capable of making predictions: Im not Darwin! he says.

The most prominent hypothesis is that the universe gives birth to other universes through black holes. This, in itself, was not a new idea. Theoretical physicists John Wheeler and Bryce DeWitt first put forward this hypothesis before, but Smolin tweaked it to fit his view of a universe that evolves, almost along the lines of natural selection. Whereas Wheeler and DeWitt thought the new universe produced each time has random values of the cosmological constant and other key parameters, Smolin took a more Darwinian approach, proposing that each universe embodies very small changes to those cosmological values, allowing for a cumulative change and fine tuning, until we arrive at the universe we have today.

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How can the universe learn anything, and how does the universe remember what has happened in the past, and use it as a precedent to decide what will happen in the future?

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The question I immediately raise is whether this picture of an evolving set of universes, in which the laws of nature are not fixed, but are ever changing, requires us to postulate a kind of meta-law, a law that would dictate the way that this evolution can take place. So are we not back to where we started, the cosmos being dictated by some fixed meta-laws? Smolin is not happy with this solution, you cant solve this by just accepting that there are fixed laws, theyre just meta-laws he says. But he also doesnt really have a definitive answer either. Its a question he takes seriously, however, and has spent much of his book with Roberto Mangabeira Unger tackling this issue.

Smolin has two other hypotheses for how the universe might be changing. One he calls The Autodidactic Universe, the self-learning universe, the other The Principle of Precedence - borrowing a concept from jurisprudence when thinking about laws seems quite clever, and in line with Smolins trick of stealing ideas from other disciplines. They each come with their own conceptual challenges how can the universe learn anything, and how does the universe remember what has happened in the past, and use it as a precedent to decide what will happen in the future? Thinking of the universe in these terms seems to bend our concepts to breaking point, although admittedly things like machine learning, a technology that is very much real, does the same. If machines can learn from a trial-and-error process, why not the universe as a whole? In fact, Smolin has collaborated with Microsoft computer scientist Jaron Lanier, to model how the universe might be understood as a giant machine learning process.

The other major challenge to Smolins theory is directed at his view that time is more fundamental than space. How is that even possible, I asked him. If time is some measure of change, how can there be change without space? Where is the change taking place?

Here Smolin brings up another collaborator, Julian Barbour, who he acknowledges as his mentor when it comes to the philosophy of fundamental physics. In work they did together they showed that it is indeed possible to do dynamics, the study of evolving quantities, without space. In order to do that, Smolin tells me, you need to think of time as playing a causal role itself as creating new events from past ones. If we think of time this way, all we have to do is look back in time coming at you from your past and the causes that have made you, to see change.

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I dont claim to have complete ideas, but I believe I have done enough to show that these are things worth thinking about. I havent built a new paradigm yet, but Im having a lot of fun in the process.

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These are fascinating ideas that really capture the imagination, which goes some way to explain why Smolin, a theoretical physicist who is mostly in the business of publishing highly technical papers, impenetrable to the uninitiated, has acquired something of a cult status beyond the world of academia. But even though his theories are these beautiful mosaics of ideas from physics, philosophy, biology, computer science, the question is, do they ultimately offer us answers to the puzzles they set out to tackle? Smolin offers a humble self-diagnosis that captures both the joy of research, but also the hope of an enduring legacy:

I dont claim to have complete ideas, but I believe I have done enough to show that these are things worth thinking about. I havent built a new paradigm yet, but Im having a lot of fun in the process.

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Lee Smolin: the laws of the universe are changing - IAI

Researchers talk to each other next to the IBM Q System One quantum computer at IBM's research facility in Yorktown Heights, New York. Quantum computing's speed and efficacy represent one of the biggest threat to data security in the future.

Photo: Misha Friedman/Getty Images

Quantum computing (QC) represents the biggest threat to data security in the medium term, since it can make attacks against cryptography much more efficient. With quantum computing capabilities having advanced from the realm of academic exploration to tangible commercial opportunities, now is the time to take steps to secure everything from power grids and IoT infrastructures to the burgeoning cloud-based information-sharing platforms that we are all increasingly dependent upon.

Despite encrypted data appearing random, encryption algorithms follow logical rules and can be vulnerable to some kinds of attacks. All algorithms are inherently vulnerable to brute-force attacks, in which all possible combinations of the encryption key are tried.

According to Verizons 2021 Data Breach report, 85% of breaches caused by hacking involve brute force or the use of credentials that have been lost or stolen. Moreover, cybercrime costs the U.S. economy $100 billion a year and costs the global economy $450 billion annually.

Although traditionally, a 128-bit encryption key establishes a secure theoretical limit against brute-force attacks, this is a bare-minimum requirement for Advanced Encryption Standard symmetric keys, which are currently the default symmetric encryption cipher used for public and commercial purposes.

These are considered to be computationally infeasible to crack, and most experts consider todays 128-bit and 256-bit encryption keys to be generally secure. However, within the next 20 years, sufficiently large quantum computers will be able to break essentially all public-key schemes currently in use in a matter of seconds.

Quantum computing speeds up prime number factorization, so computers with quantum computation can easily break cryptographic keys via quickly calculating and exhaustively searching secret keys. A task thought to be computationally impossible by conventional computer architectures becomes easy by compromising existing cryptographic algorithms, shortening the span of time needed to break public-key cryptography from years to hours.

Quantum computers outperform conventional computers for specific problems by leveraging complex phenomena such as quantum entanglement and the probabilities associated with superpositions (when quantum bits [qubits] exist in several states at the same time) to perform a series of operations in such a way that favorable probabilities are enhanced. When a quantum algorithm is applied, the probability of measuring the correct answer is maximized.

Algorithms such as RSA, AES, and Blowfish remain worldwide standards in cybersecurity. The cryptographic keys of these algorithms are based mainly on two mathematical procedures the integer factorization problem and the discrete logarithm problem that make it difficult to crack the key, preserving the systems security.

Two algorithms for quantum computers challenge current cryptography systems. Shors algorithm greatly speeds up the time required for solving the integer factorization problem. Grovers quantum search algorithm, while not as fast, still significantly increases the speed of decryption keys that, with traditional computing technologies, would take time on the order of quintillions of years.

All widely used public-key cryptographic algorithms are theoretically vulnerable to attacks based on Shors algorithm, but the algorithm depends on operations that can only be achieved by a large-scale quantum computer (>7000 qubits). Quantum computers are thus likely to make encryption systems based on RSA and discrete logarithm assumptions (DSA, ECDSA) obsolete. Companies like D-Wave Systems promise to deliver a 7000+ qubit solution by 2023-2024.

Quantum technologies are expected to bring about disruption in multiple sectors. Cybersecurity will be one of the main industries to feel this disruption; and although there are already several players preparing for and developing novel approaches to cybersecurity in a post-quantum world, it is vital for corporations, governments, and cybersecurity supply-chain stakeholders to understand the impact of quantum adoption and learn about some of the key players working on overcoming the challenges that this adoption brings about.

Businesses can implement quantum-safe cybersecurity solutions that range from developing risk management plans to harnessing quantum mechanics itself to fight the threats QC poses.

Related Reading

The replacement of encryption algorithms generally requires steps including replacing cryptographic libraries, implementation of validation tools, deployment of hardware required by the algorithm, updating dependent operating systems and communications devices, and replacing security standards and protocols. Hence, post-quantum cryptography needs to be prepared for eventual threats as many years in advance as is practical, despite quantum algorithms not currently being available to cyberattackers.

Quantum computing has the potential for both disrupting and augmenting cybersecurity. There are techniques that leverage quantum physics to protect from quantum-computing related threats, and industries that adopt these technologies will find themselves significantly ahead of the curve as the gap between quantum-secure and quantum-vulnerable systems grows.

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Quantum Computing Will Breach Your Data Security BRINK Conversations and Insights on Global Business - BRINK

Physics

Location: GuildfordSalary:32,344 to 33,309 per annumFixed TermPost Type: Full TimeClosing Date: 23.59 hours BST on Friday 05 August 2022Reference:045522

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) position in the theoretical nuclear physics group at the University of Surrey to work on a research project developing and applying quantum computing algorithms to tackle problems in nuclear structure as part of an STFC-funded Developing Quantum Technologies for Fundamental Physics programme. The work will involve developing new algorithms and/or applying existing algorithms to solve nuclear models such as the shell model and mean field model, and to look at dynamical processes such as nuclear decay.

The successful applicant will join a group working on nuclear quantum algorithms led by Dr Paul Stevenson, and will collaborate with the PhD students in the group, along with other staff members in the nuclear theory group and quantum foundations centre. Outside the university we collaborate with a mix of industry and academic partners. The quantum algorithms group is part of the theoretical nuclear physics group, which sits in the Physics Department along with groups in experimental nuclear physics, astrophysics, radiation and medical physics, soft matter, and photonics. A virtual quantum foundations group links beyond the Physics Department to those working on open quantum systems and other foundational aspects of quantum mechanics research in the University.

The University supports development of research skills as well as generic transferrable skills such as leadership, communication and project management. The Department is diverse and inclusive, and we welcome applications from candidates of any gender, ethnicity or background.

Candidates must hold (or be close to completion of) a PhD in physics, computer science, applied mathematics or a closely related discipline, with a track record commensurate with the ability to work in the stated research area.

Candidates should apply online and provide a CV with publication list, and a 1-2 page covering letter with statement summarising past research.

The position runs for up to two years with a start date ideally as soon as possible. Candidates are encouraged to email Dr Paul Stevenson (p.stevenson@surrey.ac.uk) if they have any questions.

Interviews to take place Wednesday 31 August.

Furtherdetails:JobDescription

Please note, it is University Policy to offer a starting salary equivalent to Level 3.6 (32,344) to successful applicants who have been awarded, but are yet to receive, their PhD certificate. Once the original PhD certificate has been submitted to the local HR Department, the salary will be increased to Level 4.1 (33,309).

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Research Fellow in Quantum Computing job with UNIVERSITY OF SURREY | 300383 - Times Higher Education