Category Archives: Quantum Physics

The theory group on 'Fundamental Processes in Quantum Physics' at the Center for Optical Quantum Technologies of the University of Hamburg announces a postdoctoral position in theoretical physics.

The underlying project aims at developing novel quantum and hybrid algorithms for quantum simulation based on a Rydberg tweezer platform for ultracold atoms. Applications to relevant computational and optimization problems are envisaged.

Ideally a close interface with the underlying driven many-body Rydberg physics will be established. Research is performed in the above theory group with an immediate link to the corresponding experimental groups.

For more information and/or details please contact Prof. Dr. Peter Schmelcher at the below given email (see also https://www.physik.uni-hamburg.de/en/ilp/schmelcher.html).

We are looking for a strongly motivated and highly skilled postdoctoral researcher who shares the excitement of doing research in theoretical physics. The position will be available for a two years period with a possible extension up to five years.

To apply, please send a meaningful CV (including the names of potential references) with a

cover letter to pschmelc@physnet.uni-hamburg.de.

Salaries are paid according to the German standards. Recruitment will continue until the position is filled.

Link:

Postdoctoral position in Quantum Physics job with UNIVERSITY OF HAMBURG | 273815 - Times Higher Education (THE)

Theres a lot of discussion about time in the world of quantum physics. At the micro level, where waves and particles can behave the same, time tends to be much more malleable than it is in our observable realm of classical physics.

Think about the clock on the wall. You can push the hands backwards, but that doesnt cause time itself to rewind. Time marches on.

But things are much simpler in the quantum realm. If we can mathematically express particulate activity in one direction, then we can mathematically express it in a diametric one.

In other words: time travel actually makes sense through a quantum lens. Whatever goes forward must be able to go backward.

Related: Googles time crystals could be the greatest scientific achievement of our lifetimes

But it all falls apart when we get back to classical physics. I dont care how much math you do, you cant unbreak a bottle, untell a secret, or unshoot a gun.

As Gidon Lev points out in a recent article on Haaretz, this disparity between quantum and classical physics is one of the fields biggest challenges.

Per Levs article:

Hawking demonstrated that regarding black holes, one of the two major theories leads to an error.

According to his calculations, the radiation emitted by the hole is not a function of the material the hole swallows, and therefore, two black holes that formed by different processes will emit the same exact radiation. This meant that the information on every physical particle swallowed into the black hole, including its mass, speed of movement, etc., disappears from the universe.

But under the theory of quantum mechanics, such deletion is impossible.

Levs article goes on to explain how Stephen Hawking eventually conceded (he lost a bet) that the information entering a black hole wasnt gone. He, of course, couldnt explain exactly where it went. But most physicists were pretty sure it had to go somewhere nothing else in the universe just vanishes.

Fast forward to 2019 and two separate research teams (working independently of each other) publishedpre-print papers seemingly confirming Hawkings hunch about the persistence of information.

Not only were the papers published within 24 hours of each other, but the lead authors on each ended up sharing the 2021 New Horizons Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics.

What both teams discovered was that a slight change in perspective made all the math line up.

When information enters a black hole it appears to be lost because, for all intents and purposes, its no longer available to the universe.

And thats what stumped Hawking. Imagine a single photon of light getting caught in a black hole and swallowed up. Hawking and his colleagues knew the photon (and the information that was swallowed up with it) couldnt be deleted.

But, according to Hawking, black holes leak thermal radiation. And that means they eventually lose their energy and mass and fade away.

Hawking and company couldnt figure out how to reconcile the fact that once a black hole is gone, anything thats ever been inside it appears to be gone too.

Thats because they were looking in the wrong places. Hawking and others were trying to find signs of the missing information leaking out simiarlyalong a black holes event horizon.

Unfortunately, using the event horizon as a starting point never panned out the numbers didnt quite add up.

The 2021 New Horizons Prize winners figured out a different way to measure the area of a black hole. And, by applying the new lens to measurements over various stages of a black holes life, they were finally able to make the numbers add up.

If these two teams did in fact demonstrate that even a black hole cant render information irreversible, then there might be nothing physically stopping us from time travel.

And Im not talking about that hard-to-explain, gravity at the edge of a black hole, your friends would get older while you stayed young kind of time travel.

Im talking about real-life Marty Mcfly time travel where you could set the dials in the DeLorean for 13 March 1986 so you could go back and invest in Microsoft on the day its stock went public.

Now, much like Stephen Hawking, I dont have any math or engineering solutions to the problem at hand. Ive just got this physics theory.

If information can and does escape from black holes, then its only logical to assume that other processes which we only see in quantum mechanics could also be explained through classical physics.

We know that time travel is possible in quantum mechanics. Google demonstrated this by building time crystals, and numerous quantum computing paradigms rely on a form of prediction that surfaces answers using whats basically molecular time-travel.

But we all know that, when it comes to quantum stuff, were talking about particles demonstrating counter-intuitive behavior. Thats not the same thing as pushing a button and making a car from the 1980s appear back in the old Wild West.

However, that doesnt mean quantum time travel isnt just as mind-blowing. Translating time crystals into something analogous in classical physics would mean creating donuts that reappear on your plate after you eat them or beer that reappears in your glass no matter how many times you chug it.

If we concede that time crystals exist and information can escape a black hole, then we have to admit that donuts or anything, even people could one day travel through time too.

Then again, nobody showed up for Hawkings party. So, either it isnt possible or time travelers are jerks.

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This amazing new physics theory made me believe time travel is possible - TNW

PARIS, Dec. 3, 2021 At the meeting of the 8thAtos Quantum Advisory Board, a group of international experts, mathematicians and physicists, authorities in their fields, Atos reaffirmed its position as a global leader in quantum computing technologies. In particular, the quantum hybridization axis (convergence of high-performance computing (HPC) and quantum computing) positions the company at the forefront of quantum research, converging its expertise. Atos has invested, along with partner start-ups Pasqal and IQM, in two major quantum hybridization projects in France and Germany.

Held atAtos R&D center, dedicated to research in quantum computing and high-performance computing, in Clayes-sous-Bois, in the presence of Atos next CEO, Rodolphe Belmer, and under the chairmanship of Pierre Barnab, Chair of the Quantum Advisory Board, Interim co-CEO and Head of Big Data and Cybersecurity, this meeting of the Quantum Advisory Board was an opportunity to review Atos recent work and to take stock of future prospects.

Artur Ekert,Professor of Quantum Physics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford,Founding Director of the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore and member of the Quantum Advisory Boardsaid We are truly impressed by the work and the progress that Atos has made over the past year. The company takes quantum computing seriously and it gives us great pleasure to see it becoming one of the key players in the field. It is a natural progression for Atos. As a world leader in High Performance Computing (HPC), Atos is in a unique position to combine its existing, extensive, expertise in HPC with quantum technology and take both fields to new heights. We are confident that Atos will shape the quantum landscape in years to come, both with research and applications that have long-lasting impact.

In the field of quantum hybridization Atos is the only player and the company is already enablingseveralapplications in the areas of chemistry, such as catalysis design for nitrogen fixation, and for the optimization of smart grids. Atos is also involved in two additional quantum hybridization projects, which are currently being launched:

The EuropeanHPC-QS(Quantum Simulation) project, which starts this December 2021, aims to build the first European hybrid supercomputer with an integrated quantum accelerator by the end of 2023. It is intended to be a first major brick of the French quantum plan. Atos is involved in this project alongside national partners including the CEA, GENCI, Pasqal and the Julich Supercomputing Centre. Pasqal will provide its analog quantum accelerator and Atos, with its quantum simulator, theQuantum Learning Machine(QLM), will ensure the hybridization with the HPCs at the two datacenters at GENCI and Julich.

TheQ-EXAproject, part of the German Government quantum plan, will see a consortium of partners, including Atos, work together to integrate a German quantum computer into an HPC supercomputer for the first time. Atos QLM will be instrumental in connecting the quantum computer, from start-up IQM (also part of theAtos Scalerprogram) to the Leibniz Supercomputing-LRZ centre.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), one of the worlds largest and most respected research centres, based in Geneva, has recently acquired an Atos Quantum Learning Machine (QLM) appliance and joined the Atos User Club. The Atos QLM, delivered to CERN in October, will be made available to the CERN scientific community to support research activities in the framework of theCERN Quantum Technology Initiative (CERN QTI), thus accelerating the investigation of quantum advantage for high-energy physics (HEP) and beyond.

Building on CERNs unique expertise and strong collaborative culture, co-development efforts are at the core of CERN QTI. As we explore the fast-evolving field of quantum technologies, access to the Atos Quantum Learning Machine and Atos expertise can play an important role in our quantum developments roadmap in support of the high-energy physics community and beyond, saysAlberto Di Meglio, Coordinator of the CERN Quantum Technology Initiative.A dedicated training workshop is being organized with Atos to investigate the full functionality and potential of the quantum appliance, as well as its future application for some of the CERN QTI activities.

Atos is the world leader in the convergence of supercomputing and quantum computing, as shown by these two major and strategic projects we are involved in in France and Germany. At a time when the French government is expected to announce its plan for quantum computing, the durability of our Quantum Board, the quality of the work carried out and the concrete applications of this research in major projects reinforce this position, commentsPierre Barnab, interim co-CEO and head of Big Data and Cybersecurity at Atos.

The Quantum Advisory Board is made up of universally recognized quantum physicists and includes:

As a result of Atos ambitious program to anticipate the future of quantum computing and to be prepared for the opportunities and challenges that come with it Atos Quantum Atos was the first organization to offer a quantum noisy simulation module which can simulate real Qubits, the Atos QLM and to propose Q-score, the only universal metrics to assess quantum performance and superiority. Atos is also the first European patent holder in quantum computing.

Photo, from left to right:

About Atos

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 107,000 employees and annual revenue of over 11 billion. European number one in cybersecurity, cloud and high performance computing, the Group provides tailored end-to-end solutions for all industries in 71 countries. A pioneer in decarbonization services and products, Atos is committed to a secure and decarbonized digital for its clients. Atos is a SE (Societas Europaea), listed on Euronext Paris and included in the CAC 40 ESG and Next 20 Paris Stock indexes.

Thepurpose of Atosis to help design the future of the information space. Its expertise and services support the development of knowledge, education and research in a multicultural approach and contribute to the development of scientific and technological excellence. Across the world, the Group enables its customers and employees, and members of societies at large to live, work and develop sustainably, in a safe and secure information space.

Source: Atos

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Atos Confirms Role in Quantum Hybridization Technologies at Its 8th Quantum Advisory Board - HPCwire

With admirable clarity, astronomer and physicist Marcelo Gleiser explains what a Theory of Everything is and is not: Its not about every detail of life that happens to us.

Its the search for a single, underlying force that unites the four fundamental forces of nature gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force into one single underlying force. Why havent we found it? Well, first, he says, We do not see this unity because it is only manifest at extremely high energies, well beyond what we can perceive even with our most powerful machines.

But second and more significantly there is a real question, Gleiser contends, whether science is by nature suited to finding such a force:

As the physicist Werner Heisenberg, of Uncertainty Principle fame, once wrote, What we observe is not Nature itself but Nature exposed to our methods of questioning. What we can say about Nature depends on how we measure it, with the precision and reach of our instruments dictating how far we can see. Therefore, no theory that attempts to unify current knowledge can seriously be considered a final theory or a TOE, given that we cannot ever be sure that we arent missing a huge piece of evidence.

That makes a lot of sense if we think about it. A Final Theory developed by science-minded people in ancient civilizations would not have included what we can learn from the microscope, the telescope, magnetic resonance imaging We are all at the mercy of what we cant know. As Gleiser puts it,

How are we to know that there isnt a fifth or sixth force lurking out there in the depths? We cannot know, and quite often, hints of a new force are announced in the media. To put it differently, our perennially myopic view of nature precludes any theory from being complete. Nature doesnt care how compelling we think our ideas are.

Generally speaking, the more we know, the more we find out we dont know. We fill in blanks and then more blanks appear beside them. One of the blanks, instead of just being filled in, may lead to a whole new discovery.

As Gleiser puts it, The very process of discovery leads to more unknowns. And they may be smaller or larger.

For example, in 1977, Carl Woese (19282012) almost accidentally discovered a huge and significant Third Kingdom of life, the Archaea which are neither bacteria nor more complex life forms (eukaryotes).

The fifth and sixth forces may be out there too.

Science is not, at any time in the foreseeable future, going to be all tied down and delivered in a box.

You may also wish to read: Can quantum physics, neuroscience merge as quantum consciousness? Physicist Marcelo Gleiser looks at the pros and cons of current theories. The problem is, if we assume that the mind is nothing more than the brain, there may be nothing we can discover about how it works.

and

Does science disprove free will? A physicist says no. Michael Egnor: Marcelo Gleiser notes that the mind is not a solar system with strict deterministic laws. Apart from simple laws governing neurons, we have no clue what laws the mind follows, though it does show complex nonlinear dynamics.

Also: Astronomer: We cant just assume countless Earths out there. He points out that the Principle of Mediocrity is based on faulty logical reasoning. Marcelo Gleiser notes that the starting point of the Mediocrity Principle assumes countless Earths. Thats not a conclusion from evidence. Its bad logic.

Link:

Physicist: Science, by Nature, Can't Have a Theory of Everything - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

UNSW Engineering, Scientia Professor Andrea Morello has been recognised for his outstanding outreach work in the physics field by the Australian Institute of Physics New South Wales (AIP NSW).

Prof. Morello is a renowned international leader in the field of quantum computing and has led the development and launch of the worlds first bachelors degree in Quantum Engineering at UNSW Sydney.

In its eighth year, the AIP NSW Community Outreach to Physics Awardis presented to individuals that seek to achieve activities that engage and contribute to public participation within physics communities.

Prof. Morellos outreach achievements include a popular YouTube channel, contribution to science initiatives for students, and artistic collaborations.

His YouTube video series on explaining quantum computing, building quantum computers and quantum phenomena in everyday life has attracted over 10 million views.

Prof. Morello has contributed to several popular science initiatives to engage students and younger audiences, including the National Youth Science Forum and World Science Festival, as well as being featured in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Science elevator pitch series.

I am truly honoured by this award. As much as I love basic research, pushing the boundaries of human knowledge isn't worth much if I don't share it with the public, Prof. Morello said.

I have been fortunate to have, over the years, the opportunity to interact with many outstanding science communicators, who have involved me in their activities, and inspired me to work on outreach myself.

In a ceremony on Friday, Prof. Morello was presented the AIP NSW Community Outreach to Physics Award. Photo: Supplied.

Collaborations with visual and literary artists have also seen him engage with wider audiences.

Visual art created by UNSW Art & Designs Professor Paul Thomas, inspired by Prof. Morellos quantum bits and quantum chaos research, has been exhibited internationally.

And together with award-winning writer Bernard Cohen, Prof. Morello has initiated a project to work with NSW schools to develop experiential learning activities that bring together science and creative writing.

I thank my creative arts collaborators, Professor Paul Thomas and Bernard Cohen, who helped me see things from a very different perspective and find new angles to convey the fascination for science through different channels.

UNSW Dean of Engineering Professor Stephen Foster congratulated Prof. Morello on his outreach achievements.

Congratulations to Prof. Morello on receiving this prestigious award acknowledging his relentless advocacy work in fostering closeness between science and the community, reflecting UNSWs Values in Action.

UNSW Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic, Professor Merlin Crossley also applauded Prof. Morellos engagement initiatives.

Through his depth of knowledge Prof. Morello has helped inform the public, here in Australia and across the world, about the opportunities and prospects for quantum computing that are now appearing on the horizon, said Prof. Crossley.

The Australian Institute of Physics is an organisation dedicated to promoting the role of physics in research, education, industry and the community.

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UNSW researcher honoured for outreach in the physics community - UNSW Newsroom

How do you convey the yawning abyss of infinity that is a black hole to a person who hasn't immersed themselves in non-Euclidean geometries with infinite dimensions, the 'math side' of superstring theory, and the century-long pursuit of a unified theory of physics?

If you're Dr. Valery Vermeulen, you mix it into an LP.

Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001, which is now available through Ash International, is the product of more than a year of production work. In a lot of ways, though, it's an electronic music album that has been in the making since Vermeulen was a teenager.

"Even at a young age, I was always interested in science and music," Vermeulen told me when we spoke a couple of weeks ago. "I started playing piano I think when I was seven years old. I also got into physics and science. I stumbled across quantum physics around 16. We had a library and I am a curious person."

That brush with quantum physics in a library started a decades-long fascination with quantum gravity, the elusive goal of physicists to bridge the gap between the two great theories of the universe: Einstein's General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

The best, and maybe only, hope to tie these two seemingly contradictory theories together runs right through the point in space where the two theories intersect behind a veil of darkness we can never peer behind: the singularity at the heart of a black hole.

Using streams of data from black hole mergers simulations of particle behavior at the event horizon of a black hole and the influence of Jazz legends like Oscar Peterson, Vermeulen attempts to sonify the unseeable interior of the most exotic object in the known universe.

The result is a sometimes haunting, always deeply fascinating seven-track album that aims to unify science and art as much as it does relativity and quantum mechanics.

Dr. Vermeulen pursued two separate tracks in his early life, studying for a Ph.D. in mathematics and performing as a street busker in Antwerp. "People sometimes ask me, 'Are you a scientist or an artist?', but I regard it all as creativity," Vermeulen said.

Living two seemingly separate lives had its challenges, though. "It was very difficult," he told me, "but I embrace it now. It took a long time to accept that these are both sides of who I am."

If only physics were that easy to bring together.

In the century-plus since Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity in 1915, its predictions have been tested and verified more times than anyone has bothered to count.

But problems for relativity, and physics generally, began even before it was proposed. In 1900, Max Planck published a paper showing that light, under certain conditions, appeared to behave as if it was matter, and not a wave of energy as physics had long determined.

Things got curiouser and curiouser for physics in the 1920s as physicists like Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg delved deeper into the bizarro world of the subatomic.

Here, particles could be in multiple places at once. They could either be a particle or a wave but not both and which one it was depended on how the observer wanted to measure it.

Here, a famous cat could be both alive and dead at the same time. And two entangled particles could appear to communicate instantaneously across vast distances in defiance of Einstein's proof that the speed of light was the fastest anything could ever hope to move in the universe.

In the century since the foundation for quantum mechanics, it too has been tested and verified many times over. It has even been the basis of revolutionary technological innovations like lasers and quantum computers.

Above the atomic level, Einstein's general relativity theory reigns supreme, but it falls apart the moment you cross beneath atomic scales. Quantum mechanics, whose only governing law appears to be the laws of probability, stops abruptly at the edge of the atom.

That edge, so clearly defined, is maddeningly difficult to bridge. The search for a single theory that can encompass both, a theory of everything, is one of the great scientific challenges of the day. Everyone seems to agree that black holes may hold the key.

There, inside a black hole, the mass of billions upon billions of stars can occupy a single point in space of infinite density, smaller than any subatomic particle. But that mass exerts such incomparable gravity that light is as much a prisoner to it as the poor infalling star that is ripped apart like cosmic tissue paper.

There, relativity and quantum mechanics may be united as quantum gravity, if only we could see it but a black hole keeps its secrets well.

It is the attempt to plumb the depths of that hidden space that inspired Vermeulen to compose his new album.

Vermeulen earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 2001, studying what he helpfully called "the mathematical part" of superstring theory. He has worked for years as a data scientist, but he has made some efforts previously to combine his two great passions, earning a Master's in Music Composition along the way.

"There was a former series," he said, "the sonification of a journey from the Earth to the center of the Milky Way. I was using a lot of sonified data streams in that first EP, but it was never released. But I wanted to take it a step further.

"Then I was like wait, maybe I can use deeper mathematical structures as a basis, which brought me back to one of my dreams, quantum gravity. Can I maybe work with that and combine it with music?"

When talking about the interior of a black hole where quantum gravity might reside, all one has to go on is math, the very theoretical, post-doctoral kind. Even the album title, Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001, takes as inspiration the wild, mind-bending idea that reality can be seen as a 3D projection of a 2D reality as it exists on a sphere an infinite distance away from us. At least, that's how Vermeulen described it to me. I don't know what any of that even means.

However, it's a fitting analogy. Using data pulled from gravitational waves produced by black hole mergers, black hole simulations, and other black hole data from universities in several countries, Vermeulen had a lot of numbers to work with, but how does one project those numbers into something you can hear?

"So the data I used, there are some data streams that I simulated myself, but I also got a lot of data from external sources like universities," he said. "I also worked with Thomas Hertog, a former collaborator with Stephen Hawking, and with Thomas I worked on gravitational waves, and there are a lot of gravitational waves in the album."

"Theyre rather boring," he added. "You change the frequency and you get a whooping sound."

Musical, they are not.

"The solution I found was three-dimensional renderings of those gravitational waves," Vermeulen said.

In order to do that, he had to see the data differently, not as numbers on a line graph, but almost as if it was fluid. "The gravitational waves can be expressed in three dimensions as sums of spherical harmonics basically theyre solutions to fluid equations.

"This gave me a lot more opportunities. Then I made two-dimensional cuttings of the three-dimensional fluctuating structures, and those are 2D evolving shapes, and those you can sonify and print to wavetable synthesis."

In addition to the black hole mergers, Vermeulen used simulations of the behavior of massive and massless particles at the event horizons of different black holes to translate the environment just at the event horizon into something you can hear.

Between all of these different data streams, Vermeulen was able to create a vast array of samples and instruments fed by these data streams, and from there, he could build the sonified black holes of the album.

"Theres two phases in the compositional process," Vermeulen explained.

"In the first phase, Ill make a whole database of sonified samples. So, for example, with 1000 different simulations, I can make 1000 different sounds. And the other thing is to make instruments. Instruments are fed by data, or you can map knobs and controls to those instruments."

Using Ableton, Vermeulen was able to weave together the compositions using a combination of scientific data and his artistic sensibility.

"Its an aesthetic, artistic decision in the second part that I make. I use this material, and then I try to get an abstract feeling, of course its also about emotions even if its abstract, and then I just make compositions. I make an arrangement and focus a lot on the sound design and mixing. Ive been mixing for over a year on the album to get everything as I want it to sound."

The process of taking something as mathematically impenetrable as the interior of a black hole and making it accessible to our senses is an important part of the scientific process, Vermeulen believes.

"Im interested in making connections between abstract geometrical, mathematical structures and sonification. Those objects are cold, dead objects. Theyre not active, so I try to find a way to activate them, to make a link between geometry and sound using sonification.

"One of the things in my Ph.D., the geometries I was studying were infinite dimensional. I would love to make them tangible, to bring science closer to people, to let them see. Science is just an approach to look at reality, its not a replacement for reality."

While we might never "see" behind the veil of the event horizon of a black hole to discover its secrets, experiencing that mystery is important in itself. It is something that Vermeulen hopes to continue to explore in his work going forward. You can find more of his work on his artist website or on his Instagram.

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Forget Spotify Wrapped, groove to the sound of black holes colliding - TechRadar

November 23, 2021

Joseph Eberly(University of Rochester photo / Brandon Vick)

Joseph Eberly, the Andrew Carnegie Professor of Physics and a professor of optics at the University of Rochester, has been selected as the 2021 Honorary Member of Optica, the international society for optics and photonics.

Honorary membership is the most distinguished member category for the organization previously known as OSA, the Optical Society of America.

Eberlys research discoveries include:

As Eberly tells it, his early interest in optics came about by accident. He wasfresh out of graduate school when his supervisor at the Naval Ordnance Lab asked him about lasers.

It seems silly now, but at the time I didnt really know anything about them, recalls Eberly, discussing his career path in optics.

His supervisor wanted to know if lasers could be used to destroy submarinesan idea that was not feasible. Nonetheless, that nudge from his first non-academic boss helped prompt Eberlys early interest in lasers, which led him to make the several pioneering contributions to the foundations of quantum optics theory that earned him the Optica award.

Joe Eberly may have chosen a career in optics by accident, but the society is grateful that he did, says Optica CEO, Elizabeth Rogan. Joes research contributions to quantum optics and optical physics are numerous and impactful. His leadership as a teacher and educator in the Rochester community is long-lasting. He is a true visionary in the optical sciences, and we are proud to recognize him with our 2021 Honorary Membership.

Eberlys teaching excellence is reflected in the Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Teaching that he received from the University in 2000 for introducing first year students to topics usually reserved for upper-class and graduate-level students . . . demystifying and generating enthusiasm for the topics with his clarity, humor, and accessibility.

He received the Distinguished Service Award from Optica in 2012 for outstanding service as founding editor of Optics Express, the first open access journal in physics.

Eberly earned his PhD in physics at Stanford University in 1962, joined the Department of Physics at Rochester in 1967, and then the Institute of Optics in 1979. In 1995, with funding from the National Science Foundation, he founded the Rochester Theory Center (RTC), a research group focused on optical and quantum optical science with faculty from several University departments.

Eberly is a fellow and former president of Optica and a fellow of APS, the American Physical Society. His other awards include the Townes Award and the Frederick Ives Medal from Optica, the Mariam Smoluchowski Medal of the Physical Society of Poland, the Senior Humboldt Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany, and election as a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of Poland.

Eberly has published more than 400 scientific journal articles. He has coauthored three monographs and textbooks on lasers and quantum optics, one continuously in print for 45 years, and cofounded three international conferences for quantum optical physics.

Tags: Arts and Sciences, award, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Institute of Optics, Joseph Eberly

Category: Science & Technology

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Joseph Eberly honored as a 'true visionary' in optics - University of Rochester

Implementation allows businesses to integrate elements physical and virtual and bank on the combined advantages. With proper strategy, a hybrid environment has the potential to deliver the benefits of the core business systems, public and private cloud without the need for massive investment. These future-ready applications offer portability and robustness to businesses for having a competitive edge in deploying high-quality solutions and services.

Power of DevSecOps

Analysing the future of business growth, say in the next 20 years, the hybrid vision must be in close alignment with the present business model and technology disruption capabilities driven by AI/ML, real-time analytics, and automation prowess. The future of adopting a hybrid environment aims at achieving enhanced user experience and agile deployment of solutions that a public cloud can provide across all environments (traditional and cloud). It also allows for the increased protection of data and assets, deciding the storage mode and cover best suited to its requirements. The rise of DevSecOps or secure DevOps has ensured seamless application security at the beginning of the software development lifecycle. Enhanced security automation throughout the delivery pipeline reduces the risk of data breaches and allows quicker turnaround on deploying solutions. It has become critical to ensure the cyber resilience capabilities in todays challenging landscape and protect data, identities, and applications by integrating cyber security in every layer of product delivery. The hybrid environment boosts security capabilities in the workforce allowing unhindered performance and elevated customer experience.

Seize the hybrid future

In the post-pandemic world with an evolved work base, hybrid is the way to go. Optimizing workloads, ensuring cyber resiliency, and minimizing costs on resources sets the business on an upward growth trajectory. Quicker data management with DevOps, cloud-native applications, cybersecurity capabilities, and increased sync within the organization transforms the business into a next-gen powerhouse. As the cloud complexity intensifies, enterprises must make sound investment today in building a strong hybrid IT foundation to capitalize on the multiverse opportunities for a future focused on innovation. Our universe and its possibilities are limitless, with millions and trillions of galaxies spinning through space. Sci-fi movies and years of research have brought to us the concept of the multiverse the probability of multiple and diverse universes exiting parallelly to ours or distant due to the Big Bang. But the real question lies in, is it all there? The mysterious ways in which our universe evolves, and the various quantum physics theories might make us want to believe in the existence of multiple universes or scourge for more evidence. However, while scientists debate this theory, the world of emerging technologies has brought the cloud multiverse at our disposal for endless opportunities in the digital era.

The pandemic-induced digital acceleration has revolutionized business operations today, transforming the pathway to determine growth and success. Businesses have been relooking to rewire their old strategies and underlying framework to achieve an agile and nimble workflow with higher revenue. They now have the bandwidth to evaluate their investment plans, growth goals, and requirements to focus on innovation through deploying niche technologies like AI/ML, IoT, cloud, etcetera. As we move ahead in this digital journey, remote working has pushed companies to shift their base to cloud environments to staying relevant in the present market landscape. Basis the customer demand and the future goals, IT leaders can choose to adopt private cloud, public cloud, multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, or be on edge. The future is truly cloudy!

Exploring the hybrid order

As IT frameworks integrate these technologies to ensure flexibility in operations, the cloud multiverse stands ready to be explored by organizations to attain the next generation of transformation. Setting foot in the cloud journey as per the requirements, most organizations are looking at adopting a hybrid cloud approach. According to IDC, 70% of companies by the year 2022 will integrate public and private clouds by deploying hybrid management technologies, tools, and processes. As the industry matures at a fast pace, it has become critical to focus on integrating the right mix of solutions customized for each set of applications cost-effectively while ensuring a higher scale of reliability, resiliency, and agility.

The hybrid cloud architecture allows businesses to manage their core business system while embracing the newly adopted cloud framework. It presents the best way for organizations to optimally move their business-critical assets to the cloud and ensure business continuity as the pressure of the changing IT landscape grows.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Seizing the multiverse opportunities the hybrid way - The Times of India Blog

October 25, 2021• Physics 14, 147

Two experimental quantum computers tackle the most complex problems yet, suggesting an end to the debate on whether quantum primacythe point at which a quantum computer outperforms the best possible classical computercan be reached.

Chao-Yang Lu/University of Science and Technology of China

Chao-Yang Lu/University of Science and Technology of China

In a dramatic tour de force, teams led by Jian-Wei Pan at the University of Science and Technology of China have shown, in two separate studies, remarkable progress toward the demonstration of quantum primacy [1, 2]. Quantum primacy is the goal of showing that a programmable quantum computer solves a computational problem that is currently infeasible for nonquantum, or classical, computers [3]. Impressive recent experiments led to claims that this point has been reached [4], but they prompted debates on whether the demonstrated quantum computation was truly beyond the reach of existing classical computers. It has been suggested, for example, that these experiments didnt involve a comparison with the best possible classical algorithms or implementations [5]. The two major results by the Pan group push experimental quantum computing to far larger problem sizes, making it much harder to find classical algorithms and classical computers that can keep up. The results take us further toward trusting claims that we have indeed reached the age of computational quantum primacy.

In practice, the approach to demonstrating quantum primacy is based on sampling problemscomputational problems whose solutions are random instances, or samples, of a given probability distribution [6]. The quantum advantage is established if generating these instances is infeasible for a classical computer but not for the quantum computer. For every claim of a quantum advantage, a healthy debate always arises as to whether the particular classical algorithm used is the best possible. This is the basis of IBMs challenge to the claim of primacy made by Google, for example [5].

Pan and his colleagues may have established a hard-to-question advantage by demonstrating quantum primacy in two separate systems: one photonic, the other superconducting. In each case, the goal is to increase the number of particles (such as the number of photons in the interferometer or the number of qubits in the superconducting circuit) as well as the circuit depth (which is the maximum number of sequential operations between the computers input and its output) to the point that classically simulating the result becomes impossible. In so doing, these approaches make counterarguments to quantum primacy increasingly difficult to justify. They also point the way to ever larger quantum sampling experiments that could make the classical-vs-quantum debate truly obsolete.

The photonic experiment solves the problem of boson sampling. The original, rigorously formulated, problem (referred to as BosonSampling) involves constructing a many-channel interferometer and injecting either one photon or zero photons into each input port. Signals would then be characterized via a multiphoton coincidence measurement at the output ports after passing through the multichannel interferometer, which enacts a random signal transformation. The BosonSampling analysis shows that, subject to clear and plausible assumptions and conditions, the problem of sampling the circuit output is hard for classical machines but can be efficiently dealt with by quantum photonic interferometry.

Unfortunately, this ideal mathematical formulation is difficult to realize experimentally, so BosonSampling has been generalized to scattershot boson sampling [7] and, further, to Gaussian boson sampling [8], which is the subject of this current experiment. Gaussian boson sampling is experimentally viable, but proofs of computational primacy are more challenging to obtain. Instead, the community focuses on spoofing the quantum results, which means devising classical algorithms that would succeed in simulating the quantum results and thereby negate the claim of quantum primacy.

One way to keep the quantum sampling experiment well ahead of classical spoofing is to significantly increase the size of the quantum sampling problem. In their new Gaussian boson sampling experiment, which uses stimulated squeezed-light generation plus phase control to ensure that the superposition states are mutually coherent, Pan and colleagues detect up to 113 photons at the output of a 144-mode interferometer (Fig. 1). Based on combinatoric arguments for how many ways the photons can pass through the interferometer modes to yield multiphoton coincidences at the output, they claim to sample a 1043-dimensional Hilbert space. By making reasonable assumptions about the time required to perform arithmetic calculations on a nonquantum computer and the algorithm being employed, they show a factor-of-1024 speedup in computational time for boson sampling with respect to classical computation. These new results are an impressive advance over the state-of-the-art and make it increasingly unlikely that there could be efficient classical algorithmic alternatives for this sampling problem.

The teams other experiment involves random circuit sampling with a superconducting quantum processor. The circuit can be regarded as a unitary transformation of the input qubits, all set to the logical zero state. The sampling problem consists of generating random instances of measurements of all output qubits, with the circuit chosen randomly. The belief is that, similarly to the photonic implementation, simulating the probability distribution of output-qubit readouts for a random circuit is hard classically but feasible quantumly. Again, the goal is to perform an experiment whose sampling problem has a large size, corresponding to many qubits and a large circuit depth, meaning many quantum logic cycles from input to output.

The team achieves random circuit sampling using 66 functional transmon qubits combined with 110 tunable couplers (Fig. 2). They then test quantum primacy on a subset of 56 of these superconducting qubits and up to 20 quantum logical cycles. This size reduction ensures sufficiently large numbers to claim a breakthrough while not making the task too hard to implement. Although a seemingly small increase over Googles 53-qubit demonstration of quantum primacy [4], classically simulating the new 56-qubit test demands orders of magnitude more classical computational resources than simulating Googles case because of the exponentially increasing computational-resource requirements from linear increases in the number of qubits.

These two experiments represent rapid advancement in experimental quantum sampling, making classical spoofing of these demonstrations increasingly unlikely and thus establishing more firmly that we are in an age of quantum primacy for computing. Given that such impressive, large sampling problems are solved by quantum machines in a way that far outperforms classical simulators, could we use these quantum samplers to solve useful computational problems? Researchers have claimed that there are meaningful problems to be tackled by such samplers, in particular in the field of quantum chemistry, but no convincing experimental demonstration has yet been reported. These experiments further motivate efforts to put quantum sampling to practical use.

Barry Sanders is Director of the Institute for Quantum Science and Technology at the University of Calgary, Canada, and holds distinguished positions at international universities. His bachelors degree is from the University of Calgary and his Ph.D. and subsequent D.Sc. from Imperial College London. Following postdoctoral positions in Australia and New Zealand, he joined Macquarie University, Australia, in 1992 and then the University of Calgary in 2003. His contributions to quantum information and quantum optics theory are recognized through Fellowships of the Royal Society of Canada, the Institute of Physics (UK), the Optical Society of America, and the American Physical Society. He is former Editor-in-Chief of the New Journal of Physics.

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Physics - Quantum Leap for Quantum Primacy

There is a realm the laws of physics forbid us from accessing, below the resolving power of our most powerful microscopes and beyond the reach of our most sensitive telescopes. Theres no telling what might exist thereperhaps entire universes.

Since the beginning of human inquiry, there have been limits to our observing abilities. Worldviews were restricted by the availability of tools and our own creativity. Over time, the size of our observable universe grew as our knowledge grewwe saw planets beyond Earth, stars beyond the Sun, and galaxies beyond our own, while we peered deeper into cells and atoms. And then, during the 20th century, mathematics emerged that can explain, shockingly welland, to a point, predictthe world we live in. The theories of special and general relativity describe exactly the motion of the planets, stars, and galaxies. Quantum mechanics and the Standard Model of Particle Physics have worked wonders at clarifying what goes on inside of atoms.

However, with each of these successful theories comes hard-and-fast limits to our observing abilities. Today, these limits seem to define true boundaries to our knowledge.

On the large end, there is a speed limit that caps what we can see. It hampers any hope for us to observe most of our universe first-hand.

The speed of light is approximately 300,000,000 meters per second (or 671,000,000 miles per hour, if thats how your brain works). The theory of special relativity, proposed by Albert Einstein in 1905, forbids anything from traveling faster than that. Massless things always travel this speed in a vacuum. Accelerating massive objects to this speed essentially introduces a divide-by-zero in one of special relativitys equations; it would take infinite energy to accelerate something with mass to the speed of light.

If, as a child, you hopped on a spaceship traveling out of the solar system at 99% the speed of light, you might be able to explore other parts of the galaxy before succumbing to age, but because time is relative, your friends and family would likely be long gone before you could report your observations back to Earth. But youd still have your limitsthe Milky Way galaxy is 105,700 light-years across, our neighboring galaxy Andromeda is 2.5 million light-years away, and the observable universe is around 93 billion light-years across. Any hope of exploring farther distances would require multigenerational missions or, if using a remote probe, accepting that youll be dead and humanity may be very different by the time the probes data returns to Earth.

The speed of light is more than just a speed limit, however. Since the light we see requires travel time to arrive at Earth, then we must contend with several horizons beyond which we cant interact, which exist due to Einsteins theory of general relativity. There is an event horizon, a moving boundary in space and time beyond which light and particles emitted now will never reach Earth, no matter how much time passesthose events we will never see. There is also the particle horizon, or a boundary beyond which we cannot observe light arriving from the pastthis defines the observable universe.

Theres a second kind of event horizon, one surrounding a black hole. Gravity is an effect caused by the presence of massive objects warping the shape of space, like a bowling ball on a trampoline. A massive-enough object might warp space such that no information can exit beyond a certain boundary.

These limits arent static. We will see further and further as time goes on, because the distance light travels outward gets bigger and bigger, said Tamara Davis, astrophysics professor who studies cosmology at the University of Queensland. But this expanding perspective wont be permanentsince our universe is also expanding (and that expansion is accelerating). If you fast-forward 100 billion years into the future, all of the galaxies that we can currently see will be so far, and accelerating so quickly away from us, that the light they emitted in the past will have faded from view. At that point, our observable universe would be just those nearby galaxies gravitationally bound to our own.

Another boundary lives on the other end of the scale. Zoom in between molecules, into the center of atoms, deep into their nuclei and into the quarks that make up their protons and neutrons. Here, another set of rules, mostly devised in the 20th century, governs how things work. In the rules of quantum mechanics, everything is quantized, meaning particles properties (their energy or their location around an atomic nucleus, for example) can only take on distinct values, like steps on a ladder, rather than a continuum, like places on a slide. However, quantum mechanics also demonstrates that particles arent just dots; they simultaneously act like waves, meaning that they can take on multiple values at the same time and experience a host of other wave-like effects, such as interference. Essentially, the quantum world is a noisy place, and our understanding of it is innately tied to probability and uncertainty.

This quantum-ness means that if you try to peer too closely, youll run into the observer effect: Attempting to see things this small requires bouncing light off of them, and the energy from this interaction can fundamentally change that which youre attempting to observe.

But theres an even more fundamental limit to what we can see. Werner Heisenberg discovered that the wonkiness of quantum mechanics introduces minimum accuracy with which you can measure certain pairs of mathematically related properties, such as a particles position and momentum. The more accurately you can measure one, the less accurately you can measure the other. And finally, even attempting to measure just one of those properties becomes impossible at a small enough scale, called the Planck scale, which comes with a shortest length, 10^-35 meters, and a shortest time interval, around 5 x 10^-44 seconds.

You take the constant numbers that describe naturea gravitational constant, the speed of light, and Plancks constant, and if I put these constants together, I get the Planck length, said James Beacham, physicist at the ATLAS experiment of the Large Hadron Collider. Mathematically, its nothing specialI can write down a smaller number like 10^-36 meters But quantum mechanics says that if I have a prediction to my theory that says structure exists at a smaller scale, then quantum has built-in uncertainty for it. Its a built-in limit to our understanding of the universethese are the smallest meaningful numbers that quantum mechanics allows us to define.

This is assuming that quantum mechanics is the correct way to think about the universe, of course. But time and time again, experiments have demonstrated theres no reason to think otherwise.

These fundamental limits, large and small, present clear barriers to our knowledge. Our theories tell us that we will never directly observe what lies beyond these cosmic horizons or what structures exist smaller than the Planck scale. However, the answers to some of the grandest questions we ask ourselves might exist beyond those very walls. Why and how did the universe begin? What lies beyond our universe? Why do things look and act the way that they do? Why do things exist?

The unobservable and untestable exist beyond the scope of scientific inquiry. Alls well and good to write down the math and say you can explain the universe, but if you have no way of testing the hypothesis, then thats getting outside the realm of what we consider science, said Nathan Musoke, a computational cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire. Exploring the unanswerable belongs to philosophy or religion. Its possible, however, that science-derived answers to these questions exist as visible imprints on these horizons that the scientific method can uncover.

That imprinting is literal. Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman first predicted in 1948 that some light left over from an early epoch in the universes history might still be observable here on Earth. Then, in 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were working as radio astronomers at Bell Labs in New Jersey, when they noticed a strange signal in their radio telescope. They went through every idea to figure out the source of the noiseperhaps it was background radiation from New York City, or even poop from pigeons nesting in the experiment? But they soon realized that the data matched Alpher and Hermans prediction.

Penzias and Wilson hadspotted the microwave radiation from just 400,000 years after the Big Bang called the cosmic microwave background, the oldest and most distant radiation observable to todays telescopes. During this era in the universes history, chemical reactions caused the previously opaque universe to allow light to travel through uninhibited. This light, stretched out by the expanding universe, now appears as faint microwave radiation coming from all directions in the sky.

Astronomers experiments since then, such as the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), and the Planck space observatory have attempted to map this cosmic microwave background, revealing several key takeaways. First, the temperature of these microwaves is eerily uniform across the skyaround 2.725 degrees above absolute zero, the universes minimum temperature. Second, despite its uniformity, there are small, direction-dependent temperature fluctuations; patches where the radiation is slightly warmer and patches where its slightly cooler. These fluctuations are a remnant of the structure of the early universe before it became transparent, produced by sound waves pulsing through it and gravitational wells, revealing how the earliest structures may have formed.

At least one theory has allowed for a scientific approach to probing this structure, with hypotheses that have been tested and supported by further observations of these fluctuations. This theory is called inflation. Inflation posits that the observable universe as we see it today would have once been contained in a space smaller than any known particle. Then, it underwent a burst of unthinkable expansion lasting just a small fraction of a second, governed by a field with dynamics determined by quantum mechanics. This era magnified tiny quantum-scale fluctuations into wells of gravity that eventually governed the large-scale structure of the observable universe, with those wells written into the cosmic microwave background data. You can think of inflation as part of the bang in the Big Bang theory.

Its a nice thought, that we can pull knowledge from beyond the cosmic microwave background. But this knowledge leads to more questions. I think theres a pretty broad consensus that inflation probably occurred, said Katie Mack, theoretical astrophysicist at North Carolina State University. Theres very little consensus as to how or why it occurred, what caused it, or what physics it obeyed when it happened.

Some of these new questions may be unanswerable. What happens at the very beginning, that information is obscured from us, said Mack. I find it frustrating that were always going to be lacking information. We can come up with models that explain what we see, and models that do better than others, but in terms of validating them, at some point were going to have to just accept that theres some unknowability.

At the cosmic microwave background and beyond, the large and the small intersect; the early universe seems to reflect quantum behaviors. Similar conversations are happening on the other end of the size spectrum, as physicists attempt to reconcile the behavior of the universe on the largest scale with the rules of quantum mechanics. Black holes exist in this scientific space, where gravity and quantum physics must play together, and where physical descriptions of whats going on sit below the Planck scale.

Here, physicists are also working to devise a mathematical theory that, while too small to observe directly, produces observable effects. Perhaps most famous among these ideas is string theory, which isnt really a theory but a mathematical framework based on the idea that fundamental particles like quarks and electrons arent just specks but one-dimensional strings whose behavior governs those particles properties. This theory attempts to explain the various forces of nature that particles experience, while gravity seems to be a natural result of thinking about the problem in this way. Like those studying any theory, string theorists hope that their framework will put forth testable predictions.

Finding ways to test these theories is a work in progress. Theres faith that one way or another we should be able to test these ideas, said David Gross, professor at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics. It might be very indirectbut thats not something thats a pressing issue.

Searching for indirect ways to test string theory (and other theories of quantum gravity) is part of the search for the theory itself. Perhaps experiments producing small black holes could provide a laboratory to explore this domain, or perhaps string theory calculations will require particles that a particle accelerator could locate.

At these small timescales, our notion of what space and time really is might break down in profound ways, said Gross. The way physicists formulate questions in general often assumes various givens, like spacetime exists as a smooth, continuous manifold, he said. Those questions might be ill formulated. Often, very difficult problems in physics require profound jumps, revolutions, or different ways of thinking, and its only afterward when we realize that we were asking the question in the wrong way.

For example, some hope to know what happened at the beginning of the universeand what happened before time began. That, I believe, isnt the right way to ask the question, said Gross, as asking such a question might mean relying on an incorrect understanding of the nature of space and time. Not that we know the correct way, yet.

Walls that stop us from easily answering our deepest questions about the universe well, they dont feel very nice to think about. But offering some comfort is the fact that 93 billion light-years is very big, and 10^-35 meters is very small. Between the largest and the smallest is a staggering space full of things we dont but theoretically can know.

Todays best telescopes can look far into the distance (and remember, looking into the distance also means looking back in time). Hubble can see objects as they were just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, and its successor, the Webb Space Telescope, will look farther still, perhaps 150 million years after the Big Bang. Existing galactic surveys like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Dark Energy Survey have collected data on millions of galaxies, the latter having recently released a 3D map of the universe with 300 million galaxies. The upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will survey up to 10 billion galaxies across the sky.

From an astronomy point of view, we have so much data that we dont have enough people to analyze it, said Mikhail Ivanov, NASA Einstein Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. There are so many things we dont understand in astrophysicsand were overwhelmed with data. To question whether were hitting a limit is like trolling. Even then, these mind-boggling surveys represent only a small fraction of the universes estimated 200 billion galaxies that future telescopes might be able to map.

But as scientists attempt to play in these theoretically accessible spaces, some wonder whether the true limit is us.

Today, particle physics seems to be up against an issue of its own: Despite plenty of outstanding mysteries in need of answers, the physicists at the Large Hadron Collider have found no new fundamental particles since the Higgs Boson in 2012. This lack of discovery has physicists scratching their heads; its ruled out the simplest versions of some theories that had been guiding particle physicists previously, with few obvious signposts about where to look next (though there are some!).

Beacham thinks that these problems could be solved by searching for phenomena all the way down to the Planck scale. A vast, unknown chasm exists between the scale of todays particle physics experiments and the Planck scale, and theres no guarantee of anything new to discover in that space. Exploring the entirety of that chasm would take an immense amount of energy and increasingly powerful colliders. Quantum mechanics says that higher-momentum particles have smaller wavelengths, and thus are needed to probe smaller length scales. However, actually exploring the Planck scale may require a particle accelerator big enough to circle the Sunmaybe even one the size of the solar system.

Maybe its daunting to think of such a collider, but its inspiration for a way to get to the scaleand inspiration to figure out how to get there with a smaller device, he said. Beacham views it as particle physicists duty to explore whether any new physical phenomena might exist all the way down to the Planck scale, even if there currently isnt evidence theres anything to find. We need to think about going as high in energy as we can, building larger and larger colliders until we hit the limit. We dont get to choose what the discoveries are, he said.

Or, perhaps we can use artificial intelligence to create models that perfectly explain the behavior of our universe. Zooming back out, Fermilab and University of Chicago scientist Brian Nord has dreamed up a system that could model the universe with the help of artificial intelligence, constantly and automatically updating its mathematical model with new observations. Such a model could grow arbitrarily close to the model that actually describes our universeit could generate a theory of everything. But, as with other AI algorithms, it would be a black box to humans.

Such issues are already cropping up in fields where we use software-based tools to make accurate models, explained Taner Edis, physicist at Truman State University. Some software toolsmachine learning models, for examplemay accurately describe the world we live in but are too complex for any individual to completely understand. In other words, we know that these tools work, but not necessarily how. Maybe AI will take us farther down this path, where the knowledge we create will exist spread over a civilization and its technology, owned in bits and pieces by humanity and the algorithms we create to understand the universe. Together, wed have generated a complete picture, but one inaccessible to any single person.

Finally, these sorts of models may provide supreme predictive power, but they wouldnt necessarily offer comfortable answers to questions about why things work the way they do. Perhaps this sets up a dichotomy between what scientists can domake predictions based on initial conditionsand what they hope these predictions will allow them to dolead us to a better understanding of the universe we live in.

I have a hunch that well be able to effectively achieve full knowledge of the universe, but what form will it come in? said Nord. Will we be able to fully understand that knowledge, or will it be used merely as a tool to make predictions without caring about the meaning?

Thinking realistically, todays physicists are forced to think about what society cares about most and whether our systems and funding models permit us to fully examine what we can explore, before we can begin to worry about what we cant. U.S.legislators often discuss basic science research with the language of applied science or positive outcomesthe Department of Energy funds much particle physics research. The National Science Foundations mission is To promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense; and for other purposes.

Physicists hoping to receive funding must compete for resources in order to do research that promotes the missions of these organizations. While many labs, such as CERN, exist solely to fund peaceful research with no military applications, most still brag that indirectly solving bigger problems will lead to new techthe internet, or advances in data handling and AI, for example. Private funding organizations exist, but they, too, are either limited in their resources, driven by a mission, or both.

But what if answering these deep questions requires thinking that isnt driven by anything? How can scientists convince funders that we should build experiments, not with the hope of producing new technology or advancing society, but merely with the hope of answering deep questions? Echoing a sentiment expressed in an article by Vanessa A. Bee, what if our systems today (sorry, folks, Im talking about capitalism) are actually stifling innovation in favor of producing some short-term gain? What if answering these questions would require social policy and international collaboration deemed unacceptable by governments?

If this is indeed the world we live in, then the unknowable barrier is far closer than the limits of light speed and the Planck scale. It would exist because we collectivelythe governments we vote for, the institutions they funddont deem answering those questions important enough to devote resources to.

Prior to the 1500s, the universe was simply Earth; the Sun, Moon, and stars were small satellites that orbited us. By 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a heliocentric model of the universethe Sun sat at the center, and Earth orbited it. It was only in the 1920s that Edwin Hubble calculated the distance of Andromeda and proved the Milky Way wasnt the whole universe; it was just one of many, many galaxies in a larger universe. Scientists discovered most of the particles that make up todays Standard Model of particle physics in the second half of the 20th century. Sure, relativity and quantum theory seem to have established the size of the sandbox we have to play inbut precedent would suggest theres more to the sandbox, or even beyond the sandbox, that we havent considered. But then, maybe there isnt.

There are things that well never know, but thats not the right way to think about scientific discovery. We wont know unless we attempt to know, by asking questions, crafting hypotheses, and testing them with experiments. The vast unknown, both leading up to and beyond our boundaries, presents limitless opportunities to ask questions, uncover more knowledge, and even render previous limits obsolete. We cannot truly know the unknowable, then, since the unknowable is just what remains when we can no longer hypothesize and experiment. The unknowable isnt factits something we decide.

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What We Will Never Know - Gizmodo