Category Archives: Quantum Physics

DR. WILLIAM A. AUDEH Cedar Rapids

Dr. William A. Audeh, 92, of Cedar Rapids, passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by his family, on Feb. 3, 2021, after a long illness. Dr. Audeh was a Board-Certified General Surgeon, providing care to the people of the Cedar Rapids community for over 25 years, from 1965 to 1990. Dr. Audeh was born of Palestinian Christian parents, on Jan. 7, (the Orthodox Christmas), 1929, in Khartoum, Sudan, where his father, also a physician, was in medical practice at the time. The family soon returned to their ancestral home of many generations in Nazareth, Palestine, where he grew up, surrounded by his siblings, and many aunts, uncles and cousins. He later attended Bishop Gobat High School in Jerusalem. While still a teenager, Dr. Audeh and his family were forced to leave their home in Palestine, as were many Palestinian Arab families, in 1948, and fled to Beirut, Lebanon for safety, as Palestinian refugees. Despite these hardships, he graduated from the American University of Beirut (AUB) with his Medical Degree in 1953, and began a lifetime of happiness when he married his wife Sameera (nee Azzam) in 1954, in Beirut. The couple emigrated to the United States in 1959, obtaining their U.S. Citizenship, and settling first in Omaha, Neb., where Dr. Audeh completed his Residency Training in Surgery at Creighton University in 1961. Dr. Audeh began his Surgical practice at the Kuker Clinic and St. Anthony's Hospital in Carrol, Iowa, from 1961 to 1964, before coming to Cedar Rapids in December 1964. During his many years of surgical practice in Cedar Rapids, Dr. Audeh was a member of the Medical Staff of both Mercy Medical Center and St. Luke's Hospital, serving as Chief of Surgery for a time. Dr. Audeh was an innovative and pioneering surgeon, bringing the latest technology and surgical techniques to his patients. He performed the first gastroscopy in Cedar Rapids in the 1970s, using a flexible scope (displayed in a glass case in Mercy Emergency Room) to detect upper intestinal bleeding. Most importantly, he performed the first "lumpectomy" for breast cancer ever performed in Cedar Rapids, in the 1980s, a procedure which allowed women with breast cancer to avoid mastectomy, and which is now the standard of care nationwide. Over his many years of practice, Dr. Audeh was a passionate and dedicated physician, providing surgical care to many hundreds of men, women and children in Cedar Rapids and surrounding communities. After his retirement, as an Emeritus member of the Mercy Medical Staff, he remained active in medical meetings, and regularly attended the Breast Cancer Tumor Board at Mercy Medical Center, providing his knowledge and years of experience to his colleagues. Dr. Audeh had many interests outside of Medicine. He was an avid reader of books on philosophy, quantum physics and science fiction, and was a fan of "Star Trek" through every series. He had a lifelong love of airplanes, having seen Hawker Hurricanes and Spitfires as a boy during World War II, and obtained a Pilot's license, logging many hours of flight in small single engine planes. In retirement, he applied his surgical skills to oil painting, and painted many beautiful scenes of the Iowa landscape, a number of which were displayed in an exhibition at Mercy Medical Center. Known as "Bill" to his friends, he enjoyed the company of his friends and colleagues, and for many years was a member of a weekly poker group, made up of retired physicians. Although Iowa was his adopted home, Dr. Audeh embraced everything Iowan, and particularly enjoyed " The Music Man" as his favorite film. Dr. Audeh's ultimate love and devotion was to his family, for whom he was a wonderful husband, father, grandfather and role model. Dr. Audeh is survived by his beloved wife of 67 years, Sameera; his daughter, Prof. Aida Audeh of Hamline University in St. Paul and son-in-law Giovanni; his son, Dr. M(ouni) William Audeh and daughter-in-law Carolina of Los Angeles, and grandson, Brandon William Audeh of Santa Monica, Calif. Dr. Audeh is also survived by his brother, Dr. Costandi Audeh and his wife Margaret, of Phoenix, Ariz. Dr. Audeh was preceded in death by his beloved sisters, Alice, Aida and Hilda; and by his parents, Dr. Amin and Olga Audeh, with whom he will be laid to rest in the St. George Orthodox Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund (www.pcrf.net), a medical charity providing medical care to Palestinian children. Online condolences may be left at http://www.cedarmemorial.com under obituaries.

Originally posted here:

Dr. William Audeh - The Gazette

Synopsis

Lee Chan Woo (Park Hae Soo) is a man of many talents. A major player in the world of Korean nightlife, he not only runs a successful nightclub, but has made a name for himself as the Hua Tuo of nightlife. Nicknamed after the legendary Chinese physician, Chan Woo has a knack for breathing new life into struggling, nearly bankrupt nightclubs, making them successful once again. A man who lives by his own quantum physical theory, he truly believes that your thoughts and actions shape your reality.But Chan Woos theory is put to the ultimate test when he learns that one of the countrys top celebrities is taking part in a drug party being held at one of the local clubs. Knowing the authorities must be informed, he contacts Officer Park Ki Heon (Kim Sang Ho), knowing hell do what must be done to bring those involved to justice. With Officer Park and his associate, Sung Eun Young (Seo Ye Ji) by his side, Chan Woo and his team begin to investigate the less-than-reputable goings on in some of the citys hottest clubs; but digging deeper brings with it all sorts of nasty consequences.With celebrities, prosecutors, and politicians all involved in the ever-growing scandal, Chan Woo, Eun Young, and Officer Park must confront some of the countrys most powerful people in a fight for justice that may end up costing them everything.An engaging story from start to finish, Quantum Physics is a 2019 crime film directed by Lee Sung Tae.

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Quantum Physics | Rakuten Viki

A team of researchers led by Columbia University has developed a unique platform to program a layered crystal, producing imaging capabilities beyond common limits on demand.

The discovery is an important step toward control of nanolight, which is lightthat can access the smallest length scales imaginable. The work also provides insights for the field of optical quantum information processing, which aims to solve difficult problems in computing and communications.

We were able to use ultrafast nano-scale microscopy to discover a new way to control our crystals with light, turning elusive photonic properties on and off at will, said Aaron Sternbach, postdoctoral researcher at Columbia who is lead investigator on the study. The effects are short-lived, only lasting for trillionths of one second, yet we are now able to observe these phenomena clearly.

The research appears Feb. 4 in the journal Science.

Nature sets a limit on how tightly light can be focused. Even in microscopes, two different objects that are closer than this limit would appear to be one. But within a special class of layered crystalline materialsknown as van de Waals crystalsthese rules can, sometimes, be broken. In these special cases, light can be confined without any limit in these materials, making it possible to see even the smallest objects clearly.

In their experiments, the Columbia researchers studied the van der Waals crystal called tungsten diselenide, which is of high interest for its potential integration in electronic and photonic technologies because its unique structure and strong interactions with light.

When the scientists illuminated the crystal with a pulse of light, they were able to change the crystals electronic structure. The new structure, created by the optical-switching event, allowed something very uncommon to occur: Super-fine details, on the nanoscale, could be transported through the crystal and imaged on its surface.

The report demonstrates a new method to control the flow of light of nanolight. Optical manipulation on the nanoscale, or nanophotonics, has become a critical area of interest as researchers seek ways to meet the increasing demand for technologies that go well beyond what is possible with conventional photonics and electronics.

Dmitri Basov, Higgins professor of physics at Columbia University, and senior author on the paper, believes the teams findings will spark new areas of research in quantum matter.

Laser pulses allowed us to create a new electronic state in this prototypical semiconductor, if only for a few pico-seconds, he said. This discovery puts us on track toward optically programmable quantum phases in new materials.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, University of California-San Diego, University of Washington, Center for Computational Quantum PhysicsFlatiron contributed to the study, Programmable hyperbolic polaritons in van derWaals semiconductors.

The work is supported as part of Programmable Quantum Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences.

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Switching Nanolight On and Off | Columbia News - Columbia University

Scientists are finally figuring out how much dark matter the almost imperceptible material said to tug on everything, yet emit no light really weighs.

The new estimate helps pin down how heavy its particles could be with implications for what the mysterious stuff actually is.

The research sharply narrows the potential mass of dark matter particles, from between an estimated 10^minus 24 electronvolts (eV) and 10^19 Gigaelectron volts (GeV) , to between 10^minus 3 eV and 10^7eV a possible range of masses many trillions of trillions of times smaller than before.

The findings could help dark matter hunters focus their efforts on the indicated range of particle masses or they might reveal a previously unknown force is at work in the universe, said Xavier Calmet, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom.

Related: The 11 biggest unanswered questions about dark matter

Calmet, along with doctoral student Folkert Kuipers, also of the University of Sussex, described their efforts in a new study to be published in the March issue of Physical Letters B.

By some estimates, dark matter makes up about 83% of all the matter in the universe. Its thought only to interact with light and ordinary matter through gravity, which means it can only be seen by the way it curves light rays.

Astronomers found the first hints of dark matter when gazing at a galactic cluster in the 1930s, and theories that galaxies are threaded with and fringed by vast halos of dark matter became mainstream after the 1970s, when astronomers realized galaxies were whirling faster than they otherwise should, given how much visible matter they contained.

Related: The 12 strangest objects in the universe

Possible candidates for dark matter particles include ghostly, tiny particles known as neutrinos, theoretical dark, cold particles known as axions, and proposed weakly-interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. The new mass bounds could help eliminate some of these candidates, depending on the details of the specific dark matter model, Calmet said.

What scientists do know is that dark matter seems to interact with light and normal matter only through gravity, and not via any of the other fundamental forces; and so the researchers used gravitational theories to arrive at their estimated range for the masses of dark matter particles.

Importantly, they used concepts from theories of quantum gravity, which resulted in a much narrower range than the previous estimates, which used only Einstein's theory of general relativity.

"Our idea was a very simple one," Calmet told Live Science in an email. "It is amazing that people have not thought of this before."

Einstein's theory of general relativity is based on classical physics; it perfectly predicts how gravity works most of the time, but it breaks down in extreme circumstances where quantum mechanical effects become significant, such as at the center of a black hole.

Theories of quantum gravity, on the other hand, try to explain gravity through quantum mechanics, which can already describe the other three known fundamental forces electromagnetic force, the strong force that holds most matter together, and the weak force that causes radioactive decay. None of the quantum gravity theories, however, as yet have strong evidence to support them.

Calmet and Kuipers estimated the lower bound for the mass of a dark matter particle using values from general relativity, and estimated the upper bound from the lifetimes of dark matter particles predicted by quantum gravity theories. The nature of the values from general relativity also defined the nature of the upper bound, so they were able to derive a prediction that was independent of any particular model of quantum gravity, Calmet said.

The study found that while quantum gravitational effects were generally almost insignificant, they became important when a hypothetical dark matter particle took an extremely long time to decay and when the universe was about as old as it is now (roughly 13.8 billion years), he said.

Physicists previously estimated that dark matter particles had to be lighter than the "Planck mass" about 1.2 x 10^19 GeV, at least a 1,000 times heavier than the largest-known particles yet heavier than 10^minus 24 eV to fit with observations of the smallest galaxies known to contain dark matter, he said.

But until now, few studies had attempted to narrow the range, even though great progress had been made in understanding quantum gravity over the last 30 years, he said. "People simply did not look at the effects of quantum gravity on dark matter before."

Calmet said the new bounds for the masses of dark matter particles, could also be used to test whether gravity alone interacts with dark matter, which is widely assumed, or if dark matter is influenced by an unknown force of nature.

"If we found a dark matter particle with a mass outside the range discussed our paper, we would not only have discovered dark matter, but also very strong evidence that there is some new force beyond gravity acting on dark matter," he said.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Scientists narrow down the 'weight' of dark matter trillions of trillions of times - Livescience.com

What time is the Super Bowl? Super Bowl LV will be played on Feb. 7, 2021, at the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. The game, which will be contested by the AFCs Kansas City Chiefs and the NFCs Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will kick off at 6:30 p.m. ET (5:30 p.m. CT; 3:30 p.m. PT). In the United States, you can watch on CBS. The Super Bowl LV Halftime Show will be headlined by The Weeknd.

Time is a notoriously hard concept to pin down. The first person Im aware of to take a serious crack at it is Aristotle, who offers up his definition of time in Book IV of his Physics (parts 10 and 11): time is number of movement in respect of the before and after.

This curiously circular definition citing the before and after in a definition of time somewhat evades the issue at hand is a relative one. For Aristotle (who seems to be more interested in playing with the concept of now than time itself anyway), time seems to be a sort of basis for change, although its exact nature is confusing, both for the philosopher himself and anyone unfortunate enough to be attempting to thoroughly digest his work.

Relative time turns out not to be that useful, and one of the great achievements of early modernity was capturing and taming time. The development of regular clocks allows for many things, not least more precise measurements of everything else. Its impossible to imagine, for instance, the grand edifice of Newtonian physics being built on water clocks and sundials.

Thanks to the magic of clocks, these days were used to time as a constant, the now ticking second by second into the future with implacable rhythm. This is very helpful both in being able to understand the immediate universe and to maintain a functioning society. But its also both physically wrong and hideously unnatural.

Einstein dealt with the non-static nature of time in 1905 with On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies (tl;dr: holding the speed of light constant means that time must flow differently for observers traveling at different speeds, a fact which has been proved experimentally) and although Im not drunk enough to read about quantum physics Im going to go ahead and assume that quantum theories of time are pretty gnarly too. Humanitys general concept of time only works on a limited, parochial scale.

And honestly, it doesnt work there either. We dont experience time in the way our machines do. It contracts, contorts, extending March 2020 into hideous decades, and turning what ought to be joyous hours into a stumble of drunken seconds. People dont experience time as a regimented flow. Sometimes we pretend to, and every now and then we force ourselves to sync up with it, but formal time is too abstract for us to stay with it for long.

Sports are great examples of our utter inability to mesh perceived time with real time. Since its Super Bowl week, lets take football. An NFL game nominally consists of four 15-minute quarters, but in practice lasts for hours. Why? Because the game clock twists and turns, freezing at some points but not others. The rules of football, with play clocks and timeouts and etc. act as a supplemental set of physics, but its not just the rules which determine how long a game goes.

On average the Super Bowl takes 3 hours, 44 minutes from start to finish. This is significantly longer than NFL average, despite no changes to the rules of the sport, and is entirely a product of capitalisms bizarre intersection with cultural events. Super Bowl ads cost a lot of money, the halftime show and therefore more time needs to be made (made?!) to accommodate both. In a certain sense, then, the societal environs of the game warp time within the game.

The Super Bowl, then operates on about three different layers of time, all distressed in barely-sensical ways. This is fine, because time makes no fucking sense and never will. Things happen, they appear to be irreversible because of ... entropy? ... and we all just hang around and deal with it. What is time? Honestly, I havent the foggiest idea. Maybe the post my friend Chris Greenberg wrote three years ago might help?

Ive given myself a headache now, so I hope this post is long enough for SEO purposes. Dulce et decorum est pro google mori.

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The Super Bowl: What is time? - SB Nation

Matthew Perry played one of the funniest characters on Friends. He excelled at deadpan, self-deprecating humor that truly made Chandler Bing a delight. And as it turns out, that sense of silliness extended to his life beyond the set.

Perry was relatively unknown in Hollywood before getting cast in the iconic NBC sitcom. Playing Chandler helped catapult the actor to fame, and the role even led to a few high profile romances with fellow Hollywood stars.

The Friends alum even hooked up with A-lister Julia Roberts, and it was all thanks to funny jokes and a bit of quantum physics.

Before his role of Chandler made Perry a superstar, the actor struggled with feelings of awkwardness in his dating life.

During the early stages of Friends he told show creators that while he was not an unattractive man, he did feel just awful with women, InTouch reported.

I also am not comfortable with any silence at all, Perry said during a 2004 Dateline interview. I have to break any awkward moment or silence with a joke.

Eventually, Perrys jovial nature attracted multiple romantic partners. Goofing around even led to a long term relationship with Roberts.

RELATED: Friends: This 1 Famous Co-Star Was Super Nervous to Appear on the Series I Remember Losing Sleep

By 1996, Friends was one of the hottest comedies on television. NBC execs decided to capitalize on that popularity by airing a special 2-part episode immediately following the Super Bowl game that year. And they knew they needed some special celebrity guest stars to make it even more enticing.

Getting Julia Roberts was incredibly exciting. We knew she would have the right touch for it. And when she said yes, it was pretty awesome, series co-creator Marta Kauffman told The Hollywood Reporter.

Producer Kevin S. Bright followed up with a funny story about how that happened. Do you know the story of how we got her? Matthew (Perry) asked her to be on the show, Bright recalled.

She wrote back to him, Write me a paper on quantum physics and Ill do it. My understanding is that Matthew went away and wrote a paper and faxed it to her the next day.

Roberts played Perrys love interest in the Friends episode titled The One After the Super Bowl. And their playful banter didnt end there. After filming wrapped, the two actors stayed in touch and eventually began a romantic relationship.

There was a lot of flirting over faxing, writer Alexa Junge told THR. She was giving him these questionnaires like, Why should I go out with you? And everyone in the writers room helped him explain to her why. He could do pretty well without us, but there was no question we were on Team Matthew and trying to make it happen for him.

Perry and Roberts dated for about one year, doing their best to keep the relationship hidden from nosy tabloid reporters. And it was all thanks to Perrys sense of humor channeled through Chandler.

Originally posted here:

'Friends' Star Matthew Perry Dated Julia Roberts By Wooing Her With Quantum Physics and Funny Jokes - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Till 2025, the collective sum of the worlds data will grow from 33 zettabytes this year to a 175ZB by 2025. The security and privacy of such sensitive data remain a big concern.

Emerging quantum communication and the latest computation technologies offer a promising solution. However, it requires powerful quantum optical circuits that can securely process the massive amounts of information we generate every day.

To help enable this technology, scientists in USCs Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science have made a breakthrough in quantum photonics.

A quantum optical circuit uses light sources to generate photons on-demand in real-time. The photons act as information-carrying bits (qubits).

These light sources are nano-sized semiconductor quantum dotstiny manufactured collections of tens of thousands to a million atoms packed within a volume of linear size less than a thousandth of the thickness of typical human hair buried in a matrix of another suitable semiconductor.

They have so far been demonstrated to be the most flexible on-demand single-photon generators. The optical circuit requires these single-photon sources to be masterminded on a semiconductor chip. Photons with an almost identical wavelength from the sources should then be delivered a guided way. This permits them to be controlled to shape collaborations with different photons and particles to transmit and process information.

Until now, there has been a significant barrier to the development of such circuits. The dots have different sizes, and shapes mean that the photons they release do not have uniform wavelengths. This and the lack of positional order make them unsuitable for use in the development of optical circuits.

In this study, scientists showed that single photons could be emitted uniformly from quantum dots arranged precisely. Scientists used the method of aligning quantum dots to create single-quantum dot, with their remarkable single-photon emission characteristics.

It is expected that the ability to align uniformly-emitting quantum dots precisely will enable the production of optical circuits, potentially leading to novel advancements in quantum computing and communications technologies.

Jiefei Zhang, currently a research assistant professor in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, said,The breakthrough paves the way to the next steps required to move from lab demonstration of single-photon physics to chip-scale fabrication of quantum photonic circuits. This has potential applications in quantum (secure) communication, imaging, sensing, and quantum simulations and computation.

The corresponding author Anupam Madhukar said,it is essential that quantum dots be ordered in a precise way so that photons released from any two or more dots can be manipulated to connect on the chip. This will form the basis of building unit for quantum optical circuits.

If the source where the photons come from is randomly located, this cant be made to happen.

The current technology that allows us to communicate online, for instance using a technological platform such as Zoom, is based on the silicon integrated electronic chip. If the transistors on that chip are not placed in exact designed locations, there would be no integrated electrical circuit. It is the same requirement for photon sources such as quantum dots to create quantum optical circuits.

Evan Runnerstrom, program manager, Army Research Office, an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Commands Army Research Laboratory, said,This advance is an important example of how fundamental solving materials science challenges, like how to create quantum dots with precise position and composition, can have big downstream implications for technologies like quantum computing. This shows how AROs targeted investments in basic research support the Armys enduring modernization efforts in areas like networking.

Using a method called SESRE (substrate-encoded size-reducing epitaxy), scientists created a precise layout of quantum dots for the circuits. They then fabricated regular arrays of nanometer-sized mesas with a defined edge orientation, shape, and depth on a flat semiconductor substrate composed of gallium arsenide (GaAs). Quantum dots are then created on top of the mesas by adding appropriate atoms using the following technique.

Zhang said,This work also sets a new world-record of ordered and scalable quantum dots in terms of the simultaneous purity of single-photon emission greater than 99.5%, and in terms of the uniformity of the wavelength of the emitted photons, which can be as narrow as 1.8nm, which is a factor of 20 to 40 better than typical quantum dots.

That with this uniformity, it becomes feasible to apply established methods such as local heating or electric fields to fine-tune the photon wavelengths of the quantum dots to exactly match each other, which is necessary for creating the required interconnections between different quantum dots for circuits.

We now have an approach and a material platform to provide scalably and ordered sources generating potentially indistinguishable single-photons for quantum information applications. The approach is general and can be used for other suitable material combinations to create quantum dots emitting over a wide range of wavelengths preferred for different applications, for example, fiber-based optical communication or the mid-infrared regime, suited for environmental monitoring and medical diagnostics.

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A world-first method to enable quantum optical circuits that use photons - Tech Explorist

Italys CAM Film and Fremantles The Apartment have teamed up to acquire rights to bestselling Italian author Carlo Rovellis Helgoland, an origin story about quantum physics, with plans to turn the book into a high-end TV series.

A bestseller in Italy, Helgoland will soon be published in the U.K. and elsewhere around world. Itsthe story of quantum physics, the theory that has given rise to modern technology the computer chip, for one and atomic energy, but also to philosophical considerations and a new understanding of how just about everything works.

Rovellis previous books, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What it Seems and The Order of Time are all international bestsellers, translated into 41 languages. He is a theoretical physicist who has worked in Italy and the U.S.

In June 1925, 23-year-old Werner Heisenberg, suffering from hay fever, retreated to a treeless, wind-battered island in the North Sea called Helgoland, reads the Helgoland blurb on the website for Penguin U.K., which will be releasing the book in March.

It was on this island that Heisenberg came up with the key insight behind quantum mechanics. Helgoland is thus the story of quantum physics and its bright young founders who were to become some of the most famous Nobel winners, according to promotional materials from Fremantle, which also called the tale a celebration of a youthful rebellion and intellectual revolution.

Today more than ever, we are living a life where our most simple and everyday actions are reflections of an unconditional trust in science, The Apartment chief Lorenzo Mieli told Variety. We therefore think its especially urgent and necessary to tackle this project at this particular moment in history.

Mieli, who is the producer of shows such as The New Pope, My Brilliant Friend and Paolo Sorrentinos upcoming The Hand of God, went on to note that through Rovellis solid and passionate book, we want to tell the human adventure of an extraordinary generation of scientists who changed modern thought forever, and not just from a scientific standpoint.

CAM Film is a Rome outfit headed by veteran producer Camilla Nesbitt, whose recent credits include Milan fashion world series Made in Italy, now streaming on Amazon in Italy, and upcoming French comedy Irreductible by Jerome Commandeur.

I am thrilled to start this extraordinary new adventure to bring on the screen all the emotion of scientific thought that only a great scientist and writer such as Carlo Rovelli could convey in a book, she said in a statement.

No screenwriters or other talent are yet attached to the project, which producers are shopping to streamers and broadcasters.

Link:

Quantum Physics Story Helgoland to Be Adapted by Fremantles The Apartment, CAM Film (EXCLUSIVE) - Variety

In COVID times, gestures that would have been banal and forgettable a year ago now arrive embedded with loaded backstorieseven those (especially those?) that play out on stage.

For the past year and a half, actor Melanie McNulty has been prepping to open Constellations. In September 2019, Theatre Above the Law artistic director Tony Lawry cast her as the astrophysicist heroine in Nick Payne's mind-stretching, multiverse-pondering exploration of love, the cosmos, and the infinite capacity of the human brain to both define and betray the very heart that feeds it.

At first, the two-hander also starring Ross Compton was slated to open in March 2020. It was postponed. Then it was postponed again. And again. About a year after McNulty and Compton were cast, TATL decided to do it as a virtual production, which opens this week.

The commitment made, the cast and two-person crew (Lawry and stage manager Stina Taylor) embarked on weeks of Zoom rehearsals and quarantine, punctuated by COVID tests for all four.

Eventually, the group stepped off Zoom and met for tech week in TATL's Rogers Park space. It was the first time the maximum-45-seat Jarvis Square Theater had been used for live theater in almost a year. With Taylor taking on chauffeur duties so the actors could avoid public transit, the group did two days of masked rehearsals. Then, they all did another COVID test. Then there was an extraordinary moment of wrenching ordinariness.

Compton and McNulty dropped their masks. McNulty recalled experiencing a heady sense of marvel.

"There was a slight moment where I felt like I was naked. The air, suddenly on my face. But that went away, and it was just sheer joy. I'm watching someone smile and laugh and breathe, right in front of me.

"After so many hours of rehearsal where all I could see was my scene partner's eyes, it was liberating."

It was also brief.

"It felt pretty sweet during that part of tech, to have that freedom," McNulty said. "We all have to do what we have to do to stay safeI'm not complaining about having to wear a mask or anything else I have or need to do. But yeah. I was pretty melancholy after, knowing it's going to be a long time before we have that kind of freedom again."

For Lawry, it was a defining moment in a production he'd been committed to for the better part of two years. Lawry said he's always found Payne's elliptical tale of an astrophysicist and the beekeeper who loves her an emotional roller coaster. Smart romantic comedies are his go-to genre, and this one had humans dealing with quantum physics and aphasia and string theory in addition to drunken sex, major trust issues, and witty wordplay.

He did not, however, expect it to be quite the emotional roller coaster it became.

"This was supposed to start our fourth season," he said. We were coming off our first Jeff Recommended season, our first Jeff nominationwe were riding that wave, thinking this would be a great thing to end on, keep the momentum going.

"Nobody wanted to let it go. We kept postponing it and postponing it. We thought about doing it outside somewhere in the summer, but that didn't feel safe. And the city wasn't giving theaters space to do outdoor performances like the restaurants were getting for outdoor dining.

"So by late last fall, I was like, 'We just need to do it, even if its just for us. We've all been prepping for this show for so long, and I'm afraid if we postpone it anymore, we might not all be able to do it together. So let's get it out of our system so we can move on, but we have to figure out a way that we can do that without shortchanging the brilliant material in any way and we have to be safe.'"

Lawry bought a green screen and came up with a production budget that was mostly about editing and filming. (Credit for video goes to Max Zuckert; George Pitsilos and William Schneider created the sound.)

Lawry wanted to replicate, as much as he could, the feeling of an actual play you could see in person in the Jarvis space. There were times over the past year when Lawry wondered whether the Rogers Park space would survive, at least as Theatre Above the Law.

"There were a couple months when it was iffyour landlord has been OK. We got a couple of grants, not what we'd hoped for but some. It's month by month. We just extended our lease for six months. We're good through August. But I wouldn't be truthful if I didn't say my stimulus money goes into the theater's bank account.

"I have an ensemble that's just as passionate as I am. So we've done some Zoom murder mystery fundraisers, and they've put everything behind them," Lawry continued. "And our neighbors have been so supportive. I feel like we're very much a part of our community. Like, even people who didnt attend the online fundraisers bought tickets. The restaurant across the street (R Public House) did this pairing dinner thing, where if you bought a certain dinner, we got part of the proceeds. Life's Sweet is doing a honey tart as a dessert, only on show nights.

"We got 20 new subscribers during a pandemic for a season that's totally up in the air which I think is pretty great for our little storefront. Its a tight-knit neighborhood, and I really love being a part of it," he said.

That season is not entirely up in the air. In March, Lawry hopes to drop a reboot of their 2017 world-premiere adaptation of Cyrano, only this time as a radio play complete with ad jingles. In May or June (or later), there's a world premiere of War of the Worlds on deck, only this time, as Lawry explains, "The heroine is a 13-year-old girl and the aliens are gross men."

Finally, TATL will close out with Comptons Henchpeople, a three-person comedy about which Lawry will say nothing else except for "I really hope we can do it for a live audience by then. But we'll see."

For now, Lawry and his cast and crew remain immersed in Constellations, and the often weirdly apropos existential dilemmas Payne's characters insist you think long and hard about. Take, for example drunk-but-still-an-expert-physicist Marianne's science-based statement that "We're just particles governed by a series of very particular laws being knocked the fuck around all over the place."

McNulty has given it some thought.

"In this play, there are multiple universes we're jumping in and out of, and depending on which one you're in, you see a different version of Marianne. And this version has seen some things that have hardened her. This is the Marianne who says emotions don't compute, so I'm just going to bury my head in my spreadsheets and data."

"What I love about this play," she added, "is that the playwright took something as convoluted as string theory and quantum mechanics and turned them all into a love story between two human beings.

"At the beginning of all this I spent a lot of time questioning what I had to give. What is an actor's role when everything is crumbling around us? What can we offer? This was boggling my mind for a while," she said. "I don't know all the answers. But this play makes me think about how I am spending my time. Am I doing what brings me joy? Am I being loving? Am I being me? The play makes you realize you really have to ask those questions, because we might not have a lot of time."v

More:

Quantum physics and romance collide in the streaming production of Constellations - Chicago Reader

For the uninitiated, it sounds like the mutterings of a tinfoil hat-wearing participant of a conspiracy convention: the theory that humanity and the rest of reality, as we know it, are actually part of a giant simulation akin to a cosmic video game. Rodney Ascher, who tackles the idea in his Sundance documentary A Glitch in the Matrix, said he was doubtful that the idea held any water until he started doing research.

I was first fairly skeptical. Then as I started reading up on the science of it, he said in an interview at the Sundance studio, presented by Adobe. Folks mentioning that quantum physics and quantum entanglements could be evidence of it. And there were Silicon Valley geniuses who were working on trying to break free of the simulation or find the code.

I was never really able to understand the bleeding edge of that, but it did leave me with a conviction that people who were smarter than me took it seriously. So that, OK, it could be plausible, in its way.

A Glitch in the Matrix, like its creator, is somewhat agnostic to the idea. But using the writings and speeches of sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, archival interviews with Elon Musk, the work of Plato and Ren Descartes, and new interviews with everyday people who believe in the theory, Aschers documentary makes such a seemingly untenable concept a little more digestible.

The movie premiered in Sundances Midnight section. Magnolia will release it in the US on February 5.

Ascher said he got the idea for the film from one of the interview subjects of his 2015 sleep paralysis documentary The Nightmare.

I frankly wasnt familiar with simulation theory and it took me a little while to understand what he was talking about it, Ascher said. I can see the idea getting momentum. If youve seen anything Ive done, you know Im fascinated by the intersection of fact and fiction. Ideas that seem like theyre from a horror movie, from science fiction, from a place of pure speculative fiction, that bleed into our real life.

Presenting sponsor Adobe gives everyone from emerging artists to global brands everything they need to design and deliver exceptional digital experiences. Adobe is committed to supporting, elevating and amplifying underrepresented creators, so the world can see, learn and benefit from diverse perspectives. Learn more at Adobe.com Diverse Voices.

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'A Glitch in the Matrix' Director Was Skeptical About Simulation Theory Until He Started Doing Research - IndieWire