Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time
Posted by admin / Under Quantum Physics
Physicists struggling to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics have hailed a theory – inspired by pencil lead – that could make it all very simpleIT WAS a speech that changed the way we think of space and time. The year was 1908, and the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski had been trying to make sense of Albert Einstein's hot new idea - what we now know as special relativity - describing how things shrink as they move faster and time becomes distorted. "Henceforth space by itself and time by itself are doomed to fade into the mere shadows," Minkowski proclaimed, "and...
Published on Sunday 5th of September 2010 12:34:53 AM
Quantum time machine 'allows paradox-free time travel'
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Quantum physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe it is possible to create a time machine which could affect the past without creating a "grandfather paradox".Scientists have for some years been able to 'teleport' quantum states from one place to another. Now Seth Lloyd and his MIT team say that, using the same principles and a further strange quantum effect known as 'postselection', it should be possible to do the same backwards in time. Lloyd told the Technology Review: "It is possible for particles (and, in principle, people) to tunnel from the future to the past."
Published on Sunday 5th of September 2010 12:34:53 AM
Quantum mechanics flummoxes physicists again
Posted by admin / Under Quantum Physics
A fresh take on a classic experiment makes no progress in unifying quantum mechanics and relativity. If you ever want to get your head around the riddle that is quantum mechanics, look no further than the double-slit experiment. This shows, with perfect simplicity, how just watching a wave or a particle can change its behaviour. The idea is so unpalatable to physicists that they have spent decades trying to find new ways to test it. The latest such attempt, by physicists in Europe and Canada, used a three-slit version — but quantum mechanics won out again. In the standard double-slit...
Published on Sunday 5th of September 2010 12:34:53 AM
Latest Physics Theories May Help Challenge Evolution
Posted by admin / Under Quantum Physics
The latest theories on the nature and origin of gravity are generating lots of interest from those looking to unify the various systems (Einsteinian, Newtonian, Quantum, String Theory) of looking at our universe, and bringing to the forefront the importance of the second law of thermodynamics as an organizing principle in our universe. The problem is that the second law of thermodynamics and evolution are pretty much incompatible, as EC explains...
Published on Sunday 5th of September 2010 12:34:53 AM
Gravity Emerges from Quantum Information, Say Physicists
Posted by admin / Under Quantum Physics
The new role that quantum information plays in gravity sets the scene for a dramatic unification of ideas in physics One of the hottest new ideas in physics is that gravity is an emergent phenomena; that it somehow arises from the complex interaction of simpler things. A few month's ago, Erik Verlinde at the the University of Amsterdam put forward one such idea which has taken the world of physics by storm. Verlinde suggested that gravity is merely a manifestation of entropy in the Universe. His idea is based on the second law of thermodynamics, that entropy always increases over...
Published on Sunday 5th of September 2010 12:34:53 AM
Scientists supersize quantum mechanics
Posted by admin / Under Quantum Physics
Largest ever object put into quantum state.A team of scientists has succeeded in putting an object large enough to be visible to the naked eye into a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving. Andrew Cleland at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his team cooled a tiny metal paddle until it reached its quantum mechanical 'ground state' — the lowest-energy state permitted by quantum mechanics. They then used the weird rules of quantum mechanics to simultaneously set the paddle moving while leaving it standing still. The experiment shows that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply...
Published on Sunday 5th of September 2010 12:34:53 AM
Can we detect quantum behavior in viruses?
Posted by admin / Under Quantum Physics
The weird world of quantum mechanics describes the strange, often contradictory, behaviour of small inanimate objects such as atoms. Researchers have now started looking for ways to detect quantum properties in more complex and larger entities, possibly even living organisms. A German-Spanish research group, split between the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching and the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), is using the principles of an iconic quantum mechanics thought experiment - Schrödinger's superpositioned cat – to test for quantum properties in objects composed of as many as one billion atoms, possibly including the flu virus. New research...
Published on Sunday 5th of September 2010 12:34:53 AM
Ripping Apart Einstein
Posted by admin / Under Quantum Physics
Cutting the threads of the spacetime fabric and reinstating the aether could lead to a theory of quantum gravity.If there’s one thing Einstein taught us, it’s that time is relative. But physicist Petr Hořava is challenging this notion and tearing through the fabric of spacetime in his quest for a theory of quantum gravity. His work may also resurrect another entity that Einstein had seemingly buried—the aether. Physicists have spent decades searching for a way to reconcile the seemingly incongruous twin foundations of modern physics: quantum theory, which deals with the infinitesimally small, and Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity,...
Published on Sunday 5th of September 2010 12:34:53 AM
"Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers."
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Peter the Great: the Russian czar levied a tax on beards (1698)
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