Quantum physics says goodbye to reality. Some physicists are uncomfortable with the idea that all individual quantum events are innately random. This is why many have proposed more complete theories, which suggest that events are at least partially governed by extra "hidden variables". Now physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that rules out a broad class of hidden-variables theories that focus on realism -- giving the uneasy consequence that reality does not exist when we are not observing it (Nature 446 871). Some 40 years ago the physicist John Bell predicted that many hidden-variables theories would be ruled out if a certain experimental inequality were violated – known as "Bell's inequality".
In his thought experiment, a source fires entangled pairs of linearly-polarized photons in opposite directions towards two polarizers, which can be changed in orientation. Bell's trick, therefore, was to decide how to orient the polarizers only after the photons have left the source. Quantum Mechanics and Reality, by Thomas J McFarlane. © Thomas J. McFarlane 1995www.integralscience.org Most traditional [spiritual] paths were developed in prescientific cultures. Consequently, many of their teachings are expressed in terms of cosmologies or world views which we no longer find relevant. . .The question then naturally arises: Is it possible to incorporate both science and mysticism into a single, coherent world view? . . .Up until the first quarter of the twentieth century science was wedded to a materialist philosophy which was inherently antagonistic to all forms of religious insight.
With the advent of quantum physics, however, this materialist philosophy has become scientifically untenable. That is, the evidence of science itself contradicts a purely materialistic account of the universe. -Challenge and Response [1] The appearance of an objective world distinguishable from a subjective self is but the imaginary form in which Consciousness Perfectly Realizes Itself. To quote Bohr and Heisenberg once more, How Quantum Mechanics Screws with our Perception of Reality. Consciousness & quantum physics ~ Reality is an illusion. Quantum Mechanics and Reality. The Illusion of Time. Brian Greene - The Hidden Reality. The Elegant Universe Part 3 - Welcome to the 11th Dimension - PBS NOVA. The Elegant Universe Part 2 - String's The Thing - PBS NOVA. The Elegant Universe Part 1 - Einstein's Dream - PBS NOVA. The Search For The History Of The Universe's Light Emission.
The light emitted from all objects in the Universe during its entire history - stars, galaxies, quasars etc. forms a diffuse sea of photons that permeates intergalactic space, referred to as "diffuse extragalactic background light" (EBL). Scientists have long tried to measure this fossil record of the luminous activity in the Universe in their quest to decipher the history and evolution of the Cosmos, but its direct determination from the diffuse glow of the night sky is very difficult and uncertain. Very high energy (VHE) gamma-rays, some 100,000,000,000 times more energetic than normal light, offer an alternative way to probe this background light, and UK researchers from Durham University in collaboration with international partners used the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) gamma-ray telescopes in the Khomas Highlands of Namibia to observe several quasars (the most luminous VHE gamma-ray sources known) with this goal in mind.
Source: PPARC. The World as a Hologram. What is a Higgs Boson? Documentary The Universe Quantum Physics Microscopic Universe. Dark Matter: The Larger Invisible Universe | Joe Arrigo PERSPECTIVE. Normal matter—you, me, oatmeal, mountains, oceans, moons, planets, galaxies—make up about twenty-percent of the universe; the other eighty-percent is dark matter—star-stuff we cannot see or detect…yet. Why are scientists so certain this enigmatic matter exists? Because the evidence permeates the universe, first observed by Fritz Zwicky, when he measured the motions of galaxies and calculated that there wasn’t enough visible matter to affect galaxies to extent they were being pulled around.WWWFirst, there isn’t enough gravitational force within galaxies to bind and hold them in their current formation; then there is an invisible element that keeps them rotating faster than scientists would expect, clusters of galaxies bend and distort light more than they should, and supercomputer simulations exhibit that clouds of ordinary matter in the early universe did not have enough gravity to create the tight formations of galaxies we now see.
The Theory of Everything | Joe Arrigo PERSPECTIVE. The above equation was written by Dr. Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist, who graduated first in his physics class at Harvard, and, when he was in high school built a 2.3 million electron volt atom-smasher in his parents garage. It is an equation for String Field Theory—a theory that may unite The Theory of Relativity with Quantum Theory, into a unified theory called The Theory of Everything. Theoretical physicists are those scientists who work in that twilight zone cutting edge realm between reality and science fiction. For thirty years Einstein sought a unified theory of physics that would integrate all the forces of nature into a single beautiful tapestry. Even he failed. And it remains that his relativity theory, and quantum theory—although eloquent explanations for their respective large and small worlds, are in conflict, they speak not to each other; presenting a monumental conundrum for these genius pioneers.
. © Joe Arrigo. In a "Rainbow" Universe Time May Have No Beginning. What if the universe had no beginning, and time stretched back infinitely without a big bang to start things off? That's one possible consequence of an idea called "rainbow gravity," so-named because it posits that gravity's effects on spacetime are felt differently by different wavelengths of light, aka different colors in the rainbow. Rainbow gravity was first proposed 10 years ago as a possible step toward repairing the rifts between the theories of general relativity (covering the very big) and quantum mechanics (concerning the realm of the very small). The idea is not a complete theory for describing quantum effects on gravity, and is not widely accepted. Nevertheless, physicists have now applied the concept to the question of how the universe began, and found that if rainbow gravity is correct, spacetime may have a drastically different origin story than the widely accepted picture of the big bang.
Yet the concept has its critics. Four things you might not know about dark matter. Not long after physicists on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN laboratory discovered the Higgs boson, CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer was asked, “What’s next?” One of the top priorities he named: figuring out dark matter. Dark matter is five times more prevalent than ordinary matter.
It seems to exist in clumps around the universe, forming a kind of scaffolding on which visible matter coalesces into galaxies. The nature of dark matter is unknown, but physicists have suggested that it, like visible matter, is made up of particles. Dark matter shows up periodically in the media, often when an experiment has spotted a potential sign of it. But we are still waiting for that Nobel-Prize-triggering moment when scientists know they finally have it. Here are four facts to get you up to speed on one of the most exciting topics in particle physics: 1. Illustration by: Sandbox Studio, Chicago At this moment, several experiments are on the hunt for dark matter. 2. 3. 4. Dark energy and dark matter. How world works. Bohr and beyond: a century of quantum physics › Opinion (ABC Science) In Depth › Analysis and Opinion Our understanding of the quantum world began with Niels Bohr's discovery of the quantum atom in 1913. Bohr would be astounded by where his theory has since led, says Professor David Jamieson.
Bohr's discovery of the quantum nature of the atom, published when he was a young man of 28, was an important pioneering contribution to the earliest days of quantum physics. This field emerged to explain the common sense-defying behaviour of atoms, molecules and light at the smallest scales, forming the foundations on which we have built one of the greatest and most successful theories of all time — quantum mechanics. What is quite remarkable to modern eyes was that Bohr had very little to go on. The true nature of the atom as an incredibly tiny nucleus surrounded by a cloud of orbiting electrons had only been discovered a few years earlier, in the separate work of physicists Thomson and Rutherford. ^ to top Bohr's quantum atom: nature is digital From theory to evidence.
Symphony of Science - the Quantum World! Higgs boson: Call to rename particle to acknowledge other scientists. 22 April 2013Last updated at 13:00 ET By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News "Fathers" of the Higgs, L-R: Francois Englert, Peter Higgs, Carl Hagen and Gerald Guralnik One of the scientists who helped develop the theory of the Higgs boson says the particle should be renamed. Carl Hagen believes the name should acknowledge the work of others - not just UK physicist Peter Higgs. The long-running debate has been rekindled following speculation that this year's Nobel Prize for Physics will be awarded for the Higgs theory.
The detection of a particle thought to be the Higgs was announced at the Large Hadron Collider in July last year. American Prof Hagen told BBC News: "I have always thought that the name was not a proper one. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote Peter Higgs was treated as something of a rock star and the rest of us were barely recognised. End QuoteProf Carl HagenRochester University, New York Peter Higgs is open to a name change to "H Boson" Nobel Prize. Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple: A Mini Course from Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Hans Bethe. Fluid Experiments Support Deterministic “Pilot-Wave” Quantum Theory. For nearly a century, “reality” has been a murky concept.
The laws of quantum physics seem to suggest that particles spend much of their time in a ghostly state, lacking even basic properties such as a definite location and instead existing everywhere and nowhere at once. Only when a particle is measured does it suddenly materialize, appearing to pick its position as if by a roll of the dice. This idea that nature is inherently probabilistic — that particles have no hard properties, only likelihoods, until they are observed — is directly implied by the standard equations of quantum mechanics. But now a set of surprising experiments with fluids has revived old skepticism about that worldview. The experiments involve an oil droplet that bounces along the surface of a liquid. Particles at the quantum scale seem to do things that human-scale objects do not do. Magical Measurements Bottom: Akira Tonomura/Creative Commons Some physicists now disagree.
Riding Waves The neglect continues. Uncertainty reigns over Heisenberg's measurement analogy. A row has broken out among physicists over an analogy used by Werner Heisenberg in 1927 to make sense of his famous uncertainty principle. The analogy was largely forgotten as quantum theory became more sophisticated but has enjoyed a revival over the past decade. While several recent experiments suggest that the analogy is flawed, a team of physicists in the UK, Finland and Germany is now arguing that these experiments are not faithful to Heisenberg's original formulation. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that we cannot measure certain pairs of variables for a quantum object – position and momentum, say – both with arbitrary accuracy. The better we know one, the fuzzier the other becomes. The uncertainty principle says that the product of the uncertainties in position and momentum can be no smaller than a simple fraction of Planck's constant h.
When Heisenberg proposed the principle in 1927, he offered a simple physical picture to help it make intuitive sense. Planck constant. Plaque at the Humboldt University of Berlin: "Max Planck, discoverer of the elementary quantum of action h, taught in this building from 1889 to 1928. " In 1905 the value (E), the energy of a charged atomic oscillator, was theoretically associated with the energy of the electromagnetic wave itself, representing the minimum amount of energy required to form an electromagnetic field (a "quantum"). Further investigation of quanta revealed behaviour associated with an independent unit ("particle") as opposed to an electromagnetic wave and was eventually given the term photon. The Planck relation now describes the energy of each photon in terms of the photon's frequency.
This energy is extremely small in terms of ordinary experience. Since the frequency , wavelength λ, and speed of light c are related by λν = c, the Planck relation for a photon can also be expressed as The above equation leads to another relationship involving the Planck constant. Value[edit] Significance of the value[edit] Quantum spacetime. In mathematical physics, the concept of quantum spacetime is a generalization of the usual concept of spacetime in which some variables that ordinarily commute are assumed not to commute and form a different Lie algebra.
The choice of that algebra still varies from theory to theory. As a result of this change some variables that are usually continuous may become discrete. Often only such discrete variables are called "quantized"; usage varies. The idea of quantum spacetime was proposed in the early days of quantum theory by Heisenberg and Ivanenko as a way to eliminate infinities from quantum field theory.
The germ of the idea passed from Heisenberg to Rudolf Peierls, who noted that electrons in a magnetic field can be regarded as moving in a quantum space-time, and to Robert Oppenheimer, who carried it to Hartland Snyder, who published the first concrete example.[1] Snyder's Lie algebra was made simple by C. N. The Lie algebra should be semisimple (Yang, I. For the spatial variables .
Quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently – instead, a quantum state may be given for the system as a whole. Such phenomena were the subject of a 1935 paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen,[1] describing what came to be known as the EPR paradox, and several papers by Erwin Schrödinger shortly thereafter.[2][3] Einstein and others considered such behavior to be impossible, as it violated the local realist view of causality (Einstein referred to it as "spooky action at a distance"),[4] and argued that the accepted formulation of quantum mechanics must therefore be incomplete.
History[edit] However, they did not coin the word entanglement, nor did they generalize the special properties of the state they considered. Concept[edit] Meaning of entanglement[edit] Apparent paradox[edit] The hidden variables theory[edit] Efimov state. The Efimov effect is an effect in the quantum mechanics of Few-body systems predicted by the Russian theoretical physicist V. N. Efimov[1][2] in 1970. Efimov’s effect refers to a scenario in which three identical bosons interact, with the prediction of an infinite series of excited three-body energy levels when a two-body state is exactly at the dissociation threshold. One corollary is that there exist bound states (called Efimov states) of three bosons even if the two-particle attraction is too weak to allow two bosons to form a pair.
A (three-particle) Efimov state where the (two-body) sub-systems are unbound, are often depicted symbolically by the Borromean rings. This means that if one of the particles is removed, the remaining two fall apart. The unusual Efimov state has an infinite number of similar states. The Efimov states are independent of the underlying physical interaction, and can in principle be observed in all quantum mechanical systems (molecular, atomic, and nuclear). Amplituhedron. Personal and Historical Perspectives of Hans Bethe. Atoms Reach Record Temperature, Colder than Absolute Zero. The mention of “spin” of a particle is one that... - Say It With Science. Physics Community Afire With Rumors of Higgs Boson Discovery | Wired Science. Two Diamonds Linked by Strange Quantum Entanglement | Spooky Action at a Distance | Quantum Mechanics Macroscopic Objects.
DNA molecules can 'teleport', Nobel Prize winner claims. The Higgs Boson Explained. Free particle. Macroscopic quantum phenomena. Solution of Schrödinger equation for a step potential. Rectangular potential barrier. Particle in a box. Finite potential well. Quantum harmonic oscillator. Quantum Mechanics. Density matrix. Matrix mechanics. Applications. Interpretations of quantum mechanics. Quantum Physics Revealed As Non-Mysterious. EPR paradox. Interpretations of quantum mechanics. Relationship between string theory and quantum field theory. Grand Unified Theory. Attempt at a unified field theory. Relativistic quantum mechanics. Relativity and quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics and classical physics. Fractional quantum mechanics. List of quantum-mechanical systems with analytical solutions.
Quantum geometry. Bloch sphere. Schrödinger equation. Angular momentum diagrams (quantum mechanics) Phase space formulation. Ward–Takahashi identity. Spherical basis. Schwinger–Dyson equation. Theoretical and experimental justification for the Schrödinger equation. Mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics.