Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics

[Typhoon]

Not so much the Higgs boson as some new particle currently not part of the SM.

Many HEP theorists are hoping that this next run will find some evidence of SUSY [supersymmetric particles].

If this next LHC run does not find any such evidence, then a lot of HEP theorists are going to be disappointed, as some of them have devoted much of their professional careers to working out aspects of such a theory.

It would also be a problem for he experimentalists who are worried about how to pitch for funding of a bigger accelerator without evidence of physics beyond the SM.

There is always many little things that can be studied.

http://holometer.fnal.gov/description.html

Indeed. Also high precision tabletop experiments. so-called, have set upper limits on new physics beyond the SM.

However, the most productive approach has been to smash ever higher energy particles into targets or, more recently, into each other.

What is needed is new particle acceleration methods to significantly reduce the size, and thus the cost, of new particle accelerators:

Scientists progress toward plasma acceleration

KjoH1ZZrAik

[Nonc Hilaire]

God-particle technology has come a long way since Barbarella entered the Excessive Machine.

J04gTJvynjg

[Typhoon]

God-particle* technology has come a long way since Barbarella entered the Excessive Machine.

J04gTJvynjg

A favourite scene from a favourite camp movie . . .

Jane Fonda's best work.

*Leon Lederman claims that the original title of his book was The God-damn Particle, as it had proven so difficult to find, but that the publisher refused to go with this profane title and subsequently shortened it. Unfortunately, the name stuck, to the annoyance of physicists, although post-discovery the name Higgs particle is now more common.

[Doc]

Not so much the Higgs boson as some new particle currently not part of the SM.

Many HEP theorists are hoping that this next run will find some evidence of SUSY [supersymmetric particles].

If this next LHC run does not find any such evidence, then a lot of HEP theorists are going to be disappointed, as some of them have devoted much of their professional careers to working out aspects of such a theory.

It would also be a problem for he experimentalists who are worried about how to pitch for funding of a bigger accelerator without evidence of physics beyond the SM.

There is always many little things that can be studied.

http://holometer.fnal.gov/description.html

Indeed. Also high precision tabletop experiments. so-called, have set upper limits on new physics beyond the SM.

However, the most productive approach has been to smash ever higher energy particles into targets or, more recently, into each other.

What is needed is new particle acceleration methods to significantly reduce the size, and thus the cost, of new particle accelerators:

Scientists progress toward plasma acceleration

KjoH1ZZrAik

Wow. I was under the impression that the only way to reach energies high enough to conduct tests beyond the SM was to build accelerators approximately the size of the solar system.

[HAL 10000]

CERN may not have discovered elusive Higgs Boson: study


By PTI | 9 Nov, 2014, 12.52PM IST

LONDON: The elusive Higgs boson may not have been discovered despite claims of it being detected last year, according to a new study.

Many calculations indicate that the particle discovered last year in the CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland was indeed the famous Higgs particle.

Physicists agree that the CERN experiments did find a new particle that had never been seen before, but according to an international research team, there is no conclusive evidence that the part ..


Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/art ... 086653.cms

But if the new particle discovered by the CERN particle accelerator is not the Higgs boson, then does this mean that last year's Nobel prize in physics was not deserved by the recipients? Can they revoke the Nobel prize?

Not clear why this speculative, yet generic, paper has received so much attention as it is only one of many HEP theory papers hypothesizing alternatives to the standard single Higgs boson. Someone has a good press agent.

For the particle to be the Higgs boson arising via spontaneous symmetry breaking in the Standard Model [SM] it must have the following properties:

1/ A mass in the range of 100 GeV to 1000 GeV. Confirmed.

2/ No electric [or other] charge. Confirmed.

3/ Zero intrinsic spin. Tentatively confirmed.

4/ Positive parity. Tentatively confirmed.

The LHC is getting ready to a new run. This should provide enough data to pin down the spin and parity.
If confirmed to be 0+, then it's the Higgs boson of the SM.

Of course, the job is not finished until the experiment and data analysis are done.
There could still a surprise regarding the Higgs boson, and that would make HEP a lot more interesting, but at this point I would not bet money on it.

I agree with you completely, and CERN would not have made such a strong announcement last year without enough data analysis, but my question above is primarily hypothetical: If the particle is not the Higgs boson, then can the Nobel committee take back that prize?

A friend of mine wants to give back his PhD so that he can start a new one because he feels that something was not right and that he compromised too many things in the dissertation, but he was told by one of his professors that it is impossible to cancel the degree once it is approved, so he is stuck with the PhD that he no longer wants.

[Azrael]

An Inquiry into the Possibility of Nonlocal Communication

[Nonc Hilaire]

An Inquiry into the Possibility of Nonlocal Communication

I think I saw this earlier, but wrote it off as overhyped by an amateur press. Context and a simple explanation of method and importance would be helpful. Time travel and wormholes . . . I can't even figure out how to get my car clock off 24 hr time.

[Doc]

http://news.discovery.com/space/could-t ... 141217.htm
Could the Higgs be Part of the Matter-Antimatter Problem?

Dec 17, 2014 08:11 PM ET // by Ian O'Neill

In this illustration, two protons collide at high energy, producing a Higgs boson that instantly decays, producing two tau particles. The rest of the energy from the collision sprays outward in two jets (pink cones). Measuring the angle between these jets could reveal whether or not the Higgs is involved in charge-parity (CP) violation, which says that nature treats a particle and its oppositely charged antiparticle differently.
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

As excitement grows for the the second 3-year run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), physicists are frantically planning the experiments that will be carried out when the particle accelerator starts slamming particles together at record energies in 2015.

One of those experiments, as discussed by a collaboration of particle physicists in a new paper published in the journal Physical Review D, could focus on why the universe is dominated by matter and not antimatter, one of the most enduring mysteries in modern physics.

And the focus of the study? Yes, the infamous Higgs boson may be at least partially to blame for our universe’s matter-antimatter asymmetry.

NEWS: New Clues Behind Antimatter Mystery Found by LHC

When the universe began, right at the ignition of the Big Bang some 13.75 billion years ago, particles of matter and antimatter should have been generated in equal numbers. As all Star Trek fans know, should matter and antimatter meet, total annihilation occurs. Therefore, if equal quantities of matter and antimatter were generated, there should be no matter or antimatter left in the universe — instead, the universe would have remained as a soup of energy where matter (or antimatter) could not form.

But as we look around us, although tiny quantities of antimatter can be found, the universe is obviously filled with matter. So the question is: Why did matter win out?

Since the discovery of the Higgs boson, physicists have been studying its characteristics in the LHC data. As the particle accelerator collides protons inside its building-sized detectors, a few isolated Higgs bosons are generated. But they don’t last long in isolation; they quickly break down — or “decay” — into other subatomic particles and energy.

ANALYSIS: Antimatter Matters: Fermilab Glimpses ‘The Toe of God’

The Higgs boson itself is not directly observed by the LHC, instead it is the Higgs’ decay particles that are detected. After billions and billions of collisions, eventually a strong enough signal was generated that, in 2012, LHC scientists were able to triumphantly announce the Higgs boson’s historic discovery. This was significant, not only because it was observational evidence of a boson that was theorized back in the 1960s, but because it appeared to be a Standard Model Higgs at a theorized energy of 125 GeV/c2 — basically the final and elusive piece of the Standard Model that describes all particles and forces (except gravity) in nature.

Now there could be a twist to the Higgs story.

As the Higgs field is intimately tied to matter, physicists are understandably asking whether the Higgs could be the driving force of the matter-antimatter unbalance, which specifically focuses on a phenomenon known as charge-parity (CP) violation.

ANALYSIS: Majorana Discovery: After 80-Yr Search, Weird Particle Found

“Searching for CP violation at the LHC is tricky,” said Matt Dolan, a research associate at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, Calif. “We’ve just started to look into the properties of the Higgs, and the experiments must be very carefully designed if we are to improve our understanding of how the Higgs behaves under different conditions.”

In its most basic sense, CP violation means that nature treats a particle (matter) and its antiparticle (antimatter) differently, a phenomenon that SLAC’s BaBar experiment studies. When the universe was born, there must have been a CP violation as nature somehow treats matter differently from antimatter, so there is some physical subtlety that we haven’t yet understood.

As detailed in a SLAC news release, physicists first need to confirm the Higgs fits into the Standard Model, then they need to take extremely detailed measurements of the decay products and the jets of energy the Higgs decay generates. One particular type of Higgs decay centers on the production of two tau particles — leptons that are basically massive electrons — where the remaining energy of the proton-proton collisions sprays into two defined jets.

Top 5 Misconceptions About The LHC

By measuring the angle between these jets, the fingerprint of the Higgs’ involvement in CP violation may be revealed.

“This is a very high-profile and involved analysis,” said co-author Philip Harris, physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), near Geneva, Switzerland. Harris’ research specifically focuses on Higgs-to-tau-tau decays.

“I wanted to add a CP violation measurement to our analysis … Even with just a few months of data we can start to make real statements about the Higgs and CP violation,” Harris added.

[Azrael]

An Inquiry into the Possibility of Nonlocal Communication

I think I saw this earlier, but wrote it off as overhyped by an amateur press. Context and a simple explanation of method and importance would be helpful. Time travel and wormholes . . . I can't even figure out how to get my car clock off 24 hr time.

The scientist who wrote the paper had spent many years trying to prove that FTL communication was possible. In the paper, he showed that for the scenarios he considered, FTL communication is NOT possible. It is an interesting paper, and the conclusions are the opposite of what you seem to imply.

[Heracleum Persicum]

.


The Dominant Life Form in the Cosmos
Is Probably
Superintelligent Robots

If and when we finally encounter aliens, they probably won’t look like little green men, or spiny insectoids. It’s likely they won’t be biological creatures at all, but rather, advanced robots that outstrip our intelligence in every conceivable way. While scores of philosophers, scientists and futurists have prophesied the rise of artificial intelligence and the impending singularity, most have restricted their predictions to Earth. Fewer thinkers—outside the realm of science fiction, that is—have considered the notion that artificial intelligence is already out there, and has been for eons.

Susan Schneider, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, is one who has. She joins a handful of astronomers, including Seth Shostak, director of NASA’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, program, NASA Astrobiologist Paul Davies, and Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology Stephen Dick in espousing the view that the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is probably artificial. In her paper “Alien Minds," written for a forthcoming NASA publication, Schneider describes why alien life forms are likely to be synthetic, and how such creatures might think.

“Most people have an iconic idea of aliens as these biological creatures, but that doesn’t make any sense from a timescale argument,” Shostak told me. “I’ve bet dozens of astronomers coffee that if we pick up an alien signal, it’ll be artificial life.”

With the latest updates from NASA’s Kepler mission showing potentially habitable worlds strewn across the galaxy, it’s becoming harder and harder to assert that we’re alone in the universe. And if and when we do encounter intelligent life forms, we’ll want to communicate with them, which means we’ll need some basis for understanding their cognition. But for the vast majority of astrobiologists who study single-celled life, alien intelligence isn’t on the radar.

“If you asked me to bring together a panel of folks who have given the subject much thought, I would be hard pressed,” said Shostak. “Some think about communication strategies, of course. But few consider the nature of alien intelligence.”

Schneider’s paper is among the first to tackle the subject.

I’M NOT SAYING THAT WE’RE GOING TO BE RUNNING INTO IBM PROCESSORS IN OUTER SPACE. IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, THIS INTELLIGENCE WILL BE WAY MORE SOPHISTICATED THAN ANYTHING HUMANS CAN UNDERSTAND.
“Everything about their cognition—how their brains receive and process information, what their goals and incentives are—could be vastly different from our own,” Schneider told me. “Astrobiologists need to start thinking about the possibility of very different modes of cognition.”

To wit, the case of artificial superintelligence.

“There’s an important distinction here from just ‘artificial intelligence’,” Schneider told me. “I’m not saying that we’re going to be running into IBM processors in outer space. In all likelihood, this intelligence will be way more sophisticated than anything humans can understand.”

The reason for all this has to do, primarily, with timescales. For starters, when it comes to alien intelligence, there’s what Schneider calls the “short window observation”—the notion that, by the time any society learns to transmit radio signals, they’re probably a hop-skip away from upgrading their own biology. It’s a twist on the belief popularized by Ray Kurzweil that humanity’s own post-biological future is near at hand.

“As soon as a civilization invents radio, they’re within fifty years of computers, then, probably, only another fifty to a hundred years from inventing AI,” Shostak said. “At that point, soft, squishy brains become an outdated model.”

Schneider points to the nascent but rapidly expanding world of brain computer interface technology, including DARPA’s latest ElectRX neural implant program, as evidence that our own singularity is close. Eventually, Schneider predicts, we’ll not only upgrade our minds with technology, we’ll make a wholesale switch to synthetic hardware.



Image: YouTube screenshot
“It could be that by the time we actually encounter other intelligences, most humans will have substantially enhanced their brains,” Schneider said.

Which speaks to Schneider’s second line of reasoning for superintelligent AI: Most of the radio-hot civilizations out there are probably thousands to millions of years older than us. That’s according to the astronomers who ruminate on such matters.

“The way you reach this conclusion is very straightforward,” said Shostak. “Consider the fact that any signal we pick up has to come from a civilization at least as advanced as we are. Now, let’s say, conservatively, the average civilization will use radio for 10,000 years. From a purely probabilistic point of view, the chance of encountering a society far older than ourselves is quite high.”

It’s certainly humbling to consider that we may be galactic infants of beetle-like intelligence compared with our cosmic brethren. But despite their superior processing power, there’s a fundamental aspect of cognition our interstellar neighbors may lack: Consciousness.

It sounds bizarre, but, Schneider writes, the jury’s still out on whether any artificial intelligence is capable of self-awareness. Simply put, we know so little about the neurological basis for consciousness; it’s almost impossible to predict what ingredients might go into replicating it artificially.

“I don’t see any good reason to believe an artificial superintelligence couldn’t possess consciousness, but it’s important to identify the possibility,” said Schneider.

Still, Schneider feels the assertion that artificial life simply can’t possess consciousness is losing ground.

“I believe the brain is inherently computational—we already have computational theories that describe aspects of consciousness, including working memory and attention,” Schneider said. “Given a computational brain, I don’t see any good argument that silicon, instead of carbon, can’t be a excellent medium for experience.”

YOU DON’T SPEND A WHOLE LOT OF TIME HANGING OUT READING BOOKS WITH YOUR GOLDFISH. ON THE OTHER HAND, YOU DON’T REALLY WANT TO KILL THE GOLDFISH, EITHER.”
I hope she’s right. Somehow, the notion of a galaxy teeming with soulless supercomputers is way creepier than introspective, WALL-E-like beings, or dry, sardonic Qs.

“It’s super creepy,” Schneider agrees. Indeed, Schneider, who has written extensively on the subject of brain uploading, urges that humans should reflect deeply on this potential consequence of cognitive enhancement.

The concept of superintelligent alien AI still sounds very speculative. And it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth consideration. Indeed, expanding our purview of alien intelligence may help us identify life’s fingerprints in the cosmos. “So far, we’ve pointed antennas at stars that might have planets that might have breathable atmospheres and oceans and so forth,” Shostak told me. “But if we’re correct that the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is artificial, then does it have to live on a planet with an ocean?”

It’s a bit of a mind-bender to think that habitable worlds may hold false promise when it comes to advanced alien life, but that seems to be Shostak’s conclusion.

“All artificial life forms would need is raw materials,” he said. “They might be in deep space, hovering around a star, or feeding off a black hole’s energy at the center of the galaxy.” (That last idea has seen its way into a number of science fiction novels, including works by Greg Bear and Gregory Benford).

Which is to say, they could be, essentially, anywhere.

Begging a final question: How might superintelligent aliens view us? Will our cosmic cousins see us as nothing more than convenient biofuel, a la the Matrix? Or do they study us quietly from afar, abiding by a Star Trek-esque maxim of non-interference? Schneider doubts either. In fact, she reckons superintelligent aliens couldn’t really care less about us.

“If they were interested in us, we probably wouldn’t be here,” said Schneider. “My gut feeling is their goals and incentives are so different from ours, they’re not going to want to contact us.”

That’s a welcome divergence from Steven Hawking’s claim that advanced aliens might be nomads, looking to strip resources from whatever planets they can, and that all efforts to contact said aliens may end in our own demise.

“I’d have to agree with Susan on them not being interested in us at all,” Shostak said. We're just too simplistic, too irrelevant. “You don’t spend a whole lot of time hanging out reading books with your goldfish. On the other hand, you don’t really want to kill the goldfish, either.”

So, if we want to meet our galactic peers, it looks like we’ll probably have to keep seeking them out. That may take thousands or millions of years, but in the meanwhile, perhaps we’ll upgrade our own intelligence enough to level the playing field. And as an early Christmas present, it seems we can all tick alien robots juicing us for energy off the list of likely apocalypses.

Interesting


.

[Nonc Hilaire]

.


The Dominant Life Form in the Cosmos
Is Probably
Superintelligent Robots

If and when we finally encounter aliens, they probably won’t look like little green men, or spiny insectoids. It’s likely they won’t be biological creatures at all, but rather, advanced robots that outstrip our intelligence in every conceivable way. While scores of philosophers, scientists and futurists have prophesied the rise of artificial intelligence and the impending singularity, most have restricted their predictions to Earth. Fewer thinkers—outside the realm of science fiction, that is—have considered the notion that artificial intelligence is already out there, and has been for eons.

Susan Schneider, a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, is one who has. She joins a handful of astronomers, including Seth Shostak, director of NASA’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, program, NASA Astrobiologist Paul Davies, and Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology Stephen Dick in espousing the view that the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is probably artificial. In her paper “Alien Minds," written for a forthcoming NASA publication, Schneider describes why alien life forms are likely to be synthetic, and how such creatures might think.

“Most people have an iconic idea of aliens as these biological creatures, but that doesn’t make any sense from a timescale argument,” Shostak told me. “I’ve bet dozens of astronomers coffee that if we pick up an alien signal, it’ll be artificial life.”

With the latest updates from NASA’s Kepler mission showing potentially habitable worlds strewn across the galaxy, it’s becoming harder and harder to assert that we’re alone in the universe. And if and when we do encounter intelligent life forms, we’ll want to communicate with them, which means we’ll need some basis for understanding their cognition. But for the vast majority of astrobiologists who study single-celled life, alien intelligence isn’t on the radar.

“If you asked me to bring together a panel of folks who have given the subject much thought, I would be hard pressed,” said Shostak. “Some think about communication strategies, of course. But few consider the nature of alien intelligence.”

Schneider’s paper is among the first to tackle the subject.

I’M NOT SAYING THAT WE’RE GOING TO BE RUNNING INTO IBM PROCESSORS IN OUTER SPACE. IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, THIS INTELLIGENCE WILL BE WAY MORE SOPHISTICATED THAN ANYTHING HUMANS CAN UNDERSTAND.
“Everything about their cognition—how their brains receive and process information, what their goals and incentives are—could be vastly different from our own,” Schneider told me. “Astrobiologists need to start thinking about the possibility of very different modes of cognition.”

To wit, the case of artificial superintelligence.

“There’s an important distinction here from just ‘artificial intelligence’,” Schneider told me. “I’m not saying that we’re going to be running into IBM processors in outer space. In all likelihood, this intelligence will be way more sophisticated than anything humans can understand.”

The reason for all this has to do, primarily, with timescales. For starters, when it comes to alien intelligence, there’s what Schneider calls the “short window observation”—the notion that, by the time any society learns to transmit radio signals, they’re probably a hop-skip away from upgrading their own biology. It’s a twist on the belief popularized by Ray Kurzweil that humanity’s own post-biological future is near at hand.

“As soon as a civilization invents radio, they’re within fifty years of computers, then, probably, only another fifty to a hundred years from inventing AI,” Shostak said. “At that point, soft, squishy brains become an outdated model.”

Schneider points to the nascent but rapidly expanding world of brain computer interface technology, including DARPA’s latest ElectRX neural implant program, as evidence that our own singularity is close. Eventually, Schneider predicts, we’ll not only upgrade our minds with technology, we’ll make a wholesale switch to synthetic hardware.



Image: YouTube screenshot
“It could be that by the time we actually encounter other intelligences, most humans will have substantially enhanced their brains,” Schneider said.

Which speaks to Schneider’s second line of reasoning for superintelligent AI: Most of the radio-hot civilizations out there are probably thousands to millions of years older than us. That’s according to the astronomers who ruminate on such matters.

“The way you reach this conclusion is very straightforward,” said Shostak. “Consider the fact that any signal we pick up has to come from a civilization at least as advanced as we are. Now, let’s say, conservatively, the average civilization will use radio for 10,000 years. From a purely probabilistic point of view, the chance of encountering a society far older than ourselves is quite high.”

It’s certainly humbling to consider that we may be galactic infants of beetle-like intelligence compared with our cosmic brethren. But despite their superior processing power, there’s a fundamental aspect of cognition our interstellar neighbors may lack: Consciousness.

It sounds bizarre, but, Schneider writes, the jury’s still out on whether any artificial intelligence is capable of self-awareness. Simply put, we know so little about the neurological basis for consciousness; it’s almost impossible to predict what ingredients might go into replicating it artificially.

“I don’t see any good reason to believe an artificial superintelligence couldn’t possess consciousness, but it’s important to identify the possibility,” said Schneider.

Still, Schneider feels the assertion that artificial life simply can’t possess consciousness is losing ground.

“I believe the brain is inherently computational—we already have computational theories that describe aspects of consciousness, including working memory and attention,” Schneider said. “Given a computational brain, I don’t see any good argument that silicon, instead of carbon, can’t be a excellent medium for experience.”

YOU DON’T SPEND A WHOLE LOT OF TIME HANGING OUT READING BOOKS WITH YOUR GOLDFISH. ON THE OTHER HAND, YOU DON’T REALLY WANT TO KILL THE GOLDFISH, EITHER.”
I hope she’s right. Somehow, the notion of a galaxy teeming with soulless supercomputers is way creepier than introspective, WALL-E-like beings, or dry, sardonic Qs.

“It’s super creepy,” Schneider agrees. Indeed, Schneider, who has written extensively on the subject of brain uploading, urges that humans should reflect deeply on this potential consequence of cognitive enhancement.

The concept of superintelligent alien AI still sounds very speculative. And it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth consideration. Indeed, expanding our purview of alien intelligence may help us identify life’s fingerprints in the cosmos. “So far, we’ve pointed antennas at stars that might have planets that might have breathable atmospheres and oceans and so forth,” Shostak told me. “But if we’re correct that the dominant intelligence in the cosmos is artificial, then does it have to live on a planet with an ocean?”

It’s a bit of a mind-bender to think that habitable worlds may hold false promise when it comes to advanced alien life, but that seems to be Shostak’s conclusion.

“All artificial life forms would need is raw materials,” he said. “They might be in deep space, hovering around a star, or feeding off a black hole’s energy at the center of the galaxy.” (That last idea has seen its way into a number of science fiction novels, including works by Greg Bear and Gregory Benford).

Which is to say, they could be, essentially, anywhere.

Begging a final question: How might superintelligent aliens view us? Will our cosmic cousins see us as nothing more than convenient biofuel, a la the Matrix? Or do they study us quietly from afar, abiding by a Star Trek-esque maxim of non-interference? Schneider doubts either. In fact, she reckons superintelligent aliens couldn’t really care less about us.

“If they were interested in us, we probably wouldn’t be here,” said Schneider. “My gut feeling is their goals and incentives are so different from ours, they’re not going to want to contact us.”

That’s a welcome divergence from Steven Hawking’s claim that advanced aliens might be nomads, looking to strip resources from whatever planets they can, and that all efforts to contact said aliens may end in our own demise.

“I’d have to agree with Susan on them not being interested in us at all,” Shostak said. We're just too simplistic, too irrelevant. “You don’t spend a whole lot of time hanging out reading books with your goldfish. On the other hand, you don’t really want to kill the goldfish, either.”

So, if we want to meet our galactic peers, it looks like we’ll probably have to keep seeking them out. That may take thousands or millions of years, but in the meanwhile, perhaps we’ll upgrade our own intelligence enough to level the playing field. And as an early Christmas present, it seems we can all tick alien robots juicing us for energy off the list of likely apocalypses.

Interesting


.

Very L. Ron Hubbard-ish. A substitution of science fiction for religion.

[Typhoon]

The Universe as a Process of Unique Events
Marina Cortês (*), Lee Smolin

(Submitted on 23 Jul 2013 (v1), last revised 24 Jul 2013 (this version, v2))
We describe a new class of models of quantum space-time based on energetic causal sets and show that under natural conditions space-time emerges from them. These are causal sets whose causal links are labelled by energy and momentum and conservation laws are applied at events. The models are motivated by principles we propose govern microscopic physics which posit a fundamental irreversibility of time. One consequence is that each event in the history of the universe has a distinct causal relationship to the rest; this requires a novel form of dynamics which an be applied to uniquely distinctive events. We hence introduce a new kind of deterministic dynamics for a causal set in which new events are generated from pairs of progenitor events by a rule which is based on extremizing the distinctions between causal past sets of events. This dynamics is asymmetric in time, but we find evidence from numerical simulations of a 1+1 dimensional model, that an effective dynamics emerges which restores approximate time reversal symmetry. Finally we also present a natural twistorial representation of energetic causal sets.

http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/1307.6167

(*) I'm glad to see that there is more to Portugal (Marina Cortês is a Portuguese scientist) than Cristiano Ronaldo...

She seems to have a harder time deciding on where she lives than did Schroedinger's cat.

Anyways, the exception does not prove the rule as there are smart exceptional people from everywhere.
I knew a physicist from Nepal and quite a few from Brazil along with a immunologist of international renown.

Again

There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.

~Anton Chekov

In other words, as I've noted repeatedly to one of your fellow posters, the science threads are no place for nationalism.

[Typhoon]

HEP humour spotted at CERN . . .

[noddy]

hah, i particularly like "how to ensure your model remains predictability free"

"is choice moral" is a good fit for the spenglerverse philosophy forums at their best.

[Typhoon]

2015 | The International Year of LIght

[Doc]

Just to add that it occurred to me a long time ago that Quantum uncertainty must inherently travel faster than the speed of light. That was before I ever heard of spooky action at a distance.


http://www.rdmag.com/news/2014/12/quant ... 0&at_tot=1

Quantum physics just got less complicated


Fri, 12/19/2014 - 2:21pm

Quantum physics says that particles can behave like waves, and vice versa. Researchers have now shown that this 'wave-particle duality' is simply the quantum uncertainty principle in disguise. Source: Timothy Yeo / CQT, National University of Singapore

Quantum physics says that particles can behave like waves, and vice versa. Researchers have now shown that this 'wave-particle duality' is simply the quantum uncertainty principle in disguise. Source: Timothy Yeo / CQT, National University of Singapore

Here's a nice surprise: quantum physics is less complicated than we thought. An international team of researchers has proved that two peculiar features of the quantum world previously considered distinct are different manifestations of the same thing. The result is published in Nature Communications.

Patrick Coles, Jedrzej Kaniewski, and Stephanie Wehner made the breakthrough while at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore. They found that 'wave-particle duality' is simply the quantum 'uncertainty principle' in disguise, reducing two mysteries to one.

"The connection between uncertainty and wave-particle duality comes out very naturally when you consider them as questions about what information you can gain about a system. Our result highlights the power of thinking about physics from the perspective of information," says Wehner, who is now an Associate Professor at QuTech at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

The discovery deepens our understanding of quantum physics and could prompt ideas for new applications of wave-particle duality.

Wave-particle duality is the idea that a quantum object can behave like a wave, but that the wave behaviour disappears if you try to locate the object. It's most simply seen in a double slit experiment, where single particles, electrons, say, are fired one by one at a screen containing two narrow slits. The particles pile up behind the slits not in two heaps as classical objects would, but in a stripy pattern like you'd expect for waves interfering. At least this is what happens until you sneak a look at which slit a particle goes through - do that and the interference pattern vanishes.

The quantum uncertainty principle is the idea that it's impossible to know certain pairs of things about a quantum particle at once. For example, the more precisely you know the position of an atom, the less precisely you can know the speed with which it's moving. It's a limit on the fundamental knowability of nature, not a statement on measurement skill. The new work shows that how much you can learn about the wave versus the particle behaviour of a system is constrained in exactly the same way.

Wave-particle duality and uncertainty have been fundamental concepts in quantum physics since the early 1900s. "We were guided by a gut feeling, and only a gut feeling, that there should be a connection," says Coles, who is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, Canada.

It's possible to write equations that capture how much can be learned about pairs of properties that are affected by the uncertainty principle. Coles, Kaniewski and Wehner are experts in a form of such equations known as 'entropic uncertainty relations', and they discovered that all the maths previously used to describe wave-particle duality could be reformulated in terms of these relations.

"It was like we had discovered the 'Rosetta Stone' that connected two different languages," says Coles. "The literature on wave-particle duality was like hieroglyphics that we could now translate into our native tongue. We had several eureka moments when we finally understood what people had done," he says.

Because the entropic uncertainty relations used in their translation have also been used in proving the security of quantum cryptography - schemes for secure communication using quantum particles - the researchers suggest the work could help inspire new cryptography protocols.

In earlier papers, Wehner and collaborators found connections between the uncertainty principle and other physics, namely quantum 'non-locality' and the second law of thermodynamics. The tantalising next goal for the researchers is to think about how these pieces fit together and what bigger picture that paints of how nature is constructed.

[Nonc Hilaire]

Tesla tower in Russia. Cool toy, but what can they do with it?

6tcTwW2_WrU

[Typhoon]

Tesla tower in Russia. Cool toy, but what can they do with it?

6tcTwW2_WrU

Drone videos are cool.

Now for some of my patent-pending pendatry:

Despite the video title [and the erudite observations in the comments section], those towers are Marx generators,
not Tesla coils [high frequency air core tranformers].



[Marx generator; Siemens, Germany]

A Marx generator is an electrical circuit first described by Erwin Otto Marx in 1924. Its purpose is to generate a high-voltage pulse from a low-voltage DC supply. Marx generators are used in high energy physics experiments, as well as to simulate the effects of lightning on power line gear and aviation equipment. A bank of 36 Marx generators is used by Sandia National Laboratories to generate X-rays in their Z Machine.

Very effective for generating fast high-voltage, high-current, direct current pulses; for energizing communism, not so much.

As they are situated outside, not inside a lab, one possible use may be to simulate the effect of lightning strikes on large equipment,
to test various HV insulators, and more speculatively, to test equipment against EMPs [there are better methods of generating EMPs].

A Tesla coil, on the other hand, generates a continuous high-voltage, low-current, high frequency alternating-current.

[Doc]

I wonder if this theory turns out to be true, is it possible that quantum uncertainty accounts for the expansion of the universe? Or conversely the collapse of the quantum wave function is another way to think of black holes?

No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning

(Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.

The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a "Big Bang" did the universe officially begin.

Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity.

"The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there," Ahmed Farag Ali at Benha University and the Zewail City of Science and Technology, both in Egypt, told Phys.org.

Ali and coauthor Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have shown in a paper published in Physics Letters B that the Big Bang singularity can be resolved by their new model in which the universe has no beginning and no end.

Old ideas revisited

The physicists emphasize that their quantum correction terms are not applied ad hoc in an attempt to specifically eliminate the Big Bang singularity. Their work is based on ideas by the theoretical physicist David Bohm, who is also known for his contributions to the philosophy of physics. Starting in the 1950s, Bohm explored replacing classical geodesics (the shortest path between two points on a curved surface) with quantum trajectories.

In their paper, Ali and Das applied these Bohmian trajectories to an equation developed in the 1950s by physicist Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri at Presidency University in Kolkata, India. Raychaudhuri was also Das's teacher when he was an undergraduate student of that institution in the '90s.

Using the quantum-corrected Raychaudhuri equation, Ali and Das derived quantum-corrected Friedmann equations, which describe the expansion and evolution of universe (including the Big Bang) within the context of general relativity. Although it's not a true theory of quantum gravity, the model does contain elements from both quantum theory and general relativity. Ali and Das also expect their results to hold even if and when a full theory of quantum gravity is formulated.

No singularities nor dark stuff

In addition to not predicting a Big Bang singularity, the new model does not predict a "big crunch" singularity, either. In general relativity, one possible fate of the universe is that it starts to shrink until it collapses in on itself in a big crunch and becomes an infinitely dense point once again.

Ali and Das explain in their paper that their model avoids singularities because of a key difference between classical geodesics and Bohmian trajectories. Classical geodesics eventually cross each other, and the points at which they converge are singularities. In contrast, Bohmian trajectories never cross each other, so singularities do not appear in the equations.

In cosmological terms, the scientists explain that the quantum corrections can be thought of as a cosmological constant term (without the need for dark energy) and a radiation term. These terms keep the universe at a finite size, and therefore give it an infinite age. The terms also make predictions that agree closely with current observations of the cosmological constant and density of the universe.

New gravity particle

In physical terms, the model describes the universe as being filled with a quantum fluid. The scientists propose that this fluid might be composed of gravitons—hypothetical massless particles that mediate the force of gravity. If they exist, gravitons are thought to play a key role in a theory of quantum gravity.

In a related paper, Das and another collaborator, Rajat Bhaduri of McMaster University, Canada, have lent further credence to this model. They show that gravitons can form a Bose-Einstein condensate (named after Einstein and another Indian physicist, Satyendranath Bose) at temperatures that were present in the universe at all epochs.

Motivated by the model's potential to resolve the Big Bang singularity and account for dark matter and dark energy, the physicists plan to analyze their model more rigorously in the future. Their future work includes redoing their study while taking into account small inhomogeneous and anisotropic perturbations, but they do not expect small perturbations to significantly affect the results.

"It is satisfying to note that such straightforward corrections can potentially resolve so many issues at once," Das said.

Explore further: Did the universe originate from a hyper-dimensional black hole?

More information: Ahmed Farag Ali and Saurya Das. "Cosmology from quantum potential." Physics Letters B. Volume 741, 4 February 2015, Pages 276–279. DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2014.12.057. Also at: arXiv:1404.3093[gr-qc].

Saurya Das and Rajat K. Bhaduri, "Dark matter and dark energy from Bose-Einstein condensate", preprint: arXiv:1411.0753[gr-qc].

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantu ... e.html#jCp

[Endovelico]

Collider hopes for a 'super' restart
By Jonathan Amos

A senior researcher at the Large Hadron Collider says a new particle could be detected this year that is even more exciting than the Higgs boson.

The accelerator is due to come back online in March after an upgrade that has given it a big boost in energy.

This could force the first so-called supersymmetric particle to appear in the machine, with the most likely candidate being the gluino.

Its detection would give scientists direct pointers to "dark matter".

And that would be a big opening into some of the remaining mysteries of the universe.

"It could be as early as this year. Summer may be a bit hard but late summer maybe, if we're really lucky," said Prof Beate Heinemann, who is a spokeswoman for the Atlas experiment, one of the big particle detectors at the LHC.

"We hope that we're just now at this threshold that we're finding another world, like antimatter for instance. We found antimatter in the beginning of the last century. Maybe we'll find now supersymmetric matter."

The University of California at Berkeley researcher made her comments at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In the debris

Supersymmetry is an addition to the Standard Model that describes nature’s fundamental particles and their interactions.

Susy, as it is sometimes known, fills some gaps in the model and provides a basis to unify nature's forces.

It predicts each of the particles to have more massive partners. So the particle that is light – the photon – would have a partner called the photino. The quark, the building block of an atom’s protons and neutrons, would have a partner called the squark.

But when the LHC was colliding matter at its pre-upgrade energies, no sign of these superparticles was seen in the debris, which led to some consternation among theorists.

Now, with the accelerator about to reopen in the coming weeks, there is high hope the first evidence of Susy can be found.

The machine is going to double the collision energy, taking it into a domain where those theorists say the gluino really ought to emerge in sufficient numbers to be noticed. The gluino is the superpartner of the gluon, which "glues" the quarks together inside protons and neutrons.

The LHC’s detectors would not see it directly. What they would track is its decay, which scientists would then have to reconstruct.

But importantly, those decay products should include the lightest and most stable superparticle, known as the neutralino – the particle that researchers have proposed is what makes up dark matter, the missing mass in the cosmos that binds galaxies together on the sky but which cannot be seen directly with telescopes.

"This would rock the world,” said Prof Heinemann. "For me, it’s more exciting than the Higgs."
'The other side'

So, not only would supersymmetry proponents be elated because they would have their first superparticle, but science in general would have a firm foot on the road to understanding dark matter.

Dr Michael Williams, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: "We sometimes talk about the dark matter particle, but it’s perfectly plausible that dark matter is just as interesting as [normal] matter, [which] has a lot of particles that we know about.

"There might be just as many dark matter particles, or even more.

"Finding any particle that could be a dark matter candidate is nice because we could start to understand how it affects the galaxy and the evolution of the universe, but it also opens the door to whatever is on the other side, which we have no idea what is there."

Particle physicists have three major conferences in August and September, one of which is the main gathering of the supersymmetry community. All these meetings are bound to draw huge interest.

But Prof Jay Hauser, who works on the CMS detector at the LHC, added a little caution on timings. "Even if we did see something, remember it might be complicated enough that it takes us a while to explain it," he told reporters.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31476337

This year could be very exciting in the field of physics.

[Doc]

I wonder if this theory turns out to be true, is it possible that quantum uncertainty accounts for the expansion of the universe? Or conversely the collapse of the quantum wave function is another way to think of black holes?

Maybe....

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1202/1202.5731.pdf

Abstract
A quantum expansion parameter, analogous to the Hubble parameter in cosmology, is defined
for a free particle quantum wavefunction. By considering the universe as an initial single
Gaussian quantum wavepacket whose mass is that of present-day observable universe and
whose size is that of the Planck Length at the Planck Time, it is demonstrated that this
quantum expansion parameter has a value at the present epoch of the same order as the value
of the Hubble constant. The coincidence suggests examining the effect of including this type
of quantum wave expansion in traditional general relativistic cosmology and a sample model
illustrating this is presented here. Using standard Einstein-de Sitter cosmology (Ωm = 1) it is
found that cosmic acceleration (aka dark energy) arises naturally during cosmic history. The
time at which the universe switched from deceleration to acceleration (observationally ~7 Gyr
before the present epoch) yields a value for the mass of the wavepacket representing the
universe at the Planck Time and its present age. This same mass may then be used to obtain a
curve for the cosmic expansion rate versus z. This curve is well fit to observational data. The
model is used also to obtain an estimate of the inflationary expansion factor.
Key words: Cosmology: theory, dark energy, early Universe, inflation

More at the link

No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning

(Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantu ... e.html#jCp

[Doc]

http://consolidatetimes.com/2937/20/str ... lack-hole/

Strange Dark Matter Controls the Size of Black Hole

0
Tech & Sci
February 20, 2015

Astronomers at Harvard University spotted a cluster of football like star. They observed that a mysterious dark matter is emitting from the black hole. Previously, a few researches show that there is a link between the mass of dark matter and the size of black hole. However, the latest study rebuffed all the previous assumptions. It demonstrates that total quantity of dark matter is associated with mass of black hole. The study is entirely based upon the development of elliptical galaxies. The report is available in the Astrophysical Journal.

Dark matter and mass of black hole

Dark matter in galaxies determines the growth of super massive black holes, new research shows.

The research has shown that the relationship between dark matter and black hole dominates the relationship black holes have with visible matter in galaxies. The study is significant as dark matter does not interact with electromagnetic radiation and can be know only through gravity. The new study shows that the amount of dark matter in a galaxy influences super massive black holes at the center of galaxies.

“There seems to be a mysterious link between the amount of dark matter a galaxy holds and the size of its central black hole, even though the two operate on vastly different scales,” study’s lead author Akos Bogdan to Harvard Gazette.

According to CNET, researchers analysed 3,000 elliptical galaxies to weigh black holes at galaxy center, and the dark matter in them. To weigh black hole researchers used motion of stars. To weigh dark matter, researchers used X-ray measurements to measure hot gas that helps weigh dark matter halo.

Researchers found a strong relation between dark matter and black hole connected to the growth of elliptical galaxies, which are created when smaller galaxies merge.

“In effect, the act of merging creates a gravitational blueprint that the galaxy, the stars and the black hole will follow in order to build themselves,” Bogdan said in a news release.

[Heracleum Persicum]

.


Forbes :


who is going to be the next Einstein ..

.

So, back to that Iranian woman I mentioned.

She’s called Zahra Haghani and you can read her paper, “Matter May Matter” online.

I’ll avoid summarising because, well, it’s way beyond my rudimentary understanding of physics.

But what Sparrho has done is analyse her writing, and determined that she was one of several writers who were statistically most similar to Einstein.

.

Cornel university ..

.

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Matter may matter

Zahra Haghani, Tiberiu Harko, Hamid Reza Sepangi, Shahab Shahidi

(Submitted on 15 May 2014)

We propose a gravitational theory in which the effective Lagrangian of the gravitational field is given by an arbitrary function of the Ricci scalar, the trace of the matter energy-momentum tensor, and the contraction of the Ricci tensor with the matter energy-momentum tensor. The matter energy-momentum tensor is generally not conserved, thus leading to the appearance of an extra-force, acting on massive particles in a gravitational field. The stability conditions of the theory with respect to local perturbations are also obtained. The cosmological implications of the theory are investigated, representing an exponential solution. Hence a Ricci tensor - energy-momentum tensor coupling may explain the recent acceleration of the Universe, without resorting to the mysterious dark energy.

.

Future Einsteins will speak Farsi and Hindustani and Chinese

Interesting Phenomena, lately, suddenly, "Iranian woman" start excelling, world class, specially in science, Maryam Mirzakhani (professor of mathematics at Stanford University)

Reason for this is, flood gates are now opened to woman's education in 3rd world, India, China, Iran .. in many places woman now outnumber man in higher education (in Iran)

.

[Typhoon]

.

Forbes :

who is going to be the next Einstein ..

So, back to that Iranian woman I mentioned.

She’s called Zahra Haghani and you can read her paper, “Matter May Matter” online.

I’ll avoid summarising because, well, it’s way beyond my rudimentary understanding of physics.

But what Sparrho has done is analyse her writing, and determined that she was one of several writers who were statistically most similar to Einstein.

.

She's obviously clever, but the methodology of that article is too silly for words.

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Matter may matter

Zahra Haghani, Tiberiu Harko, Hamid Reza Sepangi, Shahab Shahidi

(Submitted on 15 May 2014)

We propose a gravitational theory in which the effective Lagrangian of the gravitational field is given by an arbitrary function of the Ricci scalar, the trace of the matter energy-momentum tensor, and the contraction of the Ricci tensor with the matter energy-momentum tensor. The matter energy-momentum tensor is generally not conserved, thus leading to the appearance of an extra-force, acting on massive particles in a gravitational field. The stability conditions of the theory with respect to local perturbations are also obtained. The cosmological implications of the theory are investigated, representing an exponential solution. Hence a Ricci tensor - energy-momentum tensor coupling may explain the recent acceleration of the Universe, without resorting to the mysterious dark energy.

.

A casual search of arXiv.org will reveal a sizeable industry of proposed modifications to GR. In other words, this is one of many such papers.

Maybe this modification is right and may it's not. If this theory makes testable predictions, the the deciding factor will, as always, be experimental.

Future Einsteins will speak Farsi and Hindustani and Chinese

Interesting Phenomena, lately, suddenly, "Iranian woman" start excelling, world class, specially in science, Maryam Mirzakhani (professor of mathematics at Stanford University)

Reason for this is, flood gates are now opened to woman's education in 3rd world, India, China, Iran .. in many places woman now outnumber man in higher education (in Iran)

.

Smart Iranian women working outside of Iran is not a new phenomena.

When I lived in the US, now decades ago, the smartest girl I dated was Iranian.

Anyways, future "Einsteins" will probably be known for their contribution in some field of science other than what Einstein worked in.

Whatever languages they may speak, they will publish in English.

Global citation ranking | 2013

[Heracleum Persicum]

.

The beauty of this .. for certain these kind of sciences, very high level physics or mathematics, theoretical stuff, no laboratory, no instrument, nothing more than a pencil and sheet of paper needed

Einstein, afaik, developed all his theories by "day dreaming" .. he said (something to that effect) that “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

To prove or disprove those theories you need instruments and laboratories .. though, testing and validating some of Einstein's theories needed very simple tests .. the beauty is in the simplicity

.