Turn up the voltage, and monogamous quantum relationships fall apart in surprising ways.
Are quantum particles polygamous? New experiments suggest some of them abandon long-standing partnerships when conditions get crowded.
Quantum particles do not behave like isolated dots.
They interact, form bonds, and follow strict social rules. One of the most fundamental divides separates fermions and bosons.
A single laundry load containing synthetic clothing can release thousands of plastic microfibers from nylon, acrylic and polyester materials. Lab testing of an SA-made washing machine filter at Flinders University shows it can be a useful new way to help protect waterways from polyester and other synthetic microparticles.
Flinders researchers are also developing a novel approach to enhance nanoplastic capture on cellulose filters using a plasma polymer coating.
Microplastics are plastic particles less than 5 mm wide, and they break down further to nanoparticles.
Quantum particles have a social life, of a sort. They interact and form relationships with each other, and one of the most important features of a quantum particle is whether it is an introvert—a fermion—or an extrovert—a boson.
Extroverted bosons are happy to crowd into a shared quantum state, producing dramatic phenomena like superconductivity and superfluidity. In contrast, introverted fermions will not share their quantum state under any condition—enabling all the structures of solid matter to form.
But the social lives of quantum particles go beyond whether they are fermions or bosons. Particles interact in complex ways to produce everything we know, and interactions between quantum particles are key to understanding why materials have their particular properties. For instance, electrons are sometimes tightly locked into a relationship with a specific atom in a material, making it an insulator. Other times, electrons are independent and roam freely—the hallmark of a conductor.
When quantum particles work together, they can produce signals far stronger than any one particle could generate alone. This collective phenomenon, called superradiance, is a powerful example of cooperation at the quantum level. Until now, superradiance was mostly known for making quantum systems lose their energy too quickly, posing challenges for quantum technologies.
But a new study published in Nature Physics turns this idea on its head—revealing that collective superradiant effects can instead produce self-sustained, long-lived microwave signals with exciting potential for future quantum devices.
“What’s remarkable is that the seemingly messy interactions between spins actually fuel the emission,” explains Dr. Wenzel Kersten, first author of the study. “The system organizes itself, producing an extremely coherent microwave signal from the very disorder that usually destroys it.”
Dark matter is an elusive type of matter that does not emit, absorb or reflect light, interacting very weakly with ordinary matter. These characteristics make it impossible to detect using conventional technologies used by physicists to study matter particles.
As it has never been observed before, the exact composition of dark matter remains unknown. One proposed theory is that this elusive type of matter is comprised of light particles with very small masses, below 1 eV (electronvolt), which behave more like waves than particles.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Chuo University recently explored the possibility of searching for sub-GeV dark matter using quantum sensors, advanced systems that rely on quantum mechanical effects to detect extremely weak signals.
Einstein never liked the idea that nature is uncertain and he once said “does that mean the Moon is not there when I am not looking at it”. He believed we live in an orderly Universe which is fundamentally rational and that there should always be a reason why thing happen. But there is a way to have the objective Universe of Einstein and the uncertainty of quantum physics and that is by explaining quantum mechanics as the physics of ‘time’ with the future as an emergent property.
In this radical theory the mathematics of quantum mechanics represents the physics of ‘time’ as a physical process with classical physics representing process over a period of time as in Newton’s differential equations. This is a process formed by the spontaneous absorption and emission of light photon energy. This forms a continuous process of energy exchange that forms the ever changing world of our everyday life.
The Universe is a continuum with the future coming into existence photon by photon with each new photon electron coupling or dipole moment. This forms the movement of positive and negative charge with the continuous flow of electromagnetic fields.
Consciousness in the form of electrical activity in the brain is the most advanced part of this process and can therefore comprehend this process as ‘time’. With a past that has gone forever and a future that is always uncertain in the form of a probability function or quantum wave particle function that is explained mathematically by Schrödinger’s wave equation Ψ. Therefore each individual is in the centre of their own reference frame as an interactive part of this process. With their own time line from the past into the future being able to look back in time in all directions at the beauty of the stars! It is this personalization of the brain being in ‘the moment of now’ in the center of its own reference frame that gives us the concept of ‘mind’ with each one of us having our own personal view of the beauty and uncertainty of life.
It is not that there is uncertainty if the Moon is there or not if nobody looks. It is that the physical act of looking will form new light photon oscillations or vibrations relative to the actions of the observer in a continuous flow of cause and effect. The wave particle duality of light is acting like the bits or zeros and ones of a computer. This forms an interactive process continuously forming a blank canvas that we can interact with turning the possible into the actual! Any observation of the Moon will be over a period of time with the wave nature of light explaining diffraction, interference, reflection and refraction. But the particle nature of light the ‘photon’ will only come into existence when the light comes in contact with the lenses and mirrors of the telescope being used. And finally with new photons be formed in the eye of the observer the uncertainty of the observation will be completed using both the wave and particle nature of light!
What we see in our everyday life as an uncertain future is formed by a physical process that at the smallest scale is represented mathematically by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle ∆×∆p×≥h/4π with the Planck constant ħ=h/2π being a constant of action in the dynamics geometry of space and time! This theory takes quantum potential, electrical potential and gravitational potential and combines them into one universal process. That explains why we all have a potential future in our everyday life that is always uncertain. This is done by making the future an emergent property energy ∆E slows the rate that time ∆t flows creating a future relative to the energy and momentum of each object or life form. For in this theory creation is truly in the hand and eye of the beholder with an objective reality in the form of a dynamic interactive process that forms an infinity of possibilities. Please share and subscribe it will help the promotion of this theory!
Scientists in China have performed an experiment first proposed by Albert Einstein almost a century ago when he sought to disprove the quantum mechanical principle of complementarity put forth by Niels Bohr and his school of physicists. Bohr claimed there are properties of particles that cannot simultaneously be measured. The new result backs up the Copenhagen school yet again, with the potential to shed light on other, less settled questions in quantum mechanics.
When they met at physics conferences, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr liked to kick back and debate about quantum mechanics. Einstein, always skeptical of the standard picture of quantum mechanics then being developed, liked to claim he had found holes and inconsistencies in Bohr’s interpretation, and Bohr was always up for the challenge.
At the 1927 Solvay conference in Brussels, the two Nobel Laureates had perhaps their most famous parley, with Einstein famously proclaiming, “God does not play dice with the universe.” In particular, Einstein proposed an experiment he thought would reveal the essential contradiction in the principle of complementarity, which held that pairs of properties of particles, such as position and momentum, and frequency and lifetime, cannot be measured at the same time. Complementarity undergirds the concepts of wave-particle duality and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.