Lifeboat Foundation

Some research topics, says conventional wisdom, a physics PhD student shouldn’t touch with an iron-tipped medieval lance: sinkholes in the foundations of quantum theory. Problems so hard, you’d have a snowball’s chance of achieving progress. Problems so obscure, you’d have a snowball’s chance of convincing anyone to care about progress. Whether quantum physics could influence cognition much.

Quantum physics influences cognition insofar as (i) quantum physics prevents atoms from imploding and (ii) implosion inhabits atoms from contributing to cognition. But most physicists believe that useful entanglement can’t survive in brains. Entanglement consists of correlations shareable by quantum systems and stronger than any achievable by classical systems. Useful entanglement dies quickly in hot, wet, random environments.

Brains form such environments. Imagine injecting entangled molecules A and B into someone’s brain. Water, ions, and other particles would bombard the molecules. The higher the temperature, the heavier the bombardment. The bombardiers would entangle with the molecules via electric and magnetic fields. Each molecule can share only so much entanglement. The more A entangled with the environment, the less A could remain entangled with B. A would come to share a tiny amount of entanglement with each of many particles. Such tiny amounts couldn’t accomplish much. So quantum physics seems unlikely to affect cognition significantly.

Continue reading “Quantum information in quantum cognition” »

PARTICLE physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) are tracking down elusive particles of dark matter with the aid of dark photons, CERN has spectacularly announced.

Quantum physics, the study of the universe on an atomic scale, gives us a reference model to understand the human ecosystem in the discrete individual unit. It helps us understand how individual human behavior impacts collective systems and the security of humanity.

Metaphorically, we can see this in how a particle can act both like a particle or a wave. The concept of entanglement is at the core of much of applied quantum physics. The commonly understood definition of entanglement says that particles can be generated to have a distinct reliance on each other, despite any three-dimensional or 4-dimensional distance between the particles. What this definition and understanding imply is that even if two or more particles are physically detached with no traditional or measurable linkages, what happens to one still has a quantifiable effect on the other.

Now, individuals and entities across NGIOA are part of an entangled global system. Since the ability to generate and manipulate pairs of entangled particles is at the foundation of many quantum technologies, it is important to understand and evaluate how the principles of quantum physics translate to the survival and security of humanity.

Continue reading “A Quantum Revolution Is Coming” »

A Nobel winner, he found hidden patterns in the subatomic matter that forms the universe, evoking James Joyce in calling one kind of particle “quarks.”

A new idea for smashing beams of elementary particles into one another could reveal how light and matter interact under extreme conditions that may exist on the surfaces of exotic astrophysical objects, in powerful cosmic light bursts and star explosions, in next-generation particle colliders and in hot, dense fusion plasma.

Most such interactions in nature are very successfully described by a theory known as quantum electrodynamics (QED). However, the current form of the theory doesn’t help predict phenomena in extremely large electromagnetic fields. In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and their colleagues have suggested a new particle collider concept that would allow us to study these extreme effects.

Extreme fields sap energy from colliding particle beams—an unwanted loss that is typically mitigated by bundling particles into relatively long, flat bunches and keeping the electromagnetic field strength in check. Instead, the new study suggests making particle bunches so short that they wouldn’t have enough time to lose energy. Such a collider would provide an opportunity to study intriguing effects associated with extreme fields, including the collision of photons emerging from the particle beams.

Continue reading “New collider concept would take quantum theories to an extreme” »

A hunt for long-lived particles ramps up.

E=m c

Albert Einstein proposed the most famous formula in physics in a 1905 paper on Special Relativity titled Does the inertia of an object depend upon its energy content?

Essentially, the equation says that mass and energy are intimately related. Atom bombs and nuclear reactors are practical examples of the formula working in one direction, turning matter into energy.

Continue reading “‘Einstein Was Right: You Can Turn Energy Into Matter’” »

The first simulations of matter and antimatter particles swirling around a rotating black hole hint at the origins of the enigmatic jets. The first simulations of matter and antimatter particles swirling around a rotating black hole hints at the origins of the enigmatic jets.