For centuries, humans have made use of glass in their art, tools, and technology. Despite the ubiquity of this material, however, many of its microscopic properties are not well understood, and it continues to defy conventional physical description.
Enter Koun Shirai of the University of Osaka. In an article published in Foundations, Shirai bridges conventional physical theory and the study of nonequilibrium materials to provide a robust description for the thermodynamics of glasses.
Most materials exist in an equilibrium state, meaning that the forces and torques on the material’s atoms are all balanced. Glasses, however, are a famous exception: they are amorphous solid materials whose atoms are always rearranging, albeit very slowly, toward an equilibrium state but do not exist in equilibrium.
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Panpsychism is the theory that consciousness is irreducible and exists fundamentally at the foundations of reality. Panpsychism forms include ‘micropsychism,’ where fundamental particles or fields are in some sense conscious, and ‘Cosmopsychism,’ where the entire universe is in some sense conscious. What are the arguments for and against Panpsychism like the ‘combination problem’?
Closer To Truth is now on BlueSky! Follow us for updates, new videos, musings, and more: https://bsky.app/profile/closertotrut… Kastrup is a Brazilian-born Dutch philosopher and computer scientist best known for his work in the field of consciousness studies, particularly his development of analytic idealism, a form of metaphysical idealism grounded in the analytic philosophical tradition. Make a tax-deductible donation of any amount to help us continue exploring the world’s deepest questions: https://closertotruth.com/donate/ Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
Bernardo Kastrup is a Brazilian-born Dutch philosopher and computer scientist best known for his work in the field of consciousness studies, particularly his development of analytic idealism, a form of metaphysical idealism grounded in the analytic philosophical tradition.
Make a tax-deductible donation of any amount to help us continue exploring the world’s deepest questions: https://closertotruth.com/donate/
Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
What happened in the first few moments of our Universe’s existence? Today, scientists armed with giant telescopes and powerful particle accelerators, are probing the outer reaches of matter and the cosmos.
Top minds at the world’s largest atom smasher have released a blueprint for a much bigger successor that could vastly improve research into the remaining enigmas of physics.
The plans for the Future Circular Collider—a nearly 91-kilometer (56.5-mile) loop along the French-Swiss border and below Lake Geneva—published late Monday put the finishing details on a project roughly a decade in the making at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
The FCC would carry out high-precision experiments in the mid-2040s to study “known physics” in greater detail, then enter a second phase—planned for 2070—that would conduct high-energy collisions of protons and heavy ions that would “open the door to the unknown,” said Giorgio Chiarelli, a research director at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics.
A chemical reaction that’s vital to a range of commercial and industrial goods may soon be initiated more effectively and less expensively thanks to a collaboration that included Oregon State University College of Engineering researchers.
The study, published in Nature, involves hydrogenation —adding the diatomic hydrogen molecule, H2, to other compounds.
“Hydrogenation is a critical and diverse reaction used to create food products, fuels, commodity chemicals and pharmaceuticals,” said Zhenxing Feng, associate professor of chemical engineering. “However, for the reaction to be economically viable, a catalyst such as palladium or platinum is invariably required to increase its reaction rate and thus lower cost.”
Scientists at CERN have made a groundbreaking discovery that deepens our understanding of why the Universe is made of matter and not antimatter. By analyzing an enormous trove of data from the LHC, researchers observed a subtle but significant asymmetry in the behavior of a particle called the be
An innovative method using superconducting sensors precisely measures the recoil energy of lithium-7 nuclei, setting a lower limit on the spatial extent of neutrino wavepackets, advancing understanding of neutrino properties and weak nuclear decays.
A team of researchers led by a physics graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst made the surprising discovery of what they call a “shape-recovering liquid,” which defies some long-held expectations derived from the laws of thermodynamics.
The research, published in Nature Physics, details a mixture of oil, water and magnetized particles that, when shaken, always quickly separates into what looks like the classically curvaceous lines of a Grecian urn.
“Imagine your favorite Italian salad dressing,” says Thomas Russell, Silvio O. Conte Distinguished Professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at UMass Amherst and one of the paper’s senior authors.
Quantum states can only be prepared and observed under highly controlled conditions. A research team from Innsbruck, Austria, has now succeeded in creating so-called hot Schrödinger cat states in a superconducting microwave resonator. The study, published in Science Advances, shows that quantum phenomena can also be observed and used in less perfect, warmer conditions.
Schrödinger cat states are a fascinating phenomenon in quantum physics in which a quantum object exists simultaneously in two different states. In Erwin Schrödinger’s thought experiment, it is a cat that is alive and dead at the same time.
In real experiments, such simultaneity has been seen in the locations of atoms and molecules and in the oscillations of electromagnetic resonators.
