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Category: physics – Page 36

Hey, what are these curved green flashes above my polymer semiconductor?

In every scientific discovery in the movies, a scientist observes something unexpected, scratches the side of his or her forehead and says “hmmmmm.” In just such a moment in real life, scientists from Canada observed unexpected flashes of curved green light from a red light-emitting polymer above its surface. The flashes were reminiscent of the colored arcs that auroras take above Earth’s poles, providing a clue as to their provenance.

Their resulting investigation of the new phenomenon could find applications towards understanding the failures of polymer materials and more. Their work has been published in Physical Review Letters.

Jun Gao, a professor and chair of Engineering Physics at the Engineering Physics and Astronomy Department at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, and graduate student Dongze Wang were investigating the performance of semiconductors called polymer light-emitting electrochemical cells, or PLECs.

BD+05 4868 Ab: A Planet on Its Last Breath

“This is a very tiny object, with very weak gravity, so it easily loses a lot of mass, which then further weakens its gravity, so it loses even more mass,” said Dr. Avi Shporer.

What can a planet that’s shedding its material teach astronomers about planetary formation and evolution? This is what a recently submitted study to The Astrophysical Journal Letters hopes to address as an international team of scientists investigated a unique exoplanet that orbits its host star approximately 20 times closer than Mercury orbits our Sun, resulting in the exoplanet shedding so much material that it’s creating a tail of debris and will eventually disintegrate into nothing.

“The extent of the tail is gargantuan, stretching up to 9 million kilometers long, or roughly half of the planet’s entire orbit,” said Dr. Marc Hon, who is a postdoc in the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and lead author of the study.

Exoplanet BD+054868Ab is located approximately 140 light-years from Earth and orbits its star in approximately 30.5 hours. For context, Mercury takes our Sun in 88 days. The orbit of BD+054868Ab is so close, astronomers hypothesize that it’s a molten world slowly shedding its material and they estimate it will be completely gone between 1 million and 2 million years from now. During its long and slow death, BD+054868Ab is shedding so material that it’s leaving a trail of debris in its wake, which initially puzzled astronomers after analyzing data obtained from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

Ultrafast plasmon-enhanced magnetic bit switching at the nanoscale

Researchers from Max Born Institute have demonstrated a successful way to control and manipulate nanoscale magnetic bits—the building blocks of digital data—using an ultrafast laser pulse and plasmonic gold nanostructures. The findings were published in Nano Letters.

All-optical, helicity-independent magnetization switching (AO-HIS) is one of the most interesting and promising mechanisms for this endeavor, where the magnetization state can be reversed between two directions with a single femtosecond laser pulse, serving as “0s” and “1s” without any or complex wiring. This opens up exciting possibilities for creating memory devices that are not only faster and more robust but also consume far less power.

Ultrafast light-driven control of magnetization on the nanometer-length scale is key to achieving competitive bit sizes in next-generation data storage technology. However, it is currently not well understood to what extent basic physics processes such as at the nanoscale and the propagation of magnetic domain walls limit the minimum achievable bit size.

All-optical switching on a nanometer scale

Ultrafast light-driven control of magnetization on the nanometer length scale is key to achieve competitive bit sizes in next generation data storage technology. Researchers at Max Born Institute in Berlin and of the large scale facility Elettra in Trieste, Italy, have successfully demonstrated the ultrafast emergence of all-optical switching by generating a nanometer scale grating by interference of two pulses in the extreme ultraviolet spectral range.

The physics of optically driven magnetization dynamics on the femtosecond time scale is of great interest for two main reasons: first, for a deeper understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of nonequilibrium, ultrafast spin dynamics and, second, for the potential application in the next generation of information technology with a vision to satisfy the need for both faster and more energy efficient data storage devices.

All– (AOS) is one of the most interesting and promising mechanisms for this endeavor, where the magnetization state can be reversed between two directions with a single femtosecond laser pulse, serving as “0s” and “1s.” While the understanding of the temporal control of AOS has progressed rapidly, knowledge on ultrafast transport phenomena on the nanoscale, important for the realization of all-optical magnetic reversal in technological applications, has remained limited due to the wavelength limitations of optical radiation. An elegant way to of overcoming these restrictions is to reduce the wavelengths to the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) spectral range in transient grating experiments. This technique is based on the interference of two XUV beams leading to a nanoscale excitation pattern and has been pioneered at the EIS-Timer beamline of the free-electron laser (FEL) FERMI in Trieste, Italy.

From Laws to Algorithms: Reimagining the Mathematics of Reality

The juridical metaphor in physics has ancient roots. Anaximander, in the 6th century BCE, was perhaps the first to invoke the concept of cosmic justice, speaking of natural entities paying “penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of Time” (Kirk et al., 2010, p. 118). This anthropomorphizing tendency persisted through history, finding its formal expression in Newton’s Principia Mathematica, where he articulated his famous “laws” of motion. Newton, deeply influenced by his theological views, conceived of these laws as divine edicts — mathematical expressions of God’s will imposed upon a compliant universe (Cohen & Smith, 2002, p. 47).

This legal metaphor has served science admirably for centuries, providing a framework for conceptualizing the universe’s apparent obedience to mathematical principles. Yet it carries implicit assumptions worth examining. Laws suggest a lawgiver, hinting at external agency. They imply prescription rather than description — a subtle distinction with profound philosophical implications. As physicist Paul Davies (2010) observes, “The very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm” (p. 74).

Enter the computational metaphor — a framework more resonant with our digital age. The universe, in this conceptualization, executes algorithms rather than obeying laws. Space, time, energy, and matter constitute the data structure upon which these algorithms operate. This shift is more than semantic; it reflects a fundamental reconceptualization of physical reality that aligns remarkably well with emerging theories in theoretical physics and information science.

Half The Universe’s Matter Was Missing. Astronomers Just Found It

A new analysis of the sky has finally confirmed where the missing half of the Universe’s visible matter has been hiding.

In the space around galaxies, it lurks as huge, invisible clouds of ionized hydrogen. Normally, this would be impossible to see – but a large international team of astronomers and astrophysicists has developed a technique that reveals its hiding places, out there in the darkness amidst the stars.

Survey programs confirm the missing half of the Universe’s material takes the form of an intergalactic mist of hydrogen expelled farther from the active cores of galaxies than anybody previously thought.

It’s about (space-)time: Scientists explore new dimension for light

By breaking a decades-old paradigm and rethinking the role that the dimension of time plays in physics, researchers from the University of Rostock and the University of Birmingham have discovered novel flashes of light that come from and go into nothingness—like magic at first glance but with deep mathematical roots that protect against all kinds of outside perturbations. Their findings have now been published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Time is the strange dimension: Unlike its spatial siblings, it is a one-way street as the clock only ever ticks forward and never backward. Scientists have long been aware of time’s quirks, with the British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington musing about this “arrow of time” in his 1927 lectures. Nevertheless, whether it be because of or despite its uniqueness, time as a dimension for physics to play out in has long received far less attention than space.

Recently though, rapid progress in the research on so-called spatiotemporal crystals, objects with repeating patterns in time and space, has inspired a rethinking of the role time should play in our understanding of physics. Additionally, this has spawned the question of whether the uniqueness of time can be more than a mere quirk and instead lead to new effects ultimately useful in applications.

JWST Advanced Deep Survey Suggests Our Universe is Trapped inside a Supermassive Black Hole

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Astronomers analyzing Webb’s data have found that early galaxies seem to favor a particular spin direction—an observation that defies the Cosmological Principle. If confirmed, this could suggest that the universe was born with a fundamental rotation, pointing toward radical theories like black hole cosmology.

But this is just the beginning. The telescope has also spotted galaxies forming far earlier than they should have, some potentially dating back to just 168 million years after the Big Bang. These findings contradict existing models of cosmic evolution, raising the possibility that our understanding of time, expansion, and even reality itself may be flawed.

Adding to the mystery, supermassive black holes have been detected in the early universe, defying expectations of how they should form. Could they be remnants of a previous cosmic cycle? Some researchers are now revisiting the Cyclical Universe Theory, which suggests our universe may be part of an infinite loop of creation and destruction.

With every new revelation, JWST is not just answering questions—it’s creating new ones. Are we on the verge of a fundamental shift in physics, or is there a simpler explanation we have yet to uncover?

The James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered some of the most perplexing discoveries in modern astronomy, challenging everything we thought we knew about the cosmos. From galaxies that appear too massive and too developed for their age to a potential imbalance in galactic rotation, these findings are shaking the foundations of the Big Bang model. Could our universe itself have been born inside a black hole?

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THE SIMULATION HYPOTHESIS & VIRTUAL WORLDS — David Chalmers PHD #16

How likely is it that we live in a simulation? Are virtual worlds real?

In this first episode of the 2nd Series we delve into the fascinating topic of virtual reality simulations and the extraordinary possibility that our universe is itself a simulation. For thousands of years some mystical traditions have maintained that the physical world and our separated ‘selves’ are an illusion, and now, only with the development of our own computer simulations and virtual worlds have scientists and philosophers begun to assess the statistical probabilities that our shared reality could in fact be some kind of representation rather than a physical place.
As we become more open to these possibilities, other difficult questions start to come into focus. How can we create a common language to talk about matter and energy, that bridges the simulated and simulating worlds. Who could have created such a simulation? Could it be an artificial intelligence rather than a biological or conscious being? Do we have ethical obligations to the virtual beings we interact with in our virtual worlds and to what extent are those beings and worlds ‘real’? The list is long and mind bending.

Fortunately, to untangle our thoughts on this, we have one of the best known philosophers of all things mind bending in the world, Dr. David Chalmers; who has just released a book ‘Reality+: virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy’ about this very topic. Dr. Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specialising in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Neuroscience at New York University, as well as co-director of NYU’s Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness. He’s the founder of the ‘Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference’ at which he coined the term in 1994 The Hard Problem of Consciousness, kicking off a renaissance in consciousness studies, which has been increasing in popularity and research output ever since.

Donate here: https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episodes.

What we discuss in this episode:
00:00 Short Intro.
06:00 Synesthesia.
08:27 The science of knowing the nature of reality.
11:02 The Simulation Hypothesis explained.
15:25 The statistical probability evaluation.
18:00 Knowing for sure is beyond the reaches of science.
19:00 You’d only have to render the part you’re interacting with.
20:00 Clues from physics.
22:00 John Wheeler — ‘It from bit’
23:32 Eugene Wigner: measurement as a conscious observation.
27:00 Information theory as a useful but risky hold-all language tool.
34:30 Virtual realities are real and virtual interactions are meaningful.
37:00 Ethical approaches to Non-player Characters (NPC’s) and their rights.
38:45 Will advanced AI be conscious?
42:45 Is god a hacker in the universe up? Simulation Theology.
44:30 Simulation theory meets the argument for the existence of God from design.
51:00 The Hard problem of consciousness applies to AI too.
55:00 Testing AI’s consciousness with the Turing test.
59:30 Ethical value applied to immoral actions in virtual worlds.

References:

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Light fields with extraordinary structure: Plasmonic skyrmion bags

A research group at the University of Stuttgart has manipulated light through its interaction with a metal surface so that it exhibits entirely new properties. The researchers have published their findings in Nature Physics.

“Our results add another chapter to the emerging field of skyrmion research,” proclaims Prof. Harald Giessen, head of the Fourth Physics Institute at the University of Stuttgart, whose group achieved this breakthrough. The team demonstrated the existence of “skyrmion bags” of light on the surface of a metal layer.

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