Theoretical physicists at Utrecht University, together with experimental physicists at Sogang University in South Korea, have succeeded in building an artificial synapse. This synapse works with water and salt and provides the first evidence that a system using the same medium as our brains can process complex information.
The results appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the pursuit of enhancing the energy efficiency of conventional computers, scientists have long turned to the human brain for inspiration. They aim to emulate its extraordinary capacity in various ways.
Sir Roger Penrose proposes that the universe undergoes repeated cycles of expansion, decay, and rebirth, challenging the traditional notion of a singular Big Bang origin.
Renowned physicist Sir Roger Penrose, hailing from the University of Oxford and a co-recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, posits a fascinating theory regarding the universe’s cyclical nature. Contrary to prevailing notions, Penrose suggests that our universe has undergone numerous Big Bang events, with another impending in the future.
Penrose’s Nobel-winning contributions revolve around advancing mathematical frameworks that not only validate but also extend Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Moreover, his investigations into black holes elucidated the phenomenon of gravitational collapse, wherein excessively dense entities converge into singularities, infinitely massive points.
A scientist at the University of Portsmouth claims to have ‘evidence’ that humanity exists with a simulation. In the 1999 movie The Matrix, the plot centers around the fact that we live in a digital simulation, and scientist Melvin Vopson claims that fact may match the fiction of the popular blockbuster.
Vopson has written extensively on the topic of the possibility that the known universe is a digital facsimile. He has provided articles for The Conversation and authored a book, Reality Reloaded, on the theme.
But while many of the theories posited about the universe being a simulation are in the realm of the abstract, Vopson now claims to have evidence that support his theory. “In physics, there are laws that govern everything that happens in the universe, for example how objects move, how energy flows, and so on. Everything is based on the laws of physics,” the scientist said in 2022, reports Popular Mechanics.
Most astrophysicists believe that 95% of the universe is dark stuff — dark matter and dark energy. We can’t see, feel, or hear it, but it’s supposedly all around us. NASA scientists recently proposed a new experiment to test what is going on with the dark stuff in our vicinity. The want to use four small spacecraft flying around the solar system in a tetrahedron formation to look for variations from Einstein’s theory of gravity. Let’s have a look.
Check out my course on Brilliant! First 30 days are free and 20% off the annual premium subscription when you use our link ➜ https://brilliant.org/sabine.
You might have heard that according to Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity time doesn’t pass for light, or that time actually stops for light. Can this possibly be correct? In this video, I will look at what the maths says and discuss what it means.
Science And Technology For Emerging National Security Threats — Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, Ph.D. — Nonlinear Solutions LLC — Fmr. Director, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), United States Department of Defense.
Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, Ph.D. is Owner of Nonlinear Solutions LLC., an advisory group that provides strategic scientific and intelligence consulting services, with a focus on emerging science and technology trends, to clients in both the defense and intelligence communities.
Dr. Kirkpatrick recently retired from federal Senior Service in December 2023 and prior to his current responsibilities he answered to the Deputy Secretary of Defense to stand-up and lead the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO — https://www.aaro.mil/) in early 2022, leading the U.S. government’s efforts to address Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) using a rigorous scientific framework and a data-driven approach.
Dr. Kirkpatrick attended University of Georgia as an undergraduate, to study physics, where he also did his Ph.D. work in nonlinear and nonequilibrium phonon dynamics of rare earth doped fluoride crystals, and currently serves as an adjunct professor at UGA.
Dr. Kirkpatrick began his career in Defense and Intelligence related science and technology immediately out of graduate school. After receiving his Ph.D. in Physics in 1995, he subsequently took a postdoctoral position at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, investigating laser-induced molecular vibrations of high explosives under an AFOSR program. In 1996, he was offered a National Research Council Fellowship at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C. investigating novel solid-state lasers for the Department of the Navy. In 1997, he was recruited by the Air Force Research Laboratory to build an Ultrafast Laser Physics Lab to investigate nonlinear optics, novel ultrafast spectroscopic methods, and nonlinear micro/nano-fabrication techniques for the Air Force.
Using AI and ALMA data, scientists create a groundbreaking 3D video of flares around our galaxy’s central black hole, offering new insights into its dynamic environment.
Scientists believe the environment immediately surrounding a black hole is tumultuous, featuring hot magnetized gas that spirals in a disk at tremendous speeds and temperatures. Astronomical observations show that within such a disk, mysterious flares occur up to several times a day, temporarily brightening and then fading away. Now a team led by Caltech scientists has used telescope data and an artificial intelligence (AI) computer-vision technique to recover the first three-dimensional video showing what such flares could look like around Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*, pronounced sadge-ay-star), the supermassive black hole at the heart of our own Milky Way galaxy.
The 3D flare structure features two bright, compact features located about 75 million kilometers (or half the distance between Earth and the Sun) from the center of the black hole. It is based on data collected by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile over a period of 100 minutes directly after an eruption seen in X-ray data on April 11, 2017.
More than 97% of the stars in our Galaxy will end their lives with a whimper—slowly cooling as stellar remnants known as white dwarfs. The cooling of white dwarfs follows a pattern that was thought to be so predictable that the temperatures of white dwarfs are used to determine the age of surrounding stars. New findings, however, indicate this pattern may need revision [1]. Predictions made by Antoine Bédard of the University of Warwick, UK, and his colleagues now indicate that some white dwarfs may undergo a process that “reinvigorates” the stars, significantly slowing down the cooling process. That change could alter the calculated ages of white dwarfs by billions of years.
When a small star (one with a mass 8 times or less that of the Sun) runs out of nuclear fuel, it sheds its outer layers to form a planetary nebula. The core of the star then collapses into a white dwarf. Producing no heat, white dwarfs spend their existences radiating their remaining energy into space, cooling and solidifying from the inside out. Or so astrophysicists thought.
In 2019, this model was disrupted by astronomers analyzing data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission. The researchers identified a previously unknown population of white dwarfs within the Milky Way with anomalous properties [2]. As stars age, their velocities increase with respect to nearby stars because of repeated gravitational interactions with those stars. The newly identified white dwarfs, dubbed the Q branch, have much higher average velocities than models indicate they should have based on their temperatures, a finding that suggests that the Q-branch white dwarfs are older than previously thought. Some process is slowing down the cooling.
I found this on NewsBreak: New models of Big Bang show that visible universe and invisible dark matter co-evolved.
Physicists have long theorized that our universe may not be limited to what we can see. By observing gravitational forces on other galaxies, they’ve hypothesized the existence of “dark matter,” which would be invisible to conventional forms of observation.
