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Archive for the ‘quantum physics’ category: Page 220

Jul 1, 2022

What is Quantum Physics, and how does it work?

Posted by in category: quantum physics

What is Quantum Physics 0, and how does it work? Is quantum theory capable of explaining the universe’s mysteries?

What is Quantum Physics, and how does it work? Is quantum theory capable of explaining the universe’s mysteries? For centuries and decades, many scientists worldwide have been attempting to decipher the mysteries of the cosmos. Scientists have only cracked a handful of the universe’s inexhaustible secrets despite this. But, more importantly, are we uncovering the secrets of the cosmos correctly? Are we broadening our quest in the opposite direction of what we have mistaken for the limitless secrets of the universe? We don’t even know where to start looking for the answers to such questions.

Many outstanding scientists across the globe are using quantum theory to try to answer the universe’s unresolved riddles. And it has been somewhat successful. Quantum physics is responsible for numerous modern technologies that have revolutionized the planet. And those excellent scientists deserve to be praised. Learn what quantum physics is all about.

Jul 1, 2022

Michelle Simmons: quantum machines at the atomic limit | The Royal Society

Posted by in categories: biological, nanotechnology, particle physics, quantum physics

Join Professor Michelle Simmons to find out how scientists are delivering Richard Feynman’s dream of designing materials at the atomic limit for quantum machines. 🔔Subscribe to our channel for exciting science videos and live events, many hosted by Brian Cox, our Professor for Public Engagement: https://bit.ly/3fQIFXB

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Jul 1, 2022

The struggle to find the origins of time

Posted by in categories: cosmology, mathematics, quantum physics

What is time? Why is it so different from space? And where did it come from? Scientists are still stumped by these questions — but working harder than ever to answer them.


St. Augustine said of time, “If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain to him who asks, I don’t know.” Time is an elusive concept: We all experience it, and yet, the challenge of defining it has tested philosophers and scientists for millennia.

It wasn’t until Albert Einstein that we developed a more sophisticated mathematical understanding of time and space that allowed physicists to probe deeper into the connections between them. In their endeavors, physicists also discovered that seeking the origin of time forces us to confront the origins of the universe itself.

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Jul 1, 2022

The Size of an Atom: How Scientists First Guessed It’s About Quantum Physics

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

Atoms are all about a tenth of a billionth of a meter wide (give or take a factor of 2). What determines an atom’s size? This was on the minds of scientists at the turn of the 20th century. The particle called the “electron” had been discovered, but the rest of an atom was a mystery. Today we’ll look at how scientists realized that quantum physics, an idea which was still very new, plays a central role. (They did this using one of their favorite strategies: “dimensional analysis”, which I described in a recent post.)

Since atoms are electrically neutral, the small and negatively charged electrons in an atom had to be accompanied by something with the same amount of positive charge — what we now call “the nucleus”. Among many imagined visions for what atoms might be like was the 1904 model of J.J. Thompson, in which he imagined the electrons are embedded within a positively-charged sphere the size of the whole atom.

But Thompson’s former student Ernest Rutherford gradually disproved this model in 1909–1911, through experiments that showed the nucleus is tens of thousands of times smaller (in radius) than an atom, despite having most of the atom’s mass.

Jun 30, 2022

5 REAL Possibilities for Interstellar Travel

Posted by in categories: quantum physics, space travel

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Jun 28, 2022

Engineers resolve single photons 70x faster than other techniques

Posted by in category: quantum physics

A step towards advancing quantum information processing.

Jun 28, 2022

Our universe was made by aliens in a lab, theorises Harvard scientist

Posted by in categories: biological, climatology, genetics, habitats, quantum physics, sustainability

Ever considered the notion that everything around you was cooked up by aliens in a lab? Theoretical physicist and former chair of Harvard’s astronomy department, Abraham ‘Avi’ Loeb, has proposed a wild – if unsettling – theory that our universe was intentionally created by a more advanced class of lifeform.

In an op-ed for Scientific American, “Was Our Universe Created In A Laboratory?”, Loeb suggested that aliens could have created a ‘baby universe’ using ‘quantum tunneling’, which would explain our universe’s ‘flat geometry’ with zero net energy. If this discovery were proven true, then the universe humans live in would be shown to be “like a biological system that maintains the longevity of its genetic material through multiple generations,” Loeb wrote.

Loeb put forward the idea of a scale of developed civilisations (A, B, etc.) and, due to that fact that on Earth we currently don’t have the ability to reproduce the astrophysical conditions that led to our existence, “we are a low-level technological civilisation, graded class C on the cosmic scale” (essentially: dumb). We would be higher up, he added, if we possessed the ability to recreate the habitable conditions on our planet for when the sun will die. But, due to our tendency to “carelessly destroy the natural habitat” on Earth through climate change, we should really be downgraded to class D.

Jun 28, 2022

Hysteresis and Stochastic Fluorescence

Posted by in categories: materials, quantum physics

“Blinking” behavior of fluorophores, being harmful for the majority of super-resolved techniques, turns into a key property for stochastic optical fluctuation imaging and its modifications, allowing one to look at the fluorophores already used in conventional microscopy, such as graphene quantum dots, from a completely new perspective. Here we discuss fluorescence of aggregated ensembles of graphene quantum dots structured at submicron scale. We study temperature dependence and stochastic character of emission. We show that considered quantum dots ensembles demonstrate rather complicated temperature-dependent intermittent emission, that is, “blinking” with a tendency to shorten “blinking” times with the increase of temperature.

Jun 28, 2022

Xanadu puts quantum advantage in the cloud

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

Toronto-based start-up’s programmable photonic device is accessible to the public and much faster than classical machines at Gaussian boson sampling.

Jun 28, 2022

Making dark semiconductors shine

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics, quantum physics, solar power, sustainability

Whether or not a solid can emit light, for instance as a light-emitting diode (LED), depends on the energy levels of the electrons in its crystalline lattice. An international team of researchers led by University of Oldenburg physicists Dr. Hangyong Shan and Prof. Dr. Christian Schneider has succeeded in manipulating the energy-levels in an ultra-thin sample of the semiconductor tungsten diselenide in such a way that this material, which normally has a low luminescence yield, began to glow. The team has now published an article on its research in the science journal Nature Communications.

According to the researchers, their findings constitute a first step towards controlling the properties of matter through light fields. “The idea has been discussed for years, but had not yet been convincingly implemented,” said Schneider. The light effect could be used to optimize the optical properties of semiconductors and thus contribute to the development of innovative LEDs, , optical components and other applications. In particular the optical properties of organic semiconductors—plastics with semiconducting properties that are used in flexible displays and solar cells or as sensors in textiles—could be enhanced in this way.

Tungsten diselenide belongs to an unusual class of semiconductors consisting of a and one of the three elements sulfur, selenium or tellurium. For their experiments the researchers used a sample that consisted of a single crystalline layer of and selenium atoms with a sandwich-like structure. In physics, such materials, which are only a few atoms thick, are also known as two-dimensional (2D) materials. They often have unusual properties because the they contain behave in a completely different manner to those in thicker solids and are sometimes referred to as “quantum materials.”