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Category: quantum physics – Page 4

In the previous excerpt from my conversation with Stephen Wolfram, I asked him how I can remain a single, coherent, persistent consciousness in a branching universe.

In this excerpt, we went deeper into this question. As a conscious observer, I have a single thread of experience. So if the universe branches into many timelines, why don’t I branch into many versions of me?

Stephen’s answer touched on many profound aspects of the Wolfram model.

He started with the failure of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics to consider the possibility that different branches of history can merge, in other words, come back together again. This failure is rooted in assumption that the universe is continuous; as soon as we start thinking of the universe as discrete, such merging seems not only possible, but inevitable.

He went on to consider the concept of causal invariance, the idea that it doesn’t matter which of countless similar paths you take through the multiway graph, you end up in the same place. In the Ruliad, he said, causal invariance is inevitable.

Then we got to the core of the concept of the observer. According to Stephen Wolfram, an observer equivalences many different states and experiences the aggregate of these states.

Continue reading “Aggregation — how the Wolfram model weaves the future — with Stephen Wolfram” | >

Strange metals challenge the 60-year-old theory that electric current consists of a flow of discrete charges. Strange metals show electricity carried by a quantum fluid rather than discrete electrons, challenging the long-standing Fermi liquid theory and prompting new research into electrical tra

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Exceptional points (EPs) are unique types of energy-level degeneracies that occur in non-Hermitian systems. Since their existence was first proposed more than a century ago, physicists have only been able to experimentally observe two types of EPs, both of which were found to give rise to exotic phases of matter in various materials, including Dirac and Weyl semimetals.

Building on recent theoretical studies, researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China recently set out to experimentally observe a new class of EPs, known as Dirac EPs. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, could open new exciting possibilities for the study of non-Hermitian dynamics and for the development of protocols to reliably control .

“Our inspiration stemmed from a prior theoretical study that proposed a type of exceptional point (EP) termed Dirac EPs,” Xing Rong, senior author of the paper, told Phys.org. “We realized that this novel type of EP is distinct from all experimentally observed EPs over the past half-century. Our work aimed to transform this theoretical prediction into experimental reality.”

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But now, a bold new idea is challenging this tidy system. Scientists at Rice University in Texas believe there may be a third kind of particle—one that doesn’t follow the rules of fermions or bosons. They’ve developed a mathematical model showing how these unusual entities, called paraparticles, could exist in real materials without breaking the laws of physics.

“We determined that new types of particles we never knew of before are possible,” says Kaden Hazzard, one of the researchers behind the study. Along with co-author Zhiyuan Wang, Hazzard used advanced math to explore this idea.

Their work, published in Nature, suggests that paraparticles might arise in special systems and act differently than anything scientists have seen before.

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Quasicrystals, exotic states of matter characterized by an ordered structure with non-repeating spatial patterns, have been the focus of numerous recent physics studies due to their unique organization and resulting symmetries. Among the quasicrystals that have sparked significant interest among the physics community are so-called quantum quasicrystals, which are comprised of bosons (i.e., subatomic particles that have spin in integer values, such as 0, 1, 2, and so on, and can occupy the same quantum state simultaneously).

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (MPIPKS) recently introduced a new theoretical framework that describes low-energy excitations in bosonic quantum quasicrystals. Their newly devised theory, outlined in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, is an extension of conventional theories of elasticity, which also accounts for the unique symmetries of quantum quasicrystals.

“This paper is part of an ongoing collaboration with two colleagues, Prof. Francesco Piazza and Dr. Mariano Bonifacio, which began in 2022 when I was a guest scientist at MPIPKS in Dresden, Germany,” Alejandro Mendoza-Coto, first author of the paper, told Phys.org.

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Physicists are tapping into the strange world of quantum sensors to revolutionize particle detection in the next generation of high-energy experiments.

These new superconducting detectors not only offer sharper spatial resolution but can also track events in time—essential for decoding chaotic particle collisions. By harnessing cutting-edge quantum technologies originally developed for astronomy and networking, researchers are making huge strides toward identifying previously undetectable particles, including potential components of dark matter.

Unlocking the universe with particle colliders.

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