Hundreds of comments under his post today: http://www.newsweek.com/quantum-archaeology-quest-3d-bioprin…ife-837967
Exotic physics can happen when quantum particles come together and talk to each other. Understanding such processes is challenging for scientists, because the particle interactions can be hard to glimpse and even harder to control. Moreover, modern computer simulations struggle to make sense of all the intricate dynamics going on in a large group of particles. Luckily, atoms cooled to near zero temperatures can provide insight into this problem.
Lasers can make cold atoms mimic the physics seen in other systems—an approach that is familiar terrain for atomic physicists. They regularly use intersecting laser beams to capture atoms in a landscape of rolling hills and valleys called an optical lattice. Atoms, when cooled, don’t have enough energy to walk up the hills, and they get stuck in the valleys. In this environment, the atoms behave similarly to the electrons in the crystal structure of many solids, so this approach provides a straightforward way to learn about interactions inside real materials.
But the conventional way to make optical lattices has some limitations. The wavelength of the laser light determines the location of the hills and valleys, and so the distance between neighboring valleys—and with that the spacing between atoms—can only be shrunk to half of the light’s wavelength. Bringing atoms closer than this limit could activate much stronger interactions between them and reveal effects that otherwise remain in the dark.
Continue reading “Two-toned light pattern creates steep quantum walls for atoms” »
We all know that physics and maths can be pretty weird, but these three books tackle their mind-bending subjects in markedly contrasting ways. Clifford V. Johnson’s The Dialogues is a graphic novel, seeking to visualise cosmic ideas in comic-book style. Darling and Banerjee’s Weird Maths is a miscellany of fun oddities, ranging from chess-playing computers to prime-counting insects. Philip Ball’s Beyond Weird argues that we’ve got quantum mechanics all wrong: it’s not so weird actually, but quite sensible. All three books do a fine job for their respective audiences. Just make sure you know which target group you’re in.
The Dialogues is a sequence of illustrated conversations, often between pairs of youthful and attractive characters, scrupulously diverse in race and gender, who happen to meet in a café, gallery or train carriage, and find themselves talking about physics. Perhaps ‘The Lectures’ would be a better title, since one interlocutor is the expert, while the other is an interested lay person whose role is to feed questions at appropriate intervals.
The author shows himself to be a highly talented graphic artist as well as being a distinguished theoretician, and while the ping-pong chats may be somewhat lacking in narrative drive, they do provide a platform for some admirably lucid explanations of topics such as Maxwell’s equations or Einstein’s cosmological constant. Not the kind of comic book you roll up in your pocket, but a weighty hardback that would grace any coffee table.
You probably scratched your head last year if you read about time crystals, likely 2017’s most esoteric, widely covered popular science story. Even if you understood how they worked, you might not have known what use they could have. Time crystals, systems of atoms that maintain a periodic ticking behavior in the presence of an added electromagnetic pulse, have now piqued the interest of one well-funded government agency: the Department of Defense.
The DoD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, announced a new program to fund research on these systems. More generally, the new DRINQS program will study exactly what its acronym stands for: “Driven and Nonequilibrium Quantum Systems.” But why?
“The applications could be for atomic clocks, where you have an ensemble of atoms you’re vibrating to extract time information,” Ale Lukaszew, program manager in DARPA’s defense sciences offices, told Gizmodo. “There might be applications related to measuring things with exquisite sensitivity in time and magnetic field domains. Not a lot of these applications are open for discussion.” In other words, time crystal-based military technology is classified.
This major religious site suggests I’m part of a group of mad scientists, but Quantum Archaeology is a very interesting idea that more people should ponder. The article also highlights the challenge of #transhumanism vs. religion and conservative attitutes: http://www.lifenews.com/2018/03/12/mad-scientists-want-to-3-…k-to-life/ #transhumanism
But the self-described secular transhumanist is perfectly serious in his posturing about the future of technology, life and death. Within 50 years, he believes scientists may be able to bring back people from the dead.
“After all, everything is matter and energy. And human life, human thoughts and human existence are mathematical, determinable calculations of that subatomic world of matter and energy,” Istvan writes.
Continue reading “Mad Scientists Want to 3D Print Every Dead Person Back to Life” »
As quantum computing approaches real-world viability, it also poses a huge threat to today’s encryption measures.
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Continue reading “What CISOs Should Know About Quantum Computing” »
Those that win in this new age will not be the ones who can do old things faster, but those who can imagine new possibilities.
By Greg Satell
Continue reading “At IBM, I Got A Glimpse Of What Our Quantum Future Will Look Like” »
My new article at Newsweek on transhumanism, 3D Bioprinting the dead, and Quantum Archaeology:
Can radical scientific and technological advances really solve the problem of death?
Continue reading “The quest to 3D-bioprint every dead person back to life” »
Our current understanding of gravity is based on Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity—a dated concept belonging to the realm of classical physics.
Modern scientists, however, are still struggling to quantize gravity—that is, describe it according to the principles of quantum mechanics.
This 83-year search is believed by many to be the deepest question in physics.
Continue reading “Physicists To Test Whether Gravity is a Quantum Force” »
