Lifeboat Foundation

Alternative facts are spreading like a virus across society. Now it seems they have even infected science—at least the quantum realm. This may seem counter intuitive. The scientific method is after all founded on the reliable notions of observation, measurement and repeatability. A fact, as established by a measurement, should be objective, such that all observers can agree with it.

But in a paper recently published in Science Advances, we show that in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts. In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective.

Continue reading “Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn’t exist” »

RUDN University mathematicians have proven the Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev (HLS) inequalities for the class of generalized Riesz potentials. These results extend the scope of these potentials in mathematics and physics because the main tools for working with such potentials are based on HLS inequalities. New mathematical tools can greatly simplify calculations in quantum mechanics and other fields of physics. The results of the study are published in the journal Mathematical Notes.

Modern physics describes the world in terms of fields and their potentials—that is, the values of the field at each point. But the physical quantities that we can measure are forces and accelerations, that is, derivatives of the second-order of the potential of the corresponding field. The problem of reconstructing the field configuration with the available values of forces and accelerations observed in experiments is complex and not always analytically solvable. Differentiation operations in multidimensional space—operators are usually used to describe the correlation between the potential of the field and the forces. In particular, electromagnetic and gravitational interactions are described in the language of operators.

Since the potential of the field can be determined up to a constant value, for the convenience of calculations, the initial value of the potential is taken at some point in multidimensional space, or on the border of any spatial area. But in some cases, mathematical models of such fields lead to a singularity, that is, at some points the value of the field becomes infinite, and therefore loses its physical meaning.

The characteristics of a new, iron-containing type of material that is thought to have future applications in nanotechnology and spintronics have been determined at Purdue University.

The native material, a topological insulator, is an unusual type of three-dimensional (3D) system that has the interesting property of not significantly changing its crystal structure when it changes electronic phases—unlike water, for example, which goes from ice to liquid to steam. More important, the material has an electrically conductive surface but a non-conducting (insulating) core.

However, once iron is introduced into the native material, during a process called doping, certain structural rearrangements and magnetic properties appear which have been found with high-performance computational methods.

Physicists make a new discovery in quantum mechanics, showing nanomagnets can levitate despite a classic theorem that said it’s impossible.

Twentieth Century technology has relied on the use of fuels and chemical propellants to propel our ships, planes, and cars. The propulsion technology of the future will not use chemical combustion to produce thrust, and the 21^st century will see the emergence of propellant-less propulsion systems. Such technologies will provide the means to travel faster than ever before at a fraction of current costs and with no pollution by-products.

This becomes absolutely crucial for interplanetary and interstellar travel, as we have stated before in RSF commentary¹ reporting on Resonance-based technology may provide inertial mass reduction—the future of space travel will not be performed with chemical propellants. As an example, to date the most viable proposal for an interstellar mission with current technological capabilities is the Breakthrough Starshot project which will use a fleet of light sail probes propelled to 20% percent the speed of light via laser pulses.

Considering the significant limitations of combustion-based propulsion (as well as the harmful environmental impacts), there is a strong drive to develop the next-generation propulsion systems that will move us into the next phase of technological advancement. Torus Tech, a research and development company founded by Nassim Haramein, the founder of the Resonance Science Foundation, is researching quantum vacuum engineering technologies that will enable gravitational control and zero-point energy production.

While quantum computers won’t be found on your office desk anytime soon, these blueprints could, over time, make quantum computing much more accessible Soon, with companies like D-Wave continually improving quantum computing through user input, advancements could come sooner than expected.

Albert Einstein’s famous expression “spooky action at a distance” refers to quantum entanglement, a phenomenon seen on the most micro of scales. But machine learning seems to grow more mysterious and powerful every day, and scientists don’t always understand how it works. The spookiest action yet is a new study of heart patients where a machine-learning algorithm decided who was most likely to die within a year based on echocardiogram (ECG) results, reported by New Scientist. The algorithm performed better than the traditional measures used by cardiologists. The study was done by researchers in Pennsylvania’s Geisinger regional healthcare group, a low-cost and not-for-profit provider.

Oxford University researchers have, for the first time, generated a massive 10 billion entangled bits in silicon, taking an important step towards a real world quantum computer.

The researchers cooled a piece of phosphorus-doped silicon to within one degree of absolute zero and applied a magnetic field. This process lined up the spins of one electron per phosphorus atom. Then the scientists used carefully timed radio pulses to nudge the nuclei and electrons into an entangled state. Across the silicon crystal, this produced billions of entangled pairs.

Stephanie Simmons, researcher and lead author on the paper Entanglement in a solid-state spin ensemble — published in Nature, says that quantum computers really start to give classical computers a run for their money at a few dozen qubits, but her team is working to skip that stage altogether by going directly from a two-qubit system to one with 10 billion.

In current quantum field theory, causality is typically defined by the vanishing of field commutators for spacelike separations. Two researchers at the University of Massachusetts and Universidade Federal Rural in Rio de Janeiro have recently carried out a study discussing and synthesizing some of the key aspects of causality in quantum field theory. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, is the result of their investigation of a theory of quantum gravity commonly referred to as “quadratic gravity.”

“Like the ingredients of the standard model, quadratic gravity is a renormalizable quantum field theory, but it has some peculiar properties,” John Donoghue, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “The small violation of causality is the most important of these and our goal was to understand this better. In the process, we realized that some of the insights are of more general interest and we decided to write our understanding as a Physical Review Letter, to share these insights more widely.”

The paper written by Donoghue and his colleague Gabriel Menezes synthesizes many different aspects of causality that have been part of quantum field theory for several decades now. The realization that there can be microscopic violations of causality in certain theories dates back to the 1960s, specifically to the work of physicists T.D. Lee and G.C. Wick. In their study, however, Donoghue and Menezes also drew inspiration from a more recent study carried out by Donal O’Connell, Benjamin Grinstein and Mark B. Wise.