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Quantum ‘birthmarks’ hold lasting traces of a system’s past
Some classical physical systems can explore many configurations over time until their long-term behavior no longer reveals their starting conditions. The sampling of available configurations according to the appropriate statistical distribution is a property called ergodicity.
Quantum systems, which are governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, could instead retain some traces of their beginnings. In a paper published in Physical Review X, researchers at Harvard University and other institutions introduced the idea of quantum birthmarks, statistical traces of initial states and early development that persist in quantum systems that do not exchange information with their surroundings.
“The paper grew out of a simple tension in quantum chaos: classically, an ergodic system is expected to forget its initial conditions, but quantum evolution can retain traces of its past through coherence effects,” Joonas Keski-Rahkonen, senior author of the paper, told Phys.org. “We wanted to know whether this memory is a special feature of phenomena like quantum scars, where individual eigenstates break the expectation of classical-like ergodicity, or something far more general, as it turned out to be.”
There’s a SOLUTION to the space junk crisis! We need to use it NOW! COMSPOC Interview!
Right now, 93% of the potential collisions in space are not being addressed!
Just because we haven’t had a disastrous collision doesn’t mean we’re doing a good job with space junk.
But companies like COMSPOC Corporation have a solution!
#spacedebris #kesslersyndrome #starlink.
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Memories are not only in the brain, new research finds
It turns out your brain might not be the only part of your body that remembers. Scientists at NYU have found that cells outside the brain—like those from your kidneys—can actually “learn” and form memories. By mimicking how the brain processes information using spaced repetition (as in studying with breaks), researchers showed that even non-brain cells can activate a key memory gene in response to patterns. This suggests memory isn’t just a brain thing—it might be a basic feature of many cells in the body.
Goodyear designed a tire that could help cars fly
Goodyear has unveiled a new concept tire that would work as both a propeller for a flying car, and a regular tire.
Flying cars, though still very much science fiction, could one day disrupt Goodyear’s tire business. If flying cars ever take over the roadways — and skyways — Goodyear would want a chunk of that market.
Teens who made history with Pythagoras’ theorem discovery publish their first academic paper with new proofs
In their peer-reviewed work, Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson present five new ways of proving Pythagoras' Theorem via trigonometry. They also detail a new method for finding proofs that yield at least five more.
Brian Boyd on the Origin of Stories
Seven months before ChatGPT launched, I spent two hours with Brian Boyd on a question that now feels urgent: why do humans tell stories at all?
Boyd is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Auckland, the world’s foremost Nabokov scholar, and author of On the Origin of Stories. His answer isn’t literary. It’s #evolution.
Story, he argues, is an adaptation. It lets us track cause and effect, sure. But it also does something stranger: it lets us explore the world not only as it is, but as it could be.
Now look at where we are. We’ve built machines that produce stories by the billion. Fluent, endless, cheap. But do they know which details matter and which to ignore? Do they grasp what happens next, and why? That puzzle has a name in #ArtificialIntelligence, the frame problem, and Boyd’s take on it surprised me.
We also went places I didn’t plan for. Heider and Simmel’s famous triangle film (watch it and try NOT to see a story). Why Boyd calls art “cognitive pattern play.” Religion as perhaps the most powerful #storytelling ever. And why social media is a misguided attempt to control our own story.
Then there’s Karl Popper, the giant of #philosophy of science whose biography Boyd was writing when we spoke. Where Popper lands on science, stories, and revolutions is worth the listen alone.
