Several branches of modern physics, including quantum theory and cosmology, suggest our universe may be just one of many.
By Sarah Scoles
Humans live in a universe; that is a fact. Up for debate, though, is whether that universe lives in a sea of other universes— a multiverse.
Some scientists speculate that the strange happenings in this microscopic realm may hold the key to understanding consciousness. But scant evidence has left the majority skeptical.
That includes Christof Koch, Ph.D., meritorious investigator at the Allen Institute. As he wrote in his recent book, Then I am myself the world, “the brain is wet and warm, hardly conducive to subtle quantum interactions.”
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AI and crypto combined could add a total of $20 trillion to the global economy by 2030, the report said. Bitwise notes that bitcoin miners have all the resources that AI firms need. Crypto and AI have the potential to intersect in other areas other than mining such as information validation and virtual assistants.
The two industries could add a collective $20 trillion to global GDP by 2030, the report said.
In a study appearing in Nature, an international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, reconstructed the evolutionary history and global spread of malaria over the past 5,500 years, identifying trade, warfare, and colonialism as major catalysts for its dispersal.
Scientists refer to this phenomenon as the Great Oxidation Event, or GOE for short. But the initial accumulation of O2 on Earth was not nearly as straightforward as that moniker suggests, according to new research led by a University of Utah geochemist.
This “event” lasted at least 200 million years. And tracking the accumulation of O2 in the oceans has been very difficult until now, said Chadlin Ostrander, an assistant professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics.
“Emerging data suggest that the initial rise of O2 in Earth’s atmosphere was dynamic, unfolding in fits-and-starts until perhaps 2.2. billion years ago,” said Ostrander, lead author on the study published June 12 in the journal Nature. “Our data validate this hypothesis, even going one step further by extending these dynamics to the ocean.”
Waves pick up information from their environment through which they propagate. A theory of information carried by waves has now been developed at TU Wien—with astonishing results that can be utilized for technical applications.
A new study published in Nature Physics introduces a theory of electron-phonon coupling that is affected by the quantum geometry of the electronic wavefunctions.
The movement of electrons in a lattice and their interactions with the lattice vibrations (or phonons) play a pivotal role in phenomena like superconductivity (resistance-free conductivity).
Electron-phonon coupling (EPC) is the interaction between free electrons and phonons, which are quasiparticles representing the vibrations of a crystal lattice. EPC leads to the formation of Cooper pairs (pairs of electrons), responsible for superconductivity in certain materials.
University of Southern California scientists have proven that the Earth’s inner core is backtracking—slowing down—in relation to the planet’s surface, as shown in new research published in Nature.
Researchers have used inkjet printing to create a compact multispectral version of a light field camera. The camera, which fits in the palm of the hand, could be useful for many applications including autonomous driving, classification of recycled materials and remote sensing.
Earthquakes may betray their impending presence much earlier than previously thought through a variety of anomalies present in the ground, atmosphere and ionosphere that can be detected using satellites, a recent study in the Journal of Applied Geodesy suggests.
