tell me a story about quantum theory

From Scientific American: Was Einstein Wrong?: A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity

I've heard how there is something about quantum theory that violates Einstein's theory of relativity, but I didn't know that at least part of that is non-locality. I should have, considering my fascination with quantum entanglement. Anyway, this article details the history of the contradictions between these two theories. Being very lay-person and also very ill, it took me a long time to read it, but it's definitely very interesting.

electric sahara acid dust

From ScienceDaily: Unexpected Discovery Could Impact On Future Climate Models

Astronomers at the University of Hertfordshire looking for new extrasolar planets accidentally discovered that dust is affected by electric fields. Their polarimeter got dusty, and the dust affected light in such a way that showed the dust particles were aligning vertically. Not only could this explain how Saharan dust can make it to Northern Europe and the Caribbean, but "if it’s proven the dust is affected by electric fields, elements of current climate models may have to be re-worked with this new information, to remain accurate," says Joseph Ulanowski with the university's Centre for Atmospheric and Instrumentation Research.

hello nuclear power, goodbye nuclear waste

From ScienceDaily: Nuclear Fusion-fission Hybrid Could Contribute To Carbon-free Energy Future

This is pretty damn cool. Some scientists at the University of Texas at Austin have designed a fusion-fission hybrid that could help reduce nuclear plant waste up to 99%. Cheap nuclear power could help us with a lot of things, and one of the big issues with it is nuclear waste. Well, meltdowns are an issue, too, but there have only been two since we started using nuclear power, and the last one was more than two decades ago. It seems like they've made it a lot safer. (My internal pessimist is now telling me to build a shelter.)

entangled quantumly

From Scientific American: Quantum Entanglement Benefits Exist after Links Are Broken, Quantum Leap: Information Teleported between Ions at a Distance

Two really interesting articles on quantum entanglement. According to wikipedia, quantum entanglement is "a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which the quantum states of two or more objects are linked together so that one object can no longer be adequately described without full mention of its counterpart — even though the individual objects may be spatially separated."

In the first article, Seth Lloyd, a quantum physicist at MIT, discovers that there is some sort of lingering connection between particles even after they've disentangled. By applying this, he developed the idea of quantum illumination, where something (a camera, satellite, x-ray machine, whatever), could entangle photons and send one set to the object being sensed, with the other set being used for reference, so that when the returning photons bring information back, any noise created by any unrelated photons could be filtered out. And, "[i]f quantum illumination works, Lloyd suggests it could boost the sensitivity of radar and x-ray systems as well as optical telecommunications and microscopy by a millionfold or more."

The second article describes how researchers, led by Stephen Olmschenk, a grad student at UMD College Park, "succeeded in teleporting quantum information between ytterbium ions (charged atoms) three feet (one meter) apart." The article describes the process:

Information is teleported from one ion to another by encoding quantum information onto the first ion. Once the ion is entangled with another, the state of each ion is indefinite until the first one is measured—an action that projects the other ion into one of two states. Conventional (nonquantum) communication channels relay information, gleaned from the first ion's measurement, as to which of those two states is correct, and a pulse of microwave energy sets the second ion into the state representing the information encoded on the first.

What peaked my interest about this (besides it being awesomely cool) was a couple of sci-fi books I read a few years ago, Metaplanetary (2001) and Superluminal (2004) by Tony Daniel, which are set in the future where quantum communication is the basis for society and technology. Great books. Anyway, the thought of actually applying quantum entanglement and communication to real technology is awesome. We will never know everything.

indecent singularities

From Scientific American: Do Naked Singularities Break the Rules of Physics?

In this article, Dr. Pankaj Joshi at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai discusses the possibility of naked singularities. (I know that sounds a little naughty, but bear with me, because it actually is thrilling in its own way.) Naked singularities are basically black holes, without an event horizon. So, there would be a point of infinity density without the same effect on gravity; there would not be the same "point of no return" as there is with black holes. In addition, if naked singularities do exist, it would be possible for them to be observed directly. Theoretical models seem to show that with a certain inhomogeneity of density in a star, this type of singularity could be formed.

blowing my mind

From New Scientist: Our world may be a giant hologram

I can't even begin to talk about this crazy, amazing research. So I'll just quote from the article.

For the past seven years, this German set-up has been looking for gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 has not detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century.

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.

If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

I can't decide if I'm freaked out, or amazed, or both.

quantum hindsight got contacts

From ScienceDaily: Physicists Resolve Confounding Paradox Of Quantum Theory

Science is fun, especially quantum theory (nice I'm saying that when I really don't understand it, huh?). One of the things early quantum physicists discovered is that observing particles move changes how they act. (Check out this awesome video describing the "double slit experiment" performed in the 1920s. It's very easy to understand and features a superhero scientist. Sweet.)

So, according to this article, in the '90s people started thinking they could measure particles without interacting with them, "[b]ut when Lucien Hardy proposed that one could never reliably make inferences about past events which hadn't been directly observed, a paradox emerged which suggested that whenever one attempted to reason about the past in this way they would be led into error." So hindsight is blind?

However, scientists at the University of Toronto combined the ideas of "interaction-free measurement" with something call weak measurement, "a tool whereby the presence of a detector is less than the level of uncertainty around what is being measured, so that there is an imperceptible impact on the experiment."

I have to say, I don't understand the specifics. (I really need to take some college-level physics.) But, it basically sounds to me like scientists will now be able to see what particles are doing when they're supposed to be acting like matter but are pretending to be energy. And then for the why. Then maybe the why of particles getting stage fright?

dark matter close to home?

From Scientific American: Does Dark Matter Encircle Earth?

Just like scientists, I think dark matter is awesome, both because it is incredibly mysterious and because it apparently goes through normal matter. And its mysteriousness is apparently only equal to our inability to find any of it.

However, Stephen Adler, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies, has said there should be study of the Earth and Moon to see if any dark matter is present close by. "If the mass of Earth and the moon when measured together seems greater than their masses separately, the difference could be attributed to a halo of dark matter in between." He says that the presence of dark matter in the solar system could also solve the unexplained on other planets, like how the interiors of the outer gas giants are hotter than we think they should be.

Annika Peter, an astrophysicist at CIT, counters, saying that the latter idea would require "a seriously unrealistic amount of dark matter," and that there probably isn't any dark matter in the solar system itself. But perhaps a little outside it?

real live levitation!

From ScienceDaily: Levitation At Microscopic Scale Could Lead To Nanomechanical Devices Based On Quantum Levitation

Scientists at Harvard have discovered that by applying the Casimir effect, they could get a metal plate to float a microscopic distance off another type of metal plate.

Scientific levitation. Based on quantum mechanics. The world gets more and more exciting. These types of experimentation and discoveries are why I don't think that science and spirituality are opposed. I just think that some things are too big for us to understand, sort of like a bacteria trying to understand the known universe or the solar system. Though hey... maybe bacteria are extremely philosophical. I really don't know. I haven't talked to my bacteria lately. Just like "true" reality, reality as a whole, god or whatever you want to call it, hasn't talked to me lately, either.

anti-apple

From Science Daily: Possible Abnormality In Fundamental Building Block of Einstein's Theory of Relativity

I think this article is about how scientists don't take gravity seriously because it's a weak force. I liked it just because it contained the phrase "an apple and an anti-apple."

dark matter egg hunt

From ScienceDaily: New Detector Will Aid Dark Matter Search

Can I just say that dark matter is kind of awesome?

Dr. Jocelyn Monroe, the scientist working on the project, said that there'll probably be the discovery of a dark-matter particle sometime in the next five years. I can't wait. The universe will never be boring.