Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: particle physics

Physicists create hybrid light-matter particles that interact strongly enough to compute

Eighty years ago, Penn researchers J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly launched the age of electronic computing by harnessing electrons to solve complex numerical problems with ENIAC, the world’s first general-purpose electronic computer. Today, that same architecture still underlies general computing, but electrons are beginning to show their limits. Because they carry a charge, they lose energy as heat, encounter resistance as they move through materials, and become harder to manage as chips incorporate more transistors and handle larger volumes of data.

With artificial intelligence pushing today’s hardware to process, move, and cool more, Penn physicists led by Bo Zhen in the School of Arts & Sciences are looking to the electron’s massless counterpart, the photon, to shoulder more of the load.

“Because they are charge-neutral and have zero rest mass, photons can carry information quickly over long distances with minimal loss, dominating communications technology,” explains Li He, co-first author of a paper published in Physical Review Letters and a former postdoctoral researcher in the Zhen Lab. “But that neutrality means they barely interact with their environment, making them bad at the sort of signal-switching logic that computers depend on.”

Exploiting interfacial ionic mobility to make heat-moldable nanoparticle aggregates

If you have ever warped a cheap plastic cup by pouring coffee into it, then you have witnessed thermoplasticity in action. Thermoplasticity is the ability of a material to become pliable under heating. In industry, thermoplasticity is exploited to form materials into complex shapes using heat. However, some materials, such as aggregates of nanoparticles, are not thermoplastic and cannot be easily processed without affecting their particle morphology and properties.

However, researchers at The University of Osaka have been able to use heat to shape nanoparticle aggregates, specifically cellulose nanofibers (CNFs) derived from wood pulp. This exciting advance, showcasing the mechanical and thermal potential of nanoparticles, is published in Science Advances.

String theory is uniquely derived from basic assumptions about the universe, physicists show

If you could take an apple and break it into smaller and smaller parts, you would find molecules, then atoms, followed by subatomic particles like protons and the quarks and gluons that make them up. You might think you hit the bottom, but, according to string theorists, if you keep going to even smaller scales—about a billion billion times smaller than a proton—you will find more: tiny vibrating strings.

Developed in the 1960s, string theory proposes that everything in the universe is made from invisible strings. The theory arose as a possible solution to the problem of “quantum gravity,” the quest to align quantum mechanics, which describes our world at the smallest scales, with the general theory of relativity, which explains how our universe works on the largest scales (and includes gravity). Researchers have tried to reconcile the two theories—asking, for example, how gravity behaves in the quantum realm—but their equations go berserk, or in mathematical terms, go to infinity.

String theory is a mathematical solution that tames the unruly infinities. It purports that all particles, including the graviton—the hypothetical particle believed to convey the force of gravity—are generated by very small vibrating strings. The math behind string theory requires the strings to vibrate in at least 10 dimensions, rather than the four we live in (three for space and one for time), which is one of the reasons some scientists are not convinced that string theory is correct. But perhaps the biggest challenge for the theory is the ultrahigh energies required for testing it: Such an experiment would require a particle collider the size of a galaxy.

String Theory Emerges from “Almost Nothing”

Developed in the 1960s, string theory proposes that everything in the universe is made from invisible strings. The theory arose as a possible solution to the problem of “quantum gravity,” the quest to align quantum mechanics, which describes our world at the smallest scales, with the general theory of relativity, which explains how our universe works on the largest scales (and includes gravity). Researchers have tried to reconcile the two theories—asking, for example, how gravity behaves in the quantum realm—but their equations go berserk, or in mathematical terms, go to infinity.

String theory is a mathematical solution that tames the unruly infinities. It purports that all particles, including the graviton—the hypothetical particle believed to convey the force of gravity—are generated by very small vibrating strings. The math behind string theory requires the strings to vibrate in at least 10 dimensions, rather than the four we live in (three for space and one for time), which is one of the reasons some scientists are not convinced that string theory is correct. But perhaps the biggest challenge for the theory is the ultrahigh energies required for testing it: Such an experiment would require a particle collider the size of a galaxy.

What is a physicist to do? One way they can probe the theory is to turn to a “bootstrap” approach, in which researchers start with certain assumptions they believe to be true about the universe, and then see what laws emerge out of those assumptions. In a new paper titled “Strings from Almost Nothing,” accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters, Caltech researchers, and their colleagues at New York University and Institut de Fisica d’Altes Energies in Barcelona, have done just that. From a couple of basic assumptions about how particles should scatter off one another at very high energies, they derived the elements of string theory.

This Physicist (Unexpectedly) Derived Gravity from Information

Sponsors: Accelerate your efficiency. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at http://shopify.com/theories Sign up for Claude today at http://claude.ai/theoriesofeverything and checkout Claude Pro — which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today’s episode. I personally subscribe to The Economist. FLASH SALE to May 18: 50% off annual (double the usual!) No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOE

What if gravity is just entropy in disguise? Professor Erik Verlinde joins me to argue that gravity isn’t a fundamental force—it’s thermodynamic, emerging from quantum information the way gas pressure emerges from molecules bouncing around. We explore why spacetime may be stitched together by entanglement, and how dark energy and dark matter both pop out automatically without extra particles or parameters. Verlinde explains why the cosmological constant problem is a red herring, and why there may be no final theory of physics. When asked where the universe comes from, his answer is one word: chaos.

SUPPORT: Support me on Substack: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/su… me on Crypto: https://commerce.coinbase.com/checkou… Support me on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_… JOIN MY SUBSTACK (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com LISTEN ON SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b9… TIMESTAMPS:

  • 00:00:00 — Thermodynamic Gravity and Information
  • 00:06:35 — Beyond Effective Field Theory
  • 00:13:08 — Turtles All The Way Down
  • 00:25:41 — Entropy as a Force
  • 00:36:31 — Entanglement and Spatial Connectivity
  • 00:47:31 — Deriving Inertia and F=ma
  • 00:56:41 — De Sitter Space Challenges
  • 01:02:01 — Dark Matter and Milgram
  • 01:11:51 — The Emergence of Time
  • 01:21:01 — Statistical Gravity Fluctuations
  • 01:27:01 — Quantum Computational Complexity
  • 01:36:01 — Physics Intuition and Mentorship
  • 01:47:31 — Beauty, Garbage, and Chaos

LINKS MENTIONED: Papers, books, websites:

Videos:

  • • A 2 Hour Deep Dive into Entropy
  • • The Mathematics of String Theory [Graduate…
  • • The Debate That Divides Physics: Is the Un…
  • • The Physicist Who Found Quantum Theory’s U…
  • • Retrocausality & The Transactional Interpr…
  • • The Physicist Who Proved Entropy = Gravity
  • • The Physicist Who Says Time Doesn’t Exist
  • • The Most Astonishing Theory of Black Holes
  • • The (Simple) Theory That Explains Everythi…
  • • The Crisis in String Theory is Worse Than…
  • • Dark Dimensions: NEW THEORY Unifying Dark…
  • • MIT Scientist’s Discovery: “Black Holes Mi…
  • • The Woman Who Broke Gravity | Claudia de Rham
  • • Solving the Problem of Consciousness | Ste…
  • • Frederic Schuller: The Physicist Who Deriv…
  • • The Loop Quantum Gravity Debacle: Carlo Ro…
  • • An (Elementary) Introduction to Quantum Co…
  • • Can Physics Explain Its Own Laws?
  • • The Nobel Laureate Who (Also) Says Quantum…
  • • This Cosmologist Discovered Something Stra…
  • • Michael Levin: Consciousness, Biology, Uni…

SOCIALS:

  • Twitter: / toewithcurt
  • Discord Invite: / discord

Guests do not pay to appear. Theories of Everything receives revenue solely from viewer donations, platform ads, and clearly labelled sponsors; no guest or associated entity has ever given compensation, directly or through intermediaries. #science.

JOIN MY SUBSTACK (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com.

LISTEN ON SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b9…

TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 — Thermodynamic Gravity and Information 00:06:35 — Beyond Effective Field Theory 00:13:08 — Turtles All The Way Down 00:25:41 — Entropy as a Force 00:36:31 — Entanglement and Spatial Connectivity 00:47:31 — Deriving Inertia and F=ma 00:56:41 — De Sitter Space Challenges 01:02:01 — Dark Matter and Milgram 01:11:51 — The Emergence of Time 01:21:01 — Statistical Gravity Fluctuations 01:27:01 — Quantum Computational Complexity 01:36:01 — Physics Intuition and Mentorship 01:47:31 — Beauty, Garbage, and Chaos.

Continue reading “This Physicist (Unexpectedly) Derived Gravity from Information” | >

A Solid-State Pathway to Neutrino Mass

New density-functional-theory calculations describe the radioactive decay of tritium bound to graphene, offering a way to model experiments that could open cleaner windows onto neutrino mass.

The discovery that neutrinos oscillate—shifting among three “flavors” (electron, muon, and tau) as they propagate—showed that these elusive particles must have mass. Yet their absolute mass scale and the mass ordering (whether the lightest neutrino state is predominantly electron-, muon-, or tau-like) remain unknown. Determining these properties is a central goal of modern particle physics. A promising approach involves measuring the energy spectrum of electrons emitted in nuclear decay, particularly from tritium: Because the neutrino carries away part of the decay energy, a nonzero neutrino mass slightly modifies the spectrum of emitted electrons. Precision experiments such as KATRIN have pushed this method to its limit, setting an upper bound of about 0.45 eV on the neutrino mass [1]. While KATRIN uses molecular tritium gas, new strategies aim to go further by embedding tritium in engineered materials.

Liquid crystals enable on‑demand skyrmion formation at room temperature

Researchers have recently found a new way to summon useful structures in magnetic materials using light, heat, and electric fields. This new method, described in a new study published in Physical Review Letters, may lead to more energy-efficient and flexible technologies for data storage and optical devices.

Within the realm of condensed matter physics, scientists study how macroscopic properties emerge from the interactions of vast numbers of microscopic particles in materials. In magnetic materials, skyrmions—nanoscale, topologically stable swirling magnetic structures—arise under certain conditions.

While they have been observed in magnets, superconductors, and liquid crystals, their nucleation is often random or requires extreme conditions. Creating these structures on demand is difficult due to high energy barriers and lack of easy, reversible control.

Mostly empty foam overturns assumptions of electron beam stopping

When physicists fire beams of fast electrons at materials, they often need to know exactly how much energy those electrons will lose as they travel through. Through new research published in Physical Review Letters, a team led by Ke Jiang at Shenzhen Technology University in China has found that porous, mostly empty foam materials can stop high-current electron beams far more effectively than denser materials—overturning many previous assumptions about how these beams interact with solid materials.

When a beam of electrons travels through a solid, its energy is lost through collisions with the atoms and electrons already present in the material. But when electron beams carry extremely intense currents, driving electrons to travel close to the speed of light, individual collisions are no longer the dominant factor.

Instead, the beam generates powerful electromagnetic fields as it moves, which shape how the beam propagates and loses energy. In fields ranging from nuclear fusion to studies of planetary interiors, it is often crucial for physicists to manage this energy loss as tightly as possible.

Atomic bands in two transition metal dichalcogenides hint at long-theorized quantum state

Insulators are materials in which electrons cannot move freely. Past theoretical studies predicted the existence of an unusual insulating state dubbed obstructed atomic insulator (OAI), in which electrons are localized inside a crystal, while their centers of charge lie in empty spaces between atoms, rather than on the atoms themselves.

Two independent research teams, one at Princeton University and Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), and the other at Columbia University recently observed signatures of this long-theorized quantum state in two different transition metal dichalcogenides, niobium diselenide (NbSe₂) and tungsten diselenide (WSe₂). Their papers, both of which were published in Nature Physics, could open new possibilities for the study of topological quantum phenomena.

/* */