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Category: particle physics – Page 189

Europe is pushing to create a network infrastructure based on quantum physics.

In May 2023, Dr. Benjamin Lanyon at the University of Innsbruck in Austria took an important step toward creating a new kind of internet: he transferred information along an optical fiber 50 kilometers long using the principles of quantum physics.

Information in quantum physics differs from the units of data—binary digits—stored and processed by computers that form the core of the current World Wide Web. The quantum physics realm covers the properties and interactions of molecules, atoms and even such as electrons and photons.

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Absorption spectroscopy is an analytical chemistry tool that can determine if a particular substance is present in a sample by measuring the intensity of the light absorbed as a function of wavelength. Measuring the absorbance of an atom or molecule can provide important information about electronic structure, quantum state, sample concentration, phase changes or composition changes, among other variables, including interaction with other molecules and possible technological applications.

Molecules with a high probability of simultaneously absorbing two photons of low-energy light have a wide array of applications: in molecular probes for , as a substrate for data storage in dense three-dimensional structures, or as vectors in medicinal treatments, for example.

Studying the phenomenon by means of direct experimentation is difficult, however, and computer simulation usually complements spectroscopic characterization. Simulation also provides a microscopic view that is hard to obtain in experiments. The problem is that simulations involving relatively require several days of processing by supercomputers or months by conventional computers.

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Exploring the interface between classical and quantum physics and where it breaks down to provide answers for some long-standing mysteries.

To understand the behavior of tiny, microscopic entities such as elementary particles, atoms, and even molecules, it is necessary to apply the mind-bending principles of quantum mechanics. In this realm, physics takes on bizarre properties necessary to unravel the perplexing behaviors of the Universe at this level.

In stark contrast, the macroscopic world we navigate daily adheres faithfully to the more comforting and intuitive laws of classical physics, which serve as approximations to much more complex quantum laws. These classical laws, while impressively accurate for our everyday experiences, merely graze the surface of the quantum mechanics that orchestrates the Universe at its smallest scales.

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From the vast expanse of galaxies that paint our night skies to the intricate neural networks within our brains, everything we know and see can trace its origins back to a singular moment: the Big Bang. It’s a concept that has not only reshaped our understanding of the universe but also offers profound insights into the interconnectedness of all existence.

Imagine, if you will, the entire universe compressed into an infinitesimally small point. This is not a realm of science fiction but the reality of our cosmic beginnings. Around 13.8 billion years ago, a singular explosion gave birth to time, space, matter, and energy. And in that magnificent burst of creation, the seeds for everything — galaxies, stars, planets, and even us — were sown.

But what if the Big Bang was not just a physical event? What if it also marked the birth of a universal consciousness? A consciousness that binds every particle, every star, and every living being in a cosmic tapestry of shared experience and memory.

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Physicists working on the ATLAS experiment at CERN have observed entanglement between pairs of top quarks for the first time. The finding demonstrates that entanglement can occur at energies more than 12 orders of magnitude higher than is typical for laboratory entanglement experiments. They also show that particle-physics facilities such as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can be used to study quantum mechanics and quantum information.

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Entanglement is one of quantum mechanics’ strangest features. Dubbed “spooky action at a distance” by Albert Einstein, it creates an invisible connection between two objects that share a joint quantum state, such that measuring the state of one object – the spin of a particle, for example – immediately gives the state of the other, regardless of the distance between them. Many objects have been entangled, including photons, atoms and molecules as well as larger objects such as macroscopic diamonds.

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If new particles are out there, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the ideal place to search for them. The theory of supersymmetry suggests that a whole new family of partner particles exists for each of the known fundamental particles. While this might seem extravagant, these partner particles could address various shortcomings in current scientific knowledge, such as the source of the mysterious dark matter in the universe, the “unnaturally” small mass of the Higgs boson, the anomalous way that the muon spins and even the relationship between the various forces of nature. But if these supersymmetric particles exist, where might they be hiding?

This is what physicists at the LHC have been trying to find out, and in a recent study of proton–proton data from Run 2 of the LHC (2015–2018), the ATLAS collaboration provides the most comprehensive overview yet of its searches for some of the most elusive types of supersymmetric particles—those that would only rarely be produced through the “weak” nuclear force or the electromagnetic force. The lightest of these weakly interacting supersymmetric particles could be the source of dark matter.

The increased collision energy and the higher collision rate provided by Run 2, as well as new search algorithms and machine-learning techniques, have allowed for deeper exploration into this difficult-to-reach territory of supersymmetry.

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Falling through the Solar System at an astonishing 635,266 kilometers (394,736 miles) per hour, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has just smashed the record for fastest object ever to be created by human hands.

The event on September 27 marks the turning point of the mission’s 17th loop around the Sun as it collects data on the heated winds of charged particles and violent magnetism that surround our closest star, and comes just under three years after its previous record of 586,863.4 kilometers (364,660 miles) per hour.

At these speeds, it’d be possible for an aircraft to circumnavigate our planet roughly 15 times in a single hour, or zoom from New York to Los Angeles in just over 20 seconds.

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Here, we also expanded the applicability of the second law of infodynamics to explain phenomenological observations in atomic physics. In particular, we demonstrated that the second law of infodynamics explains the rule followed by the electrons to populate the atomic orbitals in multi-electron atoms, known as the Hund’s rule. Electrons arrange themselves on orbitals, at equilibrium in the ground state, in such a way that their information entropy is always minimal.

Most interesting is the fact that the second law of infodynamics appears to be a cosmological necessity. Here, we re-derived this new physics law using thermodynamic considerations applied to an adiabatically expanding universe.

Finally, one of the great mysteries of nature is: Why does symmetry dominate in the universe? has also been explained using the second law of infodynamics. Using simple geometric shapes, we demonstrated that high symmetry always corresponds to the lowest information entropy state, or lowest information content, explaining why everything in nature tends to symmetry instead of asymmetry.

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Without verbal communication, a group of 100 longhorn crazy ants can simultaneously grab onto an object 10,000 times their weight and collectively walk it to their nest. Scientists understand the ant-behavioral rules behind this feat but have lacked a coarse-grained description of how the group moves. Tabea Heckenthaler of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and her colleagues now provide that description, showing that it fits expectations for a self-propelled particle [1]. The finding offers a simplified route to modeling complex systems.

When a foraging ant happens upon a tasty morsel too big to carry alone, she recruits other ants via a pheromone trail. When enough helpers are gathered, they grab on with their mouths and move the object toward home. Ants at the front pull the load, while those at the back lift to reduce friction. From studies of individual ants, scientists have gleaned other details; for example, after an ant grabs on, she spends around 10 seconds pulling in what she thinks is the direction of the nest—regardless of the group’s actual direction—before aligning her efforts with the other workers. There is also a constant turnover of workers, with ants dropping off and new ants immediately filling gaps.

Instead of accounting for such individual behaviors, Heckenthaler and her colleagues consider the ants and the food item as a single moving system. From experiments performed with a cog-shaped load coated in cat food (to encourage the ants), they find that the ant-load system follows trajectories similar to the directed walks of individual self-propelled particles. Comparing trajectories of cogs carried by different numbers of ants, the researchers then show that they can work out details of the ants’ individual behavior from the group-level measurements.

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