I’ve referred to Quanta Magazine articles in a number of my previous posts. For example in Quantum computing and the quantum quacks I referred to a 2019 article by Natalie Wolchover called How Space and Time Could Be a Quantum Error-Correcting Code. In The black hole charlatans I referred to a 2020 article by George Musser called The Most Famous Paradox in Physics Nears Its End. In Quantum entanglement is scientific fraud I referred to a 2022 article by Natalie Wolchover called Physicists Create a Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer:
Screenshot of Quanta magazine video by Kim Taylor, see Physicists Create a Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer
Take a look at their About Quanta web page. They say Quanta Magazine is “an editorially independent online publication launched by the Simons Foundation in 2012 to enhance public understanding of science”. They also say they used the name Quanta because Albert Einstein called photons quanta of light, and Quanta’s goal is to illuminate science. It all sounds reasonable enough, and since they give a view of what’s happening in physics at the moment, I thought I’d write about them. Check out their physics section, where you can find about half a dozen articles a month by various authors. You can select stories via topic tags such as particle physics or cosmology, but I looked at them chronologically.
How is science even possible?
The latest Quanta article as I write is How Is Science Even Possible? dated June 20th 2024. It’s by Steven Strogatz, and it’s a transcript of a podcast. I don’t like podcasts myself, I think they’re somehow self-important, but I don’t mind a transcript. Anyway, Strogatz was talking to Nigel Goldenfeld, a physics professor at the University of California in San Diego. Goldenfeld said this: “What’s crazy is that you can really understand almost everything there is to know about electricity and magnetism with the help of those equations and some clever math”. Unfortunately that isn’t true. Most physicists don’t understand electromagnetism. Especially since Maxwell’s equations are really Heaviside’s equations, and because Maxwell’s vortex and screw concepts are missing from contemporary textbooks. Goldenfield then talked about the general theory of relativity, saying it explains gravitation to a higher accuracy than Newton’s law of gravitation. That isn’t true either. What’s presented as general relativity nowadays doesn’t actually explain how gravity works, and it contradicts Einstein in various ways. For example Einstein described a gravitational field as a place where space was neither homogeneous nor isotropic, not a place where spacetime is curved. On top of that, Einstein’s variable speed of light is totally missing. Strogatz and Goldenfeld then talked at length about magnets, but it’s clear that they don’t have a clue about how a magnet works. Thereafter there’s some waffle about emergence, finishing up with machine learning, AI, and ChatGPT. Groan. This feels like a stocking-filler article. Like it’s holiday season, and Quanta needed some padding.
The Enduring Mystery of How Water Freezes
The next article is The Enduring Mystery of How Water Freezes dated June 17th 2024. It’s by Elise Cutts, and I was thinking it was another piece of holiday filler. Maybe it was, but either way I thought it was interesting. That’s because like a lot of people I thought water freezes at zero degrees Celsius. I didn’t know that a bottle of distilled water in a deep freeze can remain a liquid down to minus forty degrees C, but will freeze if you shake it. Cutts gave a great analogy saying freezing usually doesn’t happen at zero degrees C for much the same reason that backyard wood piles don’t spontaneously combust. She told us that “To get started, fire needs a spark. And ice needs a nucleus – a seed of ice around which more and more water molecules arrange themselves into a crystal structure”.
Screenshot of movie S4 from a paper by Debdas Dhabal, Rajat Kumar, and Valeria Molinero, see Quanta
Cutts then talked about work by Valeria Molinero, a physical chemist at the University of Utah, and Konrad Meister, a biophysical chemist at Boise State University. They’ve been collaborating “to unravel the secrets of nature’s best snow makers – bacteria and fungi whose proteins interact with water in ways that promote ice nucleation”. It would seem that certain bacteria and fungi contain proteins which promote ice nucleation. And that “many of these organisms are plant pathogens, and it’s possible that their ice-nucleating proteins evolved to cause frost damage”. I didn’t know that. Or that ski-slope snow guns spray water containing an ice-nucleator in the form of Pseudomonas syringae bacteria. Cool. Whilst this isn’t the fundamental physics I’m into, and maybe isn’t actually physics, I thought it was good science. Can you imagine if you found a way to water the deserts of North America? Or the Outback? Or the Arabian desert. Or the Sahara?
The New Math of How Large-Scale Order Emerges
The next article was The New Math of How Large-Scale Order Emerges by Philip Ball dated June 10th 2024. It’s all about emergent phenomena. Ball gave examples such as the firing of billions of neurons in your brain which deliver “your unique and coherent experience of reading these words”. In other words, consciousness. Other examples are self-organising non-colliding streams of pedestrians on a crowded sidewalk, and Jupiter’s Great Red Spot:
Screenshot of Quanta magazine video by Equinox Graphics, see The New Math of How Large-Scale Order Emerges
Ball said the world is full of such emergent phenomena, but there’s no agreed scientific theory to explain emergence. He talked about work by Jim Crutchfield, a physicist at the UC Davis, Anil Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex, and Fernando Rosas, a complex systems scientist also at Sussex. These scientists talked about a theoretical framework wherein a complex system is comprised of a hierarchy of levels which operate independently, and where emergence can be thought of as a kind of “software in the natural world”. They also talked about a “mathematical formalism called computational mechanics“, about concepts labelled as computational closure and causal states, and about a thought-experiment device called an epsilon machine. Again there are references to machine learning and artificial intelligence. This time however they come with “new ideas” which “touch on the issue of free will”, which “may be rescued by the formalism of higher-level causation”. Again this isn’t the fundamental physics I’m into, but again I think it’s good science.
Mathematicians Attempt to Glimpse Past the Big Bang
I didn’t think that about the next article. It was Mathematicians Attempt to Glimpse Past the Big Bang by Steve Nadis dated May 31st 2024. Nadis talked about work by Ghazal Geshnizjani of the Perimeter Institute, Eric Ling of the University of Copenhagen, and Jerome Quintin of the University of Waterloo. They wrote a paper On the initial singularity and extendibility of flat quasi-de Sitter spacetimesi which was published by the Journal of High Energy Physics. I’m afraid to say I thought it was bad science. Not because it involved the application of mathematics to gain an understanding of what happened before the Big Bang. Mathematics is a vital tool for physics, and to make progress I think we should use everything we’ve got. I don’t have an issue trying to understand what happened before the Big Bang either. That’s something I whole-heartedly applaud. I have a particular aversion to the lies-to-children claim that time began with the Big Bang, therefore it doesn’t make sense to ask what banged.
Quanta “before inflation” image by Nico Roper, see Mathematicians Attempt to Glimpse Past the Big Bang
Instead, I thought it was bad science because the authors assumed that inflation was correct, and that the MTW concept of black holes was correct. My sentiment is that Geshnizjani, Ling, and Quintin will never get anywhere with The Big Bang when they’re weighed down by all the usual misconceptions in gravitational physics. I have no issue with anybody likening the expanding universe to a black hole in reverse. But if you ignore the crucial point that the event horizon is a place where the speed of light is zero and nothing moves, everything else is a waste of time. Especially if you think the expansion of the universe is gravity in reverse. Especially if you fall in love with curvature singularities and the FLRW metric, even though Einstein described a gravitational field as a place where space was neither homogeneous nor isotropic. Especially if you’ve fallen for inflation hook line and sinker. Even though the monopole problem misses the crucial point that the electron has an electromagnetic field, the flatness problem misses the crucial point that homogeneous space is space without a gravitational field, and the horizon problem misses the crucial point that the universe may have started with no temperature at all. The end result is that you can get “lost in maths”, then pursue the wrong avenue, then end up going nowhere. I’m afraid to say I think that’s what happened here. The paper is also available on the arXiv, and is 48 pages long. Good luck wading through it. I only hope that Ling meant what he said when he said in order to make sense of the universe “we first need to understand classical physics as well as we can”. Meanwhile this Quanta article isn’t illuminating science, it’s peddling bullshit orthodoxy to a gullible public.
Physicists Puzzle Over Emergence of Strange Electron Aggregates
The next article was Physicists Puzzle Over Emergence of Strange Electron Aggregates by Daniel Garisto dated 29th May 2024. He started by saying “in the 127 years since the electron was discovered, it has undergone more scrutiny than perhaps any other particle. As a result, its properties are not just well known, but rote, textbook material”. That’s something else that isn’t true. Back in the 1920s the realists like de Broglie and Schrödinger talked about the electron as a wave in a closed path. See for example Charles Galton Darwin’s 1927 Nature paper on the electron as a vector wave. However the Copenhagen school wilfuly ignored all this. Hence nowadays a particle physicist will tell you, with a straight face, that the electron is a point partcle. Despite the wave nature of matter. The rest of Garisto’s article is about electron quasiparticles, along with the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects, and the fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect. It ended up talking about “the potential of non-abelian anyons for quantum computing”. I’d say it’s all rather pointless if you have no actual understanding of the electron.
The S-Matrix Is the Oracle Physicists Turn To in Times of Crisis
Next came The S-Matrix Is the Oracle Physicists Turn To in Times of Crisis by Matt von Hippel dated 23rd May 2024. The S-matrix is of course the scattering matrix, which for example gives decay-product probabilities.
Quanta “S-matrix” image by Nico Roper, see The S-Matrix Is the Oracle Physicists Turn To in Times of Crisis
Hippel started by talking about Werner Heisenberg in 1943 pondering a crisis in quantum theory, wherein predictions were giving nonsensical infinite results. Hippel said “these infinities led Heisenberg to distrust the way quantum physics was depicting reality”. Yet again it’s not true. Anybody who has read the history knows full well that Heisenberg was a “Copenhagen school” physicist. They adopted Yakov Frenkel’s 1926 paper on the electrodynamics of rotating electrons, which said the electron will thus be treated simply as a point. Again, they did this because their realist rivals such as de Broglie and Schrödinger talked about the electron as a wave in a closed path. For another example see Born and Infeld’s 1935 paper on the quantization of the new field theory II. Note page 12 where they said this: “the inner angular momentum plays evidently a similar role to the spin in the usual theory of the electron. But it has some great advantages: it is an integral of the motion and has a real physical meaning as a property of the electromagnetic field, whereas the spin is defined as an angular momentum of an extensionless point, a rather mystical assumption”. Heisenberg would have known about all this, and when you do, you know that the rest of this Quanta piece is yet more bullshit orthodoxy, featuring Higgs bosons, W bosons, quarks, and gluons. None of which have actually been observed. Sigh. I will have write an entire physics detective article to explain all this. Mañana.
Will Better Superconductors Transform the World?
There are many more Quanta articles, such as He Seeks Mystery Magnetic Fields With His Quantum Compass. The subtitle was this: “Alex Sushkov is updating an old technology with new quantum tricks in hopes of sensing the magnetic influence of dark matter”. Since I think dark matter is just space with a higher energy-density, I think the guy is wasting his time and our money trying to detect axions via NMR. The next article was Will Better Superconductors Transform the World?. That’s where Janna Levin interviewed Siddharth Shanker Saxena, a condensed-matter physicist at the University of Cambridge. It was another podcast transcript, but I think it was worth reading because superconductors could indeed transform the world. Next was Dogged Dark Matter Hunters Find New Hiding Places to Check. It started by saying “perhaps dark matter is made of an entirely different kind of particle than the ones physicists have been searching for”. Yeah, and perhaps dark matter isn’t made of particles at all. It ended by saying one more possibility is that the prevailing theory of gravity isn’t quite right. That’s the theory where Einstein said “the energy of the gravitational field shall act gravitatively in the same way as any other kind of energy”. There’s also AI Starts to Sift Through String Theory’s Near-Endless Possibilities. All I shall say about that is that string theory is a dead duck.
Quanta “AI string theory” image by Kouzou Sakai, see AI Starts to Sift Through String Theory’s Near-Endless Possibilities
Caption: What macroworld emerges from string theory depends on how six small spatial dimensions are bundled up.
There’s also Can Information Escape a Black Hole? where Janna Levin interviewed Leonard Susskind about the information paradox. She said Susskind was “widely regarded as the father of string theory”. It’s yet more bullshit orthodoxy. So was What Is the Nature of Time? where Frank Wilczek says “We can really travel in time”. No Frank, we can’t, because time is merely a cumulative measure of motion. Then there’s In a ‘Dark Dimension’, Physicists Search for Missing Matter. That isn’t bullshit orthodoxy, it’s just bullshit.
That’s where Quanta colluded with Nature to peddle fairytale woo
All in all, I’d say there’s way too much of this sort of crap on Quanta, even if we haven’t seen too much of Natalie Wolchover of late. Even Peter Woit, the Standard Model pimp who censors all criticism, was appalled by Physicists Create a Wormhole Using a Quantum Computer. That’s where Quanta colluded with Nature to peddle fairytale woo. Hence I’d say that Quanta aren’t illuminating science, they’ve gone over to the dark side. They’re promoting bad science and peddling pseudoscience propaganda from quacks and charlatans. In particular they’re upholding the mainstream orthodoxy that will not admit that the electron is a wave in a closed path, and will not admit that a gravitational field is a place where space is neither homogeneous nor isotropic. That’s because such admissions would demonstrate that contemporary particle physics and cosmology are badly wrong in multiple ways. What an irony that the Simons Foundation, which has a mission “to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences“, are paying for the exact opposite.
John are you sure gravity doesn’t have an effective limit in a shorter distance than thought? It can’t be misunderstood but the ” constant” is exponentially expanding?? Singularities….ha..ha..ha. dark matter, dark energy, entanglement, multiverses’ , parallel worlds, quantum blah blah blah. How about your thoughts on chaos theory or Nasa inability to put an Indian woman on a space station and bring her back safely. Oh yeah, maybe not that one. Physics behind radiotherapy. I’m getting treatments. Where do those ejected photons trapped in a box go? Anything but quantum b.s. ,; I’ve already proposed that it is all a Wall Street scam. Hope all is well in FL
67-74 2 different pasts,present, and futures. We don’t really know as much as we think we know. Keep on trying. Maybe China’s EP collider will find that Higgs boson. https://www.livescience.com/space/cosmology/james-webb-telescope-confirms-there-is-something-seriously-wrong-with-our-understanding-of-the-universe
There’s plenty wrong with contemporary cosmology, Parish. One of the big issues is the FLRW metric. It “starts with the assumption of homogeneity and isotropy of space”. That is a really bad assumption, because Einstein described a gravitational field as a place where space is neither homogeneous nor isotropic. If some parts of the universe were denser than others, you would expect them to expand faster.
First paragraph…”time dependent”…no such thing. There is no time. Everything is energy & motion. Nothing else matters.
I would love an article on color. From the star to the photon to the objects to the retina to the brain. Whole 9 yards. 99 out of a hundred don’t understand. Black is really white, white is really black.
Colour is just a “quale”, Parish. It isn’t some real empirical physics thing, it’s just something made up by your conscious brain to help you distinguish things. Whilst consciousness and related matters are all interesting stuff, it isn’t what I do. Sorry.
Greg, shame about your man. But really, you need somebody else. I will leave it at that, OK?
Kudos Boss on your latest testament on the sadsack state of another supposedly, highly regarded publication. Once again you’ve documented that The S.M. Inmates are running the Asylum of the scientific, academic Mass Media.
Yep , it’s impossible to candy coat Biden’s horribly slow start of the debate. But no worries on my end; it’s definitely not over yet regardless of what again the Mass Media distributes : Talking Heads need to keep on talking and Yammering, Flapping Lips needs to keep on yammering and flapping away ad nauseum.
Kugelblitz…some real physiks for ya. Are you kidding me. People make a living with this bullshit??? https://www.iflscience.com/how-humanity-could-power-starships-by-creating-artificial-black-holes-74903
The Origin of Mass
http://www.ag-physics.org/rmass/
In section 6.2 he seems to be talking about photons slowing down as they travel vertically?
Steve: yes, the descending photon slows down. Einstein said that in his 1939 black hole paper. I mentioned Albrecht Giese and that web page in misconceptions in gravitational physics. He came up with gravity is a refraction years ago, way before I knew about it. However I don’t like the way he talks about exchange particles. In addition, it seems like he doesn’t know about Einstein’s variable speed of light.
An honest article from Quanta that confirms with 6 Sigma level of certainty what I’ve previously posted. https://www.quantamagazine.org/clashing-cosmic-numbers-challenge-our-best-theory-of-the-universe-20240119/
I finally got the joke. Greg you are delusional. Happy 4th from an evil orange cult member.
I read it Parish, and thought it was interesting, but I’m not sure how honest it was. It seemed to be promoting work by Simons Foundation physicists, and selling myth and mystery. And whilst it was good to hear the article casting doubts on the Standard Model of Cosmology, I don’t think it was strong enough. The article presented this as fact:
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In the very beginning, the universe was searing plasma, a soup of fundamental particles and energy. “It was a hot mess,” said Vivian Poulin-Détolle, a cosmologist at the University of Montpellier.
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A fraction of a second into cosmic history, some occurrence, perhaps a period of extreme acceleration known as inflation, sent jolts — pressure waves — through the murky plasma.
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IMHO people like J. Colin Hill should read the Einstein digital papers, and understand that the speed of light varies, and that space is neither homogeneous nor isotropic. Then they’ll immediately see the issues with current cosmology. Hopefully they will then realise that inflation is pants, and that the near-infinite time dilation creates a big issue for “a fraction of a second into cosmic history”.
You bring up good points. If all the matter/energy was a singularity then it never could have expanded at all. I personally have serious doubts about the Big Bang let alone inflation.
I found this thought provoking and would appreciate your insight. https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/higgs-boson-captivating-puzzle/
Noted Parish. I will have to write a whole article to give my thoughts on this. I’ll do it.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-breakthrough-brings-matrix-multiplication-closer-to-ideal-20240307/
Steve, I had a quick look at the Computer Science section (https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-science/). The only recent article I saw that I liked was AI Needs Enormous Computing Power. Could Light-Based Chips Help? Spookily enough, it mentions matrix multiplcation. However I sigh that this is akin to Taming Light at the Nanoscale, which dates from 2010.
You might like https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2023/agostini/podcast/ Steve
There is a LOT of money invested in that computing power . If this article is correct NVDA is obviated. Looking at the market today, the readership of this blog is bigger than quanta!
A LOT of money means NVDA market cap = 3 trillion = GDP of GB!!
What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Not only for violent human tendencies, but more importantly concerning the recent U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling favoring increasing Presidential immunities……………
https://youtu.be/iTACH1eVIaA?si=YD_-g8GxLghTXaQ8
You’re so retarded. A gander is a goose.
Retarded ? Guilty as charged……..wrong in my facts: NO.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
Parish : Chew the Phat on this even pithier, more ancient famous warning.
That being : K.J.V. Matthew 26:52. Your very welcome………
We can agree to agree on that one Greg.
Ok I’ve heard it all. Comments? https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.123028
https://scitechdaily.com/how-a-twist-in-physics-could-change-technology-forever/
Time to get back to science, this article is particularly intriguing.
This is cargo-cult hype, Greg. See this section?
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“Chiral objects play a crucial role in nature and technology. In the realm of elementary particles, one of the most important chiral phenomena is spin, which is often compared to a self-rotation of a particle, but is in fact a purely quantum-mechanical property with no classical analog. An electron, for example, has a spin of one-half and therefore often exists in two potential states: a right-handed and a left-handed one”.
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Spin is a real rotation, as evidence by the Einstein-de Haas effect. it is not purely a quantum-mechanical property. But yes, the electron has spin ½ and exists in two opposite chiralities. However the other chirality is called a positron. Also note this:
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We then used attosecond electron microscopy to obtain a detailed tomographic measurement of the electron’s expectation value, that is, the probability of being somewhere in space and time”.
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The electron is not some point-particle that has a probability of being at some location. It’s the wave nature of matter, the wave has no outer edge, and electron spin is there because that wave is going round in a closed path, like Schrodinger said. All these guys are doing is moving electrons in a helical path. As for applications for that, don’t hold your breath.
Elementary my dear Watson. There are no particles or sparticles, only condensations of the electromagnetic field. Spin is real. There are no probabilities; shit does happen. “Empty space is neither homogeneous or isotropic”; however there is no empty space. It’s Ether everywhere. How di you think the internet works? It’s the Ethernet. Peace on Earth and God Bless America for Donald J. TRUMP and Vice President J.D. Vance.
Parish, the electromagnetic field is just space. Waving. I reckon this guy more or less nailed it: https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9610066. The answer is no.
Those comments came directly from the Einstein digital papers sir. You are either mistaken or smarter than Einstein. Reread the “space is neither hogonuse nor isotonic” paper again. All is nothing more than vibrating energy. “Nothing” does not exist.
Typo. No edit method is frustrating. Sorry guys.
Pi ÷ 2 put in 2 groups. Recombined = a whole Pi. Fascinating. People waste to much $ on mathematics based theories. Lets just renormalize it all and call it non-infinitum.
Parish, I agree, James David Bowman needs all the Gawd Damn help he can get……….
Thanks for the clarification as usual. I got caught up into the word salad hype when they started to spout off about chirality & rot. The fact is was on SciPopDaily should’ve been a sure giveaway. An even stinkier turd of an article was the one I posted awhile back about ” having two entangled quantum photons dancing inside a mobius strip ” or some bullshitto to that sad effect : all because their ‘superior’ virtual maths papers and virtual computer simulations sez so……
Meanwhile hope you’ve had time garden this chaotic, historic summer ? We got a few bumper crops coming along nicely and a few that aren’t producing as planned.
Yep, quick review of your past articles concludes my post is very simular the Isabelle Dume article you previously posted a link for.
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/zjl/pdf/mill0.pdf
Interesting puzzle
Do electrons oscillate within their orbital? If so, wouldn’t there be a B field?
Imo spin is not just some abstract quantum crap but a real possibly magnetic rotation.
That it is Parish. What’s rather odd is that nobody seems to know about “rot”. It’s short for rotor, and is the European term used instead of “curl”. It’s like, a magnetic field is a rotor field.
ITER is facing years long delays. Why? Cause covid.
Because it’s a “Big Science” project. I’ve used the Holy Grail as an analogy before now. If you pay a hundred knights a fat bag of gold each every month, you can guarantee that they will never find it. They will also be extremely hostile to the competition, such as cold fusion. Check out benchtop fusion such as the “star in the jar”, and see Doug Coulter’s website: https://fusor.net/board/viewtopic.php?t=14001
Steve, I think there’s a tritium shortage that is contributing to whatever the root cause is. They’ll get it net+ and the world will run out of tritium. Waste of $ IMO unless they an element that is abundant. Thanks for the photon answer John. Make sense. Now to wrap my head around amplitude (intensity) in a visual way. Big photon wave?
Have a read of https://physicsdetective.com/what-is-a-photon/ and https://physicsdetective.com/the-photon/. I think the photon amplitude is what underlies Planck’s constant h, and is a real distance. Like that 1cm guitar pluck, but much less.
https://physicsworld.com/a/the-fusion-industry-must-rise-to-its-tritium-challenge/
Can anybody explain to me why a higher frequency photon (blue) has more kinetic energy than a lower frequency photon (red)? Is this true for single photons or is it because more individual photons arrive when they are higher frequency and multiple ones (continuous stream of light)?
It’s because the photon is a wave, because a wave is kinetic energy, and because a higher-frequency photon has a faster “kick” to it. I think a good analogy is a guitar string. Imagine your pluck doesn’t change, and is always one centimetre. If your left hand isn’t on the fret, it’s easier to pluck the string, and the string vibrates more slowly and carries less energy. If your left hand is on the fret halfway down the neck of the guitar, it’s harder to pluck the string, which vibrates faster and carries more energy. A photon is akin to thihs, but the wave is in space, not on a string. The important thing to appreciate that when you take some of the energy out of a wave, you reduce its frequency. And if you take all the energy out of the wave, it just isn’t there any more.
Translation please https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.046901
Just when I started having hope for science they come up with this crap. Virtual photons creating virtual monopolies. If Trump doesn’t win I’m moving to Titan
Parish, when you do arrive at Titan, please say hello to the Sirens for me ? Also watch out for the chrono-synclastic infundibulumen, you might get tainted by UWTB !
Here’s some more excellent Sci-fi to read :https://www.smartnews.com/p/4706989396799261154?placement=article-preview-social&utm_source=share_android_other&utm_campaign=sn_lid%3A4706989396799261154%7Csn_channel%3Acr_en_us_top&logo=logo_6&share_id=pyTBB1
Science can bring opposites together just like Bohr and Einstein. I’m beginning to like you more and more. I suppose John is trying to stop the apocalypse single handily (i.e. no chirality). Peace brother.
https://www.iflscience.com/large-hadron-collider-could-be-close-to-finding-magnetic-monopoles-73988
Parish: it’s based on a non-understanding of electromagnetism. Spread your hands in front of your keyboard. Note how one is like a mirror image of the other. Let’s say one is called North and the other is called South. Now flip your right hand over, and look at how the outline now resembles the outline of your left hand. That’s all it is. The thing we call the South pole is just the flip side of the North pole. That’s why chopping a bar magnet in still yields a North pole and a South pole. That’s why there are no magnetic monopoles.
Hey John, two questions. 1) I was reading about dark matter disappearing and that it would change the current fate of the universe. What if the universe “breaths” in a metaphorically way. Thoughts? 2)Do you get tired of annoying questions on your blog?
Hey Boss, I just watched Trump’s entire speech at the Bitcoin Convention. He literaly promised the moon to them.
So, what is you honest opinions on crypto ? Personally, I think it’s a complete scam. My one fear it’s a shadow monetary system that’s being illegally thrusted into my life. Also, are certain energy projections that predict a huge increase in electrical power needs for future crypto accurate?
All other personal/ professional thoughts are welcomed too.
I think crypto is a total scam, and “bitcoin mining” is total lunacy.
Parish:
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I’d have to see the article that talks about dark matter disappearing. I think of dark matter as merely space with a higher energy density than the surrounding space. Conservation of energy plus the expanding universe means the energy density is by and large reducing. As for the universe breathing, that doesn’t fit with what I’ve learned.
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I don’t get tired of annoying questions on this blog because there are very few. I do however like to keep it to physics.
A.I. w/it’s supercomputers, EV’s, crypto (bad idea)? We can’t even keep the lights on 24/7/364 now. Happily ever after we go.
So then, what is the difference between that (crypto) and the current lunacy of the fiat money system? How is printing money out of thin air make any sense at all? I’ve now lost all respect for the Physics Defective.
Crypto tracking is designed for drugs/weapons/etc.. I agree about the fake printing press but Crypto isn’t the answer. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/indias-biggest-crypto-exchange-wazirx-loses-nearly-half-its-reserves-how-what-and-other-details-about-the-hacker-attack/articleshow/111845421.cms
Can you suggest an answer or is it easier to throw darts? Exchanges are the weakest link. Crypto was designed for FREEDOM. The abuser (guns/drugs…) assumes all personal responsibility. The roadway systems can be used to facilitate crimes, can they not? Should we condemn them?
The issue I have with crypto is the “mining”. As an evidential scientific guy, I think it’s utterly ludicrous. I’d rather see people really mining something really useful with real value, such as copper. Then we could end up with an international currency that was not controlled by governments, with characteristics akin to the old gold standard. Then we could protect ourselves from governmental quantitative easing and magic money trees.
RD: printing money out of thin air doesn’t make any sense either. I never said it did. It’s one big reason why people in the UK are poorer than they used to be.
Freßh off the presses folks : ( assuming the accuracy of facts presented)
https://u.today/bitcoin-price-crashes-as-us-government-transfers-2-billion-worth-of-btc
4% isn’t what I consider a crash. Now the hackers can take all your pretty fake coins. Can I interest anybody in some precious metals? David Duvall is a close friend.
Here’s another great current article on Crypto :
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/cryptocurrency-mining-data-power-usage-consumption/
And I saved the best for last :
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364
“only 1 hour of crypto mining uses as much energy as an average American household for 30 days” !!!
Greg, this is a physics blog.
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All: no more on crypto please.
Got it Boss!
Quoting Michel Dyakonov very recently:
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“Will we ever have a quantum computer?
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(Keynote Talk at UPON conference in Budapest, 2024)
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Mikhail Dyakonov
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Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, Université Montpellier, France,
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A.F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, Saint Petersburg, Russia
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Abstract. The possibility of building a quantum computer is critically analyzed. The main point is that the general state of the hypothetical quantum computer with N qubits is characterized by 2^N quantum amplitudes, which are complex numbers restricted by the normalization condition only. It looks highly improbable that it will ever be possible to keep under our control this number of complex parameters even for modest values of N ~ 50 or 100.
Keywords: Quantum computing, qubits, error correction
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Introduction
The whole field of Quantum Computing was triggered exactly 30 years ago by the invention of the Shor’s factoring algorithm [1]
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Since that time, we continuously hear wild and sweeping promises to completely change our world because of the coming quantum revolution. Here is a typical example of such expectations posted on the IBM site [2]:
• Hyper-accurate long-term weather forecasting
• Life-saving drugs discovered through deep study of the behavior of complex molecules
• New synthetic carbon-capturing materials to reverse climate change caused by fossil fuels
• Stable, long-lasting batteries to power electric vehicles and store energy for the utility grid
Before engaging further, it might be wise to have a look at the achievements reached during those 30 years. The observable outcome can be summed up as follows:
• Honest factoring the number 15 = 3×5 by Shor’s algorithm is still not possible
• Error correction has still never been achieved, even on a very small scale (quantum computing without error correction is considered by everybody as impossible !)
• No quantum device exists, capable of doing elementary arithmetic, like 3×5 or 3+5
• The only existing quantum application is “quantum annealing”
Quantum annealing
The quantum annealing technology was developed and promoted by the Canadian D-wave company [3]. The term “annealing“ comes from metallurgy. After initial preparation, any system, whether classical or quantum, when slowly cooled down, tends to its ground state with the lowest possible energy.
The quantum system should be designed in such a way that its ground state represents a solution of some problem of interest. While being perfectly reasonable, and sometimes even useful, this has no direct relation to quantum computing. This technology cannot help us to factor 15.
Thus, after 30 years of intense efforts, there have been absolutely NO meaningful practical results in quantum computing. Why? To understand this, let us compare our conventional classical computer and the hypothetical quantum computer.
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Quantum vs classical computer
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a) Classical computer
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Its state is described by a sequence (↑↓↑↑↓↑↓↓…), where ↑ and ↓ are bits of information, realized as the “on” and “off” states of individual transistors. With N transistors, there are 2^N distinct possible states of the computer. The computation process consists in a sequence of switching some transistors between their ↑ and ↓ states according to a prescribed program.
b) Hypothetical quantum computer
Replace the classical two-state bit by a quantum element with two basic states, the qubit. Simplest object: electron spin.
We arbitrary chose some axis, and denote the two basic quantum states of the spin, along and opposite to this axis, as ↑ and ↓. (The direction of this axis entirely depends on OUR choice).
The arbitrary spin state is described by the wave function:
ψ = a↑+ b↓,
where a and b depend on our choice of the basic states ↑ and ↓, and |a|^2 + |b|^2 =1.
In contrast to the classical bit, that can be only in one of the two states, ↑ or ↓, the qubit can be in a continuum of states defined by the quantum amplitudes a and b. The qubit is a continuous object!
Being continuous variables, a and b can practically never have exact prescribed values!
The general state of a quantum computer
The state of N qubits (i.e. the state of the quantum computer) is defined by the values of 2^N quantum amplitudes!
Thus, the general state of 3 qubits (2^3 = 😎 is:
Ψ=a1 ↑↑↑+a2 ↑↑↓+a3 ↑↓↑+a4 ↑↓↓+ a5 ↓↑↑ + a6↓↑↓+ a7 ↓↓↑ + a8 ↓↓↓,
where the quantum amplitudes a1, a2, … are arbitrary complex numbers, restricted by the normalization condition only.
Thus, there is an enormous difference between a classical computer with N bits and a quantum computer with N qubits !!
Classical computer has 2^N DISCFREET states;
Quantum computer has a CONTINUUM of states described by 2^N continuous parameters (the quantum amplitudes)!
We might want to prepare a certain state of 3 qubits, say ↑↑↑. However, doing this exactly is not possible: we will necessarily have an admixture of the 7 other possible states, albeit with relatively small amplitudes a2, a3, … a8.
Errors in the state of a quantum system do not only consist in the fact that some qubits, which should be in their “up” state, are in their “down” state (or vice versa). Rather, the general errors consist in the (unavoidable) fact that the 2^N quantum amplitudes a1, a2 …. a2^N, describing the general state of N qubits, do not have the prescribed values (e.g. a1=1, a2 = a3 = … a8 = 0).
Error correction cannot consist simply in rectifying the state of N independent qubits. Rather, the prescribed values should be imposed on 2^N quantum amplitudes describing the whole system!
Obviously, for large enough values of N this will never be practically possible.
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The role of energy
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Vocabulary of a quantum physicist versus that of a QC theorist:
Physicist : Electron spins, Hamiltonian, Energy spectrum, Wave function, Schroedinger equation
QC theorist: Qubits, Gates Measurements, Errors, Error correction
The notion of ENERGY, of primordial importance in physics, both classical and quantum, plays absolutely no role in QC theory! Because of this, the QC theory misses the fundamental fact of Quantum Mechanics: if the energies of some quantum states (entering in a superposition) differ by ∆E, there will be free oscillations of the system with frequency ∆E/ħ (where ħ is the Planck constant) !!!
The existing QC theory misses this fundamental fact of Quantum Mechanics!
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Conclusions
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The hypothetical quantum computer is an analog machine with a super-astronomical number of degrees of freedom: the values of 2^N quantum amplitudes (where N ~ 1000), which are continuous parameters subject to oscillations, noise, etc. This is just basic text-book Quantum Mechanics! Let’s hope that this obvious and basic fact and its consequences will be understood during the next 30 years…”
Thanks Sandra. Doubtless Dyakonov will be “studiously ignored” by the people peddling the quantum hype. I mentioned him in Quantum computing and the quantum quacks which I wrote over 5 years ago. I can see a link to the conference (https://conf.uni-obuda.hu/upon2024/) but not to any transcript document. Thanks again for posting it up.
Kudos Sandra ! A very educational read indeed.