The idea that the universe we perceive is the projection of a running computer simulation is still novel, but it is being considered in some quarters.
Postselection is one of the notions that makes quantum computing simultaneously so exciting and perplexing; the idea that for a super-complex problem riddled with variables, you solve by letting the variables take any value at random and postselect for the one combination that makes the problem true. Put another way, rather than solving all the possible combinations to the problem one at a time, you run all possible combinations simultaneously and extract the set of variables that make the problem true.
A group of scientists from LMU and the ETH in Zurich, including Professor Matthias Christandl, has now shown that position and momentum can be predicted more precisely than Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle would lead one to expect, if the recipient makes use of a quantum memory that employs ions or atoms.
Only the tiny bits of matter, atoms and molecules, have even been observed in a quantum state—until now. In a study in this week’s Nature, physicists report that they’ve put the largest object ever into that state where the weird rules of quantum mechanics apply, and things can be in two places at once.
Physicists said Monday that they had whacked a tiny region of space with enough energy to briefly distort the laws of physics, providing the first laboratory demonstration of the kind of process that scientists suspect has shaped cosmic history.
A UC Berkeley physicist and a Nobel prize-winning colleague now in President Obama's Cabinet report they have confirmed one of Albert Einstein's most revolutionary theories 10,000 times more accurately than ever before.
If we accept the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, the universe doesn't know it's being watched; it's just that when you make a measurement, you find out more about which branch of the universe you are in. When you measure particle A, you know something about particle B, not because your measurement changed anything other than your state of knowledge.
A recent essay in the New York Times by Dennis Overbye has managed to attract quite a bit of attention around the internets — most of it not very positive. It concerns a recent paper by Holger Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya (and some earlier work) discussing a seemingly crazy-sounding proposal — that we should randomly choose a card from a million-card deck and, on the basis of which card we get, decide whether to go forward with the Large Hadron Collider.
A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.
Henry Stapp is an American physicist, well-known for his work in quantum mechanics.
A major revolution occurred in science during the twentieth
century. This change leads to a profound transformation of the scientific conception of human beings. Whereas the former conception of man undermines rational moral philosophy, the new one can buttress it.
Quantum weirdness: What we call 'reality' is just a state of mind A lifetime studying quantum mechanics has convinced Bernard d'Espagnat that the world we perceive is merely a shadow of the ultimate reality
There are a variety of competing theories based on the idea of parallel universes, but the most basic idea is that if the universe is infinite, then everything that could possibly occur has happened, is happening, or will happen.
In a recent study, Brunner and coauthor Paul Skrzypczyk, also of the University of Bristol, propose an explanation for why post-quantum correlations are unlikely to exist, which may reveal insight into why quantum nonlocality is bounded, as well as into the underlying difference between quantum and post-quantum correlations.
Now, I still think there is a very large accumulation of evidence supporting the after-death survival of the individual's personality. I'm not disputing that evidence or the most parsimonious conclusion to be drawn from it -- namely, that personal survival is a reality in many (possibly all) instances. I'm just wondering how much it really matters.
But consider: the refrigerator, stove, and everything else are composed of a shimmering swarm of matter/energy. Quantum theory ... tells us that not a single one of those subatomic particles actually exists in a definite place. Rather, they merely exist as a range of probabilities that are unmanifest. In the presence of an observer -- that is, when you go back in to get a drink of water -- each one's wave function collapses and it assumes an actual position, a physical reality.
Dr. Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist, best-selling author, and popularizer of science. He’s the co-founder of string field theory (a branch of string theory), and continues Einstein’s search to unite the four fundamental forces of nature into one unified theory.
In practice, entanglement is an extremely delicate condition. Background disturbances readily destroy the state—a bane for quantum computing in particular, because calculations are done only as long as the entanglement lasts. But for the first time, quantum physicist Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that memories of entanglement can survive its destruction. He compares the effect to Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights: “the spectral Catherine communicates with her quantum Heathcliff as a flash of light from beyond the grave.”
Fleming and his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley and at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered the driving engine of a key step in photosynthesis, the process by which plants and some microorganisms convert water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight into oxygen and carbohydrates. More efficient by far in its ability to convert energy than any operation devised by man, this cascade helps drive almost all life on earth. Remarkably, photosynthesis appears to derive its ferocious efficiency not from the familiar physical laws that govern the visible world but from the seemingly exotic rules of quantum mechanics, the physics of the subatomic world. Somehow, in every green plant or photosynthetic bacterium, the two disparate realms of physics not only meet but mesh harmoniously. Welcome to the strange new world of quantum biology.
From space, though, quantum signals could be sent simultaneously to stations much farther than current technology allows on land. So a group of physicists has devised a plan to test the universality of quantum weirdness by following the lead of Forbidden Planet and sending quantum messages from space to Earth.
Lisi believed that he had discovered what physicists call a Theory of Everythinga unifying idea that aims to incorporate all the universes forces in a single mathematical framework. Within four months, Lee Smolin, one of the founders of loop quantum gravity, said that Lisi had one of the most compelling unification models he had seen in years. Discusses the persistent legend of the hermit genius in physics, from David Deutsch to Albert Einstein. Lisi got his Ph.D from the University of California at San Diego and, at thirty-one, dropped out of academia.
A new approach to the decades-old problem of quantum gravity goes back to basics and shows how the building blocks of space and time pull themselves together.
Unlike most other physicists, who stay within the confines of the latest theories and measurements, the Swedish-born Tegmark has a night job. In a series of papers that have caught the attention of physicists and philosophers around the world, he explores not what the laws of nature say but why there are any laws at all.
Seed (subtitled Beneath the Surface, then Science Is Culture) is a science magazine published bimonthly by Seed Media Group and distributed internationally. Each issue looks at big ideas in science, important issues at the intersection of science and society, and the people driving global science culture.
How does our classical world emerge from the counterintuitive principles of quantum theory? Can we even be sure that the world doesn't 'go quantum' when no one is watching? Philip Ball talks to the theorists and experimentalists trying to find out.
Life is good. But the problem is: the longer I think about it, the more I write about it and the more exploratory design and engineering work my Novamente colleagues and I do, the more convinced I am that I actually know how to make a thinking machine... an intelligent software program, with intelligence at the human level and beyond.
Lloyd, a professor at MIT, works in the vanguard of research in quantum computing: using the quantum mechanical properties of atoms as a computer. He contends that the universe itself is one big quantum computer producing what we see around us, and ourselves, as it runs a cosmic program. According to Lloyd, once we understand the laws of physics completely, we will be able to use small-scale quantum computing to understand the universe completely as well. In his scenario, the universe is processing information. The second law of thermodynamics (disorder increases) is all about information, and Lloyd spends much of the book explaining how quantum processes convey information. The creation of the universe itself involved information processing: random fluctuations in the quantum foam, like a random number generator in a computer program, produced higher-density areas, then matter, stars, galaxies and life.
Firstly, I suggest that we view consciousness as “the process of observing.” Now, “observation,” of course, is a psychological and subjective concept, but it also has a physical correlate. I suggest the following characterization of the physical substrate of observation: Subjective acts of observation physically correspond to events involving the registration of something in a memory from which that thing can later be retrieved.
Scientific American: What's the biggest misconception about teleportation?
Jeff Kimble: That the object itself is being sent. We're not sending around material stuff. If I wanted to send you a Boeing 757, I could send you all the parts, or I could send you a blueprint showing all the parts, and it's much easier to send a blueprint. Teleportation is a protocol about how to send a quantum state—a wave function—from one place to another.
However, since this is a quantum issue at its core, Krauss points out that measurements can affect the outcome of the system. He suggests that our measurements of supernovae in 1998, which detected the existence of dark energy, may have reset the false vacuum's decay clock to zero, switching it back to the fast decay regime, and greatly decreasing the universe's chance of surviving. "In short, we may have snatched away the possibility of long-term survival for our universe and made it more likely it will decay," says Krauss.
This is a classic article, a little blurb from a wire service about possibly on of the most important developments in science history. Can't figure out where the actual study exists though. "In Everett's "many worlds" universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own universe."
The Medium, The Mystic, And The Physicist: Toward A General Theory Of the Paranormal by psychologist, educator, and author Lawrence LeShan is a New Age book that persuasively presents evidence of psychic abilities, and seeks to draw together the views and science of mediums, mystics, and physicists alike.
McTaggart has a dazzling genius for bringing together cutting-edge research in the field of quantum physics in a stunningly direct, accessible way.
Highly rated book. Randall, a professor of physics at Harvard, offers a tour of current questions in particle physics, string theory, and cosmology, paying particular attention to the thesis that more physical dimensions exist than are usually acknowledged.
Using the Quantum Loop Theory, a scientist attempts to model what came before the Big Bang.
