Dande Lion Farmva

I’m dorsum from Cambridge, where I attended the conference “Gravity too Black Holes” inwards award of Stephen Hawking’s 75th birthday. First things first, the ikon on the conference poster, website, banner, etc is non a psychedelic banana, but gravitational moving ridge emission inwards a dark hole merger. It’s a nonetheless from a numerical simulation done yesteryear a Cambridge grouping that you tin sentry inwards total on YouTube . What create gravitational waves convey to create amongst Stephen Hawking? More than yous powerfulness think. Stephen Hawking, together amongst Gary Gibbons, wrote ane of the start papers on the analysis of gravitational moving ridge signals. That was inwards 1971 , briefly later gravitational waves were start “discovered” yesteryear Joseph Weber. Weber’s detection was never confirmed yesteryear other groups. I don’t mean value anybody knows simply what he measured, but whatever it was, it clearly wasn’t gravitational waves. Also Hawking’s – a...

I conduct maintain a headache and blame Nature mag for it. For almost fifteen years, I conduct maintain worked on quantum gravity phenomenology, which agency I written report ways to experimentally bear witness the quantum properties of infinite together with time. Since 2007, my query surface area has its ain conference series, “Experimental Search for Quantum Gravity,” which took house most late September 2016 inwards Frankfurt, Germany. Extrapolating from whom I personally know, I gauge that almost 150-200 people currently operate inwards this field. But I conduct maintain never seen nor heard anything of Chiara Marletto together with Vlatko Vedral, who only wrote a comment for Nature  magazine complaining that the query surface area doesn’t exist. In their comment, titled “ Witness gravity’s quantum side inwards the lab ,” Marletto together with Vedral telephone telephone for “a focused coming together bringing together the quantum- together with gravity-physics commu...

Noise is the physicists’ biggest enemy. Unless you lot are a theorist whose pet view masquerades equally noise. Then you lot are best friends alongside noise. Like Roger Penrose. Correlated "noise" inwards LIGO gravitational moving ridge signals: an implication of Conformal Cyclic Cosmology Roger Penrose arXiv:1707.04169 [gr-qc] Roger Penrose made his elevate alongside the Penrose-Hawking theorems in addition to twistor theory. He is besides well-known for writing books alongside real many pages, most lately “Fashion, Faith, in addition to Fantasy inwards the New Physics of the Universe.” One man’s dissonance is about other man’s signal. Penrose doesn’t similar most of what’s currently inwards fashion, but believes that human consciousness can’t live on explained past times known physics in addition to that the universe is cyclically reborn. This cyclic cosmology, hence his recent claim, gives rising to correlations inwards the LIGO dissonance – just similar what...

Fluorescence picture of Bose-Einstein-Condensate. Image Credits: Stefan Kuhr together with Immanuel Bloch, MPQ String theory is infamously detached from experiment. But inwards a novel paper, a grouping from United Mexican US seat forrad a proposal to alter that String theory phenomenology together with quantum many–body systems Sergio Gutiérrez, Abel Camacho, Héctor Hernández arXiv: 1707.07757 [gr-qc] Ahead, allow me endure clear they don’t desire to show string theory, but the presence of additional dimensions of space, which is a prediction of string theory. In the paper, the authors calculate how additional space-like dimensions demeanour on a condensate of ultra-cold atoms, known every bit Bose-Einstein-Condensate. At such depression temperatures, the atoms transition to a acre where their quantum wave-function acts every bit ane together with the organization begins to display quantum effects, such every bit interference, throughout. In the presence of extra-dimens...

Cables nether my desk. One of the unlikelier fights I picked spell blogging was alongside an MIT grouping that aimed to wirelessly ability devices – past times tunneling: “If you lot choose some other resonant object alongside the same frequency closed plenty to these tails thence it turns out that the loose energy tin tunnel from i object to another,” said Professor Soljacic. [ Source: BBC ] They had proposed a novel method for wireless ability transfer using ii electrical circuits inwards magnetic resonance. But there’s no tunneling inwards such a resonance. Tunneling is a quantum effect. Single particles tunnel. Sometimes. But kilowatts definitely don’t. I reached out to the professor’s coauthor, Aristeidis Karalis, who told me , fifty-fifty to a greater extent than bizarrely: “The loose energy stays inwards the scheme together with does non leak out. It just jumps from i to the other dorsum together with forth.” I had to teach together with calculate the Poynting vec...

Chairs. [ Image: Verco ] That leaked internal memo from James Damore at Google ? The 1 that says 1 shouldn’t hold off employees inwards all professions to reverberate the demographics of the whole population? Well, that was a pretty dumb affair to write. But non because it’s wrong. Dumb is that Damore thought he could receive got a reasoned give-and-take close this. In the USA, out of all places. The version of Damore’s memo that get-go appeared on Gizmodo missed references together with images. But meanwhile, the multifariousness memo has its ain website together with it comes with links together with graphics. Damore’s strikes me equally a pamphlet produced past times a well-meaning, but also utterly clueless, immature white man. He didn’t deserve to get fired for this. He deserved mayhap a slap on the too-quickly typing fingers. But inwards his world, bespeak for give-and-take is evidently plenty to learn fired. I don’t commonly write close the underrepresentation of wo...

Not how it works. It’s tough to roll your caput to a greater extent than or less iv dimensions. We conduct maintain known that the universe expands since the 1930s, but whether nosotros expand amongst it is nonetheless ane of the questions I am asked most frequently. The less self-conscious simply inform me that the universe doesn’t expand but everything inwards it shrinks – because how could nosotros tell the difference? The best respond to these questions is, every bit usual, a lot of math. But it’s hard to expose a decent respond online that is non a pile of equations, so here’s a verbal conduct maintain on it. The source clue yous demand to empathize the expansion of the universe is that full general relativity is a theory for space-time, non for space. As Herman Minkowski lay it inwards 1908: “Henceforth infinite yesteryear itself, together with fourth dimension yesteryear itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, together with only a sort of matrimony of the...

I idea that anti-vaxxers are a US-phenomenon, sure non to endure establish amid the dutiful Germans. Well, I was wrong. The WHO estimates only 93% of children inward Deutschland have both measles shots . I idea that genes create upwards one's hear sex. I was wrong. For sure species of fish together with reptiles that’s non the case . I idea that ultrasound may endure a promising means to wirelessly transfer energy. That was incorrect too . Don’t worry, I haven’t all of a abrupt developed a masochist edge. I’ve had an argument. Not my every-day declaration close night affair versus modified gravity together with similar academic problems. This ane was close Donald Trump together with how to endure incorrect the correct way. Percentage of infants receiving 2d dose of measles vaccine inward Germany. [ Source: WHO ] Trump changes his mind. H5N1 lot. May that endure about the NATO or about Afghanistan or, really, find me anything he has not changed his hear about . Now,...

Have you lot heard of the regulation of to the lowest degree action? It’s the most of import reckon inward physics, together with it underlies everything. According to this principle, our reality is optimal inward a mathematically exact way: it minimizes a constituent called the “action.” The universe that nosotros bring out ourselves inward is the 1 for which the activity takes on the smallest value. In quantum mechanics, reality isn’t quite that optimal. Quantum fields don’t lead maintain to create upwards one's heed on 1 specific configuration; they tin create everything they want, together with the activity together with hence quantifies the weight of each contribution. The total of all these contributions – known every bit the path-integral – describes 1 time to a greater extent than what nosotros observe. This omniscient activity has real picayune to create amongst “action” every bit inward “action hero”. It’s precisely an integral, ordinarily denoted S , over about other...

Something else I made for the mass merely afterward removed. (Click to enlarge.)

I'm inwards Switzerland this week, for a conference on " Thinking virtually Space together with Time: 100 Years of Applying together with Interpreting General Relativity ." I am also behind amongst several things together with blogging volition rest deadening for the adjacent weeks. If you lot immature lady my writing all equally good much, hither is a novel paper .

I’m withal writing on the book. After non much happened for almost a year, my publisher forthwith rather all of a precipitous asked for the lastly version of the manuscript. Until that’s done non much volition live happening on this blog. We produce look to convey settled on a championship though: “Lost inwards Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray.” The championship is my doing, the subtitle isn’t. I precisely promise it won’t Pb every bit good many readers astray. The mass is supposed to live published inwards the USA/Canada yesteryear Basic Books side yesteryear side twelvemonth inwards the Spring, as well as inwards FRG yesteryear Fischer one-half a twelvemonth later. I’ll tell y'all to a greater extent than nearly the content at to a greater extent than or less indicate but correct forthwith I’m pretty sick of the whole book-thing. In the meantime I convey edited to a greater extent than or less other book, this i on “Experimental Search for Quantum Gravity” which y'...

I made only about drawings recently. For no item purpose, really, other than to distract myself. And hither is the joker:

Dear Chris, The criterion model of particle physics contains 2 dissimilar types of particles. There are the fermions, which brand upwardly matter, in addition to the gauge-bosons which mediate interactions betwixt the fermions and, inwards approximately cases, amid themselves. There is i additional particle – the Higgs-boson – which is needed to give masses to both bosons in addition to fermions. Neutrino number at the IceCube Observatory inwards Antarctica . Image: IceCube Collaboration The fermions come upwardly inwards left-handed in addition to right-handed versions which are mirror-images of each other. In what I recollect is the most perplexing characteristic of the criterion model, the left-handed in addition to right-handed versions of fermions comport differently. We state the fermions are “chiral.” The departure betwixt the left- in addition to right-handed particles is most apparent if yous hold off at neutrinos: Nobody has always seen a right-handed neutrino. Yo...

“Do you lot promise to win a Nobel Prize?” asked an elderly homo who had come upward to milk shiver my mitt afterward the lecture. I laughed, but he was serious. Maybe I had been a fiddling likewise successful explaining how of import quantum gravity is. No, I don’t promise to win a Nobel Prize. If that’s what I’d been after, I surely would bring chosen a dissimilar field. Condensed thing physics, say, or quantum things. At to the lowest degree cosmology. But surely non quantum gravity. Nobel Prize medal for physics as well as chemistry. It shows nature inwards the cast of a goddess emerging from the clouds. The veil which covers her expression upward is held upward past times the Genius of Science. Srsly, consider Nobelprize.org . But the Nobel Prize is of import for science. It’s of import non because it singles out a few winners but because inwards scientific discipline it’s the i annual final result that catches everybody’s attention. On which other twenty-four hr menstruat...

Living inwards a Bubble? [Image: YouTube ] We are made from stretched quantum fluctuations. At to the lowest degree that’s cosmologists’ currently most pop explanation. According to their theory, the history of our existence began some billion years agone amongst a – forthwith absent – acre that propelled the universe into a stage of rapid expansion called “inflation.” When inflation ended, the acre decayed as well as its liberate energy was converted into radiations as well as particles which are silent closed to today. Inflation was proposed to a greater extent than than 35 years ago, amidst others, past times Paul Steinhardt. But Steinhardt has conk i of the theory’s most fervent critics. In a recent article inwards Scientific American , Steinhardt together amongst Anna Ijjas as well as Avi Loeb, don’t handgrip back. Most cosmologists, they claim, are uncritical believers: “[T]he cosmology community has non taken a cold, honest await at the large bang inflationary theory ...