powerlineblog--2019-12-11--“The Racialization of Epistemology in Physics”

Is this the dumbest thing I have ever read? It definitely is a contender: “Making Black Women Scientists under White Empiricism: The Racialization of Epistemology in Physics.” The link goes to an abstract of an article that was published by the University of Chicago–God help us!–by one Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Department of Women’s and Gender Studies University of New Hampshire. You think that is a weird combination? Well, it is a weird paper. I studied physics many years ago, and as I recall there are laws of physics that have been empirically tested and verified. How could race possibly have anything to do with it? Silly me:  In this article, I propose that race and ethnicity impact epistemic outcomes in physics, despite the universality of the laws that undergird physics, and I introduce the concept of white empiricism to provide one explanation for why. White empiricism is the phenomenon through which only white people (particularly white men) are read has having a fundamental capacity for objectivity and Black people (particularly Black women) are produced as an ontological other.  Which somehow impacts their ability to solve physics problems, evidently.  This is completely insane. I can only assume that it is an embarrassing excuse for an unsuccessful career.  Hmm, let me hazard a guess. Because it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with race, maybe?  This suggests a lack of understanding of basic physics:  Albert Einstein’s monumental contribution to our empirical understanding of gravity is rooted in the principle of covariance, which is the simple idea that there is no single objective frame of reference that is more objective than any other (Sachs 1993). All frames of reference, all observers, are equally competent and capable of observing the universal laws that underlie the workings of our physical universe. Yet the number of women in physics remains low, especially those of African descent….  Much more at the link; there is no end to the stupidity. Just one more:  White empiricism produces a prestige asymmetry between the viewpoints of white scientists and Black scientists, a disparity inscribed by white supremacy. Given the historical construction of Blackness as those who manually labor for free and whose children are destined to do the same and whiteness as those who are not Black, Native, or Asian, the prestige asymmetry between physics specializations runs parallel to that of Black people as manual laborers and white people as intellectual high achievers.  The reader who emailed me a link to this travesty draws a practical conclusion:  My only question is: why are we paying for this garbage? Because taxation is the basic foundation of the academic-industrial complex. This bimbo has a PhD, which requires a six year process massively subsidized and aggressively self-aggrandizing in scope. Shut this s*** down by massive defunding….  If the taxpayers had any idea what they are paying for, they would burn down Washington and many state capitals.  Meanwhile, responding to Ms. Prescod-Weinstein’s screed about the dominance of whiteness in physics–a legacy of slavery!–Steve Sailer posts this photo of the 2018 U.S. Physics Team, consisting of top high school physics students who represented the U.S. in the international Physics Olympics:  How white can you get? Making up excuses for failure has been common throughout human history, but only in the 21st century has absurd excuse-making become a taxpayer-funded industry.


sottnet--2019-03-21--Atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method prize-winning physicist says

Atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method, prize-winning physicist says

Marcelo Gleiser, a 60-year-old Brazil-born theoretical physicist at Dartmouth College and prolific science popularizer, has won this year's Templeton Prize. Valued at just under $1.5 million, the award from the John Templeton Foundation annually recognizes an individual "who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension." Its past recipients include scientific luminaries such as Sir Martin Rees and Freeman Dyson, as well as religious or political leaders such as Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.Across his 35-year scientific career, Gleiser's research has covered a wide breadth of topics, ranging from the properties of the early universe to the behavior of fundamental particles and the origins of life. But in awarding him its most prestigious honor, the Templeton Foundation chiefly cited his status as a leading public intellectual revealing "the historical, philosophical and cultural links between science, the humanities and spirituality." He is also the first Latin American to receive the prize.Scientific American spoke with Gleiser about the award, how he plans to advance his message of consilience, the need for humility in science, why humans are special, and the fundamental source of his curiosity as a physicist.[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]Scientific American: First off, congratulations! How did you feel when you heard the news?Marcelo Gleiser: It was quite a shocker. I feel tremendously honored, very humbled and kind of nervous. It's a cocktail of emotions, to be honest. I put a lot of weight on the fact that I'm the first Latin American to get this. That, to me anyway, is important - and I'm feeling the weight on my shoulders now. I have my message, you know. The question now is how to get it across as efficiently and clearly as I can, now that I have a much bigger platform to do that from.You've written and spoken eloquently about nature of reality and consciousness, the genesis of life, the possibility of life beyond Earth, the origin and fate of the universe, and more. How do all those disparate topics synergize into one, cohesive message for you?To me, science is one way of connecting with the mystery of existence. And if you think of it that way, the mystery of existence is something that we have wondered about ever since people began asking questions about who we are and where we come from. So while those questions are now part of scientific research, they are much, much older than science. I'm not talking about the science of materials, or high-temperature superconductivity, which is awesome and super important, but that's not the kind of science I'm doing.Right. So which aspect of your work do you think is most relevant to the Templeton Foundation's spiritual aims?Probably my belief in humility. I believe we should take a much humbler approach to knowledge, in the sense that if you look carefully at the way science works, you'll see that yes, it is wonderful - magnificent! - but it has limits. And we have to understand and respect those limits. And by doing that, by understanding how science advances, science really becomes a deeply spiritual conversation with the mysterious, about all the things we don't know. So that's one answer to your question. And that has nothing to do with organized religion, obviously, but it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic.Why are you against atheism?And I think obviously the Templeton Foundation likes all of this, because this is part of an emerging conversation. It's not just me; it's also my colleague the astrophysicist Adam Frank , and a bunch of others, talking more and more about the relation between science and spirituality.So, a message of humility, open-mindedness and tolerance. Other than in discussions of God, where else do you see the most urgent need for this ethos?You know, I'm a " Rare Earth " kind of guy. I think our situation may be rather special, on a planetary or even galactic scale. So when people talk about Copernicus and Copernicanism - the 'principle of mediocrity' that states we should expect to be average and typical, I say, "You know what? It's time to get beyond that." When you look out there at the other planets (and the exoplanets that we can make some sense of), when you look at the history of life on Earth, you will realize this place called Earth is absolutely amazing. And maybe, yes, there are others out there, possibly - who knows, we certainly expect so - but right now what we know is that we have this world, and we are these amazing molecular machines capable of self-awareness, and all that makes us very special indeed. And we know for a fact that there will be no other humans in the universe; there may be some humanoids somewhere out there, but we are unique products of our single, small planet's long history.The point is, to understand modern science within this framework is to put humanity back into kind of a moral center of the universe, in which we have the moral duty to preserve this planet and its life with everything that we've got, because we understand how rare this whole game is and that for all practical purposes we are alone. For now, anyways. We have to do this! This is a message that I hope will resonate with lots of people,I think you know this message well.I do. But let me play devil's advocate for a moment, only because earlier you referred to the value of humility in science. Some would say now is not the time to be humble, given the rising tide of active, open hostility to science and objectivity around the globe. How would you respond to that?This is of course something people have already told me: "Are you really sure you want to be saying these things?" And my answer is yes, absolutely.So, okay, you're going to develop a self-driving car? Good! But how will that car handle hard choices , like whether to prioritize the lives of its occupants or the lives of pedestrian bystanders? Is it going to just be the technologist from Google who decides? Let us hope not!And so, what do I say? I say be honest. There is a quote from the physicist Frank Oppenheimer that fits here: "The worst thing a son of a bitch can do is turn you into a son of a bitch." Which is profane but brilliant. I'm not going to lie about what science can and cannot do because politicians are misusing science and trying to politicize the scientific discourse. I'm going to be honest about the powers of science so that people can actually believe me for my honesty and transparency. If you don't want to be honest and transparent, you're just going to become a liar like everybody else. Which is why I get upset by misstatements, like when you have scientists - Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss among them - claiming we have solved the problem of the origin of the universe, or that string theory is correct and that the final "theory of everything" is at hand. Such statements are bogus. So, I feel as if I am a guardian for the integrity of science right now; someone you can trust because this person is open and honest enough to admit that the scientific enterprise has limitations - which doesn't mean it's weak!You mentioned string theory, and your skepticism about the notion of a final "theory of everything." Where does that skepticism come from?This relates to a metaphor I developed that I used as the title of a book, The Island of Knowledge . Knowledge advances, yes? But it's surrounded by this ocean of the unknown. The paradox of knowledge is that as it expands and the boundary between the known and the unknown changes, you inevitably start to ask questions that you couldn't even ask before.I don't want to discourage people from looking for unified explanations of nature because yes, we need that. A lot of physics is based on this drive to simplify and bring things together. But on the other hand, it is the blank statement that there could ever be a theory of everything that I think is fundamentally wrong from a philosophical perspective.So then how do you go ahead and justify doing research if you don't think you can get to the final answer? Well, because research is not about the final answer, it's about the process of discovery. It's what you find along the way that matters, and it is curiosity that moves the human spirit forward.Speaking of curiosity... You once wrote , "Scientists, in a sense, are people who keep curiosity burning, trying to find answers to some of the questions they asked as children." As a child, was there a formative question you asked, or an experience you had, that made you into the scientist you are today? Are you still trying to answer it?I'm still completely fascinated with how much science can tell about the origin and evolution of the universe. Modern cosmology and astrobiology have most of the questions I look for - the idea of the transition from nonlife, to life, to me, is absolutely fascinating. But to be honest with you, the formative experience was that I lost my mom. I was six years old, and that loss was absolutely devastating. It put me in contact with the notion of time from a very early age. And obviously religion was the thing that came immediately, because I'm Jewish, but I became very disillusioned with the Old Testament when I was a teenager, and then I found Einstein. That was when I realized, you can actually ask questions about the nature of time and space and nature itself using science. That just blew me away. And so I think it was a very early sense of loss that made me curious about existence. And if you are curious about existence, physics becomes a wonderful portal, because it brings you close to the nature of the fundamental questions: space, time, origins. And I've been happy ever since.Lee Billings is an associate editor for Scientific American. He covers space and physics.


sottnet--2019-12-27--Falling Felines: The surprisingly complicated physics of why cats always land on their feet

Scientists are not immune to the alluringly aloof charms of the domestic cat. Sure, Erwin Schrödinger could be accused of animal cruelty for his famous thought experiment, but Edwin Hubble had a cat named Copernicus , who sprawled across the papers on the astronomer's desk as he worked, purring contentedly. A Siamese cat named Chester was even listed as co-author ( F.D.C. Willard ) with physicist Jack H. Hetherington on a low-temperature physics paper in 1975 , published in Physical Review Letters. So perhaps it's not surprising that there is a long, rich history , spanning some 300 years, of scientists pondering the mystery of how a falling cat somehow always manages to land on their feet, a phenomenon known as "cat-turning.""The falling cat is often sort of a sideline area in research," physicist and cat lover Greg Gbur told Ars. "Cats have a reputation for being mischievous and well-represented in the history. The cats just sort of pop in where you least expect them. They manage to cause a lot of trouble in the history of science, as well as in my personal science. I often say that cats are cleverer than we think, but less clever than they think." A professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Gbur gives a lively, entertaining account of that history in his recent book, Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics Over the centuries, scientists offered four distinct hypotheses to explain the phenomenon. There is the original "tuck and turn" model, in which the cat pulls in one set of paws so it can rotate different sections of its body. Nineteenth century physicist James Clerk Maxwell offered a "falling figure skater" explanation, whereby the cat tweaks its angular momentum by pulling in or extending its paws as needed. Then there is the "bend and twist" (not to be confused with the " bend and snap " maneuver immortalized in the 2001 comedy Legally Blonde ), in which the cat bends at the waist to counter-rotate the two segments of its body. Finally, there is the "propeller tail," in which the cat can reverse its body's rotation by rotating its tail in one direction like a propeller. A cat most likely employs some aspects of all these as it falls, according to Gbur.Gbur is quick to offer a cautionary word of advice to anyone considering their own feline experiments:— even in the name of science. Ars sat down with Gbur to learn more about this surprisingly prolific area of research.: It really started with my love of the history of science and writing about it on my blog . One day, I was browsing old science journals, and I came across an 1894 paper about photographs of a falling cat landing on his feet. I wrote a blog post about it. But I wasn't completely satisfied with the explanation, and I realized there were more papers on the subject. Every time I did a search, I found another paper offering another angle on the problem. Even in the last few weeks of writing the book, I still kept coming across minor little papers that gave me a little bit of a different take on the history. It was surprising just how many papers there were about the falling cat problem. The more you look, the more you find people intrigued by how a cat lands on his feet. It seems like a problem that would be readily solvable.: Yes. Maxwell did his own preliminary investigations of the subject, but he pointed out that when you drop a cat from roughly two feet, it can still land on its feet, even if you're dropping it upside down. That's a really short period of time. The human eye simply can't resolve that. So it was a problem that was largely not solvable until the technology was there to do high speed photography. Étienne-Jules Marey did the first high speed photographs of falling down. It was almost an afterthought for him. He was doing all these different high-speed photographs of different animals, because that was his research, studying living creatures in motion. He presented the images of a falling cat , and it genuinely shocked the scientific community. One of the members at the meeting where the photographs were presented, said (and I paraphrase), "This young Marey has presented us with a problem that seems to go against the known laws of physics."The motions that are depicted in the photographs are quite complicated. The explanation given is part of the truth, but it seemed incomplete. It was good enough to convince physicists that a cat wasn't violating the laws of physics, but it wasn't good enough to convince everyone that it was the right explanation, or the complete explanation.: This is part of why it was such a challenge: all these different motions play a role. If you're looking at a series of photographs or a video of a falling cat, it becomes almost a psychological problem. Different people, their attention is going to be drawn by different aspects of a motion. But the most important is a bend and twist motion. The cat bends at the waist and counter rotates the upper and lower halves of its body in order to cancel those motions out. When one goes through the math, that seems to be the most fundamental aspect of how a cat turns over. But there are all these little corrections on top of that: using the tail, or using the paws for additional leverage, also play a role. So the fundamental explanation comes down to essentially bend and twist, but then there's all these extra little corrections to it.: I don't know that there's anybody actively studying the cat model to try and get the finer details. It's reached a point where understanding how a cat does it has reached, as a 19th century physicist once said, "hunting for higher decimal places." Part of the catch is that every cat may do things just a little bit differently, because they are living creatures. You have heavier cats and lighter cats. I've got varieties of both at home. Longer cats and shorter cats. Each of them may twist and bend and tuck and turn just a little bit differently.If you watch videos of falling cats, you will see thatSo from a physics point of view, the problem has reached a level where the details depend on the specific cat. People will still argue about it. I think a lot of physicists don't realize how complicated the problem is, and they're often just looking for a single simple solution. Physicists have an instinct to look for simple solutions, but. And those two approaches are not always the same.The emphasis these days is in that robotics area. Can we actually make a robot that can flip over like this, in as effective a way as a cat can. You can design a robot that, if you drop it upside down, can land right side up, but a cat can flip over and land right side up regardless of how it started — whether it's upside down, whether it's spinning, whether it's on its side. There's a video clip of a cat leaping up to grab a toy and it ends up flipping partially end over end as it leaps. And it does multiple twists and nevertheless manages to still land on its feet. That's the sort of thing that I don't think anybody has managed to get a robot to do yet. "Hey, I'm just gonna throw this robot up in the air with any sort of spinning motion I want, and nevertheless, have it still land perfectly on its feet."Two different approaches to the falling cat problem intersect in robotics. You can use mechanical models to try and understand what a cat is doing, and then you can also use robotics to try and replicate the cat's motion properly. One is an analysis problem, where you're saying, "I want to understand what's going on." The second part is a synthesis problem where you say, "I'm going to try and make a machine that can accurately reproduce it.": The basic idea is that there are a lot of physics problems where you can cycle the system. You start with the system and one condition, and you bring it through some change of behavior back to its original condition. But nevertheless it ends with a different behavior than it started. The falling cat is a good example. The cat starts upside down with his back straight, ends up right side up with his back straight. Even though it's twisted and turned along the way, it ends up with a straight back again, but it's now rotated 180 degrees.Foucault's pendulum is where you have this pendulum oscillating on the earth, a full day goes by, and the earth has done a full revolution. So the pendulum is spatially back where it started at the beginning of the previous day, but it is swinging in a different direction. The really remarkable thing is that the mathematics is structurally similar for all these different problems. So if you understand the falling cat problem, you understand a little bit about Foucault's pendulum and how it works. Batterman also ties falling cats to polarized light and parallel parking as manifestations of the geometric phase in physics.: One reason I always emphasize learning a lot of science history is that it gives us a better understanding of how science is done. In basic physics classes, we're often taught a very abbreviated and abridged version of the history, where you're given the straight line path that leads to the end. I think of science history as sort of a maze. You've got a bunch of people wandering through this maze and a lot of people hit dead ends. That's very natural, because nobody knows what they're looking for. When we're taught the history of science in class, we're often only taught about the person who made it to the end of the maze without making any mistakes.For students, that can give a very false impression that science is always about, "Yes, I know exactly what I'm doing and I know exactly where I'm going." That isn't the case. For the general public, it's often useful to realize that, yes,. That is not a condemnation of science, but the natural way things work.


sputnik--2019-09-29--What are you Scientists Find Six Galaxies that Contradict the Laws of Physics

What are you?! Scientists Find Six Galaxies that Contradict the Laws of Physics

Scientists rarely make discoveries that lead them to question the very foundation of science, but according to the laws of physics, these galaxies should not exist. A team led by Pavel Mancera Piña of the University Groningen used the Dutch Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope and US Very Large Array Observatory to examine these six faint dwarf galaxies. This type of galaxy has not been studied in detail, as they provide little light.  What they discovered defied all known laws of physics. The dwarf galaxies and their environment do not contain any dark matter, hence they should not exist. Previously it was thought that dwarf galaxies exist only if they are held together by dark matter. The scientists tried to provide a few explanations to this cryptic discovery, but they are still struggling to solve the mystery.  Experts say that either these galaxies didn’t have dark matter to begin with or over time it began to dwindle. Earlier, another research group discovered two similar galaxies.


theindependent--2019-03-12--Zhores Alferov physicist who provided the molecular foundation for our digital society

Zhores Alferov: physicist who provided the molecular foundation for our digital society

Zhores Alferov was the Nobel prize-winning Russian physicist who developed a semiconductor that helped usher in the modern information revolution. This proved an integral part of such wide-ranging technologies as barcode readers, mobile phones, light-emitting diodes and fibre-optic cables.  Alferov, who died in Saint Petersburg aged 88, was a pioneer in the development of semiconductor heterostructures, key parts of laser diodes and fast, tiny transistors. He also served as a Communist Party member in the Russian parliament, where he sought to safeguard scientific research.  He and Herbert Kroemer, an engineer and physicist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, shared half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for their independent work on semiconductor heterostructures. The other half of the prize went to Texas Instruments engineer Jack Kilby for helping to invent the integrated circuit.  Developed in the mid-20th century, semiconductors made possible the high-speed, low-power switching of electric currents on and off. This opened the doors to the computer era and the rapid transmission of information.  While early semiconductors were often made of silicon, heterostructure semiconductors were made of two different substances, including compounds of gallium and arsenic. They were more efficient, offered far higher speeds of on-off switching, and were more suitable for guiding signals into and out of optical fibres.  The Nobel committee credited heterostructure semiconductors and the integrated circuit, known as the microchip, with providing the molecular foundation for the reshaping of society.  Zhores Ivanovich Alferov was born in Vitebsk, in what is now Belarus, in 1930. His mother was a homemaker and librarian; his father was a committed Bolshevik who led a cavalry unit in the Russian civil war and recounted meetings with Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.  Alferov’s first name, Zhores, was a Russian rendition of the last name of Jean Jaures, a French socialist leader who was assassinated in 1914. Alferov’s older brother was given the first name Marx in honour of Karl Marx and was killed while serving in the Red Army during the Second World War.  Zhores developed an interest in physics while at an all-boys school in Minsk and, in 1952, graduated from the Electrotechnical University in what was then known as Leningrad. He completed his schooling at the city’s Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, where he worked as a senior researcher and laboratory head before being elected director in 1987.  Alferov and his laboratory began producing heterostructure devices in the late 1960s. Of “utmost importance”, he wrote in a biographical sketch for the Nobel, was the production of lasers that could operate at room temperature.  He recalled that on his first visit to the US in 1969, a report he developed on laser advances “produced an impression of an exploded bomb on American colleagues”. A competition ensued to develop a continuous-wave laser operating at room temperature, and Alferov said his lab defeated Bell Labs in New Jersey by a month, resulting in the “rapid development of optical fibre communication”.  Alferov had two children with his wife, Tamara Darskaya.  In his biographical sketch, Alferov emphasised the importance of upholding scientific research through the Russian Academy of Sciences. The academy was nearly dissolved in the 1920s, he said, when it was viewed as “an inheritance from the tsarist regime”, and faced a similar threat in the 1990s, when it was deemed “an inheritance from the totalitarian Soviet regime”.  Alferov said scientific workers of all kinds stood firm in support of the academy, and that he consented to become a member of Russia’s parliament in 1995 only to ensure the organisation’s safety. In doing so, he said, he and other researchers “made compromises with the power but never with the conscience”.  “All that had been made by human beings, in principle,” he added, “was made due to science”.  We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.  At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.


theindependent--2019-05-29--Science news in brief From the physics of chocolate to why snails lean left

Science news in brief: From the physics of chocolate to why snails lean left

What do chocolate and concrete have in common? More than you might think.  Chocolate is made by mixing liquid and finely ground cacao beans in a device that bears more than a passing resemblance to a cement mixer. In both cases, stirring tiny granules in a fluid results in a substance with very specific properties – for chocolate, it’s a meltingly smooth mouthfeel, and for concrete, it’s a cohesive, consistent texture.  However, while physicists have studied the physics of mixing concrete, few have taken a close look at the forces at work in chocolate conching, as the process is called. Now a team of physicists, funded in part by Mars, the confectionery company, is showing just what happens as the ingredients of chocolate are given a stir on their way to deliciousness.  When conching was invented in 1879 by Rodolphe Lindt, it could take more than a day of steady mixing for gritty chocolate to grow smooth. Today, it is a shorter process. For this study, the researchers spun cacao powder and oil in a conching machine for 40 minutes. What they saw was that much like what happens in a cement mixer, the dry paste formed from the powder and the fluid made shaggy clumps. Then it morphed into a more liquid-like state and started to flow. Adding oil near the end just encouraged the process.  Understanding the physics may help chocolatiers decide just how long and at what speed to conch chocolate, and when to add the right amounts of ingredients.  “Conching is one of the more energy expensive steps of chocolate making,” says Wilson Poon, a professor of physics at the University of Edinburgh who led the study. “We think that once you understand the actual process, it may well be possible to reduce the amount of energy used.”  The particular chocolate made in this study, alas, went untasted. “We don’t have a food grade lab,” says Daniel Hodgson, a researcher also at the University of Edinburgh and one of the co-authors, “so any samples prepared in our labs are only for experimentation.”  How Yosemite’s most famous rock is holding up  El Capitan rises more than 3,000 feet above the floor of Yosemite National Park in California. Scaling this granite edifice is considered a rite of passage among elite climbers.  But this behemoth is also the site of frequent rockfalls. More than 20 have occurred in the past decade, including one in 2017 that killed a climber. The majority of these falls have been linked to rock formations known as flakes, sheets of rock that are peeling off El Capitan like layers of onion skin.  With infrared imaging, scientists have now essentially peered behind two of the largest flakes, Boot Flake and Texas Flake, to determine how well they’re connected to El Capitan. The results, presented at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna in April, suggest that the underlying structures linking each flake to the 100 million-year-old granite are surprisingly small. By visualising these attachment points, scientists can monitor them to keep climbers safe.  Allen Glazner, a geologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill not involved in the research, says the study shows how much “glue” is holding these rocks up.  Hundreds of flakes dot the face of El Capitan. They’re unnerving to look at because they appear so precarious. “You can’t tell what holds those things up there,” Glazner says.  Boot Flake and Texas Flake are among El Capitan’s largest flakes: Boot Flake is about a third the size of a tennis court, and Texas Flake is about two times larger. They’re both located roughly halfway up a popular climbing route called The Nose. Climbers ascending The Nose move around these flakes, sometimes even shimmying between Texas Flake and the underlying rock face using a technique called “chimneying”.  In October 2015, researchers set up a camera capable of thermal imaging in El Capitan Meadow and photographed Boot Flake and Texas Flake. In all of the frames, the flakes stood out – they were a few degrees colder than the surrounding rock. That was consistent with cool air circulating around the backsides of the detached parts of the flakes, the scientists reasoned.  But a closer inspection of the images revealed something unexpected. Small sections of each flake – near the centre of Boot Flake and in the middle and lower part of Texas Flake – were slightly warmer than the rest of the formation. These thermal anomalies revealed the rock bridges where Boot Flake and Texas Flake are connected to the face of El Capitan, the researchers realised.  “We know that there are points of attachment,” says Greg Stock, a Yosemite National Park geologist and member of the research team. “But we’ve never been able to see them.”  Boot Flake is stable, at least for now, the researchers say. But Texas Flake’s tiny rock bridge likely isn’t sufficient to glue it in place. This formation is probably held up by another feature, an intact rock attachment that runs along its base.  What colour was T-rex? Or the triceratops? Until recently, the palette of prehistory was the stuff of daydreams, artists or kids with crayons. Advances in imaging technology are bringing us closer to real answers. In the past decade, we’ve learned that sinosauropteryx’s tail was striped, and microraptor’s head was blue-black and shiny.  And now a discovery in a fossilised mouse may help us find the true colours of dinosaurs and other ancient creatures. In a “false colour” synchrotron X-ray image of a mouse in Germany, the yellow regions are rich in zinc and sulphur, suggesting the mouse’s fur had red pigments. The researchers believe the creature contained pheomelanin – the same pigment that gives a red hue to chicken feathers, tiger fur and your freckles. Their findings will allow researchers to search for more evidence of this colouring across the fossil record.  Even in well-preserved fossils, pigments deteriorate quickly. Researchers have a few workarounds to find clues to colour. Some look for melanosomes, the organelles in animal cells that make and store pigments. The shape of a melanosome can indicate what type of pigment was once inside, while the organisation of melanosomes within a feather can suggest whether a bird (or dinosaur) was dull or iridescent.  Another technique is to look for more persistent molecules known to be associated with pigments. That’s the preferred tactic of this research group, which previously found evidence of eumelanin – a brown and black pigment – in the plumage of the feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx.  The researchers worked with two specimens of an extinct field mouse. Three million years ago, when several of these mice died, they were washed into a pond in what is now Willershausen, Germany. Quickly buried by sediment, they were spared many of the ravages of bacteria and time, and ended up in a University of Göttingen fossil drawer.  “By understanding that delicate relationship between zinc and sulphur, for the first time, we can confidently say, ‘Yes, this is pheomelanin pigment in the fossil record,’” says Phillip Manning, a geologist at the University of Manchester and the paper’s lead author.  More important than their conclusion about the mouse’s colour is what their process makes possible. Previous approaches to detecting colour were piecemeal or destructive. But “this new method appears to allow mapping of colour-giving pigments across a whole fossil”, without chipping any of it away, says Mike Benton, a palaeontologist at the University of Bristol who was not involved in the study.  The group is working on further streamlining of the scanning method, “so that it’s easy for anyone to come and bring in fossils”, Bergmann says.  It is a truth universally acknowledged – or at least much discussed on social media – that a woman who works in an office is in want of a sweater.  Office air conditioning is often set at a temperature that women find chilly; the resulting water-cooler debate has been called the “battle of the thermostat”. One study even suggested that because women have slower metabolic rates, the formula used to set temperatures in workplaces, which was developed decades ago based on the comfort of men, may overestimate women’s body heat production by 35 per cent.  But does temperature affect the productivity of men and women differently? A new study reports that at colder temperatures, men scored higher than women on verbal and math tests. But as a room grew warmer, women’s scores rose significantly. The findings require further confirmation under an assortment of conditions. But they add to a scientific rethinking of the spaces where we work and study, which sometimes have been devised with a limited set of physical requirements in mind.  Researchers asked more than 500 college students to take tests for an hour in rooms with temperatures between 61 and 90 degrees. The students performed math problems and rearranged a set of letters into as many words as they could. They were also asked to solve a series of logic problems. A pattern emerged. Scores on the logic problems did not vary among men and women as temperatures changed, but the math and verbal test scores did.  “If temperatures are cold, men are much better than women,” says Agne Kajackaite, an author of the study. “So there is this gender gap.” She adds: “But then when temperature increases, the gender gap disappears” on the math test, and women outpace men on the verbal test.  Why snails lean right, or left for that matter  Most snails live in shells that coil to the right. But some turn the other way. And then there was Jeremy, the garden snail with a left-coiled shell, whose struggle to find a left-coiled mate made him famous. He was finally paired up, leaving behind a litter that was born all right.  How Jeremy and other chiral or mirror-image snails – including a few species that are all-left – turn out like this has long baffled scientists. Studying these snails offers clues to the evolution of body plans in many animals. It also could be important for understanding why approximately one in 10,000 people are born with situs inversus, a condition where their internal organs are flipped like a lefty snail’s shell.  Now scientists are turning to Crispr – the powerful gene editing tool – to figure out why some snails turn out this way. A team in Japan led by Reiko Kuroda, a chemist and biologist, has successfully used the technique to manipulate a single gene responsible for shell direction in a species of great pond snail. The research, published in the journal Development, offers definitive proof of the genetic underpinnings of handedness in this species, and could lead to clues about left and right-handed mysteries in other organisms.  “Ten years ago you might not imagine there were any similarities in the left/right asymmetry of a snail and the left/right asymmetry of humans. But it’s becoming increasingly obvious that is the case,” says Angus Davison, an evolutionary geneticist who has studied Jeremy the lefty snail as well as chiral pond snails, but was not a part of Kuroda’s study.  As for Jeremy, Davison will be studying the lefty garden snail’s great-grand-snails for clues to what made their progenitor’s unusual coil.  “We’ve got a lab full of snails, lots and lots of them, but we’re still working to try and understand what it was that made Jeremy a lefty,” says Davison. “Unfortunately, snail research doesn’t move quickly.”

Joanna Klein, Veronique Greenwood, Cara Giaimo, Katherine Kornei


yahoonews--2019-09-13--A traffic jam around the moon Physicist Michio Kaku on aliens space travel and his search for th

'A traffic jam around the moon': Physicist Michio Kaku on aliens, space travel and his search for the 'God Equation'

BARCELONA, Spain — In 1955, when Michio Kaku was 8 years old growing up in San Jose, Calif., he somberly studied the front page of the evening newspaper. Below the photograph of a book on a desk, he read the caption “This is the unfinished manuscript of the greatest scientist of our time” — Albert Einstein, who died without realizing his dream of unifying all the known physical forces into one theory. Kaku decided then and there to dedicate his life to finishing it. The theoretical physicist and futurist, who teaches at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and collaborates with scientists outside Geneva at CERN, home to the Large Hadron Collider, believes that more than six decades later, physicists are almost there.  In Barcelona to speak at the third annual Ufology World Congress, Kaku, whose most recent book is “The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth,” spoke with Yahoo News on topics from the state of human evolution to the upcoming traffic jam around the moon.  The interview has been lightly edited for space and clarity:  Yahoo News: Fifty years ago, UFOs were front-page news, but now there’s a stigma when people talk about them seriously, particularly scientists. What’s behind that?  Michio Kaku: Traditionally, there’s been the giggle factor. Every time you talk to a physicist or a scientist about UFOs, their eyes kind of roll and they start to giggle. Science is based on things that are testable, reproducible and falsifiable.  So when scientists hear stories about UFOs, they’re thinking…  You mention that the game is changing. What’s causing that?  First, we have military pilots who have given us testable evidence, evidence we can now look at to calculate the parameters. Before, it was “something sailed over the sky!” What does that mean? We now know they travel between Mach 5 and Mach 20, we now know they zigzag such that the centrifugal force would crush any living tissue — so they must be cybernetic or robotic.  So there are two possibilities. … They could be hypersonic drones [which are being developed by Russia, the U.S. and China]. The other possibility that now has to be put on the table is that they’re extraterrestrial — which used to be the subject of the giggle factor. But now we’ve located 4,000 exoplanets around other stars in the galaxy.  For the first time in history, we have a census of the galaxy. We now know on average every star has a planet going around it — and about one in five has an Earth-like planet. That means there are billions of Earth-like planets orbiting other stars in our backyard, not even other galaxies.  That makes the chances seem somewhat higher that life could be out there somewhere. In the case that we do encounter aliens, should we assume they’re more advanced than we are?  I’m a physicist. We rank civilizations by energy. So one day when we intercept messages from alien civilizations, we’ll ask, What level are they?  A Type 1 civilization is planetary. They control the weather. They can modify volcanoes and earthquakes. Anything planetary, they control.  A Type 2 civilization is stellar. They control the star; they control the energy output of the entire star. They colonize nearby solar systems. They are immortal. Nothing known to science can destroy a Type 2 civilization. Meteors and comets can be deflected. If their star becomes unstable, they just leave and move to another star.  A Type 3 civilization, which is galactic, they can roam the galaxy.  Now, if we are visited by aliens from outer space, they’re possibly Type 2, more than likely Type 3, meaning they are thousands of years ahead of us in technology. Scientists giggle because a starship going between stars isn’t imaginable with our technology. What’s the mistake? The mistake is to assume extraterrestrials are only 100 years more advanced than us.  Where does our civilization fit on that scale?  If we grow at 3 percent per year in energy consumption … we will be a Type 1 civilization in 100 years, around 2100.  What is the internet? The first planetary technology to be developed. By 2100, we’ll have many planetary technologies. We’re seeing the beginning of a planetary language. English and Mandarin Chinese are the two most popular languages on the internet. The European Union is the beginning of a planetary economy. Rock and roll, the beginning of planetary youth culture. Chanel and Gucci, the beginning of planetary high fashion.  So we’re seeing the beginning of a planetary civilization, right in our own lifetime.  In 100 years, we will have our first starship. That’s already planned — to build a starship within 100 years, but it’s a primitive starship, very clunky, it looks like a Model T and is based on fusion.  By the time you’re a Type 2 or Type 3 civilization, you have other ways to travel. So when scientists giggle, it’s because they’re ignorant of the fact that these can be Type 2 or Type 3 civilizations, in which case their technology is far beyond what we can even imagine. That’s why we have to keep our eyes and ears open.  In your writings, you talk about how 99.99 percent of all species become extinct and that we need a Plan B or Planet B.  The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program, and that’s why they’re not here today. We do have a space program. And people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. When they were children, they dreamed of going to the stars. Now they have billions of dollars. They can take out their checkbook now and create a moon rocket.  We’re going to have a traffic jam around the moon very soon. Starting next year.  What do you mean — all those satellites that Musk is planning to launch?  All the satellites, and NASA has the SLS [Space Launch System] booster that next year will be test-fired. If all goes well, it will orbit around the moon unmanned and a few years after that humans will board the SLS booster rocket with the Orion space capsule. Elon Musk has a parallel program where he creates his own rockets, the Falcon Heavy, fully capable of going to the moon. And Jeff Bezos has the Armstrong rocket. Then the Chinese have the Long March rocket. So think about that — not one, not two, not three, but four moon rockets. We’re going to have a traffic jam around the moon.  And Elon Musk would like to take it one step further and go to Mars. Then again, he has the rocket to prove it. It’s called the BFR — “B” for big, “R” for rocket, “F” for your imagination. It’s been dubbed “The Starship,” and it’s the biggest rocket on the books right now.  We need Plan B, an insurance policy. I don’t think we should move our civilization to Mars — that’s too expensive. [But] the cost is going down.  It costs $10,000 a pound [to put] anything into orbit around the Earth. To put you on the moon, it’s about $100,000 a pound. To put you on Mars, about $1 million a pound. But the prices are dropping — that’s the key.  And now Elon Musk has a reusable rocket. Why’s that important? Because if cars were not reusable, every time you took your car on a ride, you junked your car, cars would be prohibitively expensive. That’s what we do with rockets. We junk them. Once rockets become fully reusable, that’s going to open up space.  Beyond scientists, what’s behind the knee-jerk reaction to dismiss any talk of alien life as tinfoil-hat blather? Is it a human distrust of “the unknown” or what?  Look at the year 1600, when the monk Bruno was burned alive in Rome for proclaiming there were aliens up there. The Catholic Church was threatened by the idea that you could have a civilization outside of the Catholic Church. Do they have the sacraments, do they have saints, do they have Jesus Christ, do they have the Trinity? It’s better just to burn people rather than confront that.  [Johannes] Kepler wrote the first science fiction story, believe it or not. It was called “The Dream” — he had to say it was a dream. He dreamed about going to the moon and visiting moon people. So he wrote the first modern science fiction story, but he had to write it as a dream because he knew what happened to Bruno.  So we’ve always been frightened of “the other.” As Arthur C. Clarke said, “Either they’re out there, or they’re not. Either way, the thought is frightening.”  If they’re not out there, that means we’re alone in the universe — that’s frightening. And if they’re there, it’s frightening because then we wonder, “Who are they? What do they want?”  My colleague Stephen Hawking, the late physicist, said we should be careful announcing our existence. Because look what happened to Montezuma when he met Cortés — he thought Cortés was a god. In fact, Cortés was a pirate and a plunderer of civilizations. He just wanted gold.  So what would aliens want?  That’s the other question. Do they want gold, minerals, water?  Well, we don’t have anything that they would want. Gold is not precious for an extraterrestrial civilization. It’s a rather useless metal as a conductor of electricity. Water? There’s plenty of ice in outer space. We don’t have anything they would want to plunder. So I think for the most part, they’re going to be peaceful.  If they’re already Type 2 or Type 3, they’ve had plenty of time to work out sectarian, religious and racial differences. So I think for the most part, they’ll be peaceful. But we should still be a little bit careful. We don’t really know what their opinions are.  So tell us about your work in string field theory. You’re trying to finish Einstein’s equation?  That’s right. We want to find the “God Equation” — the ultimate theory that explains the entire universe. We want an equation that’s maybe 1 inch long that would allow us to “read the mind of God” — those are Einstein’s words.  And how’s it going?  We think we have it! It’s called string theory. It’s not in its final form, and it’s not testable yet, [but] we have the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva.  We’re testing the periphery of the theory, but the theory itself is a theory of the universe — so it’s very hard to test. But we physicists are optimistic. We think we will be able to test the theory. And we think it is the final theory. So physics ends at that point. Another era opens up, but one era ends when we finally prove this is the Theory of Everything.  What’s your office like? How do you work?  It’s like how a musician works. Musicians have melodies playing in their heads. And they look out the window and once in a while they sit down at the piano and pluck out melodies. Then they go back to staring out the window again. Because they’ve memorized all the notes, all the tunes, and they’re just dancing in their head.  For us, it’s equations, not melodies. I’ve memorized all the equations of string theory — they’re just floating in my head. And I have to piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle, just like a musician pieces together notes to create a symphony. So it’s close to music.  If string theory is correct, it means that all the subatomic particles — the electrons, the protons — are nothing but musical notes on a tiny vibrating rubber band. So that physics is nothing but the harmonies of the vibrating rubber bands. Chemistry is nothing but the melodies you can create from the vibrating strings. The universe is a symphony of strings.  And the mind of God is cosmic music resonated through hyperspace.  With all your parallel universes, where does death fit into that model?  Within a few decades, we will have, first of all, digital immortality — that will come very fast — and eventually, genetic immortality. Digital immortality is when we digitize everything known about you — there are several companies advertising to digitize your relatives, so you can talk to your parents forever. It’s not science fiction anymore.  I would love to talk to Einstein. One day somebody will digitize everything known about him — his memoirs, diaries, tapes, interviews, everything. One day we may be digitized and our descendants, even our great-great-grandchildren, will want to talk to us because we have been digitized. So I think when we meet aliens from outer space, they’ll be immortal.  Genetic immortality is further down the line, but already we’ve identified many genes, about 60 so far, linked to the aging process. But with what’s called CRISPR technology, we’ll have genetic engineering, and we’ll be able to edit out a lot of the mistakes that cause aging. Aging, by the way, is error — a buildup of error in our DNA — that’s what aging is: the accumulation of error. But we can correct these errors.  So genetic engineering will be possible. I think our grandkids might reach the age of 30 and stop. They may like being 30 for a few hundred years. This is coming very fast.  When we meet aliens from outer space, I think they’re probably be part genetic, part cybernetic, because the rigors of outer space are pretty severe.  I find your books are like a drug that pulls readers into a different world. Why do you write them? Why bother to explain all these things to the masses?  When I was 8 years old, something happened which changed my whole outlook on life. They announced that a great scientist had died and in the evening newspaper they put a picture of his desk with an open book. And the caption said, “This is the unfinished manuscript of the greatest scientist of our time.” So I said to myself, what could be so hard that a great man couldn’t finish it?  So I went to the library over the years and read up on this strange man and his desk. It turns out his name was Albert Einstein, and that unfinished book was the unified field theory. I said this is better than any adventure story. I wanted to read that book that he couldn’t finish. So today I can read that book — and I see all the dead ends and frustrations he had; today we can solve many of the equations that he couldn’t because we have string theory.  So it’s sad that Einstein died in 1955 because the string revolution was several decades later.  Do you think humanity is still evolving?  With civilization, the smallest unit of history is the decade. Anything smaller and you get random fluctuations, and you go crazy trying to figure out all these blips and bumps. But if you look at it decade by decade, then you see the sweep of technology. You realized our grandparents lived before telephones, radios, the telegraph was just coming in, high speed travel was the horse, and long distance communication was yelling out the window. And people didn’t live very long — for most of human history, life expectancy was about 30 or under. So today, when you look at it decade by decade, you see the enormous progress that was made. Every time I read the newspaper, I see the birth pangs of a Type 1 [planetary] civilization. It’s not going to be easy, there are ups and downs, but that, I think, will be the greatest transition in modern civilization, when we hit Type 1 and have a planetary system — not necessary a planetary government, we’ll have many governments —but a planetary society, planetary thinking, a planetary culture. I think that’s beginning already.  In that sense, yes. I read political commentaries and they act like one little blip is the end of the world. And I say, it’s just a blip you’re talking about.  Look at the march of history.  Download the Yahoo News app to customize your experience.


sputnik--2019-01-02--Russian Physicists Come Closer to Plasma Engine for Superfast Space Travel

Physicists from the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk are preparing another round of experiments aimed at successfully harnessing the power of thermonuclear plasma for use in a rocket engine, institute deputy director Alexander Ivanov has told journalists.  The experiments, which will begin later this month, will follow up on earlier successful tests which confirmed the feasibility of confining plasma in an experimental setup using parameters suitable for a rocket engine, Ivanov said.  sPHENIX Project: How Scientists Study “Soup” That Gave Rise to Universe In late 2018, the institute began operation of a unique installation, known as the SMOLA, the Russian acronym for "Spiral-based Magnetic Open Trap", with the setup serving as the first step forward toward the creation of a fusion reactor. The "plasma trap" allowed scientists to work on confining plasma in a linear magnetic system, which, it is hoped, can eventually help lead to the creation of prototype plasma engine suitable for space travel.  "The first experiments showed that the effect exists. The space engine works, and the means to reducing plasma losses as well. Presently, standard equipment is installed. We are preparing to start experiments on it in January 2019 which should fully demonstrate its capabilities," Ivanov said.  According to the physicist, the current setup serves as a technology demonstrator, with scientists achieving a temperature of 100,000 degrees to form the plasma, and reaching a sufficient density to provide them with data suitable for further work on the creation of a plasma-based rocket engine.  In October, Energomash, a Russian power engineering company involved in the production of rocket engines, announced plans to build a high-powered electrode-less plasma rocket engine. Russia's Kurchatov Institute and the Chemical Automatics Design Bureau first reported that they were working on a plasma-based engine for space travel in 2016.  Interstellar for Real: Meet the Nuclear-Powered Spaceships of the Future Other countries, including the United States, are engaged in similar developments. In 2015, NASA awarded private plasma rocket technology firm Ad Astra a contract on the creation of the "Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket" (VASIMR), with the proposed engines operating by heating pressurised gas to extremely high temperatures using radio waves and keeping the resulting plasma under control using magnetic fields.  Plasma-based rocket engines are one of several proposed options for human exploration of other planets in our solar system, and beyond it.


sottnet--2019-10-11--US Navy files patent for compact fusion reactor

The War Zone has been reporting on a set of bizarre patents assigned to theYou can learn all about these patents, their viability, and the issues surrounding them in these exclusive features of ours . Now, the same mysterious Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division engineer behind those patents has produced another patent — one for a compact fusion reactor that could pump out absolutely incredible amounts of power in a small space — maybe even in a craft.Energy dominance has become a cornerstone of American military policy as laboratories seek to develop the 'Holy Grail' of power generation: nuclear fusion. These attempts at developing stable fusion reactors utilize incredibly powerful magnetic fields in order to contain the nuclear reactions occurring inside. Creating a stable fusion reaction is difficult enough, but some laboratories are going even further by attempting to create compact reactors small enough to fit inside shipping containers or even possibly vehicles.The form of nuclear power generation employed in nuclear reactors today is fission, in which unstable isotopes of uranium and other radioactive materials are bombarded with particles, splitting them apart and releasing energy. Fusion, on the other hand, involves uniting atoms of hydrogen isotopes like Tritium and Deuterium under extreme pressure and temperature to produce helium isotopes and neutrons, a process that releases large amounts of energy.If it can be achieved, nuclear fusion would be a massive improvement over fission in that it produces much lower levels of radioactive waste and greenhouse gases, does not require enriched nuclear material that could be used to produce weapons, has a far lower risk of meltdown, and can be powered by more sustainable fuel sources. Fusion has long been hailed as a long-term solution to humankind's energy needs.While nuclear physicists and engineers have been conducting experiments with fusion reactor designs for decades, it remains challenging, to say the least, to engineer systems that can contain temperatures of hundreds of millions of degrees Fahrenheit and extremely high pressures. Most of the world's 'successful' fusion reactors are currently only able to maintain plasma discharges for periods of time measured in minutes or even seconds.Even more challenging is designing nuclear fusion reactors that are mobile, such as ones that might fit inside a shipping container or a ship. Currently, most of the world's experimental fusion reactors are the size of large buildings and the ultimate goal of much current research is to develop compact fusion reactor systems, or CFRs, small enough to work on a ship or possibly even an aircraft.In spite of these hurdles, think tanks, such as the American Security Project, believe that fusion reactors in the 21st Century will provide low cost, carbon-free energy to the world, and predict that the United States can lead the world in finally realizing safe and stable nuclear fusion reactors.The War Zone has been reporting on Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works work to create a game-changing compact fusion reactor. The elite aerospace design unit has been constructing a new, more powerful experimental reactor as recently as July 2019.Aside from Lockheed Martin, several private firms have been developing their own compact fusion reactors in recent years, and the government-run Chinese Academy of Sciences has claimed to have made significant progress in developing fusion reactors that could one day be capable of producing revolutionary levels of energy.While Lockheed Martin's CFR designs have garnered quite a bit of media attention and internet buzz in recent years, it appears one of the Skunk Works' major clients is also hard at work in this field. The U.S. Navy has filed a potentially revolutionary patent application for a radical new compact fusion reactor that claims to improve upon the shortcomings of the Skunk Works CFR, and judging from the identity of the reactor's inventor, it's sure to raise eyebrows in the scientific community.This latest design is the brainchild of the elusive Salvatore Cezar Pais, the inventor of the Navy's bizarre and controversial room temperature superconductors , high energy electromagnetic field generators, and sci-fi-sounding propulsion technologies that The War Zone has previously reported on. The patent for Pais' "Plasma Compression Fusion Device" was applied for on March 22, 2018, and was just published on September 26, 2019. The claim states, in part:It is claimed in the patent application that this plasma compression fusion device is capable of producing power in the gigawatt (1 billion watts) to terawatt (1 trillion watts) range and above with input power only in the kilowatt (1,000 watts) to megawatt (1,000,000 watts) range. By comparison, America's largest nuclear power plant, the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona, generates around 4,000 megawatts (4 gigawatts), and the A1B nuclear reactors designed for the Navy's Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers generate around 700 megawatts . The patent even claims that the device can "possibly lead to ignition plasma burn, that is self-sustained plasma burn without need for external input power."Most fusion reactor designs employ magnetic confinement to contain fusion reactions. This involves torus-shaped coils of superconductors to produce powerful magnetic fields that confine a reactor's plasma core.The Navy's new plasma compression fusion device, however, claims as its key feature the same principle as in Salvatore Pais' other inventions: the "controlled motion of electrically charged matter via accelerated vibration and/or accelerated spin subjected to smooth yet rapid acceleration transients, in order to generate extremely high energy/high intensity electromagnetic fields." Pais cites some of his prior publications as evidence that this type of spinning, vibrating electromagnetic system can create the high magnetic fields required to contain powerful fusion reaction in a stable form.The patent describes how those magnetic fields are generated within a hollow plasma chamber which includes one or more opposing pairs of conical or domed "counter-spinning dynamic fusors" that feature an electrically charged outer surface containing ducts that inject fuel gases, such as Deuterium or Deuterium-Xenon, into the plasma chamber. As these electrically-charged fusors spin, Pais claims, they "create a concentrated magnetic energy flux and electromagnetic radiation within the vacuum chamber," compressing and heating the gasses within. These fusors vibrate at a high rate as they spin thanks to piezoelectric films such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT) - the same piezoelectric metamaterial Pais claims enables his room-temperature superconductor patent Like the other bizarre Salvatore Pais patents we've covered previously, the extent to which this patent represents an operable, functioning, or even feasible technology isn't clear. The Navy has vouched for some of his designs in the past, however, going so far as to claim these inventions actually exist in an operable form and that they are needed for national security purposes, most notably to keep pace with adversaries like China . But unlike some of Pais' patents, this application sailed through the United States Patent and Trademark Office without rejection and subsequent appeal.Curiously, the patent states that "the invention will be discussed in a space, sea, or terrestrial environment" but notes that "this invention can be utilized for any type of application that requires the use of energy generation." It is unclear what type of application may exist other than space, sea, or land.Salvatore Pais is clearly a busy man finding novel applications for high energy electromagnetic fields, and the Navy is patenting some truly science-fiction-like next-generation technologies that if realized, have the potential to change the course of technological development as we know it. Yes, some will likely wonder if this could be the power source that goes along with his other recent "UFO patents" — the engine needed to complete a seemingly otherworldly craft of some sort. The procession of these patents and their potential relation to one another is certainly intriguing, to say the least.To be frank, we at The War Zone have no idea what is going on here. We have tried to get the Navy to give us some perspective on why these patents were filed, whether they are based on legitimate technology, and why they were ever made public.At the same time, all this is occurring as the Navy, and the Navy alone out of all of the branches of the U.S. military, continues to discuss the fact that its pilots are encountering unexplained aerial phenomena at an alarming rate Are they clumsily trying to emulate what their pilots are seeing in the field, but can not yet fully explain? Could these patents just represent gross mismanagement of resources on the Navy's behalf? Or is this all some sort of elaborate disinformation play by the Navy — one that seems to have emerged right in step the rise of major peer-state competition from the likes of Russia and China, and the biggest expansion of advanced aerospace development programs in decades?At this time we have no way to give you a definitive answer, but we will continue to investigate in hopes of one day being able to do just that.We've reached out to physicists for comment on this patent and will update this story once we receive their opinions.


fortruss--2019-08-06--SOLAR STORMS Swirls in Solar Atmosphere and Magnetic Plasma

SOLAR STORMS: Swirls in Solar Atmosphere and Magnetic Plasma

Scientists have discovered previously undetected observational evidence of frequent energetic wave pulses the size of the UK, transporting energy from the solar surface to the higher solar atmosphere. An international team of scientists led by the University of Sheffield has discovered previously undetected observational evidence of frequent energetic wave pulses the size of the UK, transporting energy from the solar surface to the higher solar atmosphere.  Magnetic plasma waves and pulses have been widely suggested as one of the key mechanisms which could answer the long-standing question of why the temperature of the solar atmosphere rises dramatically, from thousands to millions of degrees, as you move away from the solar surface.  There have been many theories put forward, including some developed at the University of Sheffield — for example, heating the plasma by magnetic waves or magnetic plasma — but observational validation of the ubiquity of a suitable energy transport mechanism has proved challenging until now.  By developing innovative approaches, applied mathematicians at the Solar Physics and Space Plasma Research Centre (SP2RC) in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield, and the University of Science and Technology of China, have discovered unique observational evidence of plentiful energetic wave pulses, named after the Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén, in the solar atmosphere.  These short-lived Alfvén pulses have been found to be generated by prevalent photospheric plasma swirls about the size of the British Isles, which are suggested to have a population of at least 150,000 in the solar photosphere at any moment of time.  Professor Robertus Erdélyi (a.k.a. von Fáy-Siebenbürgen), Head of SP2RC, said: “Swirling motions are everywhere in the universe, from sinking water in domestic taps with a size of centimeters, to tornadoes on Earth and on the Sun, solar jets and spiral galaxies with a size of up to 520,000 light-years.” This work has shown, for the first time, the observational evidence that ubiquitous swirls in the solar atmosphere could generate short-lived Alfvén pulses.  Alfvén modes are currently very hard to observe directly because they do not cause any local intensity concentrations or rarefactions as they make their journey through a magnetized plasma. They are hard to be observationally distinguished from some other types of magnetic plasma modes, like the well-known transversal magnetic plasma waves, often called kink modes.  “The energy flux carried by the Alfvén pulses we detected now is estimated to be more than 10 times higher than that needed for heating the local upper solar chromosphere,” said Dr. Jiajia Liu, postdoctoral research associate. “The chromosphere is a relatively thin layer between the solar surface and the extremely hot corona. The solar chromosphere appears as a red ring around the Sun during total solar eclipses.”  Professor Erdélyi added: “It has been a fascinating question for the scientific community for a long while — how the Sun and many other stars supply energy and mass to their upper atmospheres. Our results, as part of an exciting UK-China collaboration, involving our very best early-career scientists like Drs Jiajia Liu, Chris Nelson, and Ben Snow, are an important step forward in addressing the supply of the needed non-thermal energy for solar and astrophysical plasma heating.”


newsweek--2019-01-03--Laser-Cooled Neutral Plasma Created by Scientists is 50 Times Colder Than Deep Space

For the first time, scientists have created laser-cooled neutral plasma. The temperatures reached are around 50 times colder than that of deep space, with the plasma reaching -273C.  Normally we think of lasers as being used to heat things up. However, laser cooling is the opposite—using laser light to cool down a physical system. If scientists can work out how to cool atomic gases, it opens up the “ultracold world,” Tom Killian, of Rice University, told Newsweek. This, he said, would allow them to cool down atomic gasses to about a millionth of a degree above absolute zero, “where the bizarre laws of quantum mechanics take over,” he explains.  Killian, Thomas Langin and Grant Gormon, also of Rice University, worked out a way to apply the tricks of laser cooling to ions in a neutral plasma.  Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter, after solids, liquids and gases. It is often produced in extremely hot places—like the Sun, for example.  In their experiment, Langin used a set of 10 lasers of different wavelengths to cool the neutral plasma. They vaporized strontium metal with one set of lasers, which trapped and cooled a set of atoms. They then ionized the the ultracold gas with a second set. This second pulse converted the gas into a plasma, which expanded rapidly and then dissipated.  "If an atom or ion is moving, and I have a laser beam opposing its motion, as it scatters photons from the beam it gets momentum kicks that slow it," Killian said in a statement. "The trick is to make sure that light is always scattered from a laser that opposes the particle's motion. If you do that, the particle slows and slows and slows."  By cooling down the neutral plasma, the researchers have opened up new possibilities for studying plasmas in extreme environments, such as inside white dwarf stars and in the center of Jupiter. Findings are published in the journal Science.  The immediate applications of this research are not yet clear. The team is now working to make even colder plasmas. “The ultimate limit, unless we discover some clever new tricks, is a temperature of about … about 100 times colder than we have demonstrated.” One of the limitations of the research is that the probe to measure temperatures can only go down so far.  “We have just started working with laser cooling,” he continued. We will try to push colder. We will try to develop new temperature probes to measure colder temperatures. It is predicted that if we cool far enough without letting the density get too low, the system will form a crystalline plasma, called a Wigner crystal. It is believed that ions in the center of a White dwarf star exist in this state.”  Killian said the main goal of laser cooling is to “explore the unknown,” adding that “the ‘frontier’ of cold has always been irresistible for physicists.”


sottnet--2019-11-04--Voyager 2 reaches interstellar space: Scientists detect plasma density jump

Researchers at the University of Iowa report that the spacecraft Voyager 2, the region of space outside the bubble-shaped boundary produced by wind streaming outward from the sun.In a new study, the researchers confirm Voyager 2's passage on Nov. 5, 2018, into the ISM by noting a definitive jump in plasma density detected by an Iowa-led plasma wave instrument on the spacecraft. The marked increase in plasma density is evidence of Voyager 2It's also similar to the plasma density jump experienced by Voyager 1 when it crossed into interstellar space."In a historical sense, the old idea that the solar wind will just be gradually whittled away as you go further into interstellar space is simply not true," says Iowa's Don Gurnett, corresponding author on the study, published in the journal Nature Astronomy.Gurnett, professor emeritus in the UI Department of Physics and Astronomy, is the principal investigator on the plasma wave instrument aboard Voyager 2. He is also the principal investigator on the plasma wave instrument aboard Voyager 1 and authored the 2013 study published in Science that confirmed Voyager 1 had entered the ISM.Voyager 2's entry into the ISM occurred at 119.7 astronomical units (AU), or more than 11 billion miles from the sun. Voyager 1 passed into the ISM at 122.6 AU. The spacecraft were launched within weeks of each other in 1977, with different mission goals and trajectories through space. YetThat gives valuable clues to the structure of, created by the sun's wind as it extends to the boundary of the solar system.says Bill Kurth, University of Iowa research scientist and a co-author on the study. "That says that these two points on the surface are almost at the same distance.""There's almost a spherical front to this," adds Gurnett. "It's like a blunt bullet."Data from the Iowa instrument on Voyager 2, which Gurnett likens to the effect of a snowplow on a city street.The Iowa researchers saySome had thought Voyager 2 would make that crossing first, based on models of the heliosphere."It's kind of like looking at an elephant with a microscope," Kurth says. "Two people go up to an elephant with a microscope, and they come up with two different measurements. You have no idea what's going on in between. What the models do is try to take information that we have from those two points and what we've learned through the flight and put together a global model of the heliosphere that matches those observations.""The two Voyagers will outlast Earth," Kurth says. "They're in their own orbits around the galaxy for five billion years or longer. And the probability of them running into anything is almost zero.""They might look a little worn by then," Gurnett adds with a smile.The Iowa study is one of five papers on Voyager 2 published in Nature Astronomy. These papers confirm the passage of Voyager 2 to interstellar space and provide details on the characteristics of the heliopause.


upi--2019-11-05--Voyager 2 arrives at interstellar space, finds increased plasma density

Nov. 5 (UPI) -- Voyager 2 has definitely busted through the hydrogen wall at the edge of the solar system.  According to the latest data analysis by scientists at the University of Iowa, the probe left the heliosphere some time ago and has been streaming through interstellar space for the last several months.  The probe's plasma wave instrument recently returned data showing a marked increase in the plasma density, the same jump Voyager 1 experienced when it escaped the influence of the solar winds and entered the interstellar medium, or ISM.  "In a historical sense, the old idea that the solar wind will just be gradually whittled away as you go further into interstellar space is simply not true," Don Gurnett, Iowa physics professor, said in a news release. "We show with Voyager 2 -- and previously with Voyager 1 -- that there's a distinct boundary out there. It's just astonishing how fluids, including plasmas, form boundaries."  Gurnett is the principal investigator for the plasma wave instrument on both Voyager probes.  Scientists estimated that Voyager 2 left the solar system late last year, but the latest findings -- published this week in the journal Nature -- offer confirmation.  Though both spacecraft launched within a few months of each other in 1977, Voyager 1 took a slightly more direct route to the edge of the solar system. The probe has been traveling through interstellar space -- even riding the momentum of interstellar shock waves -- for several years now.  When Voyager 1 broke through the hydrogen wall, the probe was 122.6 astronomical units from the sun. When Voyager 2 entered interstellar space, it was 119.7 AUs from the sun, or more than 11 billion miles from the center of the solar system.  The numbers suggest the contours of the heliosphere's outer wall are mostly uniform.  "It implies that the heliosphere is symmetric, at least at the two points where the Voyager spacecraft crossed," said Bill Kurth, University of Iowa research scientist. "That says that these two points on the surface are almost at the same distance."  Models predicted Voyager 2 would reach the hydrogen wall first, but the latest numbers suggest the wall's thickness varies. Scientists can use the new numbers from Voyager 2 to more accurately model the shape and thickness of the heliosphere's hydrogen wall, where the solar winds run out of momentum and are pushed back by the interstellar medium.  Scientists hope to continue learning new details about interstellar space as the Voyager probes return new measurements.  "The two Voyagers will outlast Earth," Kurth said. "They're in their own orbits around the galaxy for five billion years or longer. And the probability of them running into anything is almost zero."


lewrockwell--2019-06-28--The Karl Marx of Physics

The Karl Marx of Physics

God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.  I have written in the past for LewRockwell.com about concepts presented by “Electric Universe” theorists, which are at odds with the orthodoxy of current cosmology; one such example is what I believe is the fallacy of the existence of “Black Holes” that I discussed here in “The Black Hole in the Heart of Stephen Hawking.” Perhaps the primary cause of physics losing its way is the deification of Albert Einstein. In titling this piece “The Karl Marx of Physics,” I do not intend to characterize Einstein as a callous human being who totally misread human nature and is responsible for much suffering as Karl Marx was. However, in the “oxymoronic” concept, as Electric Universe theorist Wal Thornhill describes it, of the “thought experiment,” which is to say by thinking about how nature works instead of observing and experimenting, and introducing mathematics as the focus of cosmology and less so observation, in addition to the flawed theories of General Relativity and Special Relativity, Einstein’s work has resulted in a tremendous distortion of the nature of the cosmos and how nature truly acts. For in the words of Electrical Universe theorist Wallace Thornhill, “In real science cause and effect cannot be divorced. Einstein complained of quantum mechanics, ‘God doesn’t play dice with the world.’ But ever since students have been taught two unscientific philosophies that are mutually exclusive. Ironically, Einstein’s postulates stand in the way of understanding gravity, light, and quantum interactions in simple classical terms.” The Big Bang Never Hap... Eric Lerner Best Price: $3.62 Buy New $12.83 (as of 05:55 EDT - Details)  Indeed, Einstein himself, as Wallace Thornhill concluded in the second part of his two part video series on Einstein, stated in a letter that was not revealed until long after he died, “You can imagine that I look back on my life’s work with calm satisfaction. But from nearby it looks quite different. There is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm, and I feel uncertain whether in general I am on the right track.”  In this statement of humility and insight, Einstein was finally correct about something, if only too late to correct the damage he had done. For as Thornhill notes, “Scientific understanding is provisional. It is a tactical error to declare someone a paragon of genius. In this error of peer censorship it stifles debate and dissent, which is essential for the advancement of science…It can halt progress….The simple fact is that [Einstein’s] theories make no physical sense.”  Consequently, I believe even the Electric Universe is not a complete description or explanation of the universe, although superior to current “scientistic” dogma. However, key tenets of Einstein’s theories have been disproven. In the first video entitled, “I am not Einstein,” from a quote by Einstein himself when confronted with the fanaticism of his followers, Thornhill shows that the speed of light is not a constant; this fact has been established by experiment. Posted at the time of the one hundredth anniversary of Einstein’s “General Theory of Relativity,” Thornhill asks in the video after the idolatrous coverage in the legacy media, “What really is there to celebrate? There have been no fundamental scientific breakthroughs in that time. Relativity and Quantum Theory remain as incompatible as ever. If Einstein was wrong we have wasted a century.”  And a recent experiment discredited his theory again, “with all loopholes in the experiment were closed.” Einstein disliked the concept in quantum physics of “spooky action at a distance” yet this “spooky action” has indeed been proven in these recent experiments; as Thornhill put it, “It is a profoundly important result because it confirms that there is a signaling system—a force—that connects separate bits of matter instantaneously. Einstein’s speed of light is not the barrier he postulated. The universe is a coherent, connected system. To progress once more, we must forget Einstein.  “It’s a thankless and supremely difficult task to question the long-held belief of authorities and there’s no stronger faith that Einstein was a genius of the highest order. We’re fed that story as early as primary school. The media builds it out incessantly. We are subject to indoctrination.”  The first postulate of Special Relativity is that “the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference. But orbiting planets and quantum experiments show that there is a real-time connection between widely separated matter in the universe. The fixed stars can be regarded as an absolute frame of reference, which returns us to classical physics and Ernst Mach’s principle that relates the motion of the local inertial frame to the distant stars…Einstein’s first postulate…is invalid.”  Old Physics for New: a... Thomas E. Phipps Jr. Buy New $5.95 (as of 11:15 EDT - Details) Similarly, when Einstein conducted a “thought experiment” that noted the feeling one gets when being pulled by gravity is equivalent to a person accelerating and “he dubbed this conjecture the ‘principle of equivalence.’ However, with an absolute frame of reference, they are not equivalent.” Nor does Einstein’s theory even begin to explain how gravity actually works. And the problem is applying mathematical principles to reality; while it might be correct mathematically to “label galactic time intervals ‘past, present and future’ but physically there is only now. The passage of time is universal when all matter is connected in real time. Time cannot be slowed or sped up. It is dimensionless. It has no arrow. There is no ‘space-time,’ no ‘fourth dimension.’ That the universe is a system connected effectively in real time—at least at a galactic scale—should never have been in dispute, since Newton’s law of gravity, which is derived from observations, is instantaneous. His well known equation doesn’t include time.”  Or as Thornhill has spoken in the past, “time is measured with a clock” while height, depth and length—the three dimensions—are measured with a ruler. Time is not equivalent to spatial dimensions at all.  Thornhill adds, “Observations show that the earth is drawn to the instantaneous position of the sun and not where it appears in the sky eight minutes later.” And Thornhill points out that Einstein booster Arthur Eddington in his book Space, Time and Gravitation “he notes that if gravity propagated with finite velocity, the motion of the planets around the sun would become unstable, due to a torque acting on the planets. The problem was already known to Newton and examined by Laplace, who calculated a value far faster than the speed of light.” Consequently, Einstein’s theory has no bearing on cosmic reality, just on earthbound observers jumping on or off trains or airplanes.  In the second part of the YouTube series, “Einstein: The Mythology of Celebrity,”   Thornhill notes that Einstein took a turn towards mysticism in his postulate on the nature of light as being composed of small massless particles since he introduced a “zero mass particle carrying energy in defiance of E=MC2. This introduced the absurd wave-particle duality to electromagnetism…Since all matter is connected in real time by the subtle longitudinal electric force—also known as gravity—the energy of the light wave is not available to any other particle once is has been accepted by the resonant receiving particle. Light is a combination between two signals between atoms: the direct longitudinal resonating signal and the slower transverse electrical wave.”  In the video titled “No—Gravitational Waves Have Not Been Observed,” Thornhill elaborates, “The dirty little secret is that mathematics is the foreign language of physics. Few claim to understand the language and the math to English dictionary is woefully incomplete because the editors—the natural philosophers—were sacked a century ago. So key words like ‘mass’ and ‘energy’ are physically undefined and infinities are reified, which allows a photon to exist having no mass but carrying energy.  “The shocking truth is that E=Mc2 is not physically understood. It seems physics is a foreign discipline for mathematicians also.”  As African American NASA engineer and physicist Edward Dowdye has written in the summary to his paper, “The Solar Plasma Limb is found to deflect Microwaves from Extra Galactic Radio Sources at Lowest Impact Parameter Corresponding to the Solar Plasma Limb”: Discourses & Mathemati... Edward Henry Dowdye Best Price: $260.59 Buy New $24.91 (as of 05:55 EDT - Details)  Since we do not observe what Dr. Dowdye described, this is further falsification of Einstein’s theory.  In “What Moves” written by Mel Acheson, he discusses the nature of light, as opposed to the dogma:  What if light is a “cumulative response”? No one has bothered to develop a mathematical theory for that … yet. What if light is something else? No one has bothered to peer down the cognitive alleyways for a third or fourth possibility: Consider that plasma discharge phenomena are scalable over at least 14 orders of magnitude, from the scale of galaxies to the scale of atoms. Why stop with “fundamental” subatomic particles? What if the “zoo” of subatomic particles are merely tiny electrical sparks–plasmoids–observed at different stages of their evolution or under different discharge conditions? (Imagine a subatomic-sized Herbig-Haro star or active Seyfert galaxy–the “doughnut on a stick” form typical of so many plasma discharge phenomena.) What if reality consists of larger sparks driving smaller sparks all the way down the scales, and there is no such thing as a “particle” or a “wave”? With electromagnetism, the electric and magnetic fields vary in strength and polarity. It’s not immediately obvious that anything moves–except scientists’ opinions about it. And they move more like a mob: Fervency of belief so easily obscures enlightenment. It’s been 300 years, and the question is still open: What moves?  The corresponding video from the Thunderbolts is entitled, “What Is Light?”  I don’t expect the interested and thoughtful reader to have all questions answered by viewing these few videos and reading from the selected texts. My purpose in writing is to get readers to challenge the scientific orthodoxy that has no room for heretics; yet without heretics, science doesn’t advance at all. It remains static and just another ideology; certainly readers of LewRockwell.com see that disease in current economic theory, as opposed the minority Austrian Economics perspective. The Electric Universe Wallace Thornhill, Dav... Best Price: $70.62 Buy New $24.00 (as of 11:15 EDT - Details)  While motion pictures and the legacy media promote breathlessly the (comic book) fictional high technology nation of Wakanda in Africa to inspire “black pride,” Dr. Dowdye is a real, living, respected scientist with a proven track record as an engineer. On his website ExtinctionShift.com one can find an unexpected, elegant solution to the “Double-slit Phenomenon” via this link. Of course, since Dr. Dowdye respects yet challenges Einstein’s theories, he’s a genius whose work the majority of Americans have no idea exists. From his biography on his website:  Dr. Dowdye is an electrical engineer (retired) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he worked with the development of satellite born laser systems, precision laser optics and the life-time performance of various non-linear crystals used for the generation of specific harmonics of a high energy Neodymium YAG infrared Laser. The non-linear crystals were used on board spacecrafts and satellites to provide harmonics of the infrared laser emissions for altimeter functions as well as for probes designed to map the surface of the moon and to map terrestrial and extraterrestrial surfaces. The laser emissions are also used to provide the excitations for probing various particulates of terrestrial and extraterrestrial atmospheres as well as to provide precision altimeter measurements to monitor changes in the levels of the polar ice caps due to environmental warming effects. Dr. Dowdye is an experimental Physicist with a long career and experience in lasers and the laboratory testing of precision optics to be used on space born satellite systems. Dr. Dowdye is an independent researcher and Founder of Pure Classical Physics Research. He is a leading expert on fundamental theories pertaining to both Electromagnetism and Gravitation and their direct and indirect interactions. He is a member of the American Physical Society and a member of several other nationally and internationally recognized Physical Science organizations. He frequently gives lectures at seminars and conferences at university Physics Departments, churches, schools and at various on-line video web-broadcast physical science conferences. Dr. Dowdye is the author of a book, Discourses and Mathematical Illustrations Pertaining to the Extinction Shift Principle…a challenge to both the Special and the General Relativity Theories of Dr. Albert Einstein.  Dr. Dowdye wrote on this page about his theory of the “Extinction Shift” versus Einstein’s theories:  Perhaps the world would be better served by knowledge of the work of physicist Wallace Thornhill and Dr. Dowdye, and less adulation of the confused and flawed Einstein, whose legacy sadly results in an irrational and fundamentally contradictory and incomprehensible universe.  Son of Thunder: The Sp... Yvonne Lorenzo Best Price: $864.56 Buy New $12.00 (as of 09:50 EDT - Details) The Cloak of Freya: Th... Yvonne Lorenzo Buy New $14.00 (as of 09:55 EDT - Details) Discourses & Mathemati... Edward Henry Dowdye Best Price: $260.59 Buy New $24.91 (as of 05:55 EDT - Details)  The Best of Yvonne Lorenzo


naturalnews--2019-07-24--Quantum computer time machine Russian physicists can move small particles a fraction of a second in

Quantum computer time machine: Russian physicists can move small particles a fraction of a second into the past

(Natural News) Russian researchers claim that they developed a “time machine” capable of sending subatomic particles in the opposite direction of time’s arrow. The quantum device is said to transport tiny bits of matter a fraction of a second into the past.  Conducted by the Moscow Institute of Physics & Technology (MIPT), the device used electrons as the time-traveling particle. The negatively charged particles within an atom, electrons play a big role in quantum mechanics, the science that covered particles smaller than an atom.  The researchers chose a pool break as the analogy for their time machine with the balls representing the electrons. When a pool player executes a break, the laws of physics and probability dictates that the balls moved in random directions. The same principle applies to scattered electrons.  Thanks to a customized quantum computer, the MIPT research team got the electrons to return to their starting positions instead of scattering to the winds. The effect resembled a video recording playing in reverse, a popular way of depicting the reversal of time in media.  Based on the results of their experiment, the MIPT researchers made the bold claim of successfully circumventing the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the total entropy of an isolated system will never decrease despite the passage of time.  One of the rules of physics dictates that everything in the universe experiences decay in the form of entropy. That rule ensures that events move from the past to the future instead of the other way around.  Support our mission to keep you informed: Discover the extraordinary benefits of turmeric gummy bears and organic "turmeric gold" liquid extract, both laboratory tested for heavy metals, microbiology and safety. Naturally high in potent curcuminoids. Delicious formulations. All purchases support this website (as well as your good health). See availability here.  The MIPT researchers defied this rule with a time machine based on a typical quantum computer. In turn, the computing device incorporated qubits.  A unit of data that represented either “one,” “two,” or a “superposition” that combined both values, a qubit fits on a space the size of a single electron.  In their experiment, the Russian researchers used an evolution program that forced the qubits to form an increasingly complicated and shifting pattern of zeros and ones. The evolutionary process caused the qubits to lose cohesive order in a similar way that a pool break scatters balls across the table.  As the qubits evolved from orderly patterns to chaotic movement, the researchers implemented another program. The new program altered the state of the quantum computer so that it evolved in the opposite direction.  MIPT researcher Dr. Gordey Lesovik oversaw the development of the quantum computer. He showed how the qubits appeared to be moving backward in time instead of forward when viewed from the outside.  “We have artificially created a state that evolves in a direction opposite to that of the thermodynamic arrow of time,” explained Lesovik, the head of the university’s Physics of Quantum Information laboratory.  He and his research team tested the number of qubits required to pull off a successful time reversal. They found that using two units of data sufficed to achieve a success rate of 85 percent.  However, adding more qubits also increased the number of errors. Three units dropped the chances of success to 50 percent.  Lesovik believed that their findings might contribute to the field of quantum computing.  “Our algorithm could be updated and used to test programs written for quantum computers and eliminate noise and errors,” he brought up.  The electronic circuits of conventional computers were either in an off state or an on state. Quantum computers, on the other hand, used circuits that existed in both states at the same time. Among other things, this superposition lets them predict the future.  Read more news about physics at Physics.news.